What Iya oni robo taught me on my way to Lagos

She appeared to eye us cautiously – or was it a weariness I sensed? – but then it was fleeting. She was alive again, bracing herself and gathering her wares as she approached our station wagon. You see, we had stopped at a petrol station on our way to Lagos and while the driver hurried to get the tank filled, we chatted amongst ourselves or tried to keep awake in the back seat.

This woman (who I would go on to call Iya oni robo), displayed a small transparent plastic bucket half filled with what appeared to be miniature brownish balls which had coloured the water they were soaked in. This was robo, in its pristine form. “Factory-fresh”, so to speak. She shoved her display into my field of vision and launched into a spiel.

“Brother”, she said in the Yoruba dialect, “how many should I bring.” Here she broke into familiarity both with the use of the appellation and the tribal tongue that suggested I was one of her own. And as such would be more favorably disposed towards her as we had something in common. Also, she lightly ventured an assumption: that I had made a decision to buy her product. Apparently, the only question was how many.

“I will sell one to you for ten naira while two for fifteen naira”, she smiled, luring us to purchase a product we perhaps did not cared for. I think by offering us an apparently good deal, she would tip us from our indecision in her favour. She had formulated the perfect antidote to buyer’s remorse.

And then one person bought a few which she eagerly presented in a polythene bag. And then another passenger perhaps sensing a silence endorsement of the product in the previous purchase, offered money for some. A third grew curious and asked questions about what it was made from and she happily explained the production process. It is made from melonm she said - bringing the unfamiliar finished product into the context of its familiar raw material. Two more passengers volunteered that they had tried it and it was nice.

Whether its is actively displaying a product/service offering; knowing the customer; assuming the customer already has a need your product or service would sate; the buy-one, get-one-free, gimmick or the generation of word of mouth marketing, I realized that the fundamentals of selling remain the same. It could be an insurance salesman in a business suit or a small time trader who both produces and markets her product by the road side.

As the car pulled away, I smiled and waved at Iya oni robo, musing over the last five minutes of my practical MBA as I scribbled my next blog entry into my note pad.