I ATTENDED a
ceremony at Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, during which a few prominent Nigerians who
had made great contributions to the construction industry were inducted
into
the Hall of Fame. One of them was my mentor, brother and friend Obong (Arc)
Victor Attah, former Governor of Akwa Ibom State who is truly a man of many
parts.
The theme
was “local content in the oil and gas sector”. In other words, how to increase
the use of Made In Nigeria products and services in that sector. No single person
was awarded a prize for selling the Made In Nigeria products and services which
constituted the focus of “local content”. It never occurred to the engineers
and architects that those products can only remain sustainable if sold to a
wider spectrum of customers than just those in oil and gas who were actually a
captive market because a law compels them to use local content. Once oil
recedes as a national revenue earner, the market for those products and
services will also dry up. That was a glaring error. I was not given a chance
to raise the point during the Question and Answer period. I hope some of the
organizers are reading this. Their vision is short-term because it is not based
on sound sales orientation. One of the presenters received the loudest applause
when he pointed out that almost everybody in attendance was wearing imported
suits, ties and shoes. He wondered why “we are not proud of our local attires”.
It was a demonstration of our collective hypocrisy because the speaker himself
was dressed in a suit. When it comes to patronage of goods nobody can count on
the patriotism of fellow Nigerians. Johnson Wax Nigeria Limited, in the late
1990s and early 2000s did not make that mistake when the company decided to
enter the growing market for mosquito coils when the steady decline in aerosols
became unmistakable. The market potential was huge; but there was a problem.
Imported mosquito coil brands were already here in Nigeria. Mr G. Oteri, who is
around somewhere, and former Managing Director of Johnson Wax Company, JWC, is
my witness. Close to JWC at Isolo, Lagos, was the carcass of the Berec
Batteries company which had succumbed to assault by Chinese Tiger brand
batteries among others. This time, I was engaged as a Consultant/Sales Trainer
when JWC went to battle with the Chinese brands. No new products were
introduced but in three years, the RAID COIL was by far the leading brand in
Nigeria. What made the difference? The same answer: PROFESSIONAL SELLING. JWC
sales people were subjected to the most rigorous sales training programme,
which was sustained for those three years. Again, it was like a military drill
– relentless, programmed and methodical. Apart from my professional fees, Mr
Oteri paid me the extra dividend of introducing me to his former colleague in
Ghana – who had become the Chief Executive of a company selling birth control
devices – condoms etc. I trained sales people in Ghana for the next two years
and from Ghana I was referred to a company in Uganda setting out to introduce
locally manufactured soaps and detergents. Each time, sales improved, not by
ten per cent or twenty per cent, but by as much as two hundred per cent or more
– all because the sales team was transformed into a selling machine. My career
in the brewery sector followed the same pattern. I went from SmithKline, a
pharmaceutical global giant in March 1981 to North Brewery Limited, Kano and by
the following March monthly sales had climbed from 350 cartons per month to a
record one million cartons – a record never erased till NBK shut down after I
left to join Standard Breweries, Ibadan and repeated the same feat. Yet, in all
these sales adventures, not a single sales person was sacked. I worked with the
same people who were under-performing and turned them to winners. Our father
HRH Soun of Ogbomoso, was one of my customers at NBK and Ibadan. Along the way
DOUBLE CROWN, bottled in Kano, became the leading brand in Ogbomoso; and in
reverse, CLUB became the second largest selling in Kano after I headed the
Marketing team. Nothing else changed, but the approach to selling.
Unfortunately, African businessmen still have to understand that sales training
must be continuous. As soon as major improvements are achieved, the first thing
the finance people tell the MD is the same old story; “the product is selling
itself”. Funds for sales training are deleted and the decline soon starts. On
the other hand, all the global companies for which I worked organized sales
training programmes for their sales people at least twice a year. There was
inevitably an Annual Sales Meeting attended by all the top managers and even
some Board members which invariably includes several days of sales training.
That is why those companies remain on top for years. I am also aware that most
nations in the advanced economies assist the companies selling globally to
train their staff and to make them more globally competitive. MITI in Japan is
one. Expense for such training programmes are usually tax-deductible and have
been recognized as yielding the best returns on investment possible. Certainly,
if we are serious about making a success of the campaign to get Nigerians to
buy Made In Nigeria products and services, we need to get ready to sell them.
In that connection, the Federal Government and some of its agencies, especially
the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, as well as the Organised Private Sector,
OPS, need to spearhead the effort. Guarantee Trust Bank, GTB a few months ago
organized a fair at Victoria Island for local food and drink producers. That
was show-casing. Most of the visitors to those stands who sampled the products
probably never saw them again and apparently don’t miss them. GTB and other
banks financing such ventures should urge the investors to devote some funds to
initial training of their sales people. That is what will help recover their
investments – not warehouses full of stuff which nobody wants. FG, ITF and OPS
will need to work with training outfits, like the Institute of Certified Sales
Professionals, ICSP, to develop customized
training modules for a broad spectrum of sales people called upon to
sell these products. Bringing a lot of people to undertake the foundation
courses will reduce the cost per participant to the barest minimum and we can
gradually expand the pool of sales people with the skills and mental attitude
to undertake the task of selling locally made products. It will not be easy. If
it is every local producer should be smiling to the banks by now. They can
still smile; if we want.
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