I wanted to share this nightmare and opportunity for quite awhile now.
Personally, I love sales and cold calling, especially relationship building. Growing up in Ottawa the only gigs everyone wanted to work after school were call centre jobs. Those jobs helped define who I am today. Ottawa has a special kind of Somali—the Somali sales agent.
For the past few weeks I have been reaching out to people in Somalia and various businesses.
I noticed something, it’s a complete fucking shit show.
From emailing, following up to fullfilling terms and agreements the whole process is a nightmare and massive opportunity.
First, if you want to call a prospect you will quickly come to terms with astronomical costs associated with phone cards. Upon realizing this, you have a few options: Email, Skype, What’s app, Viber and three way calls with a local who puts you on a speaker phone.
Here are things I learned based on the metrics from the calls, emails and Skype convos I have placed in the last few weeks.
Email:
I have a software that allows me to see who opened my emails and shared files like PDFs.
The emails get openeded on a daily bases if not several times a day by the same person and they never reply. This is usual in the west, since indicates the person is interested in your offering, but in Somalia it’s peculiar. They open the emails and forward them almost immediately, even if there’s sensitive/private information attached. What’s even more odd is the open rate in the emails are high 80-90%.
What I learned from this is that you have to be patient and keep emailing and requesting a time to speak on the phone. Many convert directly to phone calls and want to speak with you immediately, which open up the next section.
Calling:
If you can’t speak Somali, you’re pretty much shit out of luck in this part. Many Somalis speak english back home and I was surprised at the percentage of prospects who can actually speak English. There’s only one annoying problem, once they realize you’re from abroad, they demand you to speak Somali, what even more odd is that when you speak Somali to them they reply in English.
Phone calls depending on your time zone might have to happen in odd hours. I have an infant at home, and I have to run into a washroom @ 3am to make calls. For some reason, even if the call is crisp and clear; you can’t help yourself but to shout on the phone.
Once you get your prospect on the phone, it quickly turns into a game of tag that is incredibly fatiguing. They tell you to call back specific times of the day or week, and I find Fridays and Thursdays make Somalis more cheery on the phone.
Once you get them on the phone, your next step is to get them on a Skype call or whatsapp video to get more personal and increase trust.
Video calling:
Somalis are one step ahead of sales culture. Prospects prefer video calls over telephone calls. The only problem is that; you cold videoing turns into a shouting match, once you can find an volume equilibrium things get easy after.
Majority of your first video calls turn into discussions unrelated to your business. In the west people usually start off with small talk like house the weather, but in Somalia, you get requests from prospects asking you to find family members for them. You can easily lose the prospect if you get upset with them. So you have to remain calm and keep the conversation circling back to why you are speaking to them.
I find that once you get prospects on a video call, the trust increases significantly and they always want to keep talking to you. Only weird occurrence is that your prospects keep calling you back to just to talk about life. Super weird.
All in all, it’s getting interesting to see how people handle sales culture in Somalia. Open rates and follow ups come with very few resistance. The only issue is that know-it-all culture; when you ask someone you can help them; they always say “Why don’t you do it yourself”, after increasing trust they learn that you are there to help them and be a partner in their success.
Personally, I love sales and cold calling, especially relationship building. Growing up in Ottawa the only gigs everyone wanted to work after school were call centre jobs. Those jobs helped define who I am today. Ottawa has a special kind of Somali—the Somali sales agent.
For the past few weeks I have been reaching out to people in Somalia and various businesses.
I noticed something, it’s a complete fucking shit show.
From emailing, following up to fullfilling terms and agreements the whole process is a nightmare and massive opportunity.
First, if you want to call a prospect you will quickly come to terms with astronomical costs associated with phone cards. Upon realizing this, you have a few options: Email, Skype, What’s app, Viber and three way calls with a local who puts you on a speaker phone.
Here are things I learned based on the metrics from the calls, emails and Skype convos I have placed in the last few weeks.
Email:
I have a software that allows me to see who opened my emails and shared files like PDFs.
The emails get openeded on a daily bases if not several times a day by the same person and they never reply. This is usual in the west, since indicates the person is interested in your offering, but in Somalia it’s peculiar. They open the emails and forward them almost immediately, even if there’s sensitive/private information attached. What’s even more odd is the open rate in the emails are high 80-90%.
What I learned from this is that you have to be patient and keep emailing and requesting a time to speak on the phone. Many convert directly to phone calls and want to speak with you immediately, which open up the next section.
Calling:
If you can’t speak Somali, you’re pretty much shit out of luck in this part. Many Somalis speak english back home and I was surprised at the percentage of prospects who can actually speak English. There’s only one annoying problem, once they realize you’re from abroad, they demand you to speak Somali, what even more odd is that when you speak Somali to them they reply in English.
Phone calls depending on your time zone might have to happen in odd hours. I have an infant at home, and I have to run into a washroom @ 3am to make calls. For some reason, even if the call is crisp and clear; you can’t help yourself but to shout on the phone.
Once you get your prospect on the phone, it quickly turns into a game of tag that is incredibly fatiguing. They tell you to call back specific times of the day or week, and I find Fridays and Thursdays make Somalis more cheery on the phone.
Once you get them on the phone, your next step is to get them on a Skype call or whatsapp video to get more personal and increase trust.
Video calling:
Somalis are one step ahead of sales culture. Prospects prefer video calls over telephone calls. The only problem is that; you cold videoing turns into a shouting match, once you can find an volume equilibrium things get easy after.
Majority of your first video calls turn into discussions unrelated to your business. In the west people usually start off with small talk like house the weather, but in Somalia, you get requests from prospects asking you to find family members for them. You can easily lose the prospect if you get upset with them. So you have to remain calm and keep the conversation circling back to why you are speaking to them.
I find that once you get prospects on a video call, the trust increases significantly and they always want to keep talking to you. Only weird occurrence is that your prospects keep calling you back to just to talk about life. Super weird.
All in all, it’s getting interesting to see how people handle sales culture in Somalia. Open rates and follow ups come with very few resistance. The only issue is that know-it-all culture; when you ask someone you can help them; they always say “Why don’t you do it yourself”, after increasing trust they learn that you are there to help them and be a partner in their success.
