MTN Foundation in partnership with the Enterprise Development Centre, has commenced the Y’ellopreneur training. The four-week training programme for the 500 selected Y’ellopreneurs is designed to help build their entrepreneurial skills and help them understand how they can use the skills to grow their businesses.
The training covers a range of topics including, customer service, leadership essentials, marketing management, financial management, operations management and business plan development.
The programme which is mostly self-paced has an instructor-led session every week to ensure that the entrepreneurs have a good understanding of what they are learning. This week, the training session on ‘Effective Sales and Marketing’ was taught by Trainer, Enterprise Development Centre, Uche Egbuna, and the participants learnt about marketing management and how to apply it to their various businesses.
The training was broken into four segments, the first was for the participants to understand marketing and selling, the second was for them to know what marketing mix and market segmentation is all about, the third segment was for them to know how to develop a marketing plan and the last segment was for them to understand the sales process. During the training, the Y’ellopreneurs were able to use their businesses as case studies to understand every aspect of the marketing training.
Speaking after the training session, Uche Egbuna said that the training is meant to help the women structure their businesses “Today, I taught them on the marketing aspect of their business, and this will allow them understand how they can take their products from ideation to products that are sustainable and viable in the market. A lot of the women were able to give feedback about why they were in the market, who their target markets are and how they are able to build customer loyalty.”
He also added that the feedback received from the participants was very positive and engaging, as participants are well-invested in the program. “Women are always very engaging, from the class, we had a lot of engaging and insightful participation. As a facilitator, I also got to learn, because they tell you about their businesses and the problems they face and while proffering solution, I am also learning”.
“This is a great thing that the MTN Foundation is doing by partnering with Enterprise Development Centre to train these women, and I am glad to be part of this project. It will also be good to have other organisations emulate what the MTN Foundation is doing” he said.
The training ended with a question and answer session, and the trainer ensured that every question was answered practically.
