The United States said it will revise its ban on some categories of migrant visa on Nigeria. This was disclosed at the end of the inaugural meeting of the U.S./Nigeria Forum, by Amb. Mustapha Sulaiman, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He said while addressing the press at the conclusion of the Forum on Wednesday, that there has been improvement in the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Nigeria, thus highlighting the need to address some of their differences, including the visa restrictions.

Sulaiman said Nigeria has fulfilled almost 90 percent of what the United States government expects from her to reverse the visa ban. It could be recalled that the U.S. in January, announced visa ban on some countries, including Nigeria, on the excuse they fall short on many fronts of their ties.

But according to Sulaiman, Nigeria has responded to the concerns raised by the United States to the point that it is willing to re-evaluate the restrictions.

“We have accomplished so much within a very difficult year, but essentially we want to acknowledge and put on record Nigeria’s response to the concerns by the United States government in respect of the immigrant visa restriction that was imposed on Nigerians.

“From the assessment of the recipient of our response, I think we have accomplished almost 90 percent of the requirements that has been established in that regard. And I’m sure that if you follow the information that has been passed on the level of compliance, for instance sharing of information, we have done so much in that regard.

“That is why I believe the U.S. government is having the comfort to even re-evaluate otherwise, we wouldn’t have been candidates for re-evaluation.

“The consular forum was agreed on earlier in the year during the Bi-National Commission of the United States and Nigeria which was held in Washington January/February and that agreement is what is coming to push now. We have just had the maiden consular forum meeting today and I want to put on record that it has been a very successful meeting with various issues that were discussed,” Sulaiman said.

Acknowledging the progress made by Nigeria, the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard said there has been significant progress in many fronts, including the area of information sharing.

Leonard said she’s impressed by Nigeria’s efforts and that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State will make the report on the measures taken available to the White House for Reassessment.

“I have to congratulate Nigeria on its progress on greater information sharing with the United States, which is croak of a lot of issues dealt with in these presidential proclamations. We have reviewed the Federal Government’s report on information sharing and we are inspired by the strides that Nigeria has made to improve access to stolen and lost documents.

“And particularly, encouraged by the September 7 announcement that the U.S. provided Interpol router is successfully connected to Nigeria’s Immigration Service and National Center Bureau in Abuja. Washington is extremely pleased about that development in particular,” she said.

The US Government said in January that the visa ban has been carried out for security reasons, that Nigeria has failed to comply with the established identity-management and information-sharing criteria assessed by the performance metrics. It also said that the African giant failed to share public safety and terrorism-related information necessary for the protection of the US national security. These, they said resulted in the prevalence of identity theft in Nigeria.

Improvement in these areas of concern seems to have moved the United States to reconsider its earlier decision. It also means that thousands of Nigerians will have a shot at a migrant visa to the U.S. once again.

I will show you in two to three minutes all you need to know in order to create a product that sells and that will make investors seek you.

If you stay with me to the end, you shall learn what will change your business in a great positive dimension.

It was a very cool evening, I took a stroll to my friend’s office. So we can hang out in one of the eateries to chill and to discuss certain important topics.

So, I ran into a middle aged man in the eatery where we had dinner. We exchanged warm pleasantries like old friends that had not seen each other for long.

We began a discussion. I’m Progress Ibrahim, a Digital Entrepreneur , Business Analyst and a Copywriter. 

He also introduced himself as the owner of the eatery.

I said I love your branding and what you sell. I then added that in business, you don’t sell what people wish to buy or say they buy. You sell what they really buy. That way you can increase sales and scale in less time.

He was very grateful for the insight I shared with him. We exchanged contact and I left.

Yes, the question is how do you know what people actually buy? How do you create a product that sells massively in the market?

I shall be explaining that with the following points;

How To Create A Product That Sells.

It has become obvious that every business must sustain itself either in the short-run or in the long-run. Investments and external funds are just temporary financing means for your business. What determines a business’ sustainability is the cash flow and the secret of cash flow is sales. Here is what you need to do to unlock that.

• What The Market Needs .

The market is far more important than the product. What do I mean ?

Yes, I mean that you need to have the market before creating the product. This is because your product is to solve a need. That need is the people’s need or the market target needs.

That means creating a product before knowing the market is like putting the cart before the horse. 

I know, you know what the result will be. It will be an excellent failure.

Who are your market targets ? What are their pain points? What will they be happy with if they have the solution?

Think of products like Uber. It saves the passenger’s time, by making getting a ride just a click away. 

• What The Market Will Buy 

Another very key consideration to make is to know what the target markets buy. You can’t make mistakes when you sell what people buy. 

Better still, you will succeed in business when you sell an improvement of what people always buy.

It is your responsibility as an entrepreneur to look at what the market target spends  money on. They will continue to spend their money on that particular thing , they will not change their mind in a short time.

The copywriter called Gary Herbert developed a product with this concept and tagged it “How To Raised Your Child’s IQ While He Is Yet Delivered”

Do you know what the result was? It recorded massive sales and he made huge profit.

• What The  Market  Target Can Buy.

When it comes to business, 3 can be more than 101 in terms of purchasing power. 

When it comes to Nigeria, it has been reported on Tekedia that we have an estimate of 200m population, only 30millon of this population has purchasing power.

What that means in business is that Nigeria has a market size of 30million people.

You have to consider if the target market can buy? They may be happy with your product but they may not be able to buy.

They should be happy and able to buy your product, else you will have zero sales.

• Test The Product In The Market.

You wont know if your product is good until it is tested in the market. This is very true especially with new products. 

All new products are very good in the sight of the owners. But that is already a biased judgement. 

The right group of people to determine whether your product is good or not is the market target (those that will use it). Until then, you have a partial product.

So, try to test your product in the market and use the feedback to iterate your product until it becomes good.

That was the story of how Airbnb scaled, as explained in 3S Rules.

With these you will succeed in the most important thing in business.