When it comes to making sales, basic rules never change

Workers clean a monument at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi where part of the celebrations to mark 50 years of Independence will be held. Traders are expected to cash in on the occasion. Photo/BILLY MUTAI  

By John Kageche

In Summary

• Kenya may be 50 today and with diverse customers but marketing fundamentals are ageless.

Kenya is 50 today. Being a public holiday, you are most probably reading this at home, watching the celebrations at the Kasarani grounds and historic Uhuru Gardens. Watch closely. Amidst the multitude seated in the stadium, there are a few standing, steadily engaging the majority.

Watch closer still. Among this latter minority are people carrying containers. Every now and then, they dip into it and pull out something which they present to the majority in exchange for money. You have just witnessed a sale.

The minority are selling groundnuts, sweets, bottled water, ice-cream and a myriad other snacks. With a captive market of nearly 100,000 people, they are doing a roaring business. The minority are hawkers.

While the rest of the country is in a festive mood, they are also celebrating what seems like manna from heaven. In one day, they will have had the opportunity to sell to more people than they could ever dream of. This is peak season for them and they will fully exploit it.

What does this mean? Kenya may be 50 but these are the fundamentals: Salemanship is much older but the basics remain the same. First is that every industry has its high and low seasons and every industry knows how to capitalise fully on the high to compensate the low.

The progressive hawker is ready to satisfy the demand of the multitude.

But it is depressing to find sales people who don’t study their market to understand its dynamics; they miss the bi-annual cattle dip day where their target market (farmers) congregate in their hundreds and to whom they would have demonstrated the workings of their latest pesticide.

They also miss the quarterly in-house training that brings together 100 employees and in which they would have sought an invitation to speak.

Also look at the items on sale They are necessities. Water and soda to wet parched throats, sweets and ice cream to appease the children, cakes and bread to keep the hunger pangs at bay and bespoke golden jubilee flags and T-shirts to placate the patriotic with a souvenir.

Nothing magical there you are thinking. It is common sense you say. But is it really? How many times do sales people insist on pushing a product to a prospect which is relevant to the sales person’s commissions but totally irrelevant to the prospects needs?

Yet despite the relevance of the products, the progressive sales people are not seated pretty waiting for the client, they are out there in the multitude, sinking deeper and deeper into it, competently handling objections as they go along.

They learnt a long time ago that in sales, Moses goes to the mountain. The mountain coming to Moses is welcome but not banked on. And yes, contrary to what most may think, there are objections in their job.

Hauna maji baridi? (Don’t you have cold water?) Punguza bei, bwana. (Give me a discount please) Tafuta change, sina pesa ndogo (I only have this Sh500 note, go get change). The objections prove yet again that they arise out of human nature and not the type of product.

Kenya may be 50 today but these are the ageless sales fundamentals:—understand your market enough to exploit its highs, offer it relevant products and handle the objections that come your way.

Happy birthday Kenya!