Babson Professor Onyemah publishes ‘Entrepreneurial Selling: The Facts Every Entrepreneur Must Know’
Vincent Onyemah, associate professor of sales and marketing at Babson, co-authored with Professor Martha Rivera-Pesquera of IPADE Business School, a new book Entrepreneurial Selling: The Facts Every Entrepreneur Must Know, published on January 12, 2017. The book addresses the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs in search of buy-ins for novel ideas, products, or services.
“In addition to describing typical hurdles, the book offers strategies to win over customers, employees, talents, financiers, suppliers, board members, marketing channels, and other collaborators,” says Onyemah.
Key takeaways from the book include:
- How entrepreneurs can excel at selling to obtain resources of all kinds.
- Entrepreneurship is not possible without the ability to sell.
- The insights shared should give entrepreneurs a “leg up” by helping to prevent costly mistakes and increase the odds of realizing their dreams.
Entrepreneurial Selling is based on multiyear field studies and many consulting projects with entrepreneurs in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America.
Vincent ‘Vini’ Onyemah
Vincent ‘Vini’ Onyemah is associate Professor of Sales and Marketing at Babson. He teaches and conducts research on Professional Selling, Sales Force Management, Business Development, and Marketing Management. Prior to joining Babson College, he taught at Boston University and Lagos Business School. As a teenager, he started two companies and after obtaining a first class BSc honors degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, he worked many years in industry before pursuing his academic career. He obtained an MBA from IESE Business School, Barcelona (Spain), an MSc and a PhD in Management from INSEAD Fontainebleau (France).
Professor Onyemah’s practical selling experience spans over two decades, starting when he was twelve in Nigeria working for his parents, and including work as an independent sales agent in Europe. He has taught and conducted consulting projects in over 25 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Latin America, and North America. He also consults for the IFC/ World Bank and teaches in several international Executive Education programs. He is the field operations director for Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Platform (BEEP), an accelerated growth-focused program for scaling up businesses and economies of cities around the world. In this capacity, he has implemented multi-year Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and Scalerator® projects such as Manizales Más (Colombia), Scale Up Milwaukee (USA), Scale Up Rio (Brazil), and Scale Up North-East Ohio (USA). His work has appeared in many international journals, the most recent being a Harvard Business Review (January 24, 2017) coauthored article (with Daniel J. Isenberg): Scaling Up Midsize Cities Are Entrepreneurship’s Real Test .