You're Not Losing Sales to Price. You're Losing Them in the Chat.

Michael Taiwo made a point on X last week that I have not been able to put down. His argument, in short, was that many small businesses are losing sales inside the conversation rather than on the product, and that this is a buying-process problem rather than a marketing one. You can read the original post here.

He is right, and I want to take it further, because there is a part of this that costs Nigerian traders more than the part everybody talks about.

You already know the conversation. It goes like this.

A customer sees your post. They message you. "How much?" You reply: "DM." They are already in your DM. Then you ask which one they mean. They send a screenshot. You ask where they are. They tell you. You say delivery is separate. Then your shop gets busy and you look up three hours later.

They have stopped replying. You assume your price was too high.

Your price was fine. They bought from somebody who answered.

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The Sale Was Not Lost on Price

Here is the part that makes this so expensive: you never find out. A customer who thinks your price is too high sometimes tells you. A customer who gave up on the process just leaves. There is no complaint, no negotiation, no feedback. The chat simply goes quiet and you move on to the next person.

So the loss never shows up anywhere. It is not in your sales records, because there was no sale. It is not in your stock, because nothing moved. It sits in a WhatsApp thread you will never scroll back to.

This is the same shape as every other quiet leak in a trading business. The apprentice cutting price by ₦2,500 a bag. The credit sale nobody wrote down. The ₦40,000 you cannot account for at the end of the month. None of them announce themselves. They just make you slightly poorer than you should be, every week, for years.

The difference is that this one is the cheapest to fix. It costs nothing but a decision.

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Why We Hide Prices (And Which Reasons Are Real)

Before the advice, let me deal with the objection honestly, because "just post your price" is easy to say and there are real reasons Nigerian sellers do not.

"My competitor will see it and undercut me"

This is the most common reason, and it is the weakest one.

Your competitor already knows your price. They can message you as a customer from any number and have it in ninety seconds, which is exactly what the serious ones do. The only person your hidden price is actually hidden from is the buyer who wanted to pay you.

And undercutting is not the threat it feels like. A competitor who wins only on being ₦200 cheaper is in a race they will eventually lose to somebody cheaper than them. If price is genuinely the only thing separating you, that is a business problem to solve, not a number to hide.

"I price differently for regulars"

This one is real, and it is normal trade. Your regular who buys ten cartons a month should not pay what a stranger buying one pays.

But it does not require secrecy. It requires a visible price for the single unit and a stated bulk price. "₦4,500 each, ₦42,000 for a dozen" tells a stranger what they will pay, tells a serious buyer there is a better deal in quantity, and leaves you room to do something extra for your best customers privately. What it does not do is force every buyer into a conversation before they can know anything at all.

"The exchange rate keeps moving my cost"

Also real, especially for anyone importing or buying from Alaba or Computer Village.

The answer is not to hide the price. It is to date it. "₦185,000 as at Monday 8 September" is honest, protects you when the cost moves, and still lets a buyer decide whether to continue. Nobody is offended by a dated price. Plenty of people are put off by no price.

"I want to talk to them first"

I understand the instinct. You want to build rapport, understand what they need, maybe upsell.

The problem is that you are asking the customer to invest in a conversation before you have given them anything. They do not owe you that. Give them the price, and the ones who want the conversation will still have it with you, only now they are talking to somebody who respects their time.

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Answer the Four Questions Before They Are Asked

Every buyer, in every market, is asking the same four questions. They will get the answers from you or from someone else.

1. How much is it? The actual number, including whether that is per unit or per carton.
2. Do you have it right now? Not "we can get it." Do you have it today.
3. How does it reach me, and when? Whether they collect or you deliver, where you deliver to, roughly how long, and whether delivery costs extra.
4. How do I pay you? Transfer, cash on collection, card. If transfer, the account details, and what happens after they send it.

Put all four in the post, the status, the pinned message, the catalogue photo caption, wherever your customers actually look. Every one you leave out is a message the customer has to send, and every message they have to send is a chance for them to go somewhere easier.

Do that and something else changes: the people who message you are already most of the way to buying. You stop spending your day answering "how much" and start spending it closing.

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The Part That Costs More: The Promise Nobody Recorded

Everything above is about the customer who never buys. Now the more expensive version, and the part of Michael's post I keep coming back to: giving whoever answers one clear record of what has already been promised.

Here is how it goes wrong.

On Tuesday a customer messages. Your sister is minding the shop. She tells them ₦18,000, agrees to hold two of them until Friday, and promises delivery to Surulere is included. She does not write any of it down, because she will remember.

On Friday the customer arrives. You are the one there. You quote ₦19,500, because that is your price. The two items are not set aside, because you did not know to set them aside. You mention delivery is ₦2,000 extra.

Now look at what you have. A customer who thinks you are dishonest. A staff member who feels accused. An argument in front of other customers. And you will probably eat the difference to save face, so you lose the money as well as the goodwill.

Nothing here was caused by a bad person. It was caused by a promise that lived in one person's head.

What a record actually needs to hold

It is not complicated. For anything you promise a customer, somebody else in your shop should be able to see:

• Who the customer is and how to reach them
• What was promised, item by item, at what price
• Whether goods are being held, and until when
• What was said about delivery, including whether it is included
• Who made the promise, and when

That last one is not about catching staff out. It is about being able to ask one person a quick question instead of running a small investigation. When a promise has a name and a time on it, the Friday conversation takes thirty seconds instead of turning into a fight.

Set a holding rule and say it out loud

"I will hold it for you" is where most of this goes wrong, because it is said casually and understood as a commitment.

Pick a rule and use it every time. Twenty-four hours without a deposit. Until Friday close with a deposit. Whatever fits your trade, as long as it is the same rule for everyone and the customer hears it when the promise is made: "I will keep it for you till Friday evening. After that it goes back out."

Now the customer knows where they stand, your staff know what to do on Friday evening, and you are not holding stock indefinitely for somebody who has already bought elsewhere.

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What to Do This Week

Small, and all of it doable between customers.

Today: Write the four answers once, properly. Price, availability, delivery, payment. Put them where a customer sees them before they message you.

Tomorrow: Scroll back through last week's chats and count how many went quiet after a question you did not answer quickly. Do not guess this number. Count it. It is usually worse than people expect, and it is the number that will actually change your behaviour.

This week: Decide your holding rule and tell everyone who serves customers what it is.

From now: Every promise made to a customer gets written where the next person can see it. Not in one person's head. Not in a chat only they can read.

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How MyTreda Handles This

Let me be clear about what MyTreda does and does not do here, because half of this post is not a software problem.

MyTreda does not publish your prices for you and does not run your WhatsApp. Answering the four questions is on you, and it costs nothing.

What MyTreda handles is the second half, the part that gets expensive. When a customer is promised goods, you can put that sale on hold with the items and the agreed price attached to it, so the stock is accounted for and anybody who opens the app can see it is spoken for. When they come back, you complete the sale from that same record instead of rebuilding it from memory. If they never come back, the hold is released and the goods return to your available stock rather than quietly sitting in a corner.

Every sale carries the amount, the payment method and the staff member who recorded it, so "who told the customer ₦18,000?" is a question with an answer. And because the activity log keeps the history, you can see what changed and who changed it without anyone having to defend themselves from memory.

It works offline, which matters when you are on the road doing a delivery and the network is gone. Plans start at ₦2,500/month.

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Make It Easy to Give You Money

The businesses that win in a market like ours are not always the ones with the best product or the lowest price. Often they are just the ones that made buying simple.

Answer before you are asked. Write the promise down where the next person can find it. Say what you will hold and for how long.

Your product is already good enough. Stop making people work to buy it.