We harvested some of our watermelons yesterday, and we had thought that our prearranged customer was going to buy some quantity, but it turned out she was not used to the type of watermelons we planted.
Ours is the native species and it was organic; we used only poultry manure. They were not like the ones from the northern part of Nigeria that had a hollow in the middle. Ours was uniformly red and very sweet. Her refusal to buy could be quite discouraging for a first timer.
There are lessons I learnt from the sales of today.
1. Remember, rejection is not a verdict
Rejection by a customer is not a verdict.
It can also be extrapolated that because a company refused to employ you, does not mean you are not good enough. They might not know your worth or they don’t need your skills at that present moment. Somebody else might just see you as a perfect person for the job.
There are great sportsmen, actors, and actresses that were rejected, but turned out to be celebrities later in life.
Even at this stage in life, there are people who don’t like my style of ministry, especially in my locality and my tribe, but I don’t really care.
There is a video of mine that is making waves around the world, and someone, who saw me selling our hospital to go into ministry as akin to insanity, called me that the video was sent to her by someone. The same message that some people might get angry with, was preached in the right audience, recorded with the right equipment, and properly packaged and repackaged, and it is trending. Somebody sent it to my daughter from the US, and another person sent one from India.
Sometimes, all you need in life is the right person, with the right value for you, in the right moment, and then you get the right value.
The grading of my recent customer was very different from the grading of my other customer.
2. Timing is very important
My harvest came in when there were no watermelons in the market. The ones from the northern part of Nigeria were not available, so I had the market to myself.
Everything in life requires proper timing.
Moses was in the Nile when Pharaoh’s daughter needed a bath, was in a position to see him, and asked her servants to pick him up. Miriam was rightly positioned to go call the mother, such that she earned a salary for breastfeeding her own baby. Remember, other babies were killed.
3. The answer to some of your prayers is with people
I had adopted an online retailing formula by calling my crowd, and I had already started selling to some people. That would have taken longer and given me more money, but time and safety were crucial at this point, especially when we are recording an increase in the infection rates of COVID-19 in my locality.
Because of the lockdown, several of my teachers and workers are into different hustles according to Nigerian lingo. If you work under me, or relate with me, and you are not enterprising, then something is seriously wrong with you.
In preparation to open up our school, my wife called one of my teachers to come supply some stuff to clean the classrooms. She called my number to greet me because she had not seen me since the shutdown.
What you are incubating will determine your actions and relationships with others.
I told her to get customers for me, and within an hour, she called that she was coming with a customer. That’s how I broke into the watermelon market. If you are shy, don’t go into marketing, unless you break that yoke of timidity.
Someone rightly said that a shut mouth is a shut destiny.
4. Create value in people
The young lady, who brought the customer, did her interview several times before we took her in as a member of our staff. There were days she would weep and refuse to leave the school compound. It was my wife that eventually employed her. She turned out to be very diligent and greatly loved by her pupils. She became a great disciple of my weekly radio broadcast. She also became my mentee and a very trustworthy worker. Today, she has brought this big customer, and has even offered to teach me on one aspect of farming.
Remember how Raymond Orogun Ugbeh taught me about the church without walls and breaking the barrier of space and time.
Watermelon business is a good business, and it is multilevel in nature.
God Bless You.
