Sales Transformation in Nigeria: Insights From the Retail Frontline ft. Bimpe Adebisi

Featuring: Bimpe Adebisi, National Head of Retail, Simba Group
Host: Nikhil Chaudhary, VP Marketing at BeatRoute

Sales transformation is more than adopting tools, it’s about changing behavior, processes, and culture across complex field operations. The latest and first BeatRoute Podcast episode of 2026 is live, and it opens the year with a grounded conversation on what sales transformation actually looks like in Nigeria. In this episode, Nikhil Chaudhary speaks with Bimpe Adebisi, to share a piece of her daily grind navigating Nigeria’s complex ecosystem. Bimpe is the National Head of Retail at Simba Group, where she leads sales execution, channel partner enablement, and customer experience at scale. In this conversation Bimpe breaks down what it takes to make digital sales adoption work in one of Africa’s most challenging retail markets. With 17+ years of frontline and leadership experience across Nigeria, including Airtel Nigeria, Bimpe shares practical insights on driving adoption, scaling tools, and using AI effectively.

Let’s dive straight into the conversation!

Lessons From The Frontline

Bimpe’s career spans building high-performing retail teams, managing customer operations, and leading sales execution across Nigeria. Through this experience, she has seen how gaps in process, data readiness, and technology usage can slow down even strong teams. In day-to-day operations, resistance to new systems often shows up as familiar field-level objections. Sales teams point to poor internet connectivity, device issues, or delays in capturing data, challenges that frustrate leaders who depend on timely and accurate visibility.

In Bimpe’s view, these objections are rarely just isolated technical issues. They reflect deeper execution gaps in how systems are embedded into daily workflows, leading to inconsistent usage and limited real-time insight across the sales operation.

“On the field, you have frontline salespeople who come up with excuses like, ‘Oh! There was no internet where I went. I wasn’t able to capture any data because the internet network is poor”

Sales Transformation Pitfalls

A major reason sales transformation fails in Nigeria is that teams are asked to adopt new systems without proper preparation. Many frontline staff and managers are unfamiliar with the digital tools that could make their work easier, and without context, adoption stalls. 

Bimpe explains, “Human beings tend to resist change, except it’s simplified, broken down, and well explained. Then adoption is easy.”

Compounding this, weak data foundations and integration gaps make even the best tools ineffective.

Customer information is often duplicated, incomplete, or scattered across spreadsheets, and legacy platforms may not integrate with newer technology. When organizations digitize first but plan integration later, adoption suffers, trust drops, and transformation stalls.

According to Bimpe, seamless integration and clear education from day one are essential for any sales transformation to succeed.

“Fragmented or inaccurate data from manual records makes it hard to build reliable systems”

Educate Before Incentivizing

When it comes to rolling out a new system or process in Nigeria, Bimpe Adebisi emphasizes that education matters far more than incentives.

“Why incentivize if I don’t even understand what you’re trying to show me to use?” she asks.

 Adoption must start with clear training and hands-on guidance, showing teams how a system makes their work easier and faster. 

For frontline salespeople, this means helping them see that “when we adopt this process, you’ll be able to close sales faster, you’ll be able to relate with your customers faster,” and ultimately build stronger relationships. 

 “I would say education. I would say training first before even bringing in incentives”

CRMs That Serve Every Stakeholder

Many organizations buy a CRM, only to continue running day-to-day operations through spreadsheets and chat groups. To make a CRM truly effective, Bimpe highlights two key considerations:

• Involve all stakeholders: “Managers, frontline staff, everyone that is going to have some role needs to contribute to what the CRM can do,” she explains. By gathering input from every level, the system can support the processes that matter most to each team and help them get work done efficiently.
  
• Prioritize scalability: “Businesses grow, but many CRMs don’t. That creates issues later when customer bases expand,” she notes. A CRM should grow with the business while remaining cost-effective, ensuring it serves both current and future needs.

Beyond design and scalability, a CRM should actively enable field operations. For sales executives, it should guide route planning and territory coverage: “If I’ve visited a particular territory, the CRM should advise, ‘Now you need to cover this territory and this is where you should be visiting.’” For dealers, it should help with smarter SKU planning and targeted marketing.

AI Quick Wins for Nigerian Retail

AI is becoming indispensable for retail sales and distribution in Nigeria, impacting every level of the organization. Bimpe notes that it is nearly impossible to do anything digital today without leveraging AI. At the management level, she explains that AI helps guide strategy and decision-making by providing insights into market trends, customer demand, and product relevance. For frontline sales executives, AI adds value by helping categorize customers and prioritize actions, ensuring teams focus on the right opportunities at the right time.

“We really can’t do anything digital nowadays without the help of AI”

Trusting AI Recommendations

AI can only be as reliable as the data and design behind it. Bimpe explains that trust starts with what is fed into the AI system. She emphasizes the importance of humanizing AI interactions so that responses feel relevant and actionable. If recommendations feel mechanical, people won’t trust them. Explaining why a recommendation is made really matters. By designing AI to respond thoughtfully to real questions and reflect human-like understanding, organizations can ensure managers and teams feel confident in acting on its recommendations.

“If I’m chatting with an AI tool and I get one-line answers, I might not trust the response”

Biggest Differentiators in 2026

When asked about what will separate the top retail sales organizations in Nigeria in the next few years, Bimpe highlighted several key differentiators:

• Innovation and adaptability: Companies that adopt new technologies quickly and effectively will scale operations faster and stay competitive.
• Sustainability focus: Organizations prioritizing ESG initiatives strengthen brand trust and ensure long-term viability.
• CSR commitment: Investing in corporate social responsibility builds credibility and supports business longevity.

Bimpe notes that the organizations that combine innovation, digital transformation, and sustainable practices will emerge as the clear leaders in the market.

"A company that can innovate easily, that can adopt technology easily, and that can ensure sustainability would be able to scale in the next one to three years”

Final Takeaway

As the conversation came to an end, Bimpe underscored a simple but powerful point: sales transformation works only when leadership is inclusive. Leaders who listen closely to their teams, remain open to ideas, and encourage innovation are better positioned to address real challenges on the ground. When people are involved in the journey, digital initiatives feel relevant rather than imposed. That shift turns transformation from a top-down exercise into a collective effort that drives adoption, trust, and measurable impact.

Acerca de BeatRoute

BeatRoute is a goal-driven AI platform for retail brands. It is an enterprise-grade, scalable platform that uses a unique goal-driven mechanism with AI at its heart to deliver measurable business impact for brands in their retail sales and distribution channels.

Worldwide, retail brands from industries such as FMCG, consumer goods, and building materials face the difficult choice of risky and high capex implementation projects on development platforms. We are solving this global problem with our ready-to-deploy SaaS solution.

BeatRoute currently serves 200+ enterprise brands in 20+ countries, with 100K+ users across India, South Asia, and Africa in 10 industry verticals. Our Africa footprint includes brands such as DP World, Marcas AAVA, Dangote, Shalina Healthcare, CICOTI, BUA Foods, Beetle Heritage, Apple & Pears, Worldwide Healthcare and more.