Why Most Skill Acquisition Programmes Don’t Work – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

Marketing is the sole purpose of business.” Peter Drucker, 1909-2005.

How many times have you heard a government of­ficial, perhaps the State Governor, announce that a Skills Acquisition Centre established by the State had graduated several people and had empowered them with materials to start their own businesses? Or of private skills development outfits or Entrepre­neurship training programmes purportedly set up to train people to be self-employed.

But, have you ever wondered why there have been very few successful cases of graduates of those training centres? If you try, you will be amazed at the failure rate of those training programmes.

Because I have been on the two sides of the train­ing programme, it has been easy for me to under­stand why we are failing so miserably.

Most trainees drop out very quickly for a very simple reason the organisers of those programmes fail to take into account.

Nigerian Opportunities Industrialisation Centre, NOIC, situated at Lagos, is perhaps the premier skills acquisition training centre in Nigeria.

Started by a black American clergyman, NOIC has grown over the years and specialised in a few areas including computer, fashion design, carpen­try and auto repairs with the sole aim of graduating people who could be self-employed.

I was a member of its Board for about three years until a demanding job forced me to quit.

I remember one example of how a State govern­ment was approached to help establish their own skill acquisition centre.

The governor was enthusiastic; but, the approach took place in 2007 – when the Governor was on his way out.

Consequently, he took our proposal and passed it to the state’s civil servants for implementation; pro­vided funds and left.

In 2009, I was in the state on a project and visited the centre and a few graduates. All the graduates lo­cated have abandoned their careers.

Interviews revealed the cardinal reason. They were trained to manufacture soap, detergents and as fashion designers. But, nobody provided any training on marketing and sales.

I undertook training at a centre purportedly de­veloping entrepreneurs in agro-allied sectors – poul­try, piggery, fish farming, etc. It was well organised in many respects.

But, I quickly noticed a glaring omission in the programme. There was no single lecture on Market­ing and Sales of the products.

It was simply assumed that once the pigs, chicken, fish, are ready, there would be buyers standing at the farm gate ready to buy everything.

I developed a close relationship with some of the other participants and got their phone numbers for follow-up.

I had a Marketing Plan developed and, it was responsible for the success we had until the 2011 flood in Ibadan devastated the fish farm. In 2019, I called some other participants to find out about their businesses.

Only two were still in business; and barely surviv­ing. The rest had no clue about how to sell their prod­ucts; incurred huge losses and eventually closed shop.

Without exception, they felt scammed by the training centre. To me, there was nothing surpris­ing about that.

Death Rate Is High Among Start-Ups

“Four out of five new businesses fail within the first five years”. That was the statistics my Marketing Professor in Boston drummed into the heads of our MBA, 1968-1970 class.

And he attributed the main reason to poor market­ing and sales by the organisations involved.

Nothing has led to more anguish for product and brand owners than the notion that a “better mouse trap” sells itself.

And, he illustrated the point by offering a real case study of a company which actually invented a better mouse trap; yet went bankrupt while those regarded as inferior made money.

The inventor waited for customers to come to him. They didn’t. They bought mouse traps from those who went to them to offer traps.

Invariably, every new product has a mountain to climb, particularly in an established sector.

I was invited years ago by the publisher of a news­paper just starting out. The offer was about 150 per cent what VANGUARD was paying. I asked him only one question: “who will sell your paper?” He looked at me as if I needed to have my head examined; before announcing that “with the editorial staff and colum­nists we had assembled, the paper will sell itself.” Less than a year after the first edition, the paper folded up.

Even large scale companies fail with products and brands. Many people over 50 would remember when PEUGEOT was the middle class car of choice; until one obscure brand – TOYOTA – entered the Nigerian market and captured it.

Have you also wondered what happened to STAR lager beer, Nigeria’s top brand before; which had been supplanted by TROPHY? And, what happened to HONEYWELL noodles? The shortest answer is: poor marketing strategies.

What Then Is Marketing?

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Peter Drucker.

That the customer is king is still as true today as when the statement was first uttered.

Another axiom of marketing, which training institutions fail to impart is the fact that no product sells itself to most consumers for a long time.

It has to be sold and re-sold, virtually every single day. To do that, the cardinal requirement is to be very close to the customers.

One of my oldest friends, who died about three years ago, was from Ikwere, near Orlu.

He was the first son of his father, and the heir-ap­parent to Daddy’s thriving drug distributorship busi­ness in Head Bridge and Main markets in Onitsha when we met in 1975; after I was newly appointed as National Sales Manager for BOOTS Company Nigeria, BCN.

It took just two days in Onitsha to befriend Goddy (Godwin) and a second trip to know that he was the decision-maker in his father’s business.

Within two years his father was responsible for 18 per cent of our turnover; I was in Onitsha twice a month; and I was Goddy’s Best Man at his wedding.

Each time we were behind with our target, Goddy and others in Onitsha and Aba came to the rescue.

But, I didn’t stop there, every single one of my sales staff started developing friendships which made it easier for us to spread the appeal for support whenever sales were slow.

Yet, BOOTS was selling nothing special. Most of its brands were ordinary Over-The-Counter, OTC, drugs – which in America would have been derisively called “selling snake oil”.

Despite that, it was impossible, in the 1970s to run a successful drug store without BOOTS products; no BOOTS, no customers.

How we did it will require more space than this; but the point here is this: underneath the successes of every business, big or small, new or old, is a sharp fo­cus on customers which is consistent and which can be taught to people embarking on or being trained for their own businesses.

Prospecting Is The Heart Of Selling

“Prospects equal options. Master prospecting and you will be master of your sales destiny.” Tibor Shanto.

If there is one sales technique every person selling anything has to master, it is prospecting. That is just a long word for looking for new customers all the time.

That is what the graduates of skill training are not taught.

I told an apprentice painter to go and start work­ing as a casual labourer at a huge construction site. Time for painting came and the painter-contractor was looking for painters.

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