Recruiting Sales Partners and Customers

An Independent Sales Partner is a person with their own network who brings customers to African Fresh Market and earns commission on what those customers actually buy. A partner holds no stock, collects no cash, pays nothing to join, and is not on any payroll. AFM delivers the food and takes the payment; the partner earns on the order.

The only two things a partner has to do (ESTABLISHED)

• Give their own referral code to people they know.
• Make sure the customer uses that code, so the order is attributed to them.

Three programme facts I must know cold (ESTABLISHED)

My target is 20 real conversations a day, five days a week. A conversation means speaking to a named person, face to face or on the phone, and ending with their name and number, a partner interview booked, or an honest no. Nothing else counts.

What is not a conversation

• A message forwarded into a group.
• A poster left on a wall or a card left on a desk.
• A person who took my number and gave me nothing in return.
• The same person counted twice.

The arithmetic I hold myself to (MY TARGET)

1. 107:30, at home: choose the ground. One zone from Section 5, three named places inside it, and the person I want to see in each.
2. 208:00 to 10:00, offices: the reception desk first. Ask for whoever handles staff welfare, HR or the canteen. Ten minutes, two questions, one printed one-pager left behind.
3. 310:00 to 12:00, second ground: a market, a campus, a hospital entrance, a bus park, or a factory gate at shift change. Talk to traders, students, staff and riders where they already stand still.
4. 412:00 to 14:00, lunch hour: canteens and food outlets around the morning's office cluster. This is the richest hour of the day, because people are out, sitting down and not in a hurry.
5. 514:00 to 16:30, partner interviews: meet everyone who agreed to a longer talk. Fifteen minutes each, with the phone in hand: register the code, write down their twenty warm contacts, agree the date of their first order.
6. 616:30 to 17:30, follow-ups: call or message every name collected in the last three days. Nothing else in this hour.
7. 718:00 to 20:00, evening ground: the estates and shops near home. Salons, barbers, boutiques, gyms, pharmacies and bars are full and talkative at this hour.
8. 820:30, close the day: fill the tracker, count the day honestly, choose tomorrow's zone, and send the five messages that carry a partner from a name to a first order.

The day, hour by hour

Before I leave the house, five things

• One zone chosen, and three named places inside it.
• The person to ask for in each place.
• A full phone battery and a power bank.
• The printed one-pager with prices and the WhatsApp number +250 791 779 488.
• Yesterday's tracker page, so the follow-ups are not forgotten.

The zones run in the order of the road, not of the map, so a day's route makes sense on a moto or a bus. Streets, entrances and tenants change: confirm the gate on the map before travelling, and never spend a morning looking for a building.

Zone A - Downtown and Nyarugenge

The densest office and transport ground in the city. Best worked on a weekday morning, on foot: everything below is inside a fifteen-minute walk of the others.

Zone B - Kimihurura and Kacyiru, the office and institutional belt

Office towers, ministries, a national hospital and a university on one ridge. The single best zone in this plan for names per hour.

Zone C - Kiyovu and the city centre

Coworking, banks, embassies and hotels within walking distance. A good zone for one long, unhurried day rather than a rushed morning.

Zone D - Kicukiro, Sonatubes and Gikondo

A large government office, an industrial area and a busy centre, all on one road. Work the lunch hour at Sonatubes and the shift changes in Gikondo.

Zone E - Remera, Kisimenti and Kanombe

Sport, restaurants, the airport and a hospital belt. Best worked on a Saturday afternoon or on an event evening.

Zone F - Kimironko and Bibare

The largest market in the country, its bus park, and the estates behind it. Start early: a market day is over by midday.

Zone G - Gisozi, Kagugu, Nyarutarama and Gacuriro

A large office campus, schools, gyms and the wealthier estates. Best on a weekday evening or a Saturday morning.

Zone H - Masoro, the Special Economic Zone and Kigali Innovation City

The highest-volume ground in this plan. The Kigali Special Economic Zone at Masoro holds factories employing over 1,500 workers, and Kigali Innovation City is next to it. Work the gates, not the offices.

Zone I - The campuses

Students are fast with phones, cheap to reach in numbers, and a campus is a closed network: one credible leader can carry a whole hostel. Check the academic calendar first - in the holidays, work the estates and markets beside the campus instead.

Zone J - Community and institutions

The grounds where a whole neighbourhood is already gathered. Slower than an office tower, but the trust is higher and the conversations last longer.

A partner needs two things: people who already listen to them, and a reason to be in a food conversation every week. That is the whole filter. Age, education and social media following do not matter.

I do not leave a new partner alone until their first order is paid, because that is the moment they become a partner and the moment they start telling other people. The first seven days are scripted, and they are my responsibility as much as theirs.

1. 1Day 0, at the interview: register the code, confirm the name and phone number, and write the twenty warm contacts down with them, in front of them, into the tracker. A partner who cannot name twenty people will not sell.
2. 2Day 0, before I leave: the partner sends their first message to their own network. I give them the text in Section 8 and watch it go out.
3. 3Day 1: I call the partner. Who replied? Who is closest to ordering? We fix the single most likely order, not the whole list.
4. 4Day 2: the partner speaks to the first five names face to face. If they will not, I do the first one with them, in the same room.
5. 5Day 3: first order placed. If the customer hesitates about the code, I stay on the phone until it is entered: an order without the code pays the partner nothing.
6. 6Day 5: first paid order checked. I tell the partner the exact amount, in writing, from their own dashboard.
7. 7Day 7: the partner names the next five people. A partner who repeats this loop for four weeks is a partner for a year.

Kinyarwanda lines are kept short on purpose. If Kinyarwanda is not your first language, read them slowly, and check them with a Kinyarwanda-speaking colleague before the first day. The French opener is given once, because the same three sentences work in any Kigali office.

What I am watching in each month (MY TARGET)

• Month 1: am I really having twenty conversations a day, or am I hiding in receptions? The only honest measure is the tracker.
• Month 2: do my partners bring a second order, or only a first? Partners with repeat customers are the ones worth my Monday morning.
• Month 3: are the strongest partners bringing partners of their own? That is the point at which this stops depending on me.

The Friday review - thirty minutes, five questions

• How many conversations did I actually have? Count the tracker, not the memory.
• Which ground produced the most names, and which produced nothing? Next week, more of the first, none of the second.
• Who is stuck between a code and their first order? Those three people are called first on Monday.
• Who has gone quiet? One short message each, five at most.
• What sentence worked, word for word? Write it down and use it again.

The daily tracker is filled every evening, without exception, and the partner tracker follows every partner from registration to their third paid order. If a partner's line is empty for a week, that partner gets a call on Monday, not a message.

Daily tracker - one line per working day

Partner tracker - one line per partner

• I quote only the figures in Section 2. I never invent a rate, a bonus, a prize or a deadline.
• I never tell anyone what they will earn. I describe how commission is calculated, and I stop there.
• Nobody pays to become a partner. If anyone ever asks a partner for money to join, it is not AFM, and I report it the same day.
• Money for food goes to African Fresh Market through the official channels only. I never collect cash, and no partner of mine ever collects cash for an order.
• Customer details stay inside AFM's systems. I do not keep another person's customer list in my phone, and I do not pass a customer's number to anyone.
• Only AFM's approved codes, prices and links. No private arrangements, no side deals, and no promises made in AFM's name.
• When a customer has a delivery problem, the problem comes first. Operations before recruitment, always.
• If I do not know an answer, I say so, and I confirm it with AFM on WhatsApp +250 791 779 488 before I repeat it to anyone.

• Bus terminals that matter for this plan: Nyabugogo Bus Park, Downtown Bus Park, Kimironko Bus Park, Kicukiro Centre, the Kinyinya and Batsinda terminals, and the Remera taxi ranks.
• A moto is for moving between two grounds inside one zone. A bus is for arriving in a new zone in the morning. Both are cheap; the expensive mistake is crossing the city twice.
• Carry: the three working pages of this plan, the printed code list, the tracker, a pen, a power bank, and one printed AFM one-pager with prices and the WhatsApp number +250 791 779 488.
• Dress as a person doing business: clean, simple, one AFM item visible. A reception desk decides in five seconds.
• Phone discipline: every name goes into the phone before I leave the person. A number written on paper is a number lost.
• One long day per week, not seven short ones. Saturday is the second-best day in this plan, after Tuesday.

After two weeks (MY TARGET)

• 200 conversations had, 60 names in the phone.
• 10 partner interviews completed, 4 partners registered, 2 with a first paid order.
• The zone list corrected with what actually worked, and the two best zones known by name.

After one month (MY TARGET)

• 400 conversations, 20 partners registered, 12 with a first paid order.
• The two scripts that work known word for word.
• A complete tracker, with no day missing.

After 90 days (MY TARGET)

• 1,200 conversations, 50 partners registered, 35 with a paid order.
• 80 direct customers, and repeat orders growing faster than first orders.
• My replacement: two people I recruited who now work this same loop, in their own zones, with their own trackers.