Dr. Seidu is the Lead Consultant, JV Management Consulting Limited and the Dean of Studies Kairos School of Enterprise and Professional Development. She’s a visiting Lecturer at Trinity University, Lagos. A Fellow, Corporate Governance Professionals, Nigeria and also Fellow, Public Administration and Management Development Institute, and Associate Member, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, Dr Seidu is also an accredited Business Development Support Provider (BDSP) for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises. She is a certified educator, trainer and public speaker. A Business Etiquette coach, Dr. Seidu is also a member of several other professional bodies, including the Institute of Strategic Management of Nigeria. She has worked across sectors both in public and private organizations conducting business growth and sustainability strategies and helping businesses especially supporting the SMEs in managing and building sustainable businesses. 

In this interview with the Access Bank/ SMEDigest Radio show on Classic 93.7 FM Radio, Lagos, she gave insight on how MSMEs can grow by creating a strong customer base.

Excerpts.

How to grow a micro or small business – Dr. Jennifer Seidu speaks to Access Bank SMEDigest on Radio

Almost all businesses depend on customer growth to do well. So, for a small business owners looking to acquire new customers, how can such a business identify the ideal customer?

When you talk about acquiring a significant customer base, I would always ask who are the customers? A lot of times we get into this business as an SME, we’re running into the market and pushing what we have; but first, who are your customers? How do you get to identify your customers? What products or services are you actually selling? You need to know your product, your services, and then identify who these services or products would actually be of value to and then what solution are you providing? That’s one, and then in that case, begin to or segment who your customers are or would be? If that happens, then we’ll look at the tools; what then would I use to get my customers? So, first thing is to know your product, your services, and who this service or product suits at that time.

So, can you name some of the most suitable marketing channels for reaching new customers? 

A lot of time, It is easier to run around the digital market, in social media, Facebook, name them, but then I would say again, you need to know your business; and I mentioned that some businesses will do so well on social media, do so well on digital marketing to gain the right clients or customers. Some other ones will still go to the traditional way of doing their referrals. So, SMEs need to also consider networking; for an instance, where do you network, what business do I do? To where do I see those that would need my businesses or rather collaborate with, professional associations are good places to market or sell your services/ products, engaging with other professional bodies is highly beneficial, and in that case, you get all sorts of referrals. Again, going back to digital marketing, the email marketing, if you’re in the service world, you would want to send emails to a lot of potential customers introducing who you are, and sending proposals. Most times these emails don’t get to them directly, in some cases they go to their spam mails.

As SMEs you need know that works for” A” may not possibly not work for “B”, hence, you need to know what works for your business; What strategy do we use, what model are we using.

So, if I’ve done all of the above right, how do I now use these channels to generate sales for my business?

Okay, so let’s take the fact that you have identified your market data, your segments, and the prospective customer, the next thing to do, is to ACT, you need to begin to implement your strategies. So, you need to go to them (your prospective customers) at a time. Now depending on the level as a SME, a startup, a scaling, growth and sustainability? Even if you have all the customers, we look for more of them. We look for customers every other time so basically you need to go look for them using all the tools. 

You are an accredited Business Development Support Provider for MSMEs and you also just told us how you have an SME yourself. Give us some tricks of the trade . What are the tactics that as an entrepreneur one could use to generate leads towards reaching a new customer base.

The digital/ email marketing helps a lot in leads generation. You could also do some giveaways targeting a particular set of customers, the lead generation technique will also depend on the kind of business you run and your products/ services. 

I would rather say, that there’s no generic way or a fit for all, a fit for all in terms of making customers come back or retaining customers, however, you must as SME offer exceptional customer experience. 

You’re SME, what strategies or channels have you found to be most effective for acquiring new customers?

We use hybrid but then, we use collaboration, referral and networking more. It works for us in what we do. In the consulting world, there is what we call ‘Royal We’ , This means I get the job, I call you cos you have a skill or competence that I don’t have, Someone else knows that, somebody else is into this. So, we come together and say this is individuals with great expertise and number of years in this, then we collaborate to get the project done.

Partnership, collaboration, you need to learn it and in doing that, you must also be very transparent and sincere. I must say that integrity matters. So for us, yes, it worked. Networking is key, very important. However, you need to learn to do it, do it well.

For individuals and businesses who are new to the business world, or they’re facing challenges perhaps in building their customer base, particularly in highly competitive markets. What can these entrepreneurs do to expand their customer base?

The business world is like conception to birth, each of the phases, you have challenges? As SME, you need to understand that if you just started a business, you need to compete with people. Who are you competing with? Firstly, you need to know who your competitors are; when you get to know your competitors, and then what level do you want to get into? how do I want to get into this business? So how do you want to start and in that case, you would be able to compete at your level without getting drained or strained. 

Obviously, we’ll tell you to do the SWOT analysis; the Strengths, the Weaknesses, the Opportunities and the Threats, if you want to check what the market is, who your competitors are, how strong they are. This knowledge is very important before you begin to talk about how to compete.

Consider where you can start from in your business, so that you are not choked by the bigger names. Know what part of the river to start swimming from. Don’t get into the depths without the adequate skills require to swim. You need to learn how to swim in the SME world. If you’re getting into farming, what part of farming can I do? Where do I start? What is best for us now? Sometimes you will say this is what I have strength to do, these are what I have skills to do but will it sell in your location? What’s your environment saying? You need to put all that into consideration. And then if what you exactly have to compete with is not working in the location and however you find yourself in that business world, are you ready to tweak? Be flexible enough. You could actually partner, get someone else who knows the skill that runs around you and then begin to learn from them. You don’t just begin to swim into that.

So, if you have a sales team that do not share the same passion like you, how do you ensure that your sales team is able to convert new prospects into customers?

I once heard a colleague, “saying I don’t have passion for sales”. The sales team is like blood, it is the life of any business. As SME you must be able to train your sales team, how do you train the sales team? You may not have the skill to train your sales team yourself. All you need do is get other people to train them in various aspect of sales. They need to understand the organizational goals, what the business need to achieve in terms of sales, how much you want to sell, how much you’re even hungry for success. Some owners of businesses are not really very hungry, they are just there, they just have something to do, it is important to note that, your leadership style is tied a lot to how much team you would build. So, your team must be trained whether by you or someone else but make sure they are trained constantly in all areas of sales and closing deals.