Dr Kayode Adedapo Kolawole: Scaling B2B Sales and SaaS Opportunity in West Africa

# Background and role Dr Kayode Adedapo Kolawole is Sales Director at Nagode Industries Limited and a judge for TechRound's SaaS66. He has 30 years' experience across manufacturing, B2B sales, marketing and distribution in Nigeria and West Africa. He sits in senior professional bodies for marketing and management consulting and runs commercial strategy for Nagode's sub-Saharan chemical distribution network.

# Track record at Nagode Kolawole manages a portfolio of more than 500 product lines spanning polyurethane foam, paint, pharmaceuticals, detergents and construction. Under his direction, the company achieved measurable commercial outcomes:

• Product-basket expansion that produced 60% revenue growth.

• Geographic expansion with three new branches (Sokoto, Kaduna and Port Harcourt), increasing Nagode's Pan‑Nigerian footprint by 40% and boosting cross-border sales.
• Introduced an employee appreciation and recognition scheme credited with higher productivity and lower sales-team turnover.

# African sales

He argues that digital adoption in regional sales operations is slow, which creates an operational gap that SaaS is well positioned to address. For founders targeting this market, the opportunity is to deliver software that integrates into existing sales behaviours and workflows rather than expecting wholesale process replacement.

# How AI and automation are reshaping B2B sales Kolawole has written The Salesperson's Pocket Guide to Artificial Intelligence and lists several concrete areas where AI already changes B2B sales:

• Automating repetitive tasks: email drafting, report generation and personalised product recommendations.
• Predictive analytics: forecasting outcomes and identifying customer behaviour patterns.
• Competitive analysis and automated customer service.

He stresses that buyers now expect comprehensive product detail before engaging a salesperson, so companies must make websites, documentation and customer evidence self-service friendly and AI-discoverable.

# Advice for SaaS founders building for the region Founders should prioritise practical product design that maps to how sellers in developing economies actually work. Key attributes Kolawole highlights:

• Make core sales tasks faster and simpler through automation.
• Ensure product content is discoverable by AI and supports self-service buying.
• Build solutions that bridge between automation and day-to-day execution rather than assuming high-tech literacy or process change.

# Leadership milestone and what it means Kolawole was the first Black director in Nagode Industries' 40-year history. He frames the promotion as organisational trust and responsibility earned through consistent performance. He sees it as evidence of gradual change in African corporate leadership, with inclusive leadership helping innovation and long-term performance.

# Practical implications for companies and founders For companies: invest in modern digital sales infrastructure and make product assets self-service ready. For SaaS founders: design for low-friction adoption, focus on automating repetitive tasks, and ensure your product surfaces the information buyers need before human sales interaction.

# Final takeaway The commercial case Kolawole outlines is straightforward: a large portion of regional sales activity remains manual and relationship-driven. Deliver SaaS that closes the operational gap by working with existing sales cultures, automating routine work, and exposing product information so buyers can self-serve when they want to.