Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter

Monday 5th February 2018

NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.

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PII 104: Not Every Client Opportunity Will be Good for You [True Story: The Speaking Invitation I Turned Down in 2017]

Late last year, between August and October 2017, I had a series of email and phone conversations (see screenshot below) with decision makers /representatives of a national livestock farmers association.

They had reached out to me based on a paper flier one of them had received from me at an Agricultural conference I’d attended 2 years earlier.

It was a lady CEO, who’d started off the process.

She (as a member of the association’s executive) called me up one afternoon, and asked if I could come over to her Victoria Island base to discuss the possibility of giving my 1 hour talk announced on a flyer she said she got from me.

[If you’ve been following my writing about business marketing for some time, you most likely know the response I gave to her request for me to come down to meet her (Hint: I asked for payment – noting thst MANY do business with me, without asking to meet face to fact). But that would come a bit later. At the initial stage of our conversation, I had to ask her questions about how she got my number/found out about me and the solution I offered]

I did not however immediately recall where we’d met and could not even remember her.

But I did recall ending up speaking to a group of enthusiastic small scale farm business CEOs, after they expressed interest in hearing more about how they could boost their marketing reach and impact.

However, after I left the event, on that closing day, I really did not think anything would come of the efforts I’d made.

This was because I got the distinct impression that most of those I’d seen and interacted with were more interested in getting as much as possible FREE.

Considering the fact that this lady CEO (who I must have given my flyer in a seperate stand from the group I addressed) only came back to me about 2 years later (and she was the ONLY one who ever did), I dare say my feelings were right.

To aid my full memory recall, I told her to send me a photo of the flyer she said I’d given to her…

 

In truth I needed to see the flyer in order to get a firm idea  of what she had seen that had made her call me up.

This was necessary because I knew I’d given out serveral different flyers, offering different solutions on that day. It was therefore important that I saw the one she was responding to, in order to better respond to her enquiry

What I find noteworthy, and which I want to point out to YOU, the reader, about the above experience that I had, is the fact that a promotional item that I prepared and gave out, eventually led a potential client as a sales lead for the solution I offered.

At a point, I sent them a list of questions to help me better assess their needs

From: Tayo Solagbade

Date: Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 3:54 PM

Subject: Re: xxxxxxxxxt conference

To: Adekemi xxxxxxx Cc: tayo

Hi Kemi,

Thanks for your phone calls and email about my speaking service for farm business owners.

…..

 

I would appreciate it if you could supply responses to them in response to this email…

1. Where is your association based? (address etc)

2. How long has it been in existence?

3. What is the membership strength?

4. What is the topic or theme of the conference and where will it be holding?

 

5. What is/are the expectation(s) and/or interests of your boss/other association decision makers with regard to the conference and benefits they want members/attendees to take away? 

 

6. Is your boss interested in having me speak specifically on the topic of the flyer you have with you (i.e.How to Publish Your Own Money Making Information Product)? if YES does s/he know how many members are interested in it? If NO, what topic or theme does s/he have in mind.

 

Hope this helps,

With kindest regards,

After a series of emails and phone conversations, I advised them to send me a formal invitation on their association’s letterhead – which they did

Sadly, however, by the time I did my response to their invitation, in which I spelt out my payment requirements and complimentary zero cost benefits I would deliver to their members, they replied that they wanted me to speak for FREE.

Given the nature of the event topic they’d requested that I speak on, and the audience I was to address, the request that I speak for FREE simply would not work – and i told them so in my response.

I ended by thanking them for the consideration and noted that a future opportunity might work out better.

 

Like I’ve said in past articles, sometimes you need to WALK AWAY from certain client opportunities, NOT because you do not need the sale, but because you KNOW that settling for them will likely do your brand MORE harm than good.

In my csse, my credentials spoke for me, and the inviting body knew that. I am a proven expert authority in the field of interest, with established speaking competence to boot.

What’s more, they wanted me to share my MARKETING EXPERTISE with their members, and at the same time were asking me to speak FREE so I could get FREE marketing access to the same members!

“So who needs help from who then?!!” I thought to myself

The entire proposition told me they really had not thought their offer through and did not understand the value they could get from me.

When that is the case with a prospective client, it’s a sign that they might not be a good fit for me. So I WALK AWAY.

 

I recommend you carefully review circumstances that would make it necessary for you to do them same, so you don’t end up taking up client opportunities that blow up in your face.

READ: When to Walk Away…

 

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SDN Blog™

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Tayo K. Solagbade*

Self-Development/Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur

*Best Practice Farm Business Support Specialist & Founder of the MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club and Competition

Mobile: +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic)

http://www.tayosolagbade.com

Tayo K. Solagbade is a Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur (i.e. a highly versatile/multi-skilled entrepreneur), with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others.

Since 2002, he has earned multiple streams of income providing individuals and organizations with personal development training and coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutions, web marketing systems/ web hosting, freelance writing services, and best practice extension support services (for farm business owners).

Tayo is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ and the popular Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook. He is also the developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™ and the Poultry Farm Manager™ software.

He has delivered talks/papers to audiences in various groups and organizations, including the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalisers Fast Foods and others.

In May 2012 he was the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.

On 1st April 2013, Tayo (who reads, write and speaks the French language) relocated to Cotonou, Benin Republic to begin slowly traveling across the West African region.

His key purpose is to deliver talks, seminars and workshops on his key areas of focus and interest to interested audiences (Email tayo at tksola dot com for details).

In a previous life, before leaving to become self-employed, Tayo served for seven years (October 1994 to December 2001) as a high performing manager in Guinness Nigeria. He rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager.

In addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes, he built a reputation for using self-taught spreadsheet programming skills (starting with Lotus 1-2-3, and later moving to Excel Visual Basic) – in his spare time – to develop Automated Spreadsheet Applications to computerize manual report generation processes in the departments he worked. Over four(4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting.

Tayo holds a B.Sc degree in Agricultural Extension Services from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, having graduated top of his class – with Second Class Upper Division honors – in 1992. He is an Associate Member of the UK Institute & Guild of Brewing, a 1997 National Finalist of the Nigerian Institute of Management’s(NIM) Young Managers’ competition, a Certified Psychometric Test Administrator for Psytech UK, innovator of Spontaneous Coaching for Self-Development™ (SCfS-D™), and Founder of the Self-Development Academy (SDAc).

When he’s not amazing clients with his superhuman skills (wink), Tayo works as the creative force behind his Daily Self-Development Nuggets blog – on which he also publishes The Farm CEO Weekly Newspaper (sent via email to paid subscribers) and his Weekly Performance Improvement IDEAS newsletter.

You can connect with him on Twitter @tksola.com and Facebook.

Visit Tayo Solagbade Dot Com, to download over over 10 performance improvement resources to boost your personal and work related productivity.

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[IMPORTANT NOTE:====

On 4th May 2014, Tayo’s 9 year old domain (Spontaneousdevelopment dot com), which hosted his website, was taken over by Aplus.net.

Within a few days however, Tayo used his advanced self-taught web development skills to build a SUPERIOR “reincarnation” of it the website http://www.tayosolagbade.com.

But updates are still ongoing to URLs bearing the old domain name in most of the over 1,000 web pages, and blog posts he’s published.

If you experience any difficulties finding a page or document, email Tayo at tksola dot com.

Click “Tayo, What Happened to SpontaneousDevelopmentDotCom ?” to read a detailed narrative about how the above event occurred :-))

Here’s an article Tayo wrote, to inspire others to defy adversity, and bounce back to even greater reckoning at what they do EVERY time:

And he wrote the one below, to explain why losing a domain name, no matter how old, NO LONGER determines your online success or otherwise:

A Proven Strategy to Find Profitable Buyers Regardless of Your Domain Name
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