Young and dynamic, Divine Kawaya joined Target through a professional internship done from January to March 2016 where she was finally recruited. Today, Divine main mission is to look for new clients in and out of DRC, develop B to B activities, and look after Target visibility. Going towards end of 2017 Divine share with us how 2017 has been within her department.

After two years of our turnover drop, we were obliged to improve it this year. The challenge was major for me as for all my colleagues but I felt directly involved. With my current role on business development, finding new business opportunities is my work. So I started 2017 with one main objective, increase loyalty among our current clients but also search for new business opportunities.  My leitmotiv throughout the year was ‘’work and only work”

This credo made Divine put in place a strategy to reconquer market on three aspects:  maintaining permanent contact with agency prospects, reinforcing our presence on field, and increasing consultant/expert data base within various fields.  Each point has its place within this strategy and Divine, as the leader had the role to overlook the improvement among the various points in a way to achieve her objective and win challenge on improving turnover.

With a smile, she still remembers what has been 2017 ‘’I tried to maintain as much as possible contact with prospects by sending publications, newsletters, I was even suggesting market research proposals to clients”.  I was making sure of the agency presence at all events where it was possible to get potential clients, Semaine Francaise, Business launch, Makutano meetings… All occasions were to speak about the agency to someone. We also improved our consultants’ data base in order to manage unforeseen situations. In that way, we were then able to respond to our clients whatever be the field within which projects were to be conducted. 

In front of all these strategies set within her department, one immediately asks whether 2017 challenge has been achieved.  Yes; answered Divine with assurance before adding that ‘’we did not only improved our turnover, but we also exceeded our 2014 turnover “. The three strategies really worked, Target had new clients this year on projects requests but also on publication sales and many others.  “We penetrated, Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Uganda, four countries where we were not present up to now’’ Divine mentioned with pride.

Such targets could have been unreachable from early 2017 looking at the current political and economic context of DRC.  Clients with which Target had projects this were those with whom we started negotiations many years ago. “This is why learned from 2017 that perseverance always wins”

From 2017 experience, the main vision for 2018 is conquering new targets mainly: international NGOs. These international NGOs order many projects but they are mostly conducted by international agencies. We wish to convince them with Target, they can make reliable studies responding to international standards.