Friday to Sunday. Three full days. Eleven women entrepreneurs from Nigeria and Ghana. One intense classroom experience.

As Faculty Member of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) – AFRICA Campus in Abuja, and Faculty for the Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing course, I had the privilege of taking 11 remarkable Founders through an immersive exploration of sales, marketing and strategy.

We did not simply “teach marketing.”

We dissected it.

From understanding Sales & Marketing and the Personalities of Marketing, to frameworks for designing marketing strategies, the 8 Ps of Marketing, product creation, People × Pricing, Place, Performance, Physical Evidence and Promotion, we went deep.

We explored BCG Matrix, PESTELIED, emotions marketing, traditional vs digital marketing, frameworks for closing sales, Cialdini’s persuasion principles and long term revenue growth through community.

But one of the most revealing moments for me was deploying my proprietary Marketing Personality Framework.

It helped each Founder understand their own persona and, perhaps more importantly, their enthusiasm, resistance or reluctance toward marketing as an activity.

Because sometimes the marketing problem is not the absence of a strategy.

It is the relationship the Founder has with marketing.

The classroom became a laboratory.

Case studies.

Role plays.

Pitches.

Videos.

Group activities.

Debates.

Workshops.

Real entrepreneurial conversations.

And, of course, a lot of adaptation in real time.

By Day 3, most participants admitted their heads were FULL. 😂

That, to me, was a good sign.

The feedback afterwards described my approach as tender, deep, relatable and engaging.

I am particularly grateful for that feedback because it captures what I believe effective executive learning should be:

Rigorous enough to challenge you.

Practical enough to use immediately.

Human enough to make the learning stick.

This experience also reinforced something I have come to believe strongly:

Great capacity development is not about how much information the facilitator can deliver.

It is about how much transformation the learner can experience.

If your organisation needs someone who can combine strategic depth, practical frameworks, facilitation, coaching and human connection to create a meaningful learning experience, I would be glad to have that conversation.

Three days. Eleven Founders. Countless insights.

And one more reminder that learning becomes powerful when people are not just taught, but truly engaged.

Thank you, Saidat Lawal-Mohammed for inviting me. Onto the #April2027 cohort.

If you’re interested in joining the class, #FemaleOnly, ask me for more details or visit https://ceibs.edu

#CEIBS #EntrepreneurialSales #MarketingStrategy #BusinessCoaching #ExecutiveCoaching #CapacityDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment #Strategy #Entrepreneurship #SalesAndMarketing

Sam Obafemi, DBA (Honoris Causa)

The Octopus 🐙