By Nadine Todd
Bokang Seritsane began his entrepreneurial journey as a salesman
working for other entrepreneurs. He didn’t know it at the time, but he
was grooming himself to eventually launch his own business.
“As a salesperson, you’re responsible for your own sales and
turnover,” he says. “You need to craft a strategy for your clients as
well, so what they do and their needs dictate how you approach them and
structure your offering. In my case, I sold advertising.
“Marketing managers can spend their budgets without your assistance,
so you need to create a need to ensure they spend with you – and
translate that need into a service. It was an excellent foundation for
entrepreneurship, as that’s exactly what business owners do – find a
client need and fill it.”
As an entrepreneur, Seritsane needed to find gaps, create solutions
and commercialise them, but soon found that you often need one deal to
close the next ten. “Closing that first deal is often what undoes a
start-up. You need clients to attract clients.”
Sertisane’s advice?
Invest in doing work for free. “It might sound counter-intuitive,
particularly as you don’t want to set a precedent of doing work for
free, but often that first “no” is because your potential big client is
unsure of your work ethic or ability to deliver – and you don’t have a
track record yet. Offering to do the work for free for three or even six
months has two advantages:
“You’re able to prove that you live up to your pitch, and it lends
credibility to your subsequent pitches because you can show you’re doing
work for a large corporate. It obviously affects your bottom line, but
as long as you work with integrity and deliver what you promise, you’ll
be building a relationship with a great long-term client.”
Family and friends started asking Seritsane for business advice,
which ultimately inspired him to launch Under35Mavericks, a business
that builds up young entrepreneurs through its Maverick Mindset Programme.
“The programme is funded through corporate ED funds, so before I could
officially launch it, I needed the right relationships in place and to
have proved myself as a trusted partner. It took longer to launch, but
I’m now working off a much more sustainable base.”
Celebrating SA’s Hot young entrepreneurs
Seritsane has hit on an innovative way to celebrate young South
African entrepreneurs while also gaining brand traction with the
inaugural Maverick Awards. As South Africa’s first youth
entrepreneurship excellence awards, the Maverick Awards recognise,
acknowledge and celebrate entrepreneurial genius and prowess displayed
by young, hard-nosed entrepreneurs who are rising up to local challenges
and building great businesses as a result.
Visit www.under35mavericks.com for more information.
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