Sales start with the Customer

By Kemi Buluro

A funny story of two first-time founders navigating the startup world. 

 

This business book, in story form, will challenge the way you think about business processes and the factors affecting them. It will take you on a journey to build business processes for the benefit of your customers and not the builders. 

 

Whether you work in a startup, medium-sized company, or multinational company, as long as you work with business processes, this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kemi BOA
• Release date: May 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224968565

Kemi Buluro

Kemi Buluro is a Business Consultant working with companies to rebuild business processes from the customer's perspective. She uses stories, role-plays, and games she creates, to explain complex business principles. Her interactive training has a 90% assimilation rate and global success in startups and multinationals like Air France-KLM Group. She speaks on Gamified Training at global conferences for organizations like the International Institute of Business Analysis and the International Society for Performance Improvement. You can see her work at kemiboa.com. She is active on LinkedIn.

Book preview

To God, who has had my back, the past few years, pushing me to be better than myself. I made it.

Preface

Hi Reader,

Thank you for choosing to read my book.

While this is a business book, we are learning differently.

This book is a story of two entrepreneurs building a business. We will learn by following their actions and improve them if necessary.

Whether you work in a startup, medium-sized company, or multinational company, if you work with business processes, this book is for you. This story will challenge the way you think about business processes and the factors affecting them. It will take you on a journey to build business processes for the benefit of your customers and not the builders.

To get the most out of this book, focus on enjoying the story. The more of the story you grasp the more your thinking can be challenged.

You can read this book in three ways.

The first way is to read the story and skip the Part Reviews. It makes for an enjoyable read.

The second way to read this book is to read the story along with the Part Reviews. The Part Reviews give you a more guided way to challenge your thinking and rethink business processes.

The third way is to read this book with other people. Read one Part at a time then chat through the Part Reviews together. This should be fun; it was for us at a book reading.

Regardless of how you choose to read this book, in the end, you will have innovative ideas for improving business processes.

It is my hope that this book takes you one step closer to building better business processes from your customers’ perspective in your work.

Enjoy.

Kemi Buluro

Part One

The Idea

The t-shirt

LIAM.

Liam resigned from his full-time job ten months ago to start his own business as a Business Consultant. However, freelancing is proving to be more challenging than he had expected. It almost cost him someone’s supermarket business recently. He can’t even shop at the largest store in town because he’s hiding from the owner, Madam Sophia. He has to go to the outskirts to do his shopping. Fortunately, Madam Sophia is out of town, but Liam has a plan. He intends to start another business before she returns and pay her back for the damages he has done.

Picking a few things from the shelf, he checks the prices before he puts them in his trolley. His savings are drying up. A lot of things have changed since he quit his job. Noah got married.

Before this, things were easier.

I could ask him for some cash and pay him back later. I can’t do that now. His salary now has to be shared with Mia, and...

Hello, Liam, a voice interrupts his thoughts. When he turns, it is Madam Sophia. His heart races.

When did she return to town?

Oh, hi, Ma’am. I...

Are you surprised to see me? Well, I’m here, and I will be in your dreams too until you return all the money I paid you for that crap you did!

Madam Sophia, can we talk?

Yes. Now, in my store.

She waits for him to pay for the things he was buying, seizes them alongside his phone and house keys, and walks out of the store while he follows behind her. He is careful not to draw attention. Burlington is a small town where almost everyone knows everyone, and he will not disgrace himself.

For a woman in her late fifties, Madam Sophia walks so fast that Liam can barely catch up. Liam and Noah have known her since elementary school. She was a schoolteacher in her twenties, left the school and worked as a clerk after her wedding, and opened her store after she became a widow. The two men grow up under her very eyes.

Madam Sophia, please, I can explain, Liam says, following her into her office. He smiles past every staff and customer he meets.

Explain what? How you promised me heaven and earth with some campaign, and then you mess it up with your drunk photos? What exactly are you explaining, Liam?

It is a mistake.

Which I shouldn’t let slip away. If I count every silly action as a mere mistake, my business wouldn’t be where it is today.

Tired, he sinks into a sofa by the corner of the office and pleads with his eyes.

Those puppy eyes won’t work on me.

When he set out to start a consultancy firm, he convinced himself that her store would be his first project and that he would ace it. She wanted to expand her business by opening three branches in the neighboring towns, so he prepared an expansion strategy, and Noah helped with the marketing campaign.

Did it go well? Yes...until he mistakenly sent the wrong photos, drunken photos of himself and some other men at the bar, to the advertising company, damaging the store’s reputation. Springing up he pulls a seat opposite her.

Give me some time, Madam Sophia. I will right all that wrong. Let me take care of things for you.

No. There’s no way I’m putting my business in your hands again. But I have a task for you. Do it, and you’re free.

What is it?

After your advert came out, parents in Burlington pulled their kids from this store. You know how conservative Burlington is. I lost three workers after the nasty stunt you pulled. Thankfully, I have loyal customers. I’m recruiting new workers by the end of the week, but I need you to attend to customers for three days until the new people can start. And no, I’m not paying you a dime!

What? Did I hear her right? Me in a green shirt? This is a job for high school graduates and college students! What if the people in town see me? My reputation!

Are you in or out?

Er, em, I could pay you back...

Madam Sophia chuckled. We both know you can’t afford to pay me the money I could lose this week without workers.

Liam stays silent while Madam Sophia gazes at him for an answer.

I’m... I’m in.

Great, she says as she leaves the office. I’ll get you your t-shirt.

Slumming into the chair, Liam sighs sarcastically. It just keeps getting better.

THREE DAYS LATER