9 Tips to be a successful Facilitator/Agent in the Oil industry

9 Tips to be a successful Facilitator/Agent in the Oil industry

1. Knowing who you are dealing with?

This business is quite tasking and sometimes frustrating especially if you do not know whom you are dealing with. First thing first is to understand where you belong. For whatsoever reason or situation you find yourself, its either you know the buyer directly one on one or you know the seller. If you know

a buyer's mandate before the buyer, how are you sure the buyer's mandate doesn't know another buyer's mandate and so on? So the number one key to success in this Industry is knowing who buyer/seller is

2. Having An Agreement in Place

This is very important. Since you know the buyer or the seller face to face, the next thing to do is to have an Agreement to protect your interest. A competent Lawyer can do that for you

3. Marketing your seller's product or your buyer's needs

Another thing here is how to market your buyer/seller to the world? For starters, you can market online while for professionals, you can do face to face marketing i.e going to companies that needs these products. For crude oil, the end users are refineries, while for petroleum products; the source of distribution is/are petrol stations.

4. Due Diligence

Since you know the buyer directly, you should also understand that most offers posted on the internet, 95% of them are fake. Your Job here is to separate the fake ones from the original ones. And if it means you have to travel to meet the buyer/Seller, do that.

5. Never send or sign any document online

Sending SPA's, Proof of Product, and Proof of Funds online is very cheap and unprofessional. The thing is, most of these documents have been doctored and if you were to find out from any of the issuing Ministry/Department/Agency you will discover that these documents do not originate from them and they have no record of it either. So you might get yourself into trouble

6. Never Disclose who your seller or buyer is

Do not disclose who your seller is to the buyer until you are sure of the capability of the buyer. Any oil service company without any physical address or web presence is as good as fake

7. Bringing both parties Together

Have the buyer/seller agreed on a procedure to work with? As the seller endorsed the procedure? As the buyer endorsed the procedure? If both parties have endorsed the procedure then you can bring them together for a TTM. During TTM, agreement would be signed.

8. Don't be greedy

Whatever the buyer offers or whatever the seller offers to give you as commission, accept it. After all you are not the owner of the oil neither are you the owner of the cash. All what you have done is to introduce the buying party to the selling party. Facilitator’s greediness has killed so many deals so don't be greedy.

9. Prayers

Go and pray and hope on God to make everything scale through