As an agripreneur, one advice you always get is never plant anything without first identifying your market and figuring out how to get your produce to the market at the right time and price. This is especially true for highly perishable produce like vegetables. Well we took this advice and hit the road with our market survey. Before doing this we first of all had to figure out our target market. We also had to figure out exactly what information we needed to get from our research. Once we clarified all this we put together a questionnaire that would help us achieve our goals. Next was to figure out how to get access to our potential clients…

Meet Mrs Alabi, one of the nicest ladies I know and CEO of Blafy International Associate Ltd Blafy is a leading provider of hospitality support services to the major hotels in Nigeria. She’s the mama of one my dearest friends n sis, she was kind and generous enough to introduce me to a number of purchasing managers in our target market and it made the process a lot easier 🙂 .

So I interviewed a whole bunch of people,however these are a few.  There are some interviews you go into and you know better than to take pictures, you just get a vibe and you decide, well we best not whip out the camera….haha. Plus these are the guys I had the best interviews with, after a while it’s more like having a conversation with a friend….

Well needless to say some didn’t go so well. Some suspected that I was trying to get information for dubious reasons or spying on them or….. Nevertheless it was a very interesting experience with a hint of stress…. 🙂 . Below are pictures from some of the interviews…

An interview with a purchasing manager…

Interview with the chef…think it was the latest interview I had, we finished around 8 p.m. Had to work around their time…didn’t mind though…we had fun chatting and it was a real nice hotel.

Chef S…totally enjoyed speaking with him and he was kind enough to give me some referral. Always ask for referral, worst they can say is no, but normally you get a few…maybe 2 or 3…

I suspect this was probably my best interview, I had a blast. He basically schooled me on what I needed to do, to differentiate myself from their current suppliers. He was far too kind and I was truly grateful.

I had an awesome time speaking with her, it was like catching up with an old friend…hahaha….she taught me some tricks on how to preserve vegetables…old school style…

Lesson learnt

1. Be flexible when administering your questionnaire.
2. Know your questionnaire really well, sometimes they answer a question before you ask, so fill it out and don’t ask again.
3. Always ask for referrals.
4. Try to make the process feel like a conversation and less like an interview.
5. Be flexible and plan your time well.
6. There will be a lot of no I don’t do surveys or I don’t have time…but keep going, there are more than a few that do surveys and have time 🙂
7. Most things don’t go according to plan but hey that’s life innit!
8. When you get stressed out…acknowledge it…deal with it…but most importantly MOVE ON 🙂

It’s a wrap yall! As always thanks for stopping by :-)A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT TOOK TIME TO VOTE. We made it to the top 30….YAYY US!!!!