The Sales Person in Tanzania

In many of my recent #pitches, I've gone the extra mile and #asked my potential #clients as well as active clients what their biggest #struggle has been in #Tanzania with #newbusiness acquisition. And here are a few #highlights that seemed the most common:

1. Tanzanians Can't Say No: - now this may come as a surprise to professionals in other departments, but this can be a Sales person's biggest nightmare. It ties in with our #culture here, being brought up to feel that saying "No" is rude or just unkind in some capacity. In my humble opinion, not being able to decline an offer of service or solution is actually unkind when you don't need it and have no intention of buying it, simply because you have actively showcased yourself to a Sales Person as a Hot Lead, and they will spend time and effort to continue pursuing you when you are actually never going to convert.
2. Tanzanians Can't Take No for an Answer: - while there is no irony here after the point above has been made, this is a huge problem for the Sales Person as well as the business they are pursuing. It ties in with the same reason one cannot say no, one doesn't want to hear it either. Personally, I would advise anyone in the Sales field to openly give permission to a client to say No to you and accept their response wholeheartedly as a grace to you, having saved you your time, effort and resources after getting a clear answer. As for a business professional that has to deal with a Sales Person who may take a "no" the wrong way, a little diplomacy goes a long way.

3. Delegation is Half-Hearted: - For the longest time I have experienced that top #management in many companies have a struggle with letting the reigns go and fully trusting their immediate subordinates with steering the ship. However, in light of modern-day tactics and advice, there is still an attempt to scooch over and delegate work. This should be great, but since it is done with a "here you go" and "wait, can I have it back for a minute?", there sometimes lacks the proper trust in your subordinate to handle things the best way they know how, with you actually focusing only on the results. For a Sales person coming in to the Managing Director and being passed down to the Operations Manager, the Operations Manager takes the Sales Person from the service provider round in circles while actually waiting for the Managing Director's approval, who is in essence too busy doing their own job, yet not fully letting go and authorizing the Operations manager to take charge. What ends up happening is a Sales Person is bounced from one actual decision-maker to a pretend #decision-maker, completely wasting their time for a deal that is not going to come through until the business sorts out it's internal delegation issues.

While there are many other bottlenecks and deep-seated challenges out there, these 3 I would say are the most commonly prevalent across both larger as well as smaller #organizations. These are my personal opinions through a decade of experience in the field. All I'd like to say to my fellow Sales People in Tanzania is "Poleni Sana", though in my next short article, I will provide a list of phrases you can use for better success at this profession in our beautiful, humble and culturally rich country, Tanzania. Until then....