By Ian Ortega
When I joined UBL, we were required to spend at least a month in sales. There was even a saying; “in this company, there are only two jobs – you are either selling or helping to sell.”
In that one month in Sales, you would be assigned to one of the Sales representatives and you would do the daily routes with them. My Sales Rep (an O.B of mine but kept this secret from him) decided to give me a real baptism of fire.
On the first day, he assigned me to those trucks that do the routes from the distributor. You set off at around 8am then spend the whole day moving in and around Seeta and Mukono. What was annoying is that you would drive for 200 metres, stop just to sell in a crate of beer, or two, and those are mixed. Like someone is saying ’10 Guinness, 5 Bell, 5 Tusker…etc” Then you would also collect the empties. And move to the next drop-off point.
It really opened my eyes to the difficulty in distribution. If you solve for distribution in a business, you are half-way there. It’s just hard especially in Africa because of different factors – our roads, our demand fluctuations, our limited credit lines, our low trust.
On the 3rd day, this Sales Rep assigned me to the Junior Sales Rep. Those days, they were driving TukTuks. The point of the TukTuks was that trucks couldn’t access some areas, and they also couldn’t handle small orders. That was also the time of the sachets and other smaller packs. And boom, I was on the TukTuk learning to sell. Sometimes you would go to a Kaduuka and the woman just spends 30 minutes complaining, and then afterwards opens her kiwuuzi and buy a crate. That last mile was interesting.
After this baptism, the Sales Rep now allowed me to join him in his van. And we went selling in the more beautiful sections. Basically, how it works is that a Sales Rep will go in earlier, lock in the orders, transmit those same orders to the Distributor then a delivery would be made.
Since then, I respect the Salespeople, they are the ones that really bring in the revenue. Life is just about sales and selling. You must be selling. There’s no other way that money comes in. Always be selling something.
Whether it’s an event, an idea, a product, a service. And if you can mix in trust to that, then you’re good to go. Because I think trust is so absent in our part of the world, it’s become a differentiator for those that can build it.
Well, if you are in real estate, there’s a gentleman called ‘Kikambi’, he’s probably the most trusted in this sector according to the seniors in this industry. If it’s a Kikambi Estate, you can trust that you won’t be cheated. That land exists and you will get your title. But he’s been at it for years, he’s built that trust.