Closing the technology sales in emerging Africa

I have spent 14 years traveling all over the East and larger Africa, pitching various technologies to customers. During the time which I represented several multinationals selling various technology solutions. This journey has armed me with some key insights into the intrigues of selling technology in this region of the world.

So much literature is available for doing business in different spheres of the world like Japan, China and India among others. However, it is quite a challenge getting such specific materials for Africa. It is for this reason that I decided to pen this article, to give tips and demystify some of the boulders to look out for in the contours of the Eastern African market, which hosts 433 million people.

Get into the plane. I use this term not in it’s literal sense but as a metaphor that you have to see your client as often as possible, with a lot more effort than you would elsewhere in the globe. This may not sound particularly unique to Africa.

In emerging Africa one has to often make the inter-country trips with non-confirmed appointments. I would say, in Africa, one is not accorded the privilege of over analyzing the ROI on a particular trip before getting approvals to travel. To put things into perspective, I will describe one such incident in my career.

We had been following up on an opportunity with a client in a neighboring country for a while. On this one occasion while reviewing the opportunity, we impulsively decided to call as many contacts at the customer as possible. We also made calls to our in-country team; to check if they had sniffed anything. As often happens, these phone calls hardly answer the critical questions asked by the executives. Being a high value opportunity, at 80% probability, it’s anyone’s guess the kind of pressure that came with it. I finally got through to the CTO and requested for a meet up, I remember him mumbling something to the tune that he would be traveling out of the country for the rest of the week.

The information flow was not convincing to my boss since most of the customer contacts were also unreachable. We made a quick decision that I take the expensive late night one-hour flight (at about $500-$800 return per trip), across the border. Please note that this was minus any firmed up appointment or even any sign of it. To make matters worse, I was traveling knowing all well that the “CTO would be out of the country”. Nonetheless, I made the trip and guess what; when I went to the customers offices early the next morning for a courtesy call, I found the CTO in his office. We went on to have a very long, informative and extremely fruitful Session with him.

Fast-forward 4/5 months after this “epochal” meeting, we got the deal and 5-year frame contract. This and many other successes, I believe, would never be possible without our (my boss and myself) bold decisions to travel across borders against the organization’s 7-day travel notice policy on most occasions.

Address disparities in the technological Needs. There are some technologies, which have been successfully deployed in various parts of the world but are a complete flop in Africa. One such glaring example is the voicemail for mobile users. To some foreigner, this seems quite baffling but the simple fact is, Africans don’t like speaking to ‘machines’ as much.

Replacing Voicemail messages with a text notification to callers has proven way more successful in Africa than in other corners of the world. It’s my belief that Africa, mostly due to economic conditions and partly due to subtle behavioral/cultural differences, the license model should be modified to become commercially viable for the customers. Per second billing for mobile subscriptions, for instance, has become a key differentiator for Telco vendors wishing to crack the African market. This model was highly unpopular with vendors only until emerging Africa embraced mobile technology and surpassed some developed/developing nation. The vendors were then forced to drive the RND to make it a reality.

Always remain on the lookout for the subtle technology customizations, which address the unique emerging market problems.

Cross cultural, Geo political and Linguistic challenges. Lumping up countries based solely on their proximity and market potential is yet another miscalculation multinationals make in Africa! This model disregards the stark cultural and sometime linguistic differences, which might be invisible to a foreign eye or mind. With that logic in place, a single AM would be assigned to a group of French, English and sometimes Portuguese speaking countries.

The diplomatic ties, historical factors and sometimes, chemistry, between the countries, should guide the choices of nationalities to send to any country. A few notable examples are; the chemistry between SA and Kenya has never been the best. The same applies to the relations between close neighbors Kenya and Tanzania. Simple as these examples may sound, these factors may be the difference between winning and losing a deal. I would also advise against using a French national selling into Rwanda, for historical reasons.

Manage Travel Times for Top Sills. We all know how expensive it is for Tech companies to have local engineers in all countries they operate in. Most Tech multinationals are forced share a pool of resources located at various regional hubs. The costs, justifications and scarcity of the resources are just a few stumbling blocks to getting right people in front of customers. Poorly attended customer meetings exacerbate this challenge even further.

Getting these scarce skills to see customers but they always tend to book their travels with military precision. This means they only have a couple of hours before and after the sessions when they have to fly out. In 2 out of 4 instances, organizations never get the value from these trips because in several cases the key stakeholders would move the meeting severally around the planned times. With fixed time; you end up meeting “non-decision makers”. To mitigate this, in one organization we had a silent rule to create “meetings” the day before and after the said confirmed date to ensure the resources remained in country.

Using this hypothetical scenario, I would advise that one follows this kind of reasoning in these situations. Assuming you have set up a morning workshop on a Tuesday morning, have your team arrive early on Monday. Set a provision for a possible informal dinner, Monday or a possible breakfast meeting on Tuesday. Be ready for a cancellation of your meeting and subsequent moving to the afternoon or the next day. With all these options covered, I can guarantee maximum ROI on these otherwise expensive trips.

To put icing on the cake, the customer feels KING since one can accommodate any changes requested albeit at a cost. I cannot count the number of times such decisions made a huge difference in our overall pitches.

Drop the Pride. Waiting in the customer lobby for 2-4 hour in this region is normal, sometimes even longer. To be successful, therefore, one must prepare the nerves for this. It’s not a sign of disrespect I assure you. As mentioned in above, you may as well be ready to have the sessions a day later. There is also a frustration of never seeming to get through to the main stakeholders on their cellphones to firm up the meetings. Just keep calling, shamelessly.

I found a similar tenacity in the book, The Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight (The founder of Nike). In the book, he describes his employee number one, Johnson, as a man who sent him memos relentlessly, almost daily, during the companies’ formative years. All this was without response. Ironically, despite the seemingly nagging persistence, Johnson was and remained one of the most revered employees until the company went public. Just head out to the customer premise when there was a slightest hint that they agreed to meet you.

Know the Country Politics. The political climate in most African countries, especially during election year is always very uncertain. It is important to take this into consideration when planning for annual targets. Countries like Kenya record very little business activities business during the period preceding or after an election. There are a few exceptions like Tanzania, where, to my consternation, it was business as usual up until one month to elections.

Coming from a country where business almost grind to a complete halt almost a year before elections, this was a welcome relief. It may be important to balance your numbers across/between such countries to safeguard the organization from political effects in one country. Basically, do not keep all your eggs in “one country”

Get the author, Vincent Milewa on email email on vmilewa@gmail.com or on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-milewa-9ab75211/