In 2009, I was posted to a new territory in West Africa. I had Oracle behind me , the brand carried significant weight , but the market did not know me personally. The decision-makers I needed to reach had existing relationships with other vendors, other reps, other consultants they trusted. I was an outsider walking into a room where all the seats were already taken. What I learned in that season shaped everything I now teach at Imoye Academy about what it actually takes to build authority in an unfamiliar market.
The mistake most sales professionals make is confusing activity with authority. They join LinkedIn groups. They attend every industry event. They cold-call the same 40 contacts every two weeks. None of that builds authority on its own. Authority is not about volume; it is about positioning. It is the answer to one question in the buyer’s mind: "Why should I listen to this person specifically?" If you cannot answer that question with something concrete and memorable, you are just noise in a noisy market.
The Authority Ladder: Four Rungs You Cannot Skip
I use a framework I call the Authority Ladder when coaching sales professionals and business development managers entering new territories. The four rungs are: domain knowledge, proof of results, visible perspective, and social validation. Most people invest in only one or two of these and wonder why they are still being treated like a junior vendor three years into a market.
Domain knowledge is the foundation. You need to understand the market better than most of the buyers in it. Not just your product , the buyer’s business, their competitive pressures, their regulatory environment, their cost structures. In the Nigerian tech sector, for example, buyers at banks and telcos are sophisticated. They have seen vendor after vendor promise transformation. If you walk in with a generic pitch, you signal immediately that you have not done your homework. But if you reference the CBN’s open banking regulations, or the specific margin compression challenges facing mid-tier telcos since 2023, you signal something different: you are a peer, not just a salesperson.
Proof of results is the second rung. This is not a case study PDF attached to an email. It is the ability to reference specific, quantified outcomes , ideally in the same industry or geography. "We helped a tier-two bank in Lagos reduce their loan processing cycle from 11 days to 3 days" is authority. "Our solution drives operational efficiency" is noise. The more specific you are, the more credible you become. If you are new to a market and do not yet have local results, borrow from adjacent markets and be transparent about it. Buyers respect honesty far more than vague claims.
“Authority is not built through activity. It is built through specificity , the ability to reference exactly what you know, exactly what you have delivered, and exactly who you have served.”
The Role of Visible Perspective
The third rung is what separates the good from the great: visible perspective. This means having a published, searchable point of view on the problems your buyers face. In practice, this means writing. Not ghostwritten corporate content , your actual thinking, in your actual voice, on the real tensions in your industry. If you are selling cybersecurity solutions to Nigerian financial institutions, you should have written something specific about the 2024 wave of social engineering attacks on tier-two banks. If you are selling ERP software to manufacturing companies, you should have a perspective on supply chain disruption in the Lagos industrial corridor.
This kind of content does something that no amount of cold outreach can replicate: it makes buyers find you. When a CTO at a Lekki-based fintech Googles a problem and your article appears , with your name, your photo, your clear point of view , you arrive at the first meeting already positioned as a thought leader. As I explored in my post on treating your LinkedIn profile as a sales page, the digital trail you leave is now as important as anything you say face-to-face.
According to research published in Harvard Business Review, buyers are now 57% of the way through the purchase decision before they first contact a supplier. That means your authority must be built before the conversation starts. If a buyer is researching options and they cannot find you, you do not exist in their consideration set , no matter how good your product is.
Social Validation and the Power of Warm Introductions
The fourth rung , social validation , is the one that accelerates everything else. In African markets particularly, relationships and referrals carry enormous weight. A warm introduction from a mutual contact collapses the trust-building process from months to minutes. A LinkedIn recommendation from a respected CIO in your industry is worth more than a hundred cold emails. A testimonial from a client who is well-known in a particular sector acts as a master key that opens doors you could not have opened on your own.
Social validation is not something you can manufacture or rush. But you can be intentional about cultivating it. Every successful engagement should generate a testimonial or a referral ask. Every strong relationship should be leveraged , with permission , to create introductions into adjacent networks. As I discussed in my reflections on running sales teams across four continents, the markets that rewarded relationship investment most consistently were the ones where trust is a prerequisite for even getting to a first meeting. Nigeria is one of those markets.
A Practical 90-Day Authority-Building Plan
When I coach sales professionals entering a new market, I give them a 90-day plan built around the four rungs. Days 1, 30: deep domain research. Read every industry report, every CBN circular relevant to your sector, every earnings call transcript from the top five companies you want to sell to. Map the power structures. Identify the real decision-makers versus the gatekeepers. Write one long-form article or LinkedIn post per week based on what you are learning. You will not have results to reference yet , so lead with insight instead.
Days 31, 60: build proof points and warm relationships. By now you should have had your first few discovery calls. Every single one of these is a data collection exercise as much as a sales exercise. What is the buyer telling you about their market? What language are they using to describe their problems? Use that language in your next piece of content. Simultaneously, map who your five most important potential connectors are , people who are well-networked in your target segment , and invest in genuine relationship-building with them. Not transactional. Genuine.
Days 61, 90: close your first proof-of-concept deal and document it aggressively. Even a small win, properly documented with specific numbers, becomes your most powerful authority asset in the next 90 days. The first local success story changes everything. It answers the question every subsequent buyer will have: "Has this worked for someone like me, in a market like mine?" When the answer is yes and you can prove it, you are no longer an outsider. You are a credible local player , which is a very different conversation to be in.
“In markets where trust precedes transactions, your 90-day goal is not a closed deal. It is a story you can tell , a local proof point that makes every subsequent conversation easier and faster.”
What Most Sales Professionals Get Wrong
The most common mistake I see is treating authority-building as a marketing problem rather than a sales strategy. People delegate it entirely to a social media manager or a content agency and then wonder why the content does not convert. Authority that moves buyers is always personal. It has a specific voice, a specific point of view, and a specific face behind it. Buyers do not trust brands , they trust people. In the Nigerian market especially, the human relationship is everything.
The second mistake is trying to build authority in too many places at once. Pick one platform , for B2B in Nigeria, LinkedIn remains the clear choice , and dominate it before diversifying. Shallow presence everywhere is worth less than deep authority somewhere. The goal is to be the first name a specific type of buyer thinks of when a specific problem arises. That level of mental positioning requires consistency and focus over time, not a scatter-gun approach. For more on how to build that consistency into a daily practice, see my post on the 30-day personal branding plan for sales professionals.