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Zachary Aldwin Milkshake in the Boardroom
This week my wife decided to commit heresy and abandon all things Apple in favour of a Samsung Galaxy S4 (such a travesty can be overlooked however).
After much hunting she located a gentleman who was willing to sell her a second hand phone (a new one being out of the budget at this stage). The phone dutifully arrived. It looked odd, the strangely placed Chinese writing being a dead give away for one thing. A quick serial number check online indicated that handset was, at least in part, of the previous S3 generation.

My wife told the gentleman that this was unacceptable. Behold, phone number two was produced.

This one was all S4, but was in Russian and rebooted randomly every five minutes or so. Once again she rejected it.

Third time lucky! The gentleman produced a working, legit Samsung phone that operates rather well and grudgingly forces one to concede certain benefits over the previous brand.

Question is why bother selling me the junk options in the first place? Is this perhaps the practice in the hope that one day some hapless victim will settle for a pirated phone rather than spend extra time and frustration haggling over an original?

I am fed up being ripped off by second rate goods at inflated prices. So please stop trying to sell me rubbish.

In the same vein stop trying to sell me goods that you have obtained via a franchise type system.

Holiday packages, health products, exercise regimes, the list of sudden fads seems endless.

Everyone is trying to push the next best thing. Sadly there is a crowd that will follow you for a season, but I am not part of it.

Your pitch is not even original, it is a script provided for you in the franchise manual. One person even played me a video about the product in the hope that it would sell.
Keep your product please, especially if it has some pyramid-based sales structure. Sometimes I think we have become a nation of traders and want-to-be sales people importing everything we can in the hope of making a quick turnover by ripping off as many people as possible.

I do not mind the idea of you starting off through trading if that is what you need to do to gain capital.
At least have the decency to invest in a good marketing course so I am not bored to tears by your attempt at a sale.

Look to move beyond just trading though. Rather than importing everyone else’s franchises we should be looking to create and export our own models.

Models that work within Africa and beyond. Ashish Thakkar, – Africa’s Youngest Billionaire -, was in Harare recently and stressed, “Whatever we do, we have a positive social impact.Whatever we do must be Pan-African, we are not thinking just local. We make sure we do things that are fast changing and different, and it all must be above board and legit. The end goal is to move the needle of change, creating a fully sustainable Africa.”  What a great outlook to have.

It is not that we are without ideas in Zimbabwe. You just have to attend the monthly Pitch Nights hosted by Emerging Ideas and Global Shapers to see the variety and ingenuity of inventions blossoming here at home.

These are real ideas that have the capacity to change the way we do things. Selling junk is easy, you just need some idiot willing to buy.
Creating an idea from scratch takes far more time, effort and hard work. Often the lead time from conception to contract can take over twelve months.

I would recommend ‘One Simple Idea’ by Stephen Key if you want a good look at how the process works.

It is a process that is worth putting the time into.

Now is the time to get your hands dirty and work on building a product of your own creation, not just rehashing someone else’s.

If you are going to sell me something then it needs to have real value. Not only that, you need to develop and create real relationships, not just burn a hastily erected bridge in a quick transaction that leaves someone with a sour taste in their mouth.

If I buy something based purely on value that makes me a connoisseur. If I buy a product only because I have a relationship with you then I am a customer. Having both elevates me to a fan.

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