Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, Howard Schultz, William C Weldon, and Gary Vaynerchuk: Besides being successful CEOs, all are members of the same club: successful CEOs who started out as salespeople. Everybody loves the idea of entrepreneurship but very few people actually want to be a sales person.  If you want to become an entrepreneur, you must learn how to sell. 

The young Buffett sold securities for three years. Cuban was a sales rep who taught himself programming, Schultz sold copiers at Xerox, Weldon started his career as a Sales rep at Johnson and Johnson, Gary was a Sales Rep way back who sold baseball cards and earned thousands of dollars from it.

To be a great entrepreneur, you must possess the skills of a sales person; those same skills that are essential to leading a company: communications, strategic thinking, ambition, integrity, passion for the business and, last but not least, persuasive skills. Entrepreneurship is all about sales. Aside from the great ideas and the passion, it is important for aspiring entrepreneurs to understand that entrepreneurship is basically 80% of sales and marketing.

If you intend to become a founder/CEO and find yourself not obsessed with marketing and sales business, that turns out to be more of a liability than an asset. You can have the best product and services out there on the market but it will be a waste until and unless people realize it’s worth. Having sales strategies is very important. It is important to have a strong handle on the basic sales strategies as they are the ones that are going to bring in development of the products and services ongoing in your business.

Talking about the founders’ first campaign that they go through, to them selling is the basic concept of the business to let potential investors find interest in their prospects. Entrepreneurship is not about programming or sweeping people off their feet, it definitely is one of the toughest aspects to deal with. How many times have you seen entrepreneurs on Africa’s Young Entrepreneurs (AYE) TV show fail because they were unable to convince them to invest in their enterprises? Many of these young entrepreneurs had great ideas and great products, but were unable to pitch them in a way that made the investors willing to put their money into it?

If you think sales isn’t an important skill for an entrepreneur to learn, watch a couple episodes of AYE TV show and you’ll quickly change your mind. Think of the blood, sweat, and tears these aspiring entrepreneurs gave to launch successful businesses. It’s almost heartbreaking. You see them crash out just because they didn’t know how to sell their dreams properly. 

Just so you know entrepreneurship is not about quitting your job, having a great idea, building product/services and a team. It is all about having the major strategies that can lead you to selling your products or services to the person you don’t actually know. It does not end here. You have to continuously repeat the process so as to get the best possible results.

So, if there is just one thing that you should be looking forward to when starting your own company then that is to proceed further with sales and marketing. I am telling you; this is not a joke and you really have to be passionate about it once you look forward to investing in it. Entrepreneurship is not a child’s play. 

It is a thought of some entrepreneurs that if they can create a very good and attracting product, then it will be the customers who will be reaching out to them. If we look at the statistics, it never works out that way. The smart entrepreneurs look for the other way around. The basic strategy is to first look and find customers who are willing to have your interest. After that, you start building up your killer products. You do so only when you see that the customers are willing to pay. 

Entrepreneurship is just a game of sales. If you don’t start selling out as soon as you start your company, it can turn to days, this can further lead to weeks, and weeks can end up in months. Well, you never know, it can even go around for a year. Isn’t it? That is why it is a bad idea to start a business without an actual sales strategy. If you can’t push out your products or services and bring it out in front of the world so that they know about you, it’s more or less like your business does not exist. Being able to sell will help you gain more customers for your product. Even when you hire a sales force, you will still need to sell your product to the employees you hire. You will need to sell it to investors. You will need to sell it to everyone you meet. 

As I have mentioned several times that entrepreneurship is all about sales and if it is the thing that you lack the most, trust me, being an entrepreneur is one of the worst ideas that you have ever had.

Every society has its pains, struggles, and challenges. In every country, there are nice people as well as cruel people. For our dear country, we still have our fights, and our battles. For decades we have struggled to build a good image for our country, and our people. 

The greatest challenge we face as a nation is not corruption, but selfishness. Everyone wants to amass wealth for their families, even up to their fifth generations. Some people in public offices see such privilege as an opportunity to share a part of the National Cake. They prefer to spend most of their days overseas, instead of developing the amenities back home. They forget that the monster that they have left behind, is still where it is, and would definitely grow. They don’t believe there is something wrong in the nation because they ride the latest cars, and live in glass houses. They ride with a long queue of escorts, and even ride on one- way roads. They break the laws that they make, claiming to be above the law. They do not see the bad roads, because they live in estates built with gold. And if they see it, they will simply ignore, and say that it is not in Nigeria, or that the people are not tax-compliant. Pathetic! 

Nobody wants to do what is right anymore, without compensation. Contracts figures are inflated, as everyone wants to embezzle money. We are seen as wealthy by foreigners, when in fact, many die, being hungry. We have one of the largest natural gas reserves , but still cannot fix our chronic power issues. Nobody wants to do anything, because nobody cares. Everybody is comfortable, where they are. Nobody wants to speak up, so as not to be indicted. During elections, some of our desperate politicians mobilize the youths to unleash terror, in order to do their dirty bidding. They forget that the lion that is allowed to freely feed on any flesh, would one day feast on the flesh of its owner. 

If you have been to the slums, you will understand why the youths are embittered. If we had done the right thing, we wouldn’t have had any kidnapper stop us on the highways and on our streets. Our houses would not have been burgled, and our properties razed. Our farmlands would have been safe, and our women spared, if we had done the right thing!

What happens to a system that is fantastically corrupt? I mean a system where even the judges are biased, and the others threatened. We claim to be one, but no love to prove we are one. You see brothers fighting brothers, killing themselves. The country is allowed to rot, and at the end the masses suffer for it. When there is insecurity in the nation, these leaders are the first to leave the country. When you go to the airports, you will see a lot of queue, as the whole flights had been booked. Interesting!

Irrespective of all we have seen and heard, I love Nigeria. I believe there are good people here. We do have a conscience, and will not allow the voices of the bad few to drown the voices of the many. If you have an erring child, does that make your entire family corrupt? I don’t think so. We will become great again as a nation. However, this is a task for all of us. Remember, if we do not confront our fears, they will become our greatest nightmares. 

A lot of people wait till they graduate and complete NYSC before they start looking for jobs. These days, it has become more difficult for fresh graduates to get jobs in Nigeria, for those who get a job immediately are considered very luck indeed.

1. Here are ways you can boost your chances of securing a job before graduation.
2. If you are interested in a company, try to get in touch with its current interns, they would have advice on what the company is looking for, the best person to get in touch with so you are not cold calling or sending emails to the wrong persons.
3. Reach out to your friends who have worked as IT students or interns at the company you have in mind and see if they are willing to forward your resume to an actual person before you apply.
4. Ask for information from your employed friends on how they got their jobs. They might be able to introduce you to somebody who was helpful to them.
5. Send your resume to a career coach for a review
6. Reach out to your previous bosses where you did your internship/IT with a catch-up mail. Talk about your career goals and ask if they know any opportunity in their organization or they know anybody they can talk to on your behalf.
7. Find an opportunity to work with people at the company you want to work for by creating an opportunity for yourself. Bring somebody for a workshop, session or panel event. It is a perfect way to let people see you operate in a professional setting- a great way to start relationship with potential contacts.
8. You don’t have to be a professional to attend networking events. Search for events, attend and make connections.
9. Host a mini networking event for yourself and your friends. Having a networking mindset makes people really think about their connections and might find some friends are able to help in ways you never would have expected.
10. Find opportunity to make introductions for people especially when the connection doesn’t cost you anything but could be very valuable to them. It’s a great way to stay in touch with people. The contacts you help out are likely to pay you back later.
11. Do a part-time or virtual internship especially with a company that might be able to turn the temporary offer into a full time. It’s a time to prove how valuable you are.
12. Have your final year project coming up, see if you can find a way to spin it around and learn new skills in the process. You can start a blog instead of writing a paper, create a faux media for a company, create a website or short video related to the title of the project.
13. Look at the LinkedIn profile of people a step ahead of you or look at job listings you are interested in. Are there any skills they have or are looking for that you lack and start to gain those skills. If you don’t know what skills to add, tech skills are in high demand.
14. Ask your friends to forward you opportunities they see or start a WhatsApp group where friends can share opportunities they come across.
15. Get your LinkedIn profile setup if you don’t already have one and make sure it is completely filled. First impression they say matters a lot, so consider taking a professional headshot taken that you can use on your LinkedIn
16. Check your Facebook privacy settings to make sure you restrict un-necessary photos tagging by friends from going public. Switch your browser to incognito mode and google your name. Are the search results what you want recruiters to see, if not find a way to clean it up.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Thursday,  22nd of August published a new electricity tariff on its website, increasing the cost by an additional sum between NGN8 and NGN16 for every kilowatt-hour energy provided by their respective distribution companies. Until now, the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI)  has been marred with non-cost reflective tariffs and high aggregate technical commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses. The challenges which have created a liquidity crisis in the fragile sector is gradually pushing it towards bankruptcy despite the interventions from  the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The argument to fixing the problem was whether to first deal with the  abysmally low collection efficiency component of the ATC&C losses  which on the average for 2019 is at 20%, or to implement a cost-reflective tariff. Increasing tariff without first addressing the problems of commercial and collection losses would simply create a  vicious cycle as the action can result in deviant consumer behavior and increase the level of theft.

To solve the puzzle, NERC in her wisdom first introduced the Meter  Asset Provider (MAP) scheme where consumers can advance payment for  metering and get it installed within 10 working days. This, the Commission hopes will Fast-Track Closure of Metering Gap, and then the  expectation that it will facilitate improvement in revenue collection.  

Secondly, NERC embarked on the tariff review process for presumably,  cost reflectiveness which will become effective on 1st January 2020. We examine how this new tariff increase will affect businesses in Nigeria.

The business climate in Nigeria has never had it better in terms of  electricity supply, with most businesses generating up to 50% of their  electricity. The energy losses associated with the self-generation model is significantly high that it erodes business operating profits.  

The trade-off would have been to optimize the use of cheaper grid  electricity as much as possible when available. But the frequent number of outages from the grid diminish this value. Currently, the  industry is trying to recuperate and consequently, the increasing electricity tariff. This could mean two things for your business profitability;

• (1)   increase the price of your product and services; or
• (2)   reduce energy cost by implementing energy efficiency measures

To put these scenarios into perspective, if your annual electricity  consumption is 2,000,000 KWh in Abuja and you generate about 40% of your own electricity at NGN90 per unit (KWh) using a diesel generator,  your current annual energy cost would be NGN128.5million. If you do nothing and continue with business as usual with the increased tariff, your energy bill will increase by 12.8%, eroding your pre tax profit by  NGN16.4million per annum.

If you choose option one above by increasing the cost of your product  and services, most likely, you would see a drop in demand, especially if you are in a sector with high elastic demand. And if your business  is already struggling with the current economic downturn, it might as well mean the end of the road for your business.

If you choose option two by implementing energy efficiency measures,  through which 20% cost savings can easily be achieved, you would completely avoid the impact of the increased tariff, plus a further  9.8% reduction in your annual energy cost leading to NGN12.5 million increase in your pretax profit.

Let’s imagine that instead of going for cost reduction, you try to  increase sales instead. If your pre-tax earnings margin is 15%, then  you would have to increase sales by NGN193.3 million per year to get the same impact as option 2. And how would you do it?  Most of the time you can’t be certain that the actions you would take to boost sales will deliver the expected results. You might be left with  expensive advertising campaigns and new product development, and insufficient payback.

Prof. John Momoh (pictured), Chairman of NERC, didn’t miss his words during the  assumption of office of the new Minister of Power, Mr. Sale Mamman when he said: “You are going to be paying for those wasted energy, so  we have to minimize loss at the customer end.”[ In the current  globalized and competitive economy, the efficiency of materials,  energy, and processes determines who wins the market and Nigeria is  not an exception.