Last week I was having a meeting at Mugg & Bean with a South African Businessman who is currently in Zimbabwe scouting for opportunities. After about an hour of money talk, we made our way out. We walked past a table with quite a familiar face. Headphones on, palms raped around his coffee and eyes glued to his MacBook Pro. Was it cappuccino? Iam not sure, but the man was surely the famous Pastor G. We walked back to greet him.
Before he had another chance to drink his coffee we were standing right before him. I stretched forth my hand to greet him with a smile split all over my face till the corner of my mouth reached an unimportant distance with my ears. I told him how Iam a fan and briefed him on how we felt he would fit into the bigger scheme of things of some projects we were working on. We asked for his email. Of course you do not want to hear all this picturesque and graphical encounter. I learned five important business lessons from the man which I felt compelled to share with you. I will share just two with you to make this post as short as possible.
Have your product with you
After we exchanged contacts and almost before we could say our goodbye, Pastor G reached into one of his McBook Pro’s bag pockets and pulled out two nicely sleeved CDs of his last album ‘Unstoppable’. The CDs were going for only three dollars each and what made it more exciting was we could get him to sign the sleeve right there and then. We bought the CDs.
As we walked out of Mugg & Bean, I suddenly thought of what would have happened if we had met him and I had told him how I was a fan and he had nothing to offer me right there and then. I could have walked out happy that I had met Pastor G and he would have walked out happy that I was a fan or perhaps one of his many fans who greet him daily and that would have been the end. But Pastor G had his product with him so that every fan he meets daily has the potential to convert into a sale. That evening, he walked out of M&B $6.00 richer from the two of us. Now consider that he might have stayed there longer and met equally excited guys like my friend and I? He could have made even more money just buy seating at Mugg & Bean having coffee and possibly thinking about his next show. Instead of moving around with a bunch of business cards, this sounded more interesting, at least to me.
Now my question to you as an entrepreneur: How close is your product to you? If you are to meet me at a conference at 8pm tonight, will you be able to convert at the instance in the aura of the conference or you will be the looser will ask for my business card and promise to send an email a day later? Some will tell me that their product can’t be moved around with them (like Pastor G’s CD) because of its nature. Why not have a small 30 seconds demonstration video file on your smart phone and an online shopping cart and delivery system and promise the prospect that if he pays online there and then, he will have the product before breakfast the next day. Rather than having your business cards close to you, have your product closer to enable you to convert interests into cash anywhere.
Buy where you can sell
I talked about this principle of buying were you can sell in a previous posts. This is usually important if you are a start-up. Why buy were you can’t sell? Only buy were you can benefit from reciprocal business. I know many Zimbabwean businessmen who do not deal with certain banks because when they started their business and wanted funding were given the coldest shoulder one could get. If you read a few auto biographs you will definitely come across these. Pastor G used a hybrid of this concept in the sense that he had bought coffee from Mugg and Bean but ended up selling his CDs to us. Quite clever of him there. But the point is, as a business person, you need to identify such opportunities and develop these synergies. Always make it your first priority to buy were you can sell.
These are just a few of the lessons I learnt from my encounter with Pastor G that evening. I will be revealing more of these at the launch of our all new business forum called ‘The Secret Classroom’ starting this August. The secret classroom is strictly for people in business not business wanna bes.
As always, to your continued success.
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