The Sales Japan Series

Jealousy, Envy and Spite In Sales Sales is a tough enough job without having additional complications. Clients can be very demanding, often we depend on logistics departments and production divisions, to get the purchase to the buyer. We can't control the quality, but we have total responsibility, as far as the client is concerned. There is the constant pressure of revenue results, with bosses always pushing hard on the numbers. If we are successful and we are doing well, you would think that life would be good. We know the emotional roller coaster that is the sales life and you are only ever as good as your last deal. So, with a little bit of success should come some respite from the turmoil of hitting the numbers. No such luck! Our colleagues, by definition, cannot all be equally successful. The Pareto Principle says that the top 20% of salespeople will account for 80% of the revenue numbers. So that means the other 80% of the team are scrambling around for the remaining 20% of the sales. People come into sales from different backgrounds, with different levels of experience, with degrees of motivation and they join at certain points in the annual results cycle. This means that some will be in the top group, a chunk will be in the middle and the rest are at the bottom. In the West, the usual way sales teams are managed is based on the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. Those who can't cut it are cut loose. Those who can continue to produce get to stay. If they can survive a couple of recessions, they may even be moved up into management positions. This means that those at the bottom are basically on their own. This should spur them on to greater efforts to move up the sales ranks and to strike for the top position in the sales results table. Yet often this doesn't happen. In Japan, most salespeople are on a salary and bonus structure, rather than salary and commission. Almost nobody is on 100% commission arrangements. This means the financial ambition to get ahead in sales is not as strong as we see in the West. Often the base salaries are large by foreign standards and so people can live on the base. In some cases, there can be pushback against the top salespeople, by those failing, because the successful are making everyone else look bad. Snide comments can be made, negative inferences drawn and a host of other petty signals that says "we don't like you". This is driven by jealousy and envy. This is their "the way to build the tallest building in town, is to tear down all the taller buildings" approach to greatness. In a small sales team this can be very uncomfortable. There is a degree of mutual cooperation involved in sales teams and this is usually where the disputes arise. Who owns the client, who owns the deal, and how is the revenue going to be split up? If the sales politicians in the firm get going they can really do damage to the morale of the organisation. These people are usually excellent at whining, gathering whiners together and hosting whine parties. They use their energy to pull down those who are successful, instead of trying to become a success themselves. When you are the top performer or if you are in the top ranks, you can feel you have become a target. Instead of just worrying about getting sales done, you now have to waste precious energy walking around on egg shells, to avoid criticism from your colleagues. This is kept below the radar, so the boss is often unaware of what is really going on. However, often they don't care anyway. They are looking for numbers and they don't want to have to deal with sales soap operas in the office. If the bosses are any good, they would be sorting out the toxic few, but often they don't. The top salespeople are razor focused on serving clients and doing all the hard yards needed to get the sale, so they are not politically minded. The whole mess gets made worse because in the current climate, organisations are looking at their salesperson retain strategies. They do this because they know they cannot recruit enough salespeople replacements. This means the internal war goes on for much longer that it should. We lose sight of the external competition and fight amongst ourselves. Bosses – sack the toxic! If you don't, you will find the whole organisation will start failing as the wrong culture takes command. For top salespeople, insulate and isolate yourself from losers. They don't work as hard or as long, so there is plenty of opportunity to get into the work, without having to engage with them much. Winners start early and concentrate on their Golden Time – 9.00am-5.00pm. This is when we can see clients for meetings and create business. All of the administrivia needs to be fitted in around those hours. Writing proposals, holding sales meetings, collecting data, putting together sales information, recording activities in the CRM, etc., are what happens outside of Golden Time. These days, thanks to technology, a lot if this can be done r

Rejection Everyone hates to be rejected, but not many people have this as a fundamental aspect of their work. We ask colleagues for help and they assist, we ask our bosses for advice and they provide it. Buyers though are a different case. They can easily find a million reasons not to buy and unashamedly tell us "no". The rejection itself is not so much the problem, as is how we respond, how we deal with the rejection. In Japan, the two areas our clients flag with us for special attention in sales training for their team are around understanding the client's needs and asking for the order or closing, as it is commonly referred to in sales parlance. The poor questioning skills are a result of salespeople wanting to tell the buyer a lot of stuff about the features, but not bothering to ask some well designed questions to uncover what their clients need. This in itself will explain a lot about why buyers say "no". If we don't properly understand what they need, then how do we suggest solutions that make sense and motivate the buyer to action? The two problems are closely linked. Even assuming that the questions are well thought through and that the solution selected is professionally conveyed to the buyer, they may still say no. This is because the buyer's hesitations have not been properly addressed. There was something unclear or unsatisfactory in what they just heard from the salesperson and they are not convinced this is the right solution to their problem. This is why a "no" will certainly be forthcoming, especially from Japanese buyers. Risk aversion is a fundamental part of the fabric of Japan and buyers more than most, observe this in distinct detail. They would rather give up on something better, if they thought there was a possibility their decision might bring some stain on their record. Failure is hard to recover from in Japan. There are no second chances here. People have learnt the best way to avoid failing is to take as few decisions as possible. Especially any decisions which can be traced back to you. Best to have a group decision, so the blame can be spread around and no one loses their job. Actually that works like a charm here, so no one wants to buck the system Having given the sales presentation, many salespeople in Japan simply don't ask for the order. They get to the end of their spiel and they just leave it there. The buyer is not asked for a decision, it is left vague on purpose, so that if it is a "no" then that will not have to be dealt with directly. The Japanese language is genius for having circles within circles of subtle obfuscation. The end result is a "no" but nobody ever has to say it or hear it. To get a sale happening, the buyer has to do all the work here in Japan, because the salespeople don't want commit, to take the plunge and ask for the order. If they get a "no", their feelings of self worth are impacted, they feel depressed, that they are failing. Not doing fully competent work or being highly productive, yet keeping you job is a pretty safe bet in most Japanese companies. The level of productivity amongst white collar workers is dismally low. Collective responsibility helps because it lessens the impact of personal inability to reach targets or make deadlines. Sales though is totally crystal clear about success and failure. It is very hard to argue with numbers – you either made the target or you didn't. Sales is also a numbers game. You are not going to hit a homerun every time, so the number of times becomes important. You will have certain ratios of success that apply right through the sales value chain and the only way to increase your sales, is to improve these ratios. You have to up the ante, regarding the volume of activity. This sounds easy, but it isn't when you are feeling depressed, insecure and plummeting in confidence. The key is to see sales in a different way. The increased volume of activity will even out the rejections. The way you think about rejection has to change. Rejection isn't about you personally. Buyers don't care that much about salespeople as people. They are rejecting your offer. As it is made today. In this part of the budget process. At this point in the economic cycle. In this current construction. At this price, with these terms. We haven't shown enough value yet, to get a "yes'. As these aspects change, the answer can go from a "yes" to a "no" and from a "no" to a "yes". That decision is irrelevant of the salesperson and how the buyer feels about them. These are macro and micro factors which can impact the decision one way or another. The answer is to see more people. In that way you can have a better chance of meeting a buyer for whom all the stars align and they can say "yes". At the same time, you need to keep working on getting better, at showing more value. You need to harden up and become tougher. Whatever you are selling, you always need to remember your AFTOS mantra: "ask for the order stupid". Never say no for the buyer an

Fast and Slow In Sales Time is of the essence. Patience is a virtue. Worthy aims but sometimes we mix these aspirations up in sales. We are not moving quickly enough and miss the chance. At other times , we are impatient and we force the issue when we should be more stoic and considered. We lose on both counts whenever we confuse what we should actually be doing. Being too slow usually relates to making contact or following up, after making the initial contact. We meet people at an event, receive a bunch of meishi business cards and then we get sidetracked by something else. Usually a bright shiny object. Days float by and when we realize we haven't followed up with the people we met, the best timing window has been missed. There is an advantage in getting back to people we have had a preliminary conversation with fairly promptly, while the occasion is fresh in their mind. As the days drift by, the ease of giving us the bum's rush increases. They can choose to ignore our contact attempt, be it phone or email. Or they are just genuinely busy, busy, busy and don't get around to responding. We don't know which is the case, but we usually assume the former. Once upon a time, it was considered the height of rudeness to not return a phone call. In the early days of email everyone would reply. Not anymore. In Japan, trying to get through on the phone to people is always difficult, because they are always away from their desk and in a meeting. We are reduced to leaving a message. What does that look like at their end. Maybe a nothing, as the person taking the call chooses to do nothing. Maybe a slip of paper is plunked down on their desk, scattered amongst a million other papers, soon to disappear from view and relevance. If the contact is by email, then the tsunami of daily messages pushes our little missive down the chronological chain and we get buried in that great archive called "the lower reaches of inbox". We get ignored and now face the dilemma of how often to follow up. If we keep pushing we can become annoying. But at precisely which point is that – the second, third or fourth follow up? Maybe the lack of a response is their subtle way of telling us they are not interested. It is easier to ignore supplicants, than telling them to buzz off. Maybe they are just busy – hard to know which is which. In my case I make it three times for follow-up. I always copy the previous email I sent into the new one, to show I reached out to you, but you have not responded. Does it always work? No, but at least I feel I haven't blotted my copy book by becoming a pushy pain. I have to be patent. I have to play the long game. This sounds easy, but there are weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual targets to meet. There is the ever present urgency of the now. The other danger of patience is not to pair it with a good follow-up system. Today's lack of response reflects today's situation, but things change inside markets and companies. We tend though to keep moving. We hit up the next prospect and reignite the process all over again. Those who we met, who didn't respond, now silently disappear into the morass of the daily grind and get quickly forgotten. If it is a no or a non-response today and if we follow up in a month, their situation probably won't have changed sufficiently, to yield us a better result. If we leave it for 12 months, there is the danger that our competitor has slipped in there and plumbed the perfect timing to make contact, because the prospects situation has changed. We need to be getting back to them somewhere in that 6-9 months zone. Patience is having a good calendar system to flag that follow-up is needed and when it is needed. We need to be action oriented, but we need to do it in a patient fashion. Saying this sounds so smooth and easy, yet I know myself the discipline to have and maintain the systems to do this are extremely difficult. Especially in a busy life, hounded by targets, milestones and deadlines. In sales we are enthralled by the now. What is happening today takes up all of our attention and time. We are adrenaline junkies, loving the thrill of the deal, the urgency of the action, the vibrant seizing of the moment. By comparison, storing things away for the "distant future" is a rather foreign, unattractive idea. So we need to be better organised to take quick action on the immediate follow-up. If we get no traction, we need to be really well disciplined to get back to the prospect and follow up. Easy to say, but hard to do. Regardless, we have to do better in these two areas if we want to be successful. Remember, if we believe that what we are representing will help the client to grow their business, then we have a strong obligation to keep following up. In these circumstances, we should never be shy about re-contacting the customer. Yes, we are interrupting them, but we are doing it for all the right reasons and in their best interests. So let's get out there and follow up! Engaged employe

Sales Stories Storytelling in sales is our ability to express ourselves in a way which is engaging and persuasive. We capture the attention of the buyer because we have taken the client to a world unexpected. This might be because the real essence of their problem has just now been revealed to them. The salesperson who can marshal the discussion to bring forth the hidden insights for the client is the storyteller par excellence. The content of the story can also be a description of a better place than where the clients finds themselves today. This discussion shows the path forward for the client to realise their goals. To understand that better place requires the salesperson to set up a dialogue, where the questions asked unveil a story from the client of what success would look like. Employing examples, cases and proof where this solution has worked before, must be brought to life if the storytelling is to have impact. The ability to describe this better place in vivid word pictures is what separates the average salespeople from the master. The delivery of this storytelling facility is not just a constant babbling by the salesperson but is punctuated by periods of silence. The client is given the chance to talk without having their sentences finished for them, interrupted by a segue, observation, joke or distraction. Often sales people are loquacious, ill-disciplined speakers, who are in love with the beauty of what they are saying. Counter-intuitively, being a skilled storyteller also requires the salesperson's patience to encourage the client to tell their own story. The words chosen by the salesperson are important. The majority of the conversation with the client should consist of the client talking. The quota of words allowed for the master salesperson are therefore very limited. They only use clear, concise constructs because they know they need to give up the floor to the client as much as possible. Short sentences of inquiry which draw out rich information are the golden path to sales success. It sounds a snap, but to do this takes a lot of practice. When the client hesitates, asks for more insight, information or outright rejects what they are being told, then the salesperson's level of communication skill really becomes apparent. The balance between speaking to add light and employing silence to gauge reaction is a critical facility. There is a natural tendency when salespeople hit resistance to want to pour it on, to overwhelm the client and their objection with a thunderstorm of data, facts and statistics. They want to dominate the discussion through sheer force of personality. This is never going to fly. "A person convinced against their will, is of the same opinion still" is an old saw, we salespeople forget at our peril. Our way of telling the story makes a huge difference. We need to be matching the personality style of the person we are talking to. Their energy level, pacing, the degree of detail they require. All of this must go into the mix of telling the story for the client. If they are a very detailed oriented person, then we need to get with the programme. If they are action orientated, we must become the same. We like to do business with people we like and we like people who are on our wavelength. In sales we need to foster the ability to be on as many wavelengths as possible. Our clients will be of various styles so we need to effortlessly move between each, without losing our core beliefs in what we are doing. The telling of stories draws out the situation truths needed to understand the correct and best solution for the client. It also means the capacity to package our solution up in such a way that it is highly appealing to our buyer. This storytelling skill separates the professional from the dilettante. By the way, nobody wants to buy from an amateur, so let's become more professional and tell our story well for the client so they will buy from us. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Cham

In The Mood For Sales? The dark morning gloom of rain clouds, snow drifts or driving sleet can have an impact on our sales mood. We may be thinking to ourselves what a "lousy day" to have run around town juggling umbrellas, trains, taxis and bags of samples to visit clients. The next day, the rains have departed. Brilliant blue skies and a warm sun seem to say "what a beautiful day to make sales calls". Neither comment is acceptable for the pro salesperson, because they are not randomly controlled by the weather. These are not the only mood bear traps we need to look out for. Does your mood impact completing unpalatable tasks or conversely do they impact your mood? That proposal you have to get out but don't want to start because it is time consuming and difficult – you even have to think! Doing the CRM, which you consider a major time waster because it feels slow, boring and to you is a lower priority item. You whine later about the lack of leads from the marketing effort, but your moodiness meant you didn't help with the CRM did you? Where is your sales discipline for doing the dull bits of the work? A coffee break, a catch up on email, posting something on your business social media, etc., all look a lot more appealing than this piece of tedium you are facing? The sales pro doesn't put the reward first, they put the task completion ahead of the reward. They don't stand in front of the empty fireplace bellowing about what they want – heat. They put the logs in there first and then they light the fire. They understand the natural order of the sales universe. What about when buyers let you down? You find out they went with a competitor when you thought it was in the bag, they cancelled their order due to headquarter's spending constraints or reduced the size of their purchase. Your champion inside the company has been sidelined internally, but you don't know that. All you understand is that the next phase in the sales conversation has mysteriously not progressed and you can't fathom why. Just to really top it off, you have already spent the money from the expected commissions. Whoops, hero to zero in 2 seconds. What is the impact on your self-esteem, your fighting spirit, your motivation? In the rollercoaster of the sales life, we are now in the terrifying "dive" stage of the process, a white knuckle ride, without any sign of probable relief. Living an intentional life means controlling both the head and the heart. The bigger picture makes the bump and grind of the everyday palatable, because there is a higher purpose in our life. If we are dedicated to serving then we can absorb the fluctuations in the weather, the unreliability of people, the changing fortunes of the market, the gross unfairness of the sale life. The size of our WHY in the fight makes all the difference. What if we don't have a strong WHY or a strong enough WHY? Well, that is going to mean trouble. We better deduce, select or create one. No WHY and sales gets real hard, real fast, real often. Sit down and think about what you want to do, what you need to do and what you wish you could do. Twenty minutes on this type of introspection will soon identify some key drivers for you. Rank them into priority order, start at the top and attach timelines to their achievement. Break them down into smaller pieces, smaller projects and then get going working them. Review the goals frequently, review your work and mini-celebrate even small progress. Most importantly of all – keep going regardless. If we decide we will determine our mood, our feelings our orientation and not let externalities invade our feelings, we can keep doing what we need to be doing. We won't be running for cover trying to find a million other things more appealing to do than this task in front of us. We need to keep reconnecting with our WHY and see our activities like a calling where we can help people. As Zig Ziglar mentioned helping others is how you ultimately help yourself and sales being a numbers game, the more people you help, the better you will do. Our mood control in sales is a critical function of our sustained and consistent success. The stronger our WHY the less relevant our mood cycle. Winston Churchill has a great quote about going to from failure to failure, without losing our enthusiasm. That is a brilliant summary of what is needed to succeed in sales and in life. There are always going to be more "nays" than "yays" from buyers, so we better harden up and look to our WHY to control our moods. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and E

Prospecting For Golden Clients Do you have a clear image and understanding of your perfect client? Authors often mention about writing for their avatar. This is their imaginary reader. They have a clear picture of whom they are writing for. They know their reader's hopes, fears, aspirations, behaviors, goals and idiosyncrasies. In sales, prospecting to find your Golden Client is a bit like discovering your life partner. We have to go out and meet a lot of potential partners, until we find the person who just clicks with us. We find we get along very well together – we are simpatico, share common interests, have great communication and are on the same wavelength. Clients are our partners too. Partners in the sense that we are looking for a long- term relationship. Our chief objective is to make re-sales. Not to make a "sale", but to generate consistent orders year after year. This can only occur when the mutual trust has been built. If we have distilled what our perfect client looks like, then we have a much better chance of finding such a buyer. Now our perfect buyer may need to grow into that category. It is rare to find someone who is perfect from the outset. The "test and see" strategy in Japan almost ensures that the first orders and interactions will be limited, as the buyer tests us out, to see if we are reliable. This is done for self-protection in business. The distribution system in Japan is often convoluted and there are many outstretched hands involved. This means there are also many interlocking relationships, constructed on years of obligations and counter obligations. As a new supplier, we are caught up in this web of mutual responsibility. Failure in any one part of the system jeopardises the livelihood of everyone in the food chain and so people take this relationship building very seriously. Once burnt they are very shy to try again, so we have one shot to make a new client and we had better not blow it. So our perfect client may actually have to grow in scale to become our perfect client over time. In the beginning, we may only see small orders which based on satisfactory performance by us, will be able to grow in importance. This is the theory anyway. Now this gradual scale increase idea raises a problem. Which are nascent perfect clients and which are buyers just pushing hard for all they can get from us? At the start this is sometimes hard to determine. As sellers, we tend toward being especially accommodating in the beginning, because we want to grow the business with this new client. This makes perfect sense, but we should always have our BATNA at the ready, to wield whenever needed. Our BATNA is our "best alternative to a negotiated agreement". This is our walk away position. If we get pushed unreasonably hard on price, we need to be thinking where is the point where this new client is less than perfect. In fact are they meant to become a non-client, because they are too demanding, too cheap and too problematic? Sometimes the buyer tendency is to play the "new client" card as hard a possible. They want to force concessions. Then despite all the rhetoric and agreement about this being a one-off, once in lifetime special introductory arrangement, they then set that number as the new low bar. Against this standard all further future discounts are measured and negotiated. This is not a partnership. We need to have a clear view of who we want to partner with and make sure that there is that level of compatibility. There needs to be win-win outcomes aplenty. We can have the correct approach to clients but not all clients reciprocate. Desperation drives bad decisions and bad partnerships. Life is short. So it is better to take our time and make sure this client is someone we want to be dealing with for a long time. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast "THE Leadership Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership,

Hard Sell Stupidity "We are going to be in your area next week, would you be available on Tuesday or Thursday?". "Really? Which part of my area will you be in?". "Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?". "Wait a minute, you just said you would be in my area, so which part of my area will you be in?" "Akasaka". "Really that's interesting. Akasaka is a big place, which part of Akasaka?". "Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?". This was an outbound investment sales call. The object was to sell me on investing my hard earned cash in their company's investment product. By the way, this conversation carried on far beyond what I have extracted here and became even more ridiculous, if that is actually possible. The essence was that I didn't believe that what they were saying was true. They started with a suggestion that they would be in my area and could just drop by. They say this to appear indirect and less "hard sell". However, when you push back on the validity of what they are saying, out comes the blatant hard sell - their constant annoying refrain of "Tuesday or Thursday?". Why would they be doing this, when it is so obviously ridiculous? The answer is lack of sales skills and proper training. There is a set script in place and I departed from the sacred text by challenging what they were saying. I did not believe that they will happen to be in my area and therefore that they could just drop by. It sounded unlikely to me, so I pushed back on their basic assertion. If they wanted to see me, why not just say, "we would love to visit you, would Tuesday suit or how about Thursday?". Instead they started with a lie or at best, a dubious assertion, that has close to zero credibility. Now this sales call is for an investment offer, where you cannot see, taste, hear, touch or smell the product and you won't know if it is any good for years. The trust factor on this type of sale is huge, yet they start the proceedings with an obvious lie. How could they have done it more professionally? They don't know me and have found my address and phone number somewhere, so are trying to begin a relationship. When you are starting a relationship you need to immediately put the other person at ease and try to build some rapport. "Hello Dr. Story, we have not met or spoken before, but my name is Taro and I am with xyz company. We exist to serve the interests of highly discerning clients like yourself. Do you have a few moments to speak? Thank you. We offer information, insight and help busy executives like yourself to better manager their wealth. Our clients often tell us they are so busy helping everyone else that they tend to sacrifice devoting enough time to their own personal wealth management. Is this the type of experience you have ever had? We may or may not have something that suits your situation, but the beauty of spending a short meeting with our experts is that they can at least outline some of the most successful portfolio structures that have been working for executives similar to yourself. Are you in a position today to be able to consider investing in products which you might find attractive?". This example passage does a number of things. It flatters me that I am discerning, checks that I have time to talk, tells me they are in the wealth advisory business. They also pick a problem that busy executives do have and that is that often we are not managing our own wealth sufficiently well. By asking me if I have had that experience, this opens up a sufficiently broad timeframe range to receive a positive "yes" response. By saying they may or may not have what I need, comes across as balanced, consultative and not hard sell. Referring to the best practice examples, tells me they are only going to talk about things that are relevant and working well already. Checking whether I have capacity to take action will save us all a lot of time. Wealthy people don't leave their money sitting around in cash. They are leveraging it, investing it, working it. Often, as a result they don't have any capacity to invest, because they are already locked into other investments. The wealth management firm is looking for people who have not committed all of their wealth because they have recently cashed out of something, come into sources of cash or have a high degree of liquidity to enable them to move cash around between investments. Instead, all we had here was a hard sell for a Tuesday or Thursday alternative of choice, built off a lie about the fact they would be in my area next week. There is no congruency between what they are selling and how they are selling it. The young woman I was talking to was calling me from a Philippines sales boiler room and was a "phone dog", her job being to call large numbers of people like me on a list and go through the script. I departed from the script and she was lost. We are all in the trust business and so what we say can't be tricky, smarmy or duplicitous. We are here to serve clients and

How to Properly Prepare For Client Meetings Salespeople are very busy, rushing around finding new clients, developing leads, networking, cold calling, attending client meetings, getting stuck into preparing proposals and later executing the follow through on what has been promised. Somewhere in this process some key basics start to go missing. One of those basics is the proper preparation for client meetings. This is rather ironic because we salespeople have never had it so good. In this modern age we have so much information available to us just a few clicks away. Listed client companies very conveniently include their financial details, strategies, corporate officer information, etc., in their annual reports on their web sites. Invariably, we will see a modern besuited business Titan posing in the plush corporate corner office. In addition to the PR division's photographic efforts, there will be a substantial article or interview with the CEO, outlining the way forward for the company. The key organisation goals and milestones are on display for all to see. A few minutes finding this information and reading it will give the salesperson a very clear idea of the key business drivers for the company's strategy. The financial section will also tell us how the entity is tracking against it's declared goals. It may even get down to a breakdown at the divisional or country level, which is pure gold to someone about to meet a decision-maker from that firm. Being able to tie what you sell to the goals they have set for themselves instantly makes the context relevant and places the discussion on the right basis. Talking about your contribution to their ROI is of great interest to someone in that company, who has responsibility to deliver the goals established by senior management. So rather than talking about what you want – to sell something – the discussion is better focused around how you can help them achieve their goals. How many salespeople though bother to do this prior to calling on the client? Not enough! If we turn up to their office and say, "Tell me about your business?", this speaks volumes about our lack of research on the company beforehand. It would be much better to ask a question that relates to the goals which have been set within the company. We should be looking for some context where we can show how helpful we can be, in solving their local issues preventing them from satisfying their corporate goals. We should be coming into that meeting talking about the most relevant issues facing the team we are meeting. We might say: "I notice that your company President has made it a clear goal to grow the business by 12% over this next year. Given the current business climate, that sounds pretty tough. Is that also the commitment you need to deliver from the Japan business?" This is a great question because we have indicated we have done our homework on the firm, we are aware of their goals and we are empathetic. We are also checking if the local business has the same issues or not. If they answer that the local unit has to grow by 30%, then that sets us up for a very interesting conversation about how they are going to achieve that and why their local goal is so much larger. We want to capture the scale of the gap between their current performance and their required performance, plus their chances of bridging that gap without our help. If we find out the opportunity to grow 30% in Japan is a snap, because business conditions here are so much better than everywhere else for them, we may have a hard time showing where we can be helpful. On the other hand if they are really suffering from having such a large target, then perhaps we may be the solution and they will be all ears to hear how we can help. We could ask them "how is business?" and they may or may not choose to enlighten us to their reality. Remember, everyone loves to buy but no one wants to be sold. So the less you have to tell salespeople anything, the less likely you will be sold anything. If we are able to lead the conversation into a deeper stage quickly, the more likely we are to find out if we have a new client here or not. This should be our goal and we should be using the best resources available to us to achieve our goal. Apart from the information on the firm, there is also information we will find on the individuals we will meet from the firm. They will probably have a Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube presence. A quick search on their name will turn up useful background information, which may allow us to draw out some connections we share in common. If you both studied at the same university or previously both worked in the same industry or lived in the same location (state or town) or have the same hobbies, these are speedy connectors between two total strangers. In sales, we need our buyers to know, like and trust us. The like and trust parts are the difficult bits, especially at the initial stages of

The Importance Of Consistency In Sales We all know that consistency is a fundamental requirement if we are going to establish trust with others. We ask buyers to purchase from us on the basis that we will be delivering what we say we will deliver, on time, at the agreed price point and quality. Now no salespeople go around promising anything less so there is no differentiation at this stage of the sales process. What can we do to differentiate from all the other rivals out there making promises and claims of reliability. Saying you are reliable and trustworthy is hot air, until you prove it. Obviously once we get the order and deliver we are in a position to walk the talk. What about before that though? How do we have the buyer feel comfortable with our hot air such that they decide to take a risk and buy from us? Being able to quote statistics based on performance is powerful. If we can say that our on-time delivery rate has been running at 97% on average over the last five years that is powerful. Being able to show the dates and times in a format that offer prooof is even better. Having testimonials that focus on the reliability factor is also convincing. Most testimonials focus on broad satisfaction and quality, but asking clients to comment on this specific issue is another way to differentiate ourselves from the competition. Controlling expectations is another important factor in underlining our reliability and ability consistency. Under promise and over deliver is an old chestnut but a good one for salespeople. We tend to want to promise the earth to get the deal agreed. The classic scenario is the sales team promises the client things the company can't fulfill, usually around delivery times or volumes. The factory managers or the production department are now under immense strain to hold up the compny's reputation because of laziness on the part of the salesperson and this squally invites things to go wrong when you least need them to. Promise well within your range of possibilities on the first outing with the new client. Deliver exceptionally well and then from there expand the conversation to include other services or products. Don't be in a rush to cram the whole line-up down the throat of the buyer. Bite size pieces is how you eat an elephant and how you best serve each new client. Patience and attention to detail are the primary requirements for success. We should also be careful about our consistency in casual conversation. If we tell someone our favorite baseball team is the current winning team but next year we are now supporters of the new champions, then we sow the seeds of doubt about our reliability. If you were a vocal critic of a political candidate before the election and now you are a supporter people wonder about your authenticity. Some may see this as immense flexibility but reliability is more valued in business here. If this person can change so easily they come across as opportunistic and standing for nothing. In Japan especially predictably is valued. Buyers like to be sure of what they are buying and in the first instance they are buying us. We have to create a great first impression and after getting the business we have to create a great second impression and a great third impression, ad infinitum. If we tell the client one thing and later contradict ourselves then the trust is destroyed and it is very hard to get it back. The ability to deliver the same product or service at the agreed level doesn't always happen for a variety of reasons. We had better have a rock solid explanation though as to why this variation occurred and why it won't happen again. Everyone knows that things can go wrong, despite the best planning, so it is the reaction and response that buyers look for. Mealy mouthed arguing the point infuriates clients much more than the fact of an error. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan

What To Say When You Cold Call Cold calling is an unheralded intervention into someone's already packed schedule. They are distracted by the phone from what they were concentrating on, so they are automatically annoyed. They are time conscious because this call was not in their plan. The person calling them is an unknown quantity, so the trust factor is zero or less than that. They have been cold called by idiots in the past, who say dumb things like, "How are you today" which is an immediate warning bell that we are talking to a nincompoop. The unfamiliar voice triggers "who is this?", and a feeling that being called by unknown people is not good, "I don't like this". So how do we call people in a way that we can add value to their business? A good starting point is to define what is the purpose of the call. Anyone thinking of pitching their whatever on the phone, had better rethink right now what they are doing. There are some items we can sell by phone, but actually very, very few with any success. There is only one point in making this call and that is to sit in front of the client at a later date and have a conversation about their needs and whether we might be the solution to any problems they may be having. Having said that, the point is not to bludgeon them into a meeting, should they indicate zero interest. If you plan on staying in business then killing your personal brand is not a good idea. Be gracious on the phone, definitely don't be pushy and be charming. Here is how it can go: "Hello, may I speak with Suzuki san please?" This opening presumes we have a name to ask for. Usually in Japan if you only have a title, you will get killed at the entry point by some lowly minion, whose only joy in life is getting rid of salespeople like you who call unannounced. Let's continue: "Speaking" "Suzuki san, my name is Greg Story, I am with Dale Carnegie. Do you have a moment to speak? When I say my name I slow down and put a little gap between the "Greg" and the "Story", so that they can easily catch my name. I ask for permission to speak with them, respecting their schedule. If they a too busy to speak, it won't matter what I say, I will only be annoying them and will blot my copy book for a later call. If they are too busy at that point, then I say: "Thank you for letting me know, I will give you a call later in the week". I don't ask for a day or time, because they have already told me they are busy and I want to show I respect their schedule. If they say, "Fine", then I know I have their agreed attention. " Suzuki san, thank you. We are in the XYZ business. I have done some research and I see that your company profile fits with what our typical satisfied clients looks like. We have been able to improve the results for our clients who fit this profile because we have ABC. I was just wondering if our ABC were able to grow your business, like it has for our other clients, would getting those sort of outcomes also be of benefit to your company?" We let them know what business we are in, so that they can garner some context for this unexpected call. We mention we have done research and the call is the product of some analysis and intelligence, not the random phoning a numbers from the phone book or business directory. We mention we have had success for people who look looks them and wonder, not unreasonably, if lightening could strike twice for them as well. We ask if they would like to grow their business. It doesn't matter if they say "Yes" or "No" next, because we are ready for both. If they say "Yes" then we say: "Thank you. I am not sure if what we have is a perfect fit for you or not, but let me swing by and show you what we have and how it works. Then you can make a judgment if it is helpful or not. Would this week suit or would next week be better." We are polite and thank them for their agreement to continue. We are not pushy and we readily acknowledge this may not be suitable, but we at least want to give them the chance to make that judgment. This week or next week is an alternate choice, the answer to which is an agreement to meet, rather than a "yes" or a "no". If they nominate a week, then we move to the next stage and suggest a choice of days, and having arrived at a day, we ask about morning or afternoon. We don't continue the alternate of choice after this, because it is becoming annoying. We just shoot for a time and then be prepared to vary it according to their time frame. If they say "no" to wanting to improve the results for their business we say: " Thank you for telling me, may I ask why you say that?" And then we shut up and say absolutely nothing. There may a thousand good reasons why they don't want to meet and we should be prepared to accept the referee's decision and not try to force the issue. They may say something however which allows us to reframe the value of meeting and we can carry on asking about getting together this week or next week and so on. Remember a "no" is not "n

Woeful Contributions From Salespeople Three woeful contributions from salespeople include "we have this widget", "you should have it?" and "we can discount the price". What a mess right there. Yet, left to their own devices, this is the type of nonsense salespeople say to clients. Serving the client's best interests is job one for salespeople, so why aren't they having a proper conversation with the buyer? They are untrained, unprofessional and unskilled. What should they be saying? We don't have anything for the buyer, until we have some idea of what they need. Going through the detail of the latest release, model, new variation etc., is pointless. Yet out come the brochures, detailing the spec, trying to lure buyers with glossy photos and copywriting. This has its place, of course, but timing is everything. The buyer wants it in pink, but we don't know that. If we head off on a monologue about the wonder of our blue range, we are going to get nowhere - glossy photos or otherwise. Ask the buyer about where they are now with their business and then where they want to be? The size of the gap tells the salesperson whether they are the one with the solution to closing that gap or not. If the gap is not so large, better to go and find a buyer who has the opposite situation. Don't waste anyone's time any further. If there is a sizable gap, ask why they haven't filled it in themselves already. What an ace question! In this answer is the hint as to whether we have the magic answer to solve their problem. Listening to them, we may however discover that we don't have what they need. No need for wrestling the buyer to the ground and trying to force them to buy. Get out of there as fast as polite and go find someone who you can provide with a solution. The next question in this escalation is about their why. There are usually four "whys". There is the unit why, the division why, the company why and then their own personal why. Their personal why is the key driver of buyer behavior, as we are driven by our own best interests. Once we know what success means for them, then we have an idea of how to present the solution at a later stage. Going through the details and then asking "do you want it" is not impressive as a means of getting the buyer to go for the purchase. Instead, having now understood what they need and having ascertained we can provide it, we now (and only now) introduce our product or service. We need to check a couple of things off before we go into solution explanation mode. Who are we talking to? Is this the big picture, macro, company direction, vision realization driven CEO? Or are we talking to detail oriented people like the CFO and the technical buyers, who want three decimal places and all the micro analysis? Are they the user buyer, who is thinking about ease of application, after sales service, guarantees and hand holding if needed? Depending on where they sit in the company our explanation of the suitability of the solution for them will be different. Similarly the way we deliver the solution during our explanation will vary depending on their personality type. Are they a straight down to business or let's have a cup of tea buyer? Are they big picture or highly detail orientated? Discounting is the cancer of sales. It is a brand killer, a symbol of low value, a slippery slide for which there is only one direction and that is down. The salesperson is like water. They find the path of least resistance and the antidote to price preservation is discounting, because it is easy. Salespeople are here to provide value. If there is a push for discounting it had better be related to volume purchases. The defense of the brand is critical and price preservation is needed if the organization is to stay in business. This is the salesperson' job - provide value. There are budget limits, policies, stupidities, excuses, justifications a plenty as to why the price has to go down. Salespeople need to defend the price at all costs, including walking away. That is painful, especially with monthly targets and tonnes of pressure raining down on your head like shrapnel, but you have to stand your ground. Provide a better explanation of the value, do better research on where this solution can help the customer grow their business. Remember, if we can help the buyer to grow their business, then the product or service is essentially free. It is paid out of the growth, on the top line, not the bottom line. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information

In Sales When to Start Selling? It always astonishes me that many salespeople have very little sense of proper timing to start selling their product or service. In the sales call, they are in a rush to get down to business. Japan has mastered the idea of building some rapport before starting the sales conversation. Small talk predominates at the commencement of the meeting and then smoothly glides into the main discussion. Western business people are all "time is money" focused and want to "get straight down to business". They consider that preamble to be a waste of their valuable time. Japan has a preference for the long term view and business partnerships. The "devil" they know is much preferred to the "angel" they don't, which is why, usually, the same suppliers get called back every year. New leaders, new staff in decision making positions can eject you from the sales supply conveyor belt but that is usually because they have their own preferred supplier "devil" they know from past dealings. Everywhere in the world I believe people like to do business with people they like. We may be forced to do business with people we don't like, from time to time, but all things considered we all still like to do business with people we like. That early component of the rapport building stage of the sales conversation about the weather, where is your office, how long have you been in Japan etc., is designed to see if you are someone who is likeable. Trust is the other biggie and the first meeting is mainly geared to determine if the buyer can trust you and your firm in that order. By listening and observing how we behave, the buyer is trying to get a fix on our degrees of reliability. This factor is more important in Japan because of all the tight interlocking relationships in play here. There are many more layers of distribution in Japan, so an error or a problem in any part of the food chain, can have adverse impacts down the line. The last thing a buyer wants is an unhappy buyer of their own products or services down the line of distribution, because of something we did or didn't do. Believing we are saving time by cutting to the chase, getting down to business immediately is actually wasting your time in Japan. It is a waste because the whole sales process is probably de-railing the possibility of a sale at the very start. Another observation I would make is that even those who observe the sales niceties in Japan, get straight into their "pitch" immediately after the small talk is finished. This is a big mistake. The loquacious salesperson is the thing of legend. Talk, talk, talk is the idea, somehow overpowering the buyer's resistance with our onslaught of logic and data. The fail point here is the degree of relevancy. Your assembled data, powers of persuasion, inarguable logic and passionate delivery are only relevant if the discussion is on point. The trick is to actually distill what is on point? A cagey buyer who doesn't give much away, but demands much in terms of information, is a nightmare. The Japanese capacity for obscurantism, vagarity, opaqueness, combined with the circuitous nature of the Japanese language is unmatched for being indirect. You can be sitting there, listening carefully and have no clear idea where the buyer needs are located. If you don't ask any questions and just plough right in with your "pitch", then buyer needs are unlikely to surface. If the buyer is unwilling to share their needs with a total stranger, in the first meeting, then all the "pitch" is going to result in, is some drinking of the ubiquitous cheap, bitter green tea and that is about all. Relevancy means getting a good match between what we have and what they want. The way to understand that is to not "pitch", but to ask well designed questions and listen very, very carefully to the answers. This sounds like the simplest thing in the world to me, but so many salespeople fail to do this. They are so keen to "tell", they confuse this with how to "sell". The solution we have to offer should be held back until we reach a point in the conversation where we determine we have what they need. To get to that point requires the client to do most of the talking. Again fast talking salesmen trying to overpower the Japanese buyer are going to fail miserably. If the client needs the item in pink, why are we talking about blue. If we don't have it in pink, why are we talking at all? In Japan, for whatever reason, the cadence of a meeting is small talk, then the business discussion, a possibility of a proposal, if there is interest and more small talk on the way to the elevators, wrapped up in a hour bracket. We can sometime go longer, but only if the interest and time schedule permits, but usually the hour is the calibration. The wise salesperson realizes the likelihood of a sale from a first meeting is relatively low in Japan, so they know they are playing a long game here and are therefore not frantic about getting an immediate resu

Winner Sales Follow Through The implication of this title is that if you don't properly follow through on the sale then you are a loser. Well, it is true - you are a loser. The difficulty of gaining a sale is hard enough, but the real difficulty is to get the re-order. This is where we should all be very finely focused. Rather than approaching a potential client with a sale in mind, what if we set off with the idea of the re-order firmly entrenched in our brain? This simple switching of gears completely changes the conversation, the goals and the execution of the sale follow through. What often happens though in a busy life is we have more than one client on the go. As we are completing one sale, we have other sales coming to fruition. There are proposals to write, meetings to be held, materials and data to be gathered – all sorts of tasks required to make the sale happen. In the middle of this rush, a sale is registered and the concentration on the imminent future sales, suck up all the energy and time that should be available to do a proper job of the follow through. We need to think carefully about our workload and ensure that above all, we protect our reputation for reliability. If we are going though the Valley of Sales Death, where we have run out of prospects and the sales pipeline is now empty, we may be rushing around like a maniac trying reboot the sales process. This means we are often over extending ourselves and we don't get to the follow through in a timely manner. It might mean not following through fast enough with potential clients we met at networking events. We lose the momentum and now they don't respond to us. It might mean, that we have sealed the sale and then mentally move on to securing the next one, without properly nailing down the execution piece of the first sale, we have just completed. One key thing we need to check with the clients, is what are their expectations on the follow through, be they someone to meet after the networking event or actual clients who have just purchased from us. Clients themselves are genius at this. You meet them, hit them up for a follow on meeting and they say contact me: after Golden Week (May) after obon (summer holidays in August) after Silver Week (September) after bonenkai (end of year party) season after oshogatsu (New Years). Basically they are trying to condition our expectations of getting a meeting with them. That is to say, they are resisting our efforts to see them, by trying to slip out of our schedules. We can take a leaf out of their book too and make sure we set up the proper expectations for our follow through. If we are going to be busy, then we should say: "Is it okay if I get back to you in a week or so, regarding scheduling our follow up meeting?" In this way, we are not putting too much pressure on ourselves, if we think we cannot actually squeeze in this next meeting reasonably soon. If we have had the meeting, gone through our offer and have promised to send a proposal with pricing, then again we need to consider what is the time frame which will allow us to remain in control and project the best image of trustworthiness and reliability. We could say: "Thank you for the meeting today, would you mind if I shoot the proposal out to you in two weeks time?" If we have just made the sale, then we could looking at conditioning the follow through, by saying: "Would it be too much trouble if I sent you the necessary materials you have requested, in about two weeks time?" I struggle with this myself. I get on a roll and pump up the client meetings, then the proposals have to start rolling out and this is highly time consuming. The days are filled with more and more meetings and the time between them to do the follow up gets squeezed. Deadlines start to get missed or start to drift and things start to fall of the table and not get done at all. I have to have a few harsh words with myself and tell myself to stop biting off more than I can chew. Often, the client will stall you on a decision. "We will study the materials and get back to you". They don't and you don't get back to them either, to see about the why they haven't gotten back to you as promised. This is because you have moved on seamlessly to the next client meeting, then the next subsequent round of either hollow promises or genuine undertakings, which are slow to materialize. Sales brethren, don't expect the client to do all the work on the follow through – that is our job. So the first step is to condition the client's expectations as you end the meeting about what will happen next and when it will happen. Give yourself time because you want to reinforce trust, credibility and reliability. Remember to the client, the things you promised in the meeting are just so much hot air coming from a salesperson. The real test is when we get down to the follow through. How do you want to be perceived when it's show time? Having set the time frames in a reasonable way, so you don't blo

Create Your Own Philosophy of Sales Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care –Anonymous". Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Don't miss it – we all know that selling stuff is a tough gig. Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be tough to survive in a sales job. You need other things too. Product and technical knowledge is important. Total command of the detail is expected by clients. However, we need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about? Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don't like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want "blue" but they keep showing me 50 shades of "pink". They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named "process of elimination". I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, "in your success Greg, is my success"? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs? I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth? I can sense they have already bought the new 3 series Beemer before the ink is dry? The quote at the beginning, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care" reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え). It can be simply translated as "preparedness" but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. As a side note, here is a little Japanese language grammar insight for you. Kokoro in Japanese means your heart or spirit and kamae means you ready position. In karate, for example, we take our kamae, fighting position, when we do free sparring. So the word kamae becomes gamae when kokoro and kamae are made into a single compound word. So we can translate kokorogamae as "getting your heart in order". This concept is the core foundation of my sales philosophy. This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Huh? Does this sound a bit too "hug a tree" Californian style, overly emotional for you? Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn't centered on their best interests and therefore they won't buy from you. Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the "smooth talking" salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to. Oh, they may con us once, but we will eventually work them out. In this modern age, social media can kill us very fast. Our reputation can be shredded and before we know it, we are out of business. These single transaction orientated salespeople are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand. The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was a criminal. The criminal part didn't surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks (note to Sales Managers – do background checks!). He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the role play, and WOW, what a closer! I thought "Yes!" at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong. What a wake up call to smell the coffee for me. So let's ignore the outliers, those riff raff of sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. They are under skilled because they have never received proper sales training. People often arrive into sales jobs through companies who are transactional in nature. It is the industrial mod

Sales Rocks, But It's All Uphill Sisyphus was banished to Hades for misdeeds in life and spent eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, to just watch it descend again. This is the sales life. Every end of financial year, we are back down at the bottom of the hill. Here we go again, having to push that big rock all the way to the top. "You are only good as your last deal" is a common refrain in sales. We struggle all year to make our targets and then we go back to zero revenues and start rolling those massive KPI rocks up the hill once more. Most salespeople struggle to make their targets and the targets are always being raised. The effort to get deals over the line before the cut off, leaves us in a disheveled heap. We go to bed one night utterly exhausted, only to arise the next morning to face an even bigger rock. We are already tired, so how do we motivate ourselves to get in the game again? Maybe we made your target or maybe we didn't. It doesn't matter because we are in a new financial year now so we have to start again. So the first thing is to not worry about the past. Draw lessons from it, but don't allow yesterday's worry to intimidate today's attitude. Fill our mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope. We cannot tolerate a vacuum in our minds, so either the good stuff goes in or we allow the bad stuff to disable us. We should not dwell on the negatives, but concentrate on solution finding for client problems. Oh no! Our biggest client won't be buying this year and that is going to leave a massive hole in our numbers. Don't moan about it. Start work on finding new wonderful clients to replace the lost one. Get on to positive momentum to carry you forward. You have your health and that is critical in sales. It is a stressful occupation, an emotional rollercoaster that can quickly spin out of control. Make sure you maintain your health by adjusting what you eat and drink. We all know what we are supposed to do, we just don't do it. Well, this year do it! Expect ingratitude. This way, bad news and bad behavior never catch you mentally unprepared. Your client chooses your competitor and not you, despite the close relationship you have together. You feel like you are dealing with an unfaithful spouse and are burning up with rage. If you assume ingratitude is the usual state of the world, then you just brush it off and move forward. That good client of yours will be back at some point, so don't blow the relationship for the sake of one deal gone missing. Count your blessings not your troubles. You are focused on the hill and the rock but not your strengths. You have experience, contacts, track record and a good reputation in the marketplace. You are a professional, who always has the client's interests as your first priority. You practice your craft and you study to improve even further. There are always more potential clients than time available to service them, so there is no lack of potential. Your competitors are not studying, and don't have the client's interests at heart. This gives you an advantage over the long term, as they just flame out and disappear. Try to profit from your losses. Not every post is a winner despite your best efforts. Analyse what went wrong. Don't be afraid to ask the client for feedback. Our experience is the sum of our failures. We learn what does work by finding out what doesn't work. In the startup world they have the mantra of "fail faster". This is an old idea. Edison applied this same concept to discovering which materials would bridge the gap in his electric bulb. Create happiness for others. Give something back. Provide advice, volunteer, turn up and help. When we give, we receive much more in return. Our soul is warmed by the act and our spirit is strengthened. Don't be overwhelmed by the hill in front of us. Break it down to centimeters and roll that rock a little a day, every day and we will get to the top. Okay, we have to start again but that is the fun of the game. We get to play again and see what we can do this year. See which wonderful new clients we can help. See what creative solutions we can generate. We are an awesomely powerful learning machine and the game is our university of life. Action Steps Don't worry about the past Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope Expect ingratitude Count your blessings not your troubles Try to profit from your losses Create happiness for others Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] About The Author In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would

The 106 Centimeter Cold Caller Salespeople are world class whiners. They are the most creative group amongst all professions for coming up with excuses about why they can't meet their targets. The sale's life requires a constant stream of new buyers. Marketing is permanently inhabited with ne'er-do-wells, who are sabotaging the sales department's efforts with underdone campaigns and inept promotions. When the leads are few and far between, desperate measures are called for and the chief villain of the piece is cold calling. Everyone will assure you that you can't cold call in Japan. Salespeople everywhere are delicate blossoms. They get a rocket from their boss about their poor results and try to cold call potential clients over the phone. They get total, irreversible rejection and quit phoning after the third call. There is a variety of cold calling which is even more debilitating and that is tobikomi eigyo (飛び込み営業). You have probably seen some seriously stressed out younger person in your reception hall of your office, hanging around looking totally out of depth and out of place, getting the bum's rush from the most lowly ranked person on your company's totem pole. That was a tobikomi eigyo salesperson, someone who just drops by unannounced and devoid of an appointment, always unceremoniously shown the door. Invisible Sales Imagine if you were so short, that the receptionist can't even see you unless she stands up and peers well over the counter. Or, that the typical unmanned reception phone and organisational chart are at such a height and depth, that you can't even use them. This presumes you can even get into the building, in the first place. Toshiya Kakiuchi was born with a brittle bone crippling disease that confined him to a wheelchair. He applied for jobs, found the going tough, then one day a firm which built websites, accepted him as an employee. He expected to be seated at a desk, building websites in the safe bosom of the office. His boss told him to head off to the sales department. "You have to get out there and cold call offices door to door, tobikomi eigyo style, looking for companies who need a website". Seated in his wheel chair, he was only 106 centimeters tall, found that most buildings were difficult to access because of vertiginous stairs. His sales comrades were seeing 40 or 50 companies a day and he was only seeing 5, if he was lucky. Yet, in a short space of time, he became the top salesperson in that company. After his talk to the Economist Conference Network event, I asked him about how he managed it. With only a limited number of calls he could make in a day, he had to really make every post a winner. He found a way to turn his disadvantage into an advantage. We have tobikomi eigyo people coming to our office every month, trying to sell us one thing or another. Like everyone else, we send forth the lowest person in the chain of command to shoo them away (nicely of course, because we are Dale Carnegie!). Do we remember any of them 30 seconds after they have moved on to the next company's reception area? No. Kakiuchi san, though, is definitely memorable, distinct, differentiated. You are not going to forget him turning up to you office. He told me that he had to just keep going back again and again. Eventually he would get to talk to a decision-maker who could buy and they did buy. Stop Whining So, for all those able bodied salespeople out there whining in their suds about how tough sales is, stop it right now – you have nothing to complain about. Kakiuchi san found a way through by differentiating himself, by having grit and stick-ability to keep going back despite being constantly rejected. He was physically weak but mentally tough. Today he runs his own company Mirairo that researches, designs and consults on the needs of the disabled. He has produced an app called Bmaps that tells the disabled where there are stairs, elevators, physical barriers on their route to their destination. His book Barrier Value (バリアバリュー) tells his story of how he overcome his challenges. With our aging population demographics, we will all be needing his company's services in the future, as our hips and knees weaken and those stairs are looking like Everest. So salespeople, don't complain about cold calling. Read Kakiuchi san's book and reflect on how lucky you are, with so much sales opportunities right in front of you. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] About The Author In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a

Japan New Client Sale's Agonies Japan is a huge market. This is a wealthy, sophisticated society, with a design sense second to none. People work diligently as a team and put in long hours. Achieving annual organic growth should be an expectation of bosses that sales teams should be able to realise. Yet, the results are often flat lining or disappointing. Excuses abound – the yen is too strong, the yen is too weak, competitors are discounting, new competitors are taking market share, etc. Finding new clients is the perpetual Holy Grail of the sales world. Websites lure, social media sponsored posts promulgate, ad words harvest, email sequences are very precisely engineered and content marketing assures expert authority. But this is the world of marketing to unleash the lead flow so that the sales team can follow up. How well do the marketing and sales teams work together? Often, not well. The marketers complain the salespeople are squandering their hard earned efforts. The sales people whine about the poor quality of the lead flow. Down at your shop, are they operating as two independent empires or as hand in glove colleagues furiously plotting together to achieve world domination? Targeting new clients doesn't get much attention in Japan. We all know that our avatar represents the typical client and all we have to do is identify others who fit that profile and the chances are high that they too will benefit from our product or service. How many sales teams here have defined their avatar? What about your crew? Get Your Spider A standard operating procedure should be the Spider. If a client from a particular business has landed in your sales funnel and have bought from you, there are no doubt others in that same niche who would also possibly buy as well. Having made a sale to one company, do the salespeople take the Spider metaphor to heart and start listing up other similar targets to proactively contact. They should, but they don't. Why? A major ice wall confronts them – the unknown. They don't have a contact who can introduce them, so they do nothing. The idea of cold calling the target company is judged hard graft, so they don't try. By the way, are your salespeople cold calling? There is a way through the OL (Office Lady) barrier by focusing on the design of the conversation that will spark buyer interest. But no, they do nothing and just leave it. It is no push over here. When you cold call a Japanese company, if you don't already know the exact name of the person you are after, then you get cordoned off by the lowest person on the firm totem pole – the youngest female OL. They are not very lady like though, in fact they are killers, axing your aspirations right there to speak with the buyer. They are merciless and unrelenting. If you don't go down without a fight, they will switch you to the next level up on the totem pole. This is the spotty faced, flat headed youngest male in the section, who will promise you that their boss will call you back, as he gleefully gets rid of you, knowing that call will never happen. No More Whimsy These opening conversations should not be left to whim. They need to be designed and practiced, so that you do get through to someone who can make a buying decision. Untrained salespeople try to cold call without a solid plan, fail, and then tell all a sundry you cannot cold call in japan. Not true, but you need to have a proven methodology for doing this. The fall back position may be to try to meet new clients through networking. Japan is a curious place though in the networking world, because fundamentally, no one is interested. I know you, you introduce me to Taro and I will do the same for you with my contacts. A pretty limited way of doing things, but this is acceptable here. Barefaced bowling up to a complete stranger and introducing yourself, trying create a connection, is greeted with such shock, that salespeople give up quickly. Can you widen your network of people you have no connection to and can you work the room here? Yes, you can, but again you need a methodology and you need to take salespeople out of their self -imposed limits and practice it. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] About The Author In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts "THE Leadership Japan Series", "THE Sales Japan Series". "THE Presenta

Designing Your Sales Conversation (Part 3) With all of this preparation in hand (and it takes about a nanosecond to complete this, once you understand their role and their style), you are now ready to start asking the right questions. A good place to start is to ask them where they would want to see the business. This helps to scope out the ideal outcome, so you need to be working on a solution for them that gets as close as possible to that mental picture they have in their mind. We call this the "Should Be". Next we ask them where they see the business right now, the "As Is". Having established these two focal points we need to design questions which show that the gap between these two points is both huge and fatal. Why huge and fatal? If the gap between them is insignificant then why bother doing anything, why take on the risk of change? If the gap is big, but there is no opportunity cost or no downside to not taking action, then the client will persevere with the current situation, take no action and not buy your services or product. We hold this part of the questioning until we uncover what is holding them back from closing the gap between the As Is and the Should Be. They know what they need to do, but why aren't they doing it? These are called Barrier Questions, to pick out the issues where you might be the solution, because so far they haven't been able to solve the riddle facing them. As mentioned though, the actuality of a problem and the desire to do something about it, are not the same and we must help to highlight that solving this issue is best done right now, with no delay. To paint a picture, imagine the client has a problem retaining key staff. They are not all leaving at the same time, but gradually the organization is seeing people they want to keep depart. You might mention you have a great training solution for improving engagement, go through the tool in detail but find the conversation doesn't translate into the application of a solution. Instead you might reference another client, who had a similar issue and how the failure to address the engagement of the key staff leaving led to that company losing market share and encountering cash flow problems. This triggered a downward spiral, with all the staff becoming worried about the stability of the company, investigating escape options and eventually leading to them closing up operations. Here we are fleshing out the costs of non-action, to encourage the organisation to take steps to stop the haemorrhaging. Having used questions to draw out the implications on non-action we now need to ascertain the Payout for them. If we deliver the solution and life gets great, what will it mean for them personally? We need to be addressing the "What's In It For Me" construct. As mentioned earlier this is very difficult to isolate out for most Japanese people, because they usually reference what is in it for the team, rather than for themselves personally. It doesn't really matter though if we can't get them to openly express the personal Dominant Buying Motive, as long as we get them thinking about the issue. We need to bridge into providing the tailored solution for them, and we do this with a Capability Statement. We are not delivering the solution at this point, because we are just reassuring them that having heard all they have to say, and letting them know we actually can help them. We reference what they have told us and we offer our solution capacity, addressed in terms of their Primary Interest and their Dominant Buying Motive. From this point, we go into solution provision. This is rarely done in the first meeting in japan. We usually go away and come back for another meeting with a written proposal outlining in detail what happens next and how much it will cost. The ability to set up the asking of questions, the designing of the questions with the specific audience in mind and the ability to provide confidence you have a viable solution sets up the solution provision platform.

Part 2 Having built rapport, leveraged our credibility statement to receive permission to ask questions and having designed our questions with the buyers four key interests (Primary, Criteria, Other, Dominant) in mind, we are ready to apply the questioning technique. Prior to that though, we still have two more filters to apply before we get into exploratory mode. We need to consider where the buyer sits. Where you sit impacts your perspective and influences your buying point of view. Here are some examples: if you are a User Buyer, you are thinking how reliable or easy is this to use. If you are a Technical Buyer, you are concerned that the spec be a perfect match for the requirements. If you are a Financial Buyer, the typical CFO, then you are worried about the cost relative to the budgeting. If you are an Executive Buyer, the CEO, you are looking at how this solution boosts your strategic objectives. As an astute salesperson, we will need to ask pertinent questions, based on the interest perspective of the buyer. There is another layer which sits across the perspective filter. Often, we think that the cultural norms are an important consideration in approaching the buyer. Americans are like this, or Aussies are like that, in the case of the Japanese you need to do this and that, etc. Yes, there are certain cultural preferences which are important, the only problem with this type of cultural prism, is that it is pretty much irrelevant from a sales viewpoint. Why? There are vast differences among national groups, so compartmentalization is rather tricky. A typical New Yorker is not the same as someone from San Francisco, or Atlanta, or Houston. So we need to go a bit deeper and consider something more individual for our filter. A good place to start is with personality styles. Myers Briggs, DISC, etc., there are numerous tools to help us analyse personal style preferences. What ever you use, it needs to be simple in a sales conversation situation. I am not great at holding multiple data points in suspension in my head so I can realize an analytical breakthrough. I rely on two simple decisions. Decision one, on a scale of low to high, is this person low or high in assertion terms? Decision two, is this person more people or task oriented? With those two snapshots I can try and place the person into one of four preferred styles. Actually, at different times and in different roles, we exemplify all four styles, but we naturally gravitate to one more than the others. For example, the high assertion/high task style is the Driver. Typical "one man shacho" types, who care more about the outcomes, than the people achieving them. Don't waste their time with small talk and cups of tea – get straight down to it, offer three alternatives, make a recommendation, get a decision and move on. The polar opposite it the low assertion/high people style of the Amiable. They worry about getting everyone behind the direction, by really carefully considering how they feel about things. They like consensus and don't like risk. Cups of tea and "let's get to know each other" is a basic approach with them. The low assertion, high task orientation is the technical person – the Analytical. They want detail, data, statistics, proof, validation. So no big picture, macro analysis for them, they want the micro, so you better have your detail ready to go. The direct opposite is the Expressive. They want to grab the whiteboard marker and draw out strategies, to create ideas off the cuff, to bounce concepts around. Don't ask them for detailed paperwork because they are bored with the petty details of business paperwork. More so than national stereotypes, understanding where the buyer is in this quadrant breakdown will go a long way to getting the sale, because you will be "speaking their language" and they will feel you are "just like them". Do you have to develop a schizoid personality to be successful in sales? No. All you need to do is switch your communication style for each group. You maintain your own personality, but recognize selling the way you like gets one in four people excited and selling the way the client likes to buy, gets four out of four clients excited. With all of this preparation in hand (and it takes about a nanosecond to complete this, once you understand their role and their style), you are now ready to start asking the right questions. A good place to start is to ask them where they would want to see the business. This helps to scope out the ideal outcome, so you need to be working on a solution for them that gets as close as possible to that mental picture they have in their mind. We call this the "Should Be". Next we ask them where they see the business right now, the "As Is". Having established these two focal points we need to design questions which show that the gap between these two points is both huge and fatal. Why huge and fatal? If the gap between them is insignificant then why bother doing anything, why ta

Designing Your Sales Conversation (Part 1) Salespeople who don't have a framework for their sales conversation with their client, will wind up on the back foot following the buyer's purchasing framework. If we know what we are doing, we have built some good rapport, used our credibility statement to receive permission from the client to ask questions and are now ready to go deeper with our sales conversation. For many salespeople who are "free spirits" and "artists" who don't design the sales conversation, this means a chapter and verse meandering through the gritty detail of the product or service features. Blathering on about the 50 shades of grey available and offering expert, in-depth insights into the differences might be intriguing, but if the buyer is looking for things in the colour blue, the effort is completely wasted and pointless. Now this sounds primitive and obvious, except that the vast majority of salespeople are geared up for feature explanation, not needs exploration. I was selling Australian furniture in Nagoya, and visiting a leading furniture retailer at his vast store, filled with beautiful pieces from all around the world, except Australia. I went into my presentation about the uniqueness of the Australia timbers, the special designs available, the opposite seasonality and numerous other worthy points. His first question back to me absolutely floored me. He asked, "Do you make furniture in Australia?" Ouch !!! I immediately realized my sales conversation had assumed too much. I needed to start with selling Australia first, the manufacturer second and the actual products last. As I discovered, poor sales conversation design leads to poor results. We need to learn four key things from the client: what they want (Primary Interest); what they must have – absolutes (Buying Criteria); what they would like to have – desirable (Other Considerations) and most importantly, why they want it (Dominant Buying Motive). The way we learn these things is to ask intelligent, well thought out, pre-planned questions. The accompanying piece with this idea is to listen proactively to the answers. This is where many salespeople lack discipline. They hear something the client says and jump right in without letting the buyer give us all the detail. Or they lose concentration on what the key messages are because they are so fixated on what they are going to say next because they fear losing that thought, so they block out the client's conversation. Salespeople are allowed to take notes! Just write down the thought bubble, so it doesn't get missed and sit back, relax and keep listening to the buyer – it is that hard. The Primary Interest of the buyer is not what we sell. What we sell is a tool, a conduit, an enabler to fix a problem the client has and that solution is what they buy. Salespeople however, miss this distinction, because they are focused on the features of the tool and wish to describe it in great detail. We don't buy the functionality – we buy the outcome of the functionality. Some common Primary Interests amongst buyers would include: increased revenues, lower costs; speed; improved efficiency; effective employees; increased market share etc. These are all outcomes – benefits not features. The salesperson's job is to uncover which of these types of things are what the buyer wants, keeping in the back of the mind, how your solution will deliver these. Buying Criteria are fairly straightforward. These are the features – things like the colour, size, weight. The buyer wants to know about the quality, the specifications, the warranty, locations, delivery, support etc. If these criteria are not present then there is no relevant solution from the salesperson to attract the buyer's attention and they mentally dump you and move on. Other considerations may not be a hard edged requirement but they influence the buying decision. This might mean special features, added value, special packaging, delivery options, payment terms, creative solutions. Selling up against the Japanese trading companies is a tough gig. You might have your bright shiny object, all ready to go for the Japanese market, but the Big Guys have a secret weapon. They have locked your buyers into payments terms that you can't compete with. They may be giving 120 days to pay, so the importer can receive and sell the goods, before they even have to pay for them. You are looking for cash on delivery and wonder why you can't make any headway with this buyer, especially when you have a strong price advantage. The Dominant Buying Motive is a compelling emotional reason for the buyer to make the buying decision. This is a tough one to uncover in Japan. Normally, these motives would include recognition, rewards, self-preservation, self-fulfillment. Because of the team focus of Japanese buyers they are reluctant to tell you what your wonderful solution will do for their personal career, after it fixes all the issues for them. Instead they will menti

Keep Your Shtick To Yourself Buddy Smoothly memorised shtick, elaborate glossy materials, sharp suits, large expensive watches, bleached teeth, the perfect coiffure are not important in sales. Yet, this is the image of the pro-salesperson. Most of us never meet many pro-salespeople, because the vast majority we run into are hopeless. We meet the great unwashed and untrained, the part-time and partially interested, usually in a local retail format. The slick sales dude is what we see in movies or is a received image from urban myths. Hollywood pumps out Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, The Wolf of Wall Street and we get sold an image of what high pressure salespeople look like. Japan is fascinating, in that it throws up some doozies. Rotting blackened stumps for teeth, disheveled clothing, scuffed worn shoes, ancient food stains on ties – you encounter this low level of personal presentation here with salespeople. It is almost the opposite extreme of the American movie image. Rat with a gold tooth or rat with a rotting tooth – neither appeal very much. What we buyers really want is someone on our side. We want help to solve issues slowing us down, holding us back or preventing us from growing as we would wish. There are 6 steps on the client journey with salespeople: know you, like you, trust you, buy from you, repeat buy from you and refer you because we are a believer. This sounds simple, but salespeople get confused about who they are working for. They think they are there to work for themselves and get their commission or bonus or promotion and the client is just a tool in that process. This is stupid. Dumb Things Said I coach salespeople but am amazed at the dumb things they say and do. Some want to jam the square peg in the round hole and then argue with the client about why it will fit when it clearly doesn't. When they get pushback from the client they then try to overwhelm the objection by will or force of personality. This is stupid too. The salesperson jumps into the slide presentation on the laptop from the get go. Or they are pulling out their shiny flyers or expensive brochures or whatever and are launching forth with their memorised shtick. My first sales job was early evening door to door Britannica encyclopedia sales in a poor working class suburb in Brisbane. Before we were unleashed on an unsuspecting semi-literate public, we had to memorise, word for word, the entire twenty-five minute presentation. It wasn't great then, but it is unacceptable now. Some people are still back in the 1970s with their sales efforts. I get calls even today telling me "so and so" is in my area etc. I can hear the cadence of them reading it off a script! No More Show & Tell When I am coaching aspirant professional salespeople, I ask them how do they know which slides to show or which flyer they should offer to the client? This is usually greeted with a "Huh?" response. We all did "show and tell" in elementary school but some have not travelled very far since then and think this is how you do sales. When I arrived at the Shinsei Retail Bank the financial product sales team would whip out a flyer of one product and if the wealthy client didn't go for it, then they would just whip out the next one. This went on until the client either got tired of it or bought something. As salespeople, we don't know what to show the client and we shouldn't show the client anything, until we know what they want. So keep the laptop closed, the flyers in the briefcase, the widget under the table and ask questions instead. By the way, get permission to ask questions first, especially in Japan. Here the status of the buyer is sky high and it is a total impertinence for a lowly sales pond scum to be asking God questions about anything. Get Permission Nevertheless, get permission and ask. Find out if there is a match. Mentally scour the walls of your gigantic solutions library, floor to ceiling packed with possible antidotes to their business ailments and select the best one for the client. If there is no solution in your library, then don't try and force the square peg into the round hole. Just thank them for their time and go and find someone you can help. If your solution doesn't fit, then don't waste the client's time - keep your shtick to yourself. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic

Sales Understanding Price is always a big issue. We salespeople are very happy to drop the price, because we see this as the easy route forward with the client. Whenever there is a price increase, we immediately whine about it, because we see this as making our revenue task more difficult. We are permanently happy to discount, to win the business, even when our commissions are tied to the size of the sale. The problem is we are totally focused on the wrong thing. What should we be focused on is not the pricing. We need to do a better job of listening to our clients, to really, deeply understand what that business needs to succeed. Rather than carrying around a bunch of screaming monkeys in our heads, all fighting about price, commission size, boss anger, mortgage payments, personal status, which new car, etc., we should be 100% concentrated on the client's problems, not our own. Rather than going into a discussion about what price we can get the client to agree to, we would do much better to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer. The customer has goals and aspirations and our job is to help them achieve them. In their success is our own success. In fact, the cost of our product or service is free to the client. It is free because it is paid out of the additional growth we bring to the client's business, rather than a subtraction from what they have today. When you think in terms of paying for your contribution from the increase in the revenues or costs savings for the client, then your whole mental framework shifts and so does the conversation. A focus on repeat orders rather than this one transaction is also a powerful mindset shift for us when engaging with clients. There may be occasions where this transaction is a one shot wonder, but really we want to build relationships with clients which last. Lasting relationships are totally based around the amount of trust which has been created and thinking only about ourselves, isn't going to make that trust engagement happen anytime soon. Pricing is totally related to perceptions of value on the part of the buyer. If there is sufficient value from the exchange of the good or service, then the buyer is comfortable with the relationship between the two. Their perception is the key and this is the job of the salesperson to work on that buyer perception. In many cases, it is very hard to prove that the price is backed up with sufficient value to justify what the salesperson is asking. This is understandable in some cases where the thing being sold is intangible or where the outcomes take time. Talking about the historical results for other firms is fine, but the buyer always suspects that type of talk is baloney or irrelevant. They have their own situation in their company and they want to see the value proposition through that prism. A test or sample is a good way to break through the skepticism. The results may or may not be immediately available, but at least the process is able to be confirmed. The buyers experience helps them to decide whether the outcomes suggested are reasonable or not, based on what they have seen. So, how do we salespeople become better able to have the proper approach to clients? In lieu of no existing sales philosophy at all within the firm, salespeople will generally posit their own version and often this is a highly selfish one. The sales culture can quickly become self-defeating. So we need to take responsibility and set down what is our attitude to our clients and how we do business around here. We need to understand we are building lifetime client value, our brand, our reputation and we are playing the long game. Salespeople need to repeat this to themselves endlessly. As salespeople we may think a couple of self administered doses of this philosophy will do the trick - well it won't. We have to hammer on about this all the time to ourselves, to drive the idea into our mind and our soul. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Cha

Negotiation Fails Former American President John F. Kennedy left us with a great quote: "Let's never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate". Actually, we do fear to negotiate though, don't we. We worry about asking for too much or too little. We usually imagine a "negotiator" as someone totally unlike ourselves, a tough individual with ice coursing through their veins. Ironically, we are all negotiating everyday within our families, circle of friends and companies. Decisions have to be taken, a direction has to be chosen and we need others to agree with our idea. This often requires compromise or even giving up our idea, in preference to competing suggestions. We are not taught how to negotiate though and so we are mainly unschooled amateurs flailing around. Somewhere along the line, we find ourselves in a sale's role and we have to negotiate with the buyers. Procurement officers are often highly expert in negotiations or at least they are deaf to our appeals about the value we provide. In Japan however, they are rarely specialists and often take a very basic approach. They have their matrix with your name arranged vertically along the left side of the spreadsheet, together with all your competitors. Across the top they have the products nominated. In the corresponding spreadsheet cells, they plug in the prices. Bingo, find the lowest priced cell and buy from that company. This is bad. There is no allowance for any differentiation which you may have, because they are applying a very basic code of reference here. In these cases, we need our internal champion to intervene and fight for paying more for better quality. Let's now look at the usual negotiation cases, where we are not dealing with procurement officers. This "negotiation" issue is a big topic, so let's narrow the focus to common mistakes we may be making right now, which we should eliminate forthwith. Negotiating price before details There are many elements usually involved in making a decision and price is just one of them. We need to garner the full spectrum of issues involved and check our assumptions about what will happen once a deal has been struck. There are variations on pricing according to volume, frequency, regularity, quality, colour, sizing, delivery options, etc. Many aspects are in play in addition to just price, although most people get fixated on that one variable and that is a mistake. Clients are also going to be suspecting things like hidden fees, tricky terms of payment or penalties, timings. Hopefully, you don't have any of these issues to complicate building the relationship with the buyer. We should anticipate the client's concerns and create our own checklist of items, before we even have any discussion with the other party. The object of the negotiation is not to outsmart the other side. It is to create a relationship, which is mutually beneficial and so tricks and clever tactics where you win and they lose is a formula for a short and limited relationship. Failing to keep the end in mind and leaving no room for negotiation Key details can occupy our complete attention to the detriment of what we are ultimately trying to achieve. There are micro and macro perspectives involved and we need to be able to keep reminding ourselves of the big picture, while we are mired in the mud and blood of the details. Lack of confidence We undermine our mental attitude to the process of negotiating by talking ourselves down. Coming across as hesitant, unsure, nervous may embolden our negotiating partner and we achieve a diminished result as a consequence. Salespeople who have targets, quotas, bonuses or commissions riding on a deal, are very prone to cave in on price, because they are so desperate for business, any business. This weakness will come across to the buyer and the price achieved is almost guaranteed to go down as a result. Remember, in our lives the vast majority of people we will be negotiating with will be rank amateurs, just like us, so we shouldn't be shy about what we are doing. As a salesperson, if you believe in the goodness of what you are doing for the client, then you can be confident when negotiating. Failing to understand the needs of the customer Some things may not be negotiable, often for reasons which we could never even imagine. Once we understand clearly what the other side wants, we will be in a better position to find middle ground and strike a mutually satisfactory agreement. We can get captured by a single item in the negotiation and miss the many options that are also in play. Often, what we imagine to be the key for the other side, may not be their main concern. We need to find out what is their main concern and find a way of supplying it to their satisfaction. Letting the customer dictate the process and outcomes The buyer may feel they are the dominant side in the negotiation and may try to force us to an agreement through the brute strength of their buying power. A bad agreement is

The Sales Success Environment What are today's revenue results, how much is in the pipeline, when will we get paid by the client, what is the run rate, will we meet our budget - this is the lexicon of sales. The sales results are the end product of a series of processes. There is usually ample attention placed on sales processes but sometimes we need to step back from the detail, the mechanics, the techniques and contemplate the overall environment we have created for sales to flourish. Your Japanese sales manager yelling at the sales team and berating them for under performance is usually not very productive, because the motivation drops and a vicious downward spiral kicks in. The client's best interests are out the window immediately and in short order, the brand "flesh wounds" start to accumulate. We need to redirect the team's performance by moving things forward, rather than constantly combing through the bitter ashes of past defeats. Here are five environment builders to boost the success of the sales team. Best Our Rivals Sales can become very internally focused. The constant review of sales numbers and focus on existing clients draws us into a web of self-absorption. Shifting the world into "us" and "them" can be great for focus and encouragement. Unfortunately, a lot of the "us" and "them" is often internally focused. This is usually centered on the failings of Marketing or IT or Production or just about anybody outside of sales who can be blamed. Better to focus this caustic energy on the competition. Intense rivalry is a motivator and beating the other sales team is a worthy goal that appeals to the competitive nature of sales people, so focus them outward. High Income Factory Having no limits on sales people's earnings motivates. Pretty obvious! Sadly the ego of the President or the Sales Director can get swept up in this commission-based melee, especially when they realize that individual sales people are earning more than they are. Emasculating or ending a successful sales structure, because of ego or greed, is stupid but still happens anyway. Rather than reducing commissions, keep the no-ceiling attraction there to drive results and it becomes a win-win for everyone. Japan rarely operates on 100% commission, so there is usually a base/commission trade off. Keeping the unlimited income prospect in everyone's sights is good business, because the corresponding base pay rates can be kept lower. If performance takes time to produce or is not being generated, then the actual fixed costs remain low. The more sales people succeed, the more attractive you are to the quality talent you want to attract and retain. Focus On Personal Development The basics of sales can't be neglected or truncated. Every high performance athlete or sports team goes back to the basics at the start of every season. Sales people are no different – back to basics on a regular basis eliminates or confines bad habits. Your own presentation can become boring. The client usually only ever hears it once, but the sales person could be giving the same basic presentation 20-30 times a week. Short cuts emerge, best practices are trimmed, inconsistencies pop up, complacency arises when sales people, even the good ones, find themselves immersed in routine. Stimulation to vary the presentation or to inject some fresh ideas into the sales conversation is needed. Training, attending sales rallies, industry related conferences and events, support for reading and on-line courses, are all magic stimuli for sales people. Self Directed In the famous movie Glengarry Glen Ross, the sales "leads" are so valuable they are placed in the company safe. Ace sales guy, Ricky Roma, played by Al Pacino, is the only one who is not dependent on the company provided leads. Moral of the story - don't let sales people become dependent on leads generated by the marketing department or from the web. The best sale culture is one of accountability for production , independence and a will to achieve. Organised tenacity, creativity, freedom, success orientation - should be the dominant attributes. Make it clear at the hiring point that "this is how we roll here", because sales is a brutally honest results culture. High Praise & Recognition Culture It may be thought that self-directed sales people don't need praise or approbation. They want it anyway. Don't ever underestimate the competitive nature of sales people and their appetite for having their egos stroked! Successful sales leadership builds people and manages processes. Paying attention to the macro-environment, as well as the gritty detail, will help build a sustainable, high performance culture in your sales organisation.Is what I have outlined here doing a good job in describing your work environment? If not, take some initiative and push hard to change it to a success model, rather than let it continue as a blame model. If you can't change it, then get out. Good salespeople are welcome everywhere and life i

Pricing Salespeople don't set the price of what they sell. This is usually an obscure outcome decided by someone else inside the machine. It might actually be an elaborate process, where multiple variables are carefully calibrated, mathematical formulae are applied and a price is arrived at. Or, it might be a slightly moist index finger boldly thrust skyward to come up with a number. The latter is often the case when arriving at pricing for services. Regardless, the salespersons task is to sell at that price. This is where we get into trouble. Salespeople are total wimps when it comes to price. We have learnt that getting a sale is what counts and price is an obstacle in that process. If we are on a fixed salary and bonus or base salary and commission, the two usual cases in Japan, we get paid when we make a sale. Do we know the profit margin attached to each sale? Usually no and actually we don't often care either, as long as we get paid. We are just happy to (A) not get rejected by the buyer and (B) get a win, however small. Our self-esteem is totally tied up with getting sales, modest in size or otherwise. The instinct of the salesperson then is to make the price as malleable as possible. Offering a discount seems to get the buyer in a good mood and more likely to give us a yes. This reduced price immediately impacts our commission and if we keep doing this, will also impact our bonus and job security, as we don't bring in enough revenue relative to the target. The key problem is that the salespeople often don't believe in their own product or service. Because of this they can discount with gay abandon. This is a short-term gain for long-term pain. The ability to meet the price requirement is a critical piece of the salesperson's skill set. Dropping the price may be easy, but we never build the skills to really succeed in this profession. It usually is a path to our removal by the sales manager, who understands we are unable to sell. Amateur salespeople, when they don't believe in the price, start right off the bat with a discounted price. They say stupid things like, "normally the price is x but I am going to offer it to you for y". Or, "if you buy two, I will drop the price by x". The client hasn't even requested a discount, begun haggling, attempted to massage the ask and yet lo and behold, a miracle has just popped up without warning. This tactic may be misinterpreted by salespeople, who don't know what they are doing, as building trust and a good relationship with the client. That is a false dawn of hope on the part of our intrepid hero or heroine. Thanks to volunteering an unprompted price cut, the client now understands that your firm are a bunch of liars who say one thing, but do another. They also know you are a tricky bunch who are trying to snow buyers with your fiction pricing magic. They don't see the gratuitous lower price as a bargain. They see that as the starting point in a negotiation to drive the price even lower. By having a listed price and immediately offering a lesser price, the buyer feels you cannot be trusted because you cannot even defend what you say is the value of your offering. By dropping the price so quickly, the whole question of perceived value is brought into fundamental disrepute. There is no fixed price for this sale and therefore no equivalent particular value attached to it either. We are now in the Wild West of selling, where there the only rule is the right of force and the buyer has the Gatling Gun and we have a water pistol. The salesperson's job is to pour on the value explanation and show why this pricing is fair and reasonable, fully justified and easily defensible. If they do need to meet the client's restricted budget or need to allow the buyer to save face with their bosses, then any discounting should in the first instant be attached to volume purchases. If they buy more then the price can be adjusted. The amount reduced should be as smallish amount, as part of the first offer. Remember, we are now off the paved highway and are hacking our way through the dense brush of a negotiated agreement, where there are no maps, no signposts and no 5th Cavalry about to come to the rescue over the sand dunes. If the price point is to be assaulted, then the reductions should be small and fought heroically all the way. Do not go for round number drops or large number drops, go down in dribs and drabs. The client will feel much better knowing that they got a legitimate discount against the usual price, because they extracted that right out of the salesperson's hide, rather than the salesperson rolled over right from the get go. When that happens, they doubt everything about you and your company because your pricing seems bogus. Never drop your price. Defend your price with value. Resist reductions all the way down and extract some form of quid pro quo against volume purchases. If you buckle, you will be destroying the brand, the brand positioning and the credibility of

Why Lawyers Can't Sell, But Need To Lawyers have spent a lot of time studying to pass their bar exams. When they graduate, they are the white collar galley slaves, shackled to legal partner's teams, doing the grunt work for years, until they can be allowed on deck. As they move up the ranks they begin to interact with clients. After a few more years they actually have to go out and get clients. The big dog in the law firm is the rainmaker, who brought in the clients who paid the most money for the professional services of the firm. Lawyers are proud of their achievements, their study, their knowledge of the law, their brains. They want the clients to appreciate all of this and as a consequence, give them work. This is the "I deserve it" school of sales in the law. Knowledge is valuable. I have knowledge therefore you need me to help you sort out these various issues you are facing. I don't have to be persuasive, charming, attractive, engaging or likeable because I have what you need. Once upon a time that was the way of the legal profession. A bunch of lawyer nerds serving up legal rocket science to companies. Times change and now there are lots and lots of lawyers, all vying for their share of the pie. The clients have also become better educated too and are more discerning, particularly around questioning the massive bills they receive. Faced with such a proliferation of buying choices what do clients do? They do what they do for all the other purchases they make. They apply the "Know, Like and Trust" rule. To know the legal firm, means to have a trusted confidant provide some testimonial style advice on how they performed in the past, how reliable they were and their degree of expertise in this particular area. If there is no track record which the client can judge, then this "know" process is the equivalent of the "cold call" in sales. Don't recall there were any "cold calling" modules in the legal curriculum at university. The "like" part is the legal equivalent of a doctor's "bedside manner". Doctors here in Japan haven't quite gotten around to learning this yet, but in most advanced countries the doctor has to become skilled in handling people. To greet them properly, make them feel relaxed, assure them of the wisdom of their diagnosis and reinforce the trust the patient can place on their prognosis. This is a great metaphor for the legal profession, because all of those same steps make for the "like" and "trust" results on the lawyer's scorecard. The diagnosis component requires two great skills: listening and questioning. Asking well designed questions to uncover the client's needs. This is Selling 101. The delivery of the solution requires great skill to engage the trust of the client. The client may not be an expert on the finer points of the law on a specific issue, so the ability to explain complex things in a way the buyer can understand and relate to them is a fundamental sales skill. Technical experts, like lawyers, get excited about the details and start explaining these with great enthusiasm. This is what we call explaining the features of the solution in the sales world. Many lawyers tend to stop there, believing their job is now done, but they are in grave error. This is the case also with unsuccessful salespeople. Instead, the features of the solution require to have the respective benefits attached to them, the application of those benefits need explaining and so does how they will impact the business. Evidence of where this has worked elsewhere needs to be marshalled to sustain the argument and then we ask for the business, using a trial close. Was there a varsity module on "trial closes?". No and neither was there one on handling client hesitations and objections. These are part and parcel of the sales world, yet lawyers are oblivious to what is necessary for convincing buyers to select their recommendations. Lawyers are all in sales, they just don't know it. They are in bad company though. They are in the same bracket as the failed salesperson. They are saying the wrong things, using the wrong approaches and remaining under skilled and under educated about dealing with buyers. These days the buyer of legal services has a surfeit of choices. They will gravitate to those they know; like and trust. Lawyers who get it, realise they need sophisticated sales training. The rest will scramble for the crumbs. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carne

Toxic Sales Bullying, humiliation, ridiculous targets, rubbish goods, stress, shame – a toxic cocktail often suffered in the sales environment. We often get into sales by accident. There are no varsity courses in sales. There is training available by companies like ourselves, but often this is not offered by the employer. The assumption is you look after yourself. We won't invest in you and we will fire you if you can't make your numbers. "Churn em and burn em" is the dominant ethos. The successful salespeople ride the favourable market through to the inevitable downturn. If they survive that experience, they often wind up being the sales manager. Battlefield commands come on the back of your officer being killed off. There is a high turnover rate in sales both when people fail or succeed. In either case, you are out the door and off to somewhere else. The survivors who don't want to move on the greener pastures, often become the bosses. They continue the toxic culture regardless of how stupid it is, because that is all they know. The client in all of this is the "mark", to be harvested, to have their cash extracted and then abandoned to their own devices thereafter. Often in bad sales organisations, area salespeople have to cover big territories. This is because they can only hit that one market once. They are selling a lie. Their product is not matched by quality against price and they have to scarper with the cash and get out of Dodge. They are like sharks, which have to keep swimming around in order to breathe. They move from town to town, fleecing the rubes and riding off into the sunset. They are 100% commission pirates who have allegiance to no flag, except the skull and crossbones of short sighted, selfish salesmanship. The successful move up in the organisation and the rest move on. Who decided it would be like this? Not the salesperson. They join a company and then discover the disconnect between the cost and the value, between the rhetoric and the reality. By this time they have already left their previous job and are treading water to make commission and not drown in debt. They are always just one week from financial oblivion, so they have to keep dancing while the music is playing. The evil ethos is the company's making and this is where the blame should lie. Bad companies are inevitably run by bad sales managers. The reason is simple – "birds of a feather, flock together". Good sales managers don't want to be involved in a business where they have to survive by fleecing the buyers. They see a bigger picture, they have ability and talent and a war chest of funds to offer them choices. Old Japanese saying – "the fish rots from the head". Consequently your company's bad sales boss, environment, culture and ethos stinks. If you are a "good" person in sales, swimming in toxic cocktail of sales hell, then get out. You are not in a position to reform that business or management. It didn't get that way by accident. Now you may not be able to move immediately, but for the sake of your health and mental well-being, don't put up with crap from idiots. As soon as you can, move. In the interim, educate yourself. There are tonnes of books, free videos and podcasts on how to do a better job serving clients. Access them. Feed your mind with the positive, because for sure you are being killed by the negative environment surrounding you. If you have the funds then get yourself into training. By whatever ethical means, make yourself more skillful and valuable. I often refer to kokorogamae, which I translate in this case as our "true intentions". Don't let any toxic environment or people corrupt your true intentions. We should have a very clear guiding light and that should be to serve the best interests of the customer. That means we have their success as the catalyst to our own success. This is not instant and means a different type of client relationship with a longer sales cycle. The share of wallet increases when there is a good track record and strong trust. The lifetime value of the customer becomes an integral part of the equation. This type of sales environment only exists in companies with a correct kokorogamae. If your company is not like that then do not become a lifer pirate, get out and save your career, health and mental well being. Action Steps Decide that your time in this toxic environment must come to an end Study sales diligently while you are arranging your escape Make your kokorogamae a clear vote in favour of serving the client Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese

Presenting Our Sale's Materials If we are presenting a brochure, flyer, price list, hard copy slide deck or any other typical collateral item, then we should adopt best practice for greatest success. Have two copies always, one for you to read and one for the client, unless you are a genius of reading upside down (which by the way seems to include all Japanese!). At the start, put your copy to the side for later if you need it and turn the client's copy around to face them. Then proceed to physically control the page changes of the document. Don't just hand it over, if you can avoid it. You want to walk them through the pages, under your strict supervision. There is usually a lot of information involved and we only want to draw attention to the key points. We don't receive unlimited buyer time, so we have to plan well. You don't want them flicking through the pages at the back and you are still explaining something up the front By the way, don't place any collateral pieces in view of the client at the start of the meeting. Keep them unseen on the chair next to you or in your bag. Why? We want to spend the first part of the meeting asking solid questions to uncover their needs. Don't distract the buyer from answering your questions – this is vital to understanding their business and their needs. As we hear their answers we set off a chain reaction. We mentally scan the solution library in our brain and start lining up products for them. The details will be in a brochure or a flyer etc., but by showing them at the start we will distract the client. It also implies I am here to sell you something. What is our mantra? Everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Keep the sales materials out of sight, until you absolutely know what you will need. Also, at the beginning, we don't know which materials to show to them, because we don't know which is the best solution for their needs. Are they after blue or pink? There is no point in going to great depths to describe your unmatchable, unbeatable, best blue in the universe, a prince amongst blues, if they only want to buy pink. After the questioning phase is completed, when we know what they need, then and only then, do we can grab our materials and guide them through the detail. If we hand over the sales materials at the start, they will be reading something on page five and you will still be focused on page one. If you allow this to happen, control of the sales conversation has been lost. The salesperson's key job is to keep control of the sale's talk direction, from beginning to end. If you can't do that, then selling is going to be a tough employ for you. After placing the document in front of them, facing them, pick up your nice pen and use it to show them where to look. There are many distractions on any single page, so we need to keep the show on the road and them focused on the key items. Our pen is our navigator. When we need to make a strong point, we should back it up by using eye contact. The problem is their eyes are glued to the page in front of them, so that they are not even looking at us anymore. To get their eyes off the page, to make eye contact with us, simply raise the pen to your own eye height and their gaze will soon join yours. Know where the items of most interest in your materials are located, based on what you heard earlier and skip pages that are not as relevant. Do not go through the whole thing, from beginning to end. You want them focused only on the most relevant and interesting elements of your presentation. Also you have to narrows things down, because you just don't have that much time available to you. Slide Decks Regarding the preparation of slide decks, this is a very specific "visual" topic and so please go to our You Tube Channel. We have a comprehensive video tutorial of all the nitty gritty detail of what works best. To access the video, please go to our YouTube Channel, "Dale Carnegie Training Japan". In the playlists, there is a section called "How to Become Really Excellent At Presentations". Scroll down to find the video titled "How to Use Powerpoint etc., (Properly) When Presenting". This takes you through colours, fonts, layout, graphs, tables, photos - everything you need to know in one place. Many Japanese presenters are at world champion level at getting this type of thing wrong. Everything and the kitchen sink is thrown up on the one screen, with garish colours and disparate fonts. Usually it is a total mess. Don't make this your template to try and blend in. The country of zen has not managed to apply any such minimalist concepts to what goes up on a screen. The basic rule is "less is more" with presentations on screen. Proposal Documents It is extremely rare that we wrap up a deal at the first meeting in Japan. Usually, we come back with our solution and pricing. There are many favoured standard styles for presenting proposals for clients, so it is impossible to go through all of those. However, in general

Creating Consistently Great Customer Service Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service. He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book "Moments Of Truth". I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore. By the way, the drive in from Changi Airport is a credit to the Singaporean Government, who spend millions every year to develop and maintain their landscaped, leafy, tropical thoroughfares. This is smart. You are already in a pleasant mood just getting into town. While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice. Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well. I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel. One of Carlzon's observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand. The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer. So back to my story. As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn't working. After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on. There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room. Actually, I discovered the same system in the elevator, when I unsuccessfully tried to select my floor. Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me. Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan. You call just about any organisation, get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese "XYZ company here". You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she "is not at her desk right now" and then stone cold silence. The "may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back" bit is rarely offered. Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call. Again, to Carlzon's point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand. In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and had a good impression of the whole organisation. The person taking the call has just put that positive image to the sword. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone "gets it" about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service. You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department's efforts to create an excellent image of the organization. After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven't you? But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand? Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn't get properly briefed. I had one of my recent hires in the sales team answering the phone with an unhelpful tone in his voice. He actually sounded like he was angry. He was in his fifties, so no boy, but obviously that had been his standard phone manner throughout his entire working life. A perpetual brand killer and reputation destroyer right there. We have an open plan office, so I could hear this. If you are encased in the dark wood paneled corner executive crib with a tremendous view, then maybe you will never know and therefore be unable to do anything about it. Leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider's web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with. We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again. So how about this for a starter for educating our staff to do a better job protecting and enhancing the brand: Answer the phone with a pleasant, happy voice. Be helpful and offer your name first, so the customer won't be embarrassed that they didn't recognise your voice. If you take the call and the person they are calling isn't there, proactively offer to ensure

You Don't Want Sales Clever, shallow, smooth as silk, glib, "rat with a gold tooth" salespeople are the scourge of the earth. They are focused on your money and how quickly they can separate you from it. There are no barriers to entry or qualifications to enter this field of sales work. Riff raff need not apply but quite often they do. Some will tell you anything, they live for today and like a shark, are constantly moving around in order to feed. Snake oil purveyors to the naïve and trusting, create an unsavory image in the minds of our buyers. So, how do honest salespeople get anywhere when the image of the profession is so negative. Movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room, people like Bernie Madoff, etc. - it goes on and on convincing us that we are permanently potential victims of scammers, charlatans and confidence men. By the way, we are all in sales today. You might have friends in one of the "professions" thinking sales has nothing to do with them, but they are no longer above the fray. Lawyers are competing for clients just as voraciously as dentists, architects, engineers, doctors and everyone else who spent long years slogging through varsity. The company title might be vague, such as the popular "business development", but the sales activity is the same, usually without the prerequisite sales skills. The key point to differentiate yourself from the shady carnival barker type, sales pond scum and assorted lowlifes giving the rest of us a bad name, is to stop focusing on sales. Instead focus on the re-orders. This mental shift is fundamental. A sale can be a one-time thing, a transient satisfaction of a temporary itch. In some cases that may be all that is needed. This is the long hard road of sales though – constantly prospecting to find new clients, having a pipeline that is razor thin and precariously teetering between feast and famine. Not recommended. The re-order concept is totally relationship based and is linked to the idea of the lifetime value of the buyer. A client may only buy, say $10,000 worth of your product or service and that seems a small amount. However, when that client continues to buy from you, year in year out, that $10,000 purchase becomes a sizeable amount. One of our clients only sends a few people along to various public courses we hold during the year. However, they have been doing this every month for forty years! If we only looked at the contribution on a quarterly or annual basis, we would not appreciate the value of this client to the business. Did we know it would keep going for forty years at the start – no and that is the point. There is a degree of trust that brings the business to you, without you having to go and hunt it down. Clients want to work with you because they feel safe and secure. They know the value you provide and they know your word is your bond. Sometimes, it may be a long time between drinks before the follow up order appears, but it will eventually appear. For example, another of our clients bought one year, did nothing the next year and then has continued to buy for the last two years. Altogether that client represents over a million dollars in total revenues. We would prefer they bought every year but in this profession of sales, we all know the client is never on your schedule. The re-orders are what makes a business not the single sale. So what is the key to gaining the trust and providing the value over the long -term? I believe the concept of kokorogamae (心構え) or "true intentions" is the key. This is a Japanese word describing a mental outlook which appears in many traditional activities - calligraphy, flower arrangement, tea ceremony, martial arts, etc. I discovered kokorogamae through my study of traditional Japanese Shitoryu karate-do – the Way of Karate. In business, your true intention is to be a long-term partner in achieving the client's success, on the basis that the more successful they become, the more goods or services you will need to provide them, as they grow and expand their operation. If your true intention is to build trust, then there will be no attempt to snow the client at the first meeting, to lure them into a false sense of security and scamper off with their money. Instead you will tell the client what you do, who else you have done it for and some evidence about the results achieved for them. Evidence not bombast is always a constant theme in your client conversations. Fast talking salespeople invariably are an "evidence free zone". So are you capturing enough evidence of the results you have provided, aligned with the value achieved behind those results? If you are not, then start looking for ways you can amass that evidence. It might be getting a testimonial from the client, some statistics on their sales volumes prior and following the delivery of your product or service. It might be a self-assessment done before and after, to draw out the difference you have made to their business. To build trust, you

Stop Sales Suicide What we say and how we say it matters. It matters in life, in families and in business- especially in sales. Sale's talk is very semantics driven. By the way, the classic Hollywood big talking salesperson is an archeological artifact, a dusty relic, now banished to the tombs. Today, salespeople have to be articulate but not glib, concise not flowery, evidence based not barrow-boy spivs. Japan presents a challenge with developing salespeople. Invariably, they are the undereducated graduates of OJT or On-the-Job Training. This OJT approach will work for certain technical themes, but not necessarily for the broader art of sales. If your boss is a great salesperson and a great coach, then well done you. In Japan, that combination is a rare bird. Attempts by foreign corporates to rectify this OJT problem for developing salespeople are often laughable. Bosses who don't speak Japanese or don't have a sales background or even worse lack both, send in the English speaking instructors from the corporate APAC hub, to dole out the sales medicine. It is always snake oil. Sales training for salespeople must be based on the reality of selling to clients in the client's native language. If the clients are Japanese, then the training has to be done in Japanese, because what we say and how we say it are so culturally and linguistically specific, there is no way you can satisfactorily train this in English. You can explain the theory perhaps, but where is the coaching of the role play, the examples, the finer points of nuance? This doesn't stop people from trying though. The snapper is when they add to their woes by using the in-house HR trainers from Singapore or Hong Kong, the usual hub centers in Asia. These individuals are invariably smart, sharp, rapid fire Chinese speakers of accented English. They facilitate from the global corporate sales textbook, but sadly the local Japanese participant's English language comprehension levels max out at around 60% in the morning sessions and drop to 15% to 10% by mid-afternoon. As noted, there is no instructor understanding of the subtleties of the Japanese language, the cultural reference points or the opportunity to coach the sales roles plays in Japanese. Knowing and doing are not the same. The practice component, with powerful coaching, is the winning formula. Let's stop wasting time and money and get this done properly in the language of the client. There are plenty of sales fails anyway. The first big fail is lack of preparation and anticipation of the issues facing the client. Because of this the language being used by the sales person is vague and often meandering. Salespeople should complete a mini-SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on the industry and the company, to flag potential problems requiring solutions and direct the discussion to the elements of the greatest interest to the buyer. If they have dealt with this industry before, then they should have some ideas on the more common issues and can test for relevancy. We need to be asking good questions, to find out what the buyer needs and using SWOT allows us to get to the key points faster and builds more credibility. Blocker words are another killer of sales success. This is directly related to a lack of discipline on the part of the salesperson. They go shooting their mouths off, without engaging their brains, and in the process out pour words that scupper the deal. What are these notorious blocker words – some common ones include: "sort of", "a few", "kinda", "sometimes", "more or less", "about", "some". These are all vagaries, to which no useful sales evidence can be attached. We should speak with authority and certainty, because clients want our full belief and commitment, so that they can trust what we say is true. We need to bring data, proof, evidence, examples, testimonials to back up what we are saying. Words like "price", "cost", "contract" are also poor selections. These words create an image of money going out like a flood from the client, but no value coming back in. We should only be speaking of "value" and "investment" instead. Value makes price and cost relevant for the buyer because there is something in return for them. We should be focusing on the value our solution brings. Also, your parents told you to be careful about signing a "contract", so let's sign an "agreement". Simple semantic switches in emphasis, but these make a big difference to what clients hear. Salespeople often talk too much. They love people and they love to chat. Too many words begin to pop up into the conversation, which add no value to the sales process. Being concise is the key mantra here. Pare back the dialogue to only words which are relevant, project value, are laden with evidence and which build trust – everything else has to go. This is not easy for loquacious salespeople but we have to be very disciplined. Many a deal has been sunk because the salesperson couldn't shut up a

The Negotiation Process "Winning is not a sometime thing. You don't do things right once in a while…you do them right all of the time". This is a great quote from the famous American football coach Vince Lombardi and we can apply this idea directly to negotiations. Any business undertaking does better when there is a structure, a process that is capable of creating consistent outcomes. As negotiators, if we don't manage the process, we risk becoming passive, reactive spectators to events as they randomly unfold. Purposeful behavior is the key to influencing win-win outcomes. There are many tactics, strategies, feints, bombast, illusions, delusions, egomania, tricks and skullduggery associated with negotiating. Our recommendation is to play the long game. Don't win the battle to only lose the final outcome. We are looking for a sustained business career and that means our reputation in the market is like gold. We should never throw that tremendous trust asset away for a few shekels more. Especially when operating here in Japan. Trust is hard to build and easy to squander in this country. We will sometimes be involved in one off transactional deals where the likelihood of ever dealing with that organisation again is probably going to be rare to remote. The temptation is to suspend our usual behaviour, normally based on a long-term view, and go for the jugular, to squeeze every last penny out of the other side. Yes, we may never deal with them again but we will deal again. Our good name is too valuable to drag it in the mud. Be fair, be consistent and be aware of how the rest of the market will perceive you. Word travels fast in Japan and companies are skeptical enough about foreigners anyway, so be even more vigilant about protecting your good name. Always fair is always fair, whether a transactional one night stand or otherwise. Being a known entity gives others confidence to deal with you – we are all trying to reduce risk and look for people we can trust. Japan is a highly risk averse culture and business environment and they always prefer the devil they know to the angel they don't. The constant switching during negotiations of the good guy/bad guy routine is not adding to any consistency of reputation. Being the good guy is a much better place to be, so don't get sucked into bad behavior by bad people. There is always another deal and another partner. Part of being consistent is value driven and another big component is how we organise ourselves for the negotiation. We may not do that many negotiations in a year, depending on our business. If we have a standardised routine, we don't have to worry about what to do or forgetting what worked well in the past. We can go straight to the basics and ensure we have a better performance each time. There are four stages of the negotiation we should prepare for: Analysis We need to identify possible alternatives available to us in reaching an agreement. There are many levers we can pull in negotiating an agreement and finding added value through those levers requires clarity around the full picture of what we are trying to achieve. This is an advantage in Japan because the thought processes here can be very linear. Thinking out of the box is not present anywhere in the formal or company education systems. We need to see the negotiation from the point of view of our counterparty. For this we need information and perspective before we even get to the negotiating table. What position are they likely to take, what interests do they have, what forces are impacting them at the moment or will in the near future? Getting good information and intelligence is that bit harder in Japan, but if you have a good network that can help a lot to short circuit the research process. We need to reframe the conversation to avoid confrontation. This means we are looking for words and deeds that speak to a win-win outcome. We have a positive, forward looking approach to the joint solution of issues which are making it hard for the other side to agree to what we are proposing. Slamming table tops, screaming, tantrums, abusive name calling, throwing inanimate objects are not a feature in Japanese society and so has no place here during negotiations. Decorum, harmony, respect, face-saving, politeness, discipline are all valued and appreciated. Presentation We should rehearse the other side's presentation, as well as our own. By actually doing a dry run of their presentation, as we imagine it, we throw up insights and ideas which are very helpful for ourselves. We tend to inhabit our own little bubble of what is important or pressing for us. A good practice is to switch perspectives before we get to the negotiating table. For our presentation, we should frame it in the language of the interests and needs of the counterparty. Talking about what we want doesn't move us toward an agreement. Speaking their language, contemplating solutions to their issues positions us all on the same side of the

What Successful Negotiators Do Every sale is a negotiation. It might be centered around price but it could also be around delivery times, quantities, guarantees, return policy, quality assurance, legal liability, etc. We can't control the issues which arise during a negotiation or the attitude of the buyer, but we can control our own skill level and approach. The more we understand and manage our own behavior, the greater the influence we will have with others. To be successful we need to behave in a way which influences the interaction by moving it along a collaborative continuum. What are some recognizable qualities in successful negotiators? Here are a few thoughts on the subject. Good reputation with good intentions People may forget the finer points of the negotiation but they will remember how we treat them. Burning people, being too sharp, too cunning creates a negative reputation for fair dealing. The aim is to win in business and one deal is only one deal. Winning the battle and losing the war is for short-term transactional types. We aim to be around a long time, so our approach will reflect that intention. We are focused on the re-order not just one sale. Respectful, trusting and trustworthy Getting to a mutually satisfactory and beneficial outcome is the goal. Along the way, we treat the counter party with respect and they feel it. This adds to our own commercial history as someone you can trust in business and that is worth a lot more than the contents of one transaction. Today bad news, warnings, discontent and whining travels at the speed of social media posts which by the way are instant and real time. Confident and positive Having the right intentions gives us strength to find a solution that will be well regarded. We are constantly looking for a way through the difficulties, seeking to find a solution to the other party's issues. If we can solve their problem we will solve our own problem. This means looking outside your own interests. Well prepared Knowing the facts, the background, the individuals, the market situation are all elements we can and should prepare prior to having any discussions with the counterparty. Being able to quickly source key information, as negotiations get underway, is a tremendous booster to finding a successful outcome. Most of our errors of judgment have come as a result of poor or incorrect information or false assumptions. Composed Calm and considered is a good philosophical position to adopt in negotiations. Emotional control is a prerequisite for success. Never get emotional not matter how much is thrown at you. It may be a tactic on the other side's part to get you riled, but don't fall for it. Effective communicator This idea often suggests being a good talker, when in actual fact being a good listener is often more important. Asking excellent questions and listening for what is not being said is an approach that will yield rewards. Tact and diplomacy are skills that go a long way to improve understanding and create agreement. Being clear about what you are proposing is a skill and this is required in both documentation and orally in the meetings. People skills Helping people to relax, finding common ground, getting on their wave length are all people skills. Being able to remove barriers and reduce inflammation points, through how we treat others, makes the negotiation discussion proceed in a smooth fashion. We like to do business with people who are like us and that is where the person with people skills really shines. They are able to operate on a level that the counterparty likes and respects. We may do this deal or we may not, but probably we will be dealing with this person or this company's representatives again in the future. Open-minded Flexibility is a source of strength in a fluid, shifting activity like negotiating. Rigidity can lock us in to a position which precludes a mutually beneficial agreement, usually because we have let our own ego get in the way. There are many paths to the mountain top and we have to be open to the fact that we don't know them all. Creative We are sometimes captives to our limited knowledge and experiences and so the world of possibilities seems small. Finding a tangential solution through a creative approach can produce surprising breakthroughs, when everything seems to be heading toward a train wreck in the negotiations. Thinking about a problem from various angles helps us to see options that may have been hidden or unclear. A risk taker In finding agreement there is always an element of risk. Caution, timidity, fear drive us into corners from which it is sometimes difficult to emerge. Having a capacity to take a risk because you have thought through how to minimise that risk once taken, is a big advantage when it comes to finding creative solutions to end an impasse. Business is usually not a one time thing, so how we treat others and especially the way we do business marks us out in the community. Bad news alwa

Omotenashi: Real Japanese Customer Service I am sure you have you seen notices explaining that this store location is going to close while the building is being reconstructed and that it will reopen at a specified date in the future? Given the increasingly stringent earthquake code here in Tokyo after 2011, we are seeing many businesses opting to re-build their premises. One notice however has become much talked about locally amongst Japanese retailers. Toraya are a famous traditional Japanese sweets manufacturer and retailer. Mr. Mitsuhiro Kurokawa is the 17th generation of his family to lead the business and his "we are rebuilding" notice is considered outstanding, even in a country where omotenashi or customer first service is renowned. Most such notices tell facts, supply relevant data and provide the obligatory greetings about serving us again when they reopen. Kurokawa san did all of that but much, much more. He put the current change in historical perspective, noting the business started in Kyoto in 1586 toward the end of the Muromachi (1338-1573) period, moved to Tokyo in 1869 and to this location in 1964. By doing this he is assuring us of their long traditions, longevity and capacity to change with the times when needed. He then started to tell some stories about the customers they have had at this shop on Aoyama Street in Akasaka, over the last 50 plus years. He mentioned that every three days, a male customer visited the shop to enjoy oshiruko (bean paste sweet soup with grilled mocha or pounded rice). This is considered a bit unusual in Japan, because men don't normally have such a sweet tooth, so this customer stood out from others. Another customer, a kindergarten aged boy came with his mother to the shop every day and bought a bite sized yookan (sweet bean paste block). One day he came by himself to shop. The staff were worried about him and so they went out with him and found that the mother was secretly hiding and watching that he was okay. A 100 year old lady regularly came by wheelchair to the shop. She later became hospitalised and her family came to buy namagashi (fresh Japanese sweets) and higashi (a dried sugar sweet), to take to the hospital for her. Even after she couldn't eat anything anymore, they found if they crushed the dried sugar sweet she could still enjoy it. He mentioned that he couldn't include all of the episodes they have shared over these 50 plus years with their customers, but he said he and the staff keep them, one by one, in their hearts forever. Telling customer stories is powerful. Kurokawa san made the customers the centerpiece and their experiences come alive. He linked the customers to the products they enjoyed. Rather than just a cold statement of the facts, he crafted a statement of love for their customers. The feeling of the notice is that there is a special bond they feel with all of their customers and even though they won't reopen on that site for another three years, they won't have forgotten them and look forward to serving them forever. What can we learn from this excellent customer focus? Are we communicating we feel a special bond with our customers? Often, corporate communications becomes machine like and wrapped up in what can sound like marketing department dross. Kurokawa san conveys a lot of heart felt feelings in this simple notice about the main store being rebuilt. Are we weaving enough customer stories into our communications? I don't mean fake propaganda stories or plastic stories that politicians love to use these day, but real episodes that the reader can visualise in their mind's eye? Even in a country like Japan, with such high levels of customer focus, Kurokawa san's notice gets attention because of the sincerity of his message. He is regarded as really epitomising the spirit of a family running a retail business, that has served customers for 17 generations. We may not be the 17th generation in our business, but we can bring more heart into the service we provide our customers. We can start right now with the service we provide and how we communicate that service. What does your current customer communication say about you? Can it be improved? Action Steps Are we really thinking about creating an emotional connection with our clients Are we telling enough happy client stories in our communications Are we fully aware of the content of all the touch points we have with our buyers Are we serving from the heart or just the head Are we instilling the right frame of reference into our staff, regarding how to properly serve the client. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, t

Nasty Buyers The customer is Kamisama (God) in sales in Japan. We hear this a lot here across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an Oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up? Actually no! Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices. If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment. Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills. If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge. The Japan winner of the worst sales environment is the pharmaceutical industry selling to doctors. Unlike the rest of the advanced world, where patients use the internet to educate themselves about medical conditions, before they see the doctor, Japan is still stuck in the pre-1990s. Japanese doctors consequently, still consider themselves vastly superior to everyone else, from patients on down. At the absolute bottom of the pile are drug salespeople. Being forced to wait around for hours, fawning over the doctor, being spoken to like dirt, cleaning their Mercedes, arranging all types of incentives to get them to buy your drugs, have been the fodder for legendary poor buyer behavior forever. Conflicts of interest have emerged recently as a concern and there are many more restrictions now on entertaining doctors. The flow of goodies is being restricted and so the salesperson doesn't have as much in the way of ame (sweets) to offer anymore. They still get plenty of muchi (whip) from the buyer though. Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society. You have been busily networking, creating new opportunities. The company President you have just met tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson. You might be thinking, this is looking good. Not necessarily. What often surprises me about HR people and other underlings in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want. Recently, I had lunch with a multi-national company President here running the Japan operation. The President is dynamic, articulate and a great presenter. After the lunch, as promised, the President sent an email to the HR person instructing them to get together with me to discuss training for their company. I follow up with the HR person many, many times, but never get an answer. It has become obvious they do not care what the President said, they have their own views on how to run the training and we are not going to fit into that plan. On another occasion, I had met the Japanese President at a networking event, followed up, got a meeting and in the process he introduced me to the HR people. In the meeting, the President suggested they take a look at what we offer. Many, many emails and attempted contacts later, no response from the HR team for follow-up meeting. Going back and telling the President who introduced you that, in fact, they have no power within their own organization is a bit of a delicate conversation. Even if you raise it, you have just said that the Emperor has no clothes. They do not thank you for pointing out their underlings are in rebellion and they themselves are impotent. I am still working on a solution for this contradiction. Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to put together a proposal and quote on a product or service, but there is absolutely no intention to buy from you. This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens and the compliance box is ticked. We were contacted by a large company recently asking for a proposal on a particular piece of training. Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the proposal, it will be fine (!). This is a tricky one, because you don't know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help. To test the system in these specific doubtful and dubious cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the proposal. I know, I know. This sounds like a very bad sales effort on my part and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers. If they are really interested, then they will get back to me with either more questions or an order. If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor's sales effort. That is a double ouch right there, isn't it! It is not always black and white though. In another case the Pre

The Sales Valley of Death Sales cannot run like a manufacturing production line. We are not making industrial cheese here. This is more like an artisanal pursuit, closer to art than science. Yet, every sales force on the planet has targets which are usually uniform. Each month, the sales team has to deliver a specified amount of revenue, rolling up into a pre-determined annual target. The construct may be logical, but sales is far from logical, as it is steeped in emotion, luck and magic. Having said that though, sales is also a numbers game and to some extent pseudo-scientific. There are accepted algorithms which apply. You call a certain number of people, speak to a lesser number, meet a few and from that residual group, you conclude an agreement. There are ratios, which when calculated over time, apply as averages linking activity with results. So we call 100 people, speak to 80, see 20, strike a deal with 5. In this construct, to make one sale, on average we need to call 20 people. With this type of precision available, you would think that we could industrialise the sales process and confidently set annual targets, neatly divided into units of 12, to arrive at a consistent steam of revenue achievement. Sales managers would be multi-tasking, sipping their afternoon martinis, propping their cowboy boots on the desk and carefully calculating their next car upgrade, as the sales team obligingly track to the revenue plan. Sadly, it doesn't work like this. Sales flow without rhyme or reason, some months exceeding the target and other months missing it completely. Some sales colleagues are precociously consistent producers and others are annoyingly unpredictable and some are just annoying because they don't seem to be doing much at all. Why is there this perplexing inability to automate the production of results? The valley of sales death is the problem. This is the plunge between sales peaks. It is the lull in the fighting, the quiet before the storm, the brief interlude in the phony war of sales. Sales people work hard, usually because they are on commission structures which guarantee not very much if you don't produce. Japan is a little different - basically here it is either a base and commission or straight salary and bonus system. Few sales people in Japan are on 100% commission. Why? Because they don't have to and the Japanese preference for risk aversion means forget it! Nevertheless, they know they have to produce, so they tend to be diligent. Commission structures vary but many "industrial structures" specify that you have to hit a monthly or quarterly target before your commission kicks in. If this is too industrial, it may fail to take into account seasonal downturns, because each target unit is the same throughout the year. This is hardly motivating and probably needs a bit more nuance around expectations and reality. Sales people cannot be consistently successful unless they have two great professional skills. They must be machine-like time managers and they must also be highly disciplined. The two interlock. The ebb and flow of sales is based around customer activity. Networking, cold calling, following up with previous clients, chasing leads which come through marketing activities etc., all of this takes considerable time. If we pump out enough client contact activity we will get appointments, sales and therefore generate follow up. Time starts to disappear from the mining activities that made us active in the first place. We can't do the prospecting work, because we are too busy executing the follow up. Once the fog of being busy clears though, we suddenly see that we have a very pitiful pipeline ahead of us. So we work like a demon again to kick start generating new leads. Downturns in activity lead to massive holes in revenue. This is the Sales Valley of Death. It is the messy counter point to industrial sales production, which is consistent, predictable, uniform, and when graphed for boss presentations, is beautifully shaped, balanced and ascetically pleasing to upper management. To avoid this valley phenomenon, we need to make time to keep prospecting every week. Hence the requirement for excellent time management skills and the discipline to make sure we are doing it every single week. Otherwise, we find our time for pipeline development is stolen away by client demands, emergencies, mistake correction, more detailed discussions and results follow up with the buyer. Sales people who do not block out time in their diaries for prospecting everyday will be Death Valley dwellers in short order. They will be joined there by those who don't plan their day in detail. That means planning the necessary activities with numbered action priorities. Winging it, being "spontaneous", living in the moment unshackled from schedules are all delusional activities which cannot be part a successful sales life. If we don't wish to enter the Sales Valley of Death, we must block time for prospecting and craft a

Let's Go For The Sale's Bull's-eye Sale's solutions are what make the business world thrive. The client has a problem and we fix it, our goods or services are delivered, outcomes are achieved and everybody wins. In a lot of cases however these are only partial wins. Problems and issues are a bit like icebergs – there is a lot more going on below the surface than can be spotted from the captain's bridge. The salesperson's role is to go after the whole iceberg and not just the obvious bit floating above the waterline. The standard sales interview is based on two models comprising the outer circles surrounding a bull's-eye. The extreme periphery is the "telling is selling" model. This ensures the salesperson does most of the talking. The client is subjected to a constant bombardment of features, until they either buy, die or retreat. The second model, the inner circle adjoining the bull's-eye, is the solution model of providing outcomes that best serve the client, based on what the client has understood is their problem. The latter is a much better tool and is in pristine condition because so few salespeople use it. The rapid fire of features at the client, rarely provides success because of the randomness of the proffering of alternatives. Welcome to the "toss enough mud at the wall and some is bound to stick" School of Sales. Aligning the fix with the client need in the solution model is the mark of the semi-professional. There is nothing wrong with this model but what are the rock star sales masters doing? They are zipping up their wetsuits and diving into the icy water under the iceberg, inspecting things closely and really understanding the full scope of the situation. They are on a mission to try and find what nobody else is seeing. Their ability to deliver previously unseen, unconsidered insights is pure gold for clients. Mentally picture our big red bull's-eye at the center of a series of concentric circles. Stating the features of a product or service is the first level, the very outer circle. Our solutions constructed around what the client knows already is the next inner circle. The highest level is providing solutions for problems that the client isn't even aware of yet. A truly magical client statement would be: "Oh, I hadn't thought of that or allowed for it!". Think about your own experience. Anytime we have been a buyer and have uttered those words to ourselves, as a result of insight from the salesperson, we have experienced a major breakthrough in our world view. Now that is the bull's-eye we want right there. The salesperson who can provide that type of perspective, alerting clients to over-the-horizon issues, provides such value that they quickly become the client's trusted business partner. Be it in archery or business, hitting the bull's-eye is no easy matter. Insight can't be plucked from the air at will. Plumbing one's experiences, sorting and sifting for corresponding relevancies and then diving deeply into the client's world looking for alignment are the skills required. In a way, ignorance is an advantage. Paraphrasing Peter Drucker, our success can come by asking a lot of "stupid" questions. A salesperson has an outside perspective, untainted and pure. There is no inner veil obscuring the view, no preconceived notions or ironclad assumptions clouding judgment. Counter intuitively, the fact that we don't know, what we don't know, becomes our strength. Ignorance allows us to question orthodoxy in a way that insiders can't because of inertia, groupthink, company culture or the internal politics of the organization. When salespeople serve numerous clients, be it in the same industry or across industries, they pick up vital strategic and tactical commercial intelligence. Researching various client's problems, experiences, triumphs and disasters is valuable – but only if you know how to process the detail. In all of our companies, we can only see clearly what we are doing ourselves. We all exemplify that Japanese saying: "the frog in the well does not know the ocean". Everything is too familiar and so we don't ever question everyday normality. We don't have the opportunity to peak behind the curtain and look into what our competitors are doing. It is also very rare for company personnel to do study tours of totally unrelated businesses. If we classified industries alphabetically, in a standard business setting, representatives from A and Z would rarely meet, let alone get to trade ideas and experiences. Salespeople however are floating around businesses and therefore able to know many wells and oceans. The ability to select and apply one particularly successful thing in a different context is a commercially valuable skill. How can salespeople get that skill? Some ways salespeople can provide over-the-horizon value include being highly observant. Take what you have seen working elsewhere for one client, in a different company or industry and then apply it for your current client. Sounds ra

Selling Ain't Telling He slid effortlessly into the chair and before I knew it, he had popped open the oyster shell of his laptop and was pointing his screen menacingly in my direction. Uh oh! Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After 20 minutes he stopped the torture. "Wow", I thought, "he hasn't managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting". His business card announced he was the Sales Director – that seemed a definite worry if he was responsible for others. The irony of this sales presentation was that I had requested it. I was in fact, a hot prospect. I had heard his President at a function talking about the new whizbang service their firm offered and I was intrigued. So intrigued, I approached the speaker and asked that he send one of his crew over to see me. I should have suspected something was amiss though, by the reaction of the President when I made my "visit me" request. Did he become buoyant with anticipation of a sale and reassure me that this product was the best thing since sliced bred? Surprisingly aloof, I found him, in fact almost disinterested. Was this a Nordic thing, I wondered or just his personality? I will never know, but what I did think to myself was, how important it is in sales to be positive and upbeat about your product at all times. So back at the meeting, after a death of a thousand powerpoints, I miraculously revived and questioned the Sales Director. Why? Well despite his incompetence, I still had a need. In the end though, I was not a buyer. What could he have done with me? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. He could have holstered his weapon before drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the "hotties". We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything, instead of only those things I needed to know, to make a buying decision. Reading this little vignette, I hope you take immediate action and self-audit whether you are any better at questioning than this guy? Do you have a sales process in place. Are you spending the bulk of the client interface time, laser focused on where they have the greatest likelihood of success? If you are a "teller", then here is a simple questioning step formula that will help you get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn't really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between "As Is" and "Should Be". By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be "no sale" today. Clients are never on the our salesperson schedule and will take no action, unless they clearly understand there is a benefit to doing so. Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven't fixed the issue already. This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves. Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff? They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators. Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant. If my sales Powerpoint maestro had applied some of these basics, he may have had a sale that day. He was in his forties, so one can expect that he has probably been repeating this same flawed performance for decades. Adding it all up, the total amount of lost sales over that period would be mind boggling. Such a shame really and so unnecessary. If you want to see revenues go up, ask clients questions, before you mention one word about your magical widget. Do this one simple thing and watch the difference. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at [email protected] If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japa

Principled Salespeople Win In 1936 an unknown author, despite many frustrating years of writing drafts and receiving publisher rejections, finally managed to get his manuscript taken up by a major publishing house. That book became a classic in the pantheon of self-help books – "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Surprisingly, many people in sales have never read this work. Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius etc., were all around substantially prior to 1936 and we still plumb their insights. Dale Carnegie has definitely joined that circle of established thinkers, offering wisdom and valuable ideas. His aim was to help all of us be better with each other, particularly in a business context. He did this by laying down some principles, which will make us more successful in dealing with others, especially those people not like us. Salespeople should definitely be friendly. Ancient Chinese wisdom noted, " a man who cannot smile should not open a shop". What this is saying is there are some pretty basic things we must do to be successful with people. We know all of this, but we forget or even worse, we know but we don't apply our knowledge. Here are nine principles for helping us all to become friendlier with our clients. Become genuinely interested in other people Our buyers are actually more interested in what we know about what they want, than in what we know about our product or service. It is a common mistake though to be wrapped up in the features of our offering and lose focus on the person buying it and what they want. At the extreme, transactional thinking means you don't care about the individual, you only care about their money from the sale. That is the hyper short career in sales option. For a long career, we better get busy really understanding our clients. The key word in this principle is "genuine". Having a correct kokorogamae or true intention, means we will be honestly focused on understanding the client so that we can really serve them and build a partnership. We must be fully focused on their success, because wrapped up inside that outcome is our own success. Talk in terms of the other person's interests Salespeople have a self-defeating habit of selective listening and selective conversation around what they want to talk about. Their kokorogamae is centered around their interests and the buyer's interests are secondary. Sales talk is a misnomer - there is no sales talk. There are well designed questions and there are carefully crafted explanations around solution delivery, which are tightly tied back to what the buyer is interested in. Questions uncover interests and with laser beam focus, that is the only thing we talk about. Sounds simple, but salespeople love to talk, they love the sound of their own voice and they become deaf to the client, often without even realising it. Check yourself during your next client conversation – imagine we were to create a transcript of your words, would they be 100% addressed to the buyer's interests. If not, then stop blathering and start talking in terms of their interests. By the way, Japanese buyers are rarely uncomfortable with silence, so don't feel pressured to fill the conversation gaps with pap! Be a good listener. Encourage the other person to talk about themselves Good listening means listening for what is not being said, as well as what we are hearing. It means not pretending to be listening, while we secretly think of our soon to be unveiled brilliant response, witticism or repartee. It means not suddenly getting sidetracked by a single piece of key information, but taking in the whole of what is being conveyed. It means listening with your eyes – reading the body language and checking it against the words being offered. Talkative salespeople miss so much key client information and then scratch their heads as to why they can't be more successful in selling. The client doesn't have the handy dandy sales handbook, where the questioning sequences are nicely aligned and arranged for maximum efficiency. Instead the client conversation wanders all over the place, lurching from one topic to another, without any compunction. I am just like that as a buyer. I have so many interests and will happily digress on the digressions of the digressions! Well designed questions from the salesperson keeps the whole thing on track and allows the client to speak about themselves at length. In those offerings from the buyer we learn so much about their values, interests, absolute must haves, their desirables, their primary interests and their dominant buying motives. Japanese buyers usually need a level of trust to be developed, before they may open up and talk about themselves. It is exceedingly rare to wrap up an agreement in Japan with just one meeting. So salespeople, play the long game here and don't be in a rush. We are limbering up for a marathon, not a sprint in Japan. Arouse in the other person an eager want This is not huckster, carnival barker manipu

Credibility Counts For Everything In Sales Salespeople are carrying around a lot of baggage with them when they visit clients. The smooth talking, dodgy sales person trying to con us, is the folkloric villain of the piece. Reversing that doubt and hesitation is critical to gaining acceptance as a valuable business partner for the client. This entire problem is magnified when we meet the client for the first time. Because the client's don't know us, their default position is one of caution and doubt. We have all grown up being rewarded for being risk averse and so we are resistant to change. The new salesperson represents "change" – because they are asking the client to buy something new or to change suppliers. So that we can properly serve them, we need to breakthrough that mental protective wall erected by the client and establish trust and credibility,. Great – but how do we do that? Try crafting a Credibility Statement. This is a succinct summary that will grab the attention of the client and help to reduce their resistance to what we are offering. It unfolds in four stages: First we give an overview of the general benefits of what we do. For example, "Dale Carnegie Training helps to deliver the behavior change needed in the team that translates into improved results". Next we need to quote some specific outcomes, as evidence that we are a credible supplier of services. So we now might say something like this, "An example of this was where we helped XYZ company, a very high end retailer with training their entire sales staff. They are now enjoying a 30% increase in sales". Now, we introduce an important suggestion that makes this benefit and result summary relevant to the listener. "Maybe we could do the same for you?" Finally, we need to create a "verbal bridge" so we can move on to questioning the client about what they need. In Japan, a lot of buyers expect to control proceedings, such that the seller turns up, gives their pitch and then the buyer happily shoots it full of holes. What Japanese buyers are doing is trying to ascertain the risk factor of what you are proposing, by disparaging everything you have just said. They now want you to provide answers that eliminate their fears. You are immediately on the back foot. The client, not you, is controlling the sales process. Good luck with that and let us know how that is working out for you? To break this pattern (which has a very low success rate), we need to ask pertinent questions and find out what they really need. In order to do that, we need to get their permission to ask questions. This transition into the questioning part of the sales process is absolutely critical. Don't miss this: in Japan the buyer is God. Hence, buyers here may feel our questions are impertinent, intrusive and unnecessary, so we must gain their permission to proceed. Every single time I have been forced to just give my "pitch", because the buyer has denied me the opportunity to ask questions, there has been no sale achieved. We need to better skilled, to get them to allow us to fully understand how we can best serve them. That is why we need to be asking questions and listening carefully to their answers. So that we can make that transition, after saying "Maybe we could do the same for you?" , we softly mention, "In order to help me understand if we can do that or not, would you mind if I asked a few questions?". We say this, almost as a throw away line. No big deal, nothing to see here. When they agree, we are now free to explore in detail their current situation, what they aspire to, what is holding them back and what would success mean to them personally. If you don't ask these questions you have little chance of convincing the client you can help them solve their problems. Amazingly, the majority of sales people don't ask any questions, but just blab on about the features of their product. I had a sales presentation given to me recently here in Tokyo by the Sales Director of a software vendor and after some initial pleasantries, he plunged straight into walking me through his powerpoint presentation of the functionality of his solution. Forty minutes later he finished. Not one question about my needs or about my difficulties – nothing. Amazing – he was an experienced guy who had always been in sales! Come on - as salespeople, we all have to do a lot better than that! So putting it all together, the sequence flow would be like this: "Dale Carnegie Training helps to deliver the behavior change needed in the team that translates into improved results. An example of this was where we helped a very high-end retailer with training their entire sales staff and they are enjoying a 30% increase in sales. Maybe we could do the same for you. In order to help me understand if we can do that or not, would you mind if I asked a few questions?". This Credibility Statement should be short (under 30 seconds), delivered fluently and confidently (no Ums and Ahs). This takes a lot of pre

Sales Certainty The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don't believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this "whatever" to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client's problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal and professional brand suicide. There are elements of the sales process which are so fundamental, you wonder why I would even bring them up. For example, believing in what you sell. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don't believe but keep selling. You don't have to look far to find them. They are going through the motions but you never feel they have your best interests at heart. They usually don't have any other sales process than blarney and BS. We may buy from these people, but we come to bitterly resent being conned and we don't forgive or forget. Today with social media, your "crime" is soon broadcast far and wide, warning everyone to be very careful when dealing with the likes of you. The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people. They get into sales by accident. They should have been screened out from the start but sadly the world is just not that logical. When I joined Shinsei's retail bank, I recognised immediately that 70% of the salespeople should never have been given a sales role. My brief was "we have 300 salespeople and we are not getting anywhere – come in and fix it". The vast majority of people in the role of convincing wealthy Japanese customers to buy our financial products were really suffering. They lacked the communication skills, the people skills, the persuasion power, the warmth, the concern for the customer, etc., which they needed to be successful. Why on earth were they there then, you might ask? Many of them had never been in a sales role, many had been in backroom jobs, never facing customers. When Shinsei moved all of the operations components out of the branches they gained tremendous efficiency. The operations part became centralised and worked like a charm, but the operations staff were still there and were given sales jobs. Disasterous for them! How about your sales team? Are all of your colleagues in the right role? Are you in the right role? As Shinsei, we worked out who was best suited for a sales role and gave those people the proper training to equip them for success. The remainder were given a role elsewhere in the bank. What training did we give them? Before I arrived, mathematics was thought to be really important for bankers. It probably is for certain roles but the ability to ask good questions, to fully understand wealthy customer's needs, was much more important. So was the understanding that first impressions should not be left to chance but need to be created. If I don't like you or trust you, why would I want to buy anything from you? At Dale Carnegie we do a lot of sales training and we see the same client issues come up continuously. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. This sounds a bit ridiculous except that many people in sales roles don't smile easily. They don't exude warmth, coming across as cold, hard, clinical, mercenary and overly efficient. We all love to buy, but we hate being sold and "efficient" sales people make us nervous. Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of "filler words" like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don't buy sales person uncertainty. Record your own sales conversations and check if what you are saying is coming out in a professional manner, bolstering the confidence of the buyer in what you are saying. A totally canned sales speech is the opposite problem. I sold encyclopedias for Britannica as my first sales job and we had to pass a memory test, where we could recite the entire 20 minute presentation precisely. Having passed, we were then dropped off in a forlorn, working class outer suburb in my home town of Brisbane and turned loose on an unsuspecting public. There were no questions involved, but a lot of data dumping going on in that canned speech. Astonishingly, despite all we know 40 years later, there are still people trying to make careers in sales while wading through minute after minute of the features of the "whatever". Wher

You Can't Cold Call in Japan. Really? The pressure for increasing results is not constant. It is just keeps surging "higher, faster, further". We in the sales team do work hard. We are polite, conscientious, quite customer focused. Great! So why can't we grow sales fast enough to meet our targets. What is the problem? There are some simple reasons. Current customer numbers are too few. Current customer volumes are not growing. Current customer share of wallet is not changing. As sales we will often blame marketing for not generating new leads for our sales team to go after. We can be surprisingly terrific advocates for all the reasons the customer puts on the table about not being able to buy at all, buy now, or buy more. Blaming everyone else for insufficient sales volumes is a well developed skill here in Japan (and everywhere else salespeople walk the earth) . Helpfully, your boss pipes up with a shiny idea: "what about going after new customers?" At this point marketing's lack of lead generation gets recycled as our excuse. Innocently, your boss mention the "C" word! Shock, horror and pity drains the blood from the Sales Director's face. "Don't you know boss, this is Japan, you can't do cold calling here". Case closed. Having been through this scenario a number of times here as the boss and having also seen plenty of cold calling getting done, "skeptical" doesn't even come close to describing my reaction to this useful intervention to explain the finer points of Japan to me. Walking into a new organization with a crystal clear recollection of salespeople in the previous company, phones taped to their wrists so they get through their cold calls, always concentrates the mind in these circumstances. What is usually meant is not that you can't physically cold call companies here, but just the effectiveness is so low, it a major waste of time. This is too true, when the cold calling is done poorly. Curiously, the same "experts" who tell you that you can't cold call by phone, accept the tobikomi eigyo technique of just dropping in unexpectedly. Why suddenly turning up at a couple of companies and dropping off some business cards and literature in a day is thought to be more effective than sitting at desk and calling 100 prospects a day is a quaint curiosity. This always reminds me of the same arguments you hear about you can't get referrals in Japan. "Do you know anybody who might be interested in our widget?" must be one of the most criminal statements to ever escape from a salesperson's lips. The problem is when the way you ask is rubbish, don't be surprised with a pathetic result. Design is critical to increasing the success rate for cold calling and referrals. Amazingly, hardly any sales people ever plan their conversations. They just sashay from one failure to another wondering, why this approach doesn't work. Cold calling works much better when we are very clear about the outcome we can expect to achieve. There are products and services you can sell over the phone, however these are very, very, very few. The main aim should be securing a face-to-face appointment. That means you are only selling a date and time over the phone – nothing more. Before you even get to that point, you need to be able to speak to the person who has the diary spot you want a piece of. There are armies of hapless young Japanese women occupying the bottom rungs of the machine, whose only joy in life is getting rid of salespeople like us trying to see the decision maker. If you are persistent then they have this great technique of passing you over to the next most senior male in their section. Usually some spotty faced, no authority nobody completely afraid of their own shadow, and seemingly able to go to retirement, without ever having had to make a decision in their entire career. This is where you need a blockbuster credibility statement that summarises who you are, why you are calling and why speaking to their boss will change the world. Design is everything. By the way, you only have to design the one credibility statement, because you use the same one on their boss when you eventually get through to them. You might refer to some recent research you would like to share which will be a big help to their business now and into the future. You should mention that you can't share it over the phone because you need to show it to them, to head off the "Well tell me now!" or "Email it to me!" comebacks. This phone conversation might sound like this: "Thank you for your time on the phone, I know you are super busy. We have just received the results of our global survey into the buying perspectives of your buyers. It was a global comparison that included Japan and the results are quite striking, especially for what are the key motivators for making purchasing decisions in Japan. It also investigated where the buyers believe the industry is moving and this insight is very valuable to make sure we are always keeping in lockstep with the

How To Be Likeable and Trustworthy In Sales The first few seconds decides all It has always been astonishing to me how hopeless some salespeople are in Japan. Over the last 20 years, I have been through thousands of job interviews with salespeople. We teach sales for our clients and so as a training company we see the good, the bad and the ugly - a very broad gamut of salespeople. We also buy services and products ourselves and so are actively on the receiving end of the sales process. Well actually that is a blatant exaggeration. There are almost no salespeople operating in japan using a sales process. But there are millions of them just winging it (badly). Why? On The Job Training (OJT) is the main training pedagogical system in Japan for training the new salesperson. This works well if your boss has a clue and knows about selling. Sadly, there are few sales leaders like that populating the Japan sales horizon. So what you get are hand-me-down "techniques" that are ineffective and then even worse, these techniques are poorly executed in the hands of the newbies. We like to buy, but few of us want to be sold. We like to do business with people we like and trust. We will do business with people we don't like and very, very rarely with people we don't trust. Neither is our preference though. The million dollar question is, "what makes YOU likeable and trustworthy?' Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust. When you think about it, this is just the same as in a sales job interview. In both cases we enter an unfamiliar environment and greet strangers who are brimming over with preoccupation, doubt, uncertainty, reluctance and skepticism. If a sales person can't handle a job interview and build rapport straight away, then it is unlikely they are doing much better out in the field, regardless of what is glowingly written down in the resume. So what do we need to do? Strangely, we need to pay attention to our posture! Huh? It is common sense really - standing up straight communicates confidence. Also, bowing from a half leaning forward posture, especially while we are still on the move, makes us look weak and unconvincing. So walk in standing straight and tall, stop and then bow or shake hands depending on the circumstances. Smiling at the same time would also be good, depending on the situation.. If there is a handshake involved then, at least when dealing with foreigners, drop the dead fish (weak strength) grasp or the double hander (gripping the forearm with the other hand). The latter, is the classic insincere politician double hand grip. Some Japanese businesspeople I have met, have become overly Westernised, in that they apply a bone crusher grip when shaking hands. Recently I have met a couple of Japanese businesswomen, who are trying to out man the men and are applying massive grip strength when shaking hands. It sounds very basic advice, but please teach your Japanese team how to shake hands properly. Too weak or too strong are unforced errors which impinge on building that all important first impression. By the way, we probably only have a maximum of 7-10 seconds to get that first impression correct, so every second counts. We are all so quick to make snap judgments today, we just can't leave anything to chance. When you first see the client, make eye contact. Don't burn a hole in the recipient's head, but hold eye contact at the start for around 6 seconds and SMILE. This conveys consideration, reliability, confidence – all attributes we are looking for in our business partners. We combine this with the greeting, the usual pleasantries – "Thank you for seeing me", "Thank you for your time today". Now, what comes next is very important. We segue into establishing rapport through initial light conversation. Japan has some fairly unremarkable evergreens in this regard – usually talking about the weather or about the distance you have travelled to get here, etc., etc. Don't go for these bromides. Try and differentiate yourself with something that is not anticipatory or standard. Also be careful about complimenting a prominent feature of the lobby, office or the meeting room. I was in a brand new office the other day and they have a really impressive moss wall in the lobby. I will guarantee that my hosts have heard obvious comments about the moss wall from every visitor who has preceded me. "Wow, what an impressive moss wall " or "Wow, that is a spectacular entry feature". Boring! Teach your salespeople to say something unexpected, intelligent and memorable. In this example, "Have you found that team motivation has lifted since you moved to this impressive new office?", "Have you found your brand equity with your client's has improved since moving here?". This get's the focus off you the salesperson and on to the client and their business. For example, if you are a training company like us, you definitely want to know ho

Salespeople Need To Care Do you subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc? The following morsel popped into my inbox the other morning, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care–Anonymous". Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Don't miss it – we all know selling stuff is a tough gig. Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be mentally tough to survive in a sales job. You need other things too. Product and technical knowledge is important. Total command of the detail is expected by clients. This has to be a given, so if you don't know your stuff cold then get studying. However, we also need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about? I am a buyer too and am constantly amazed by what some people get up to. Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don't like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want "blue" but they keep showing me 50 shades of "pink". They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named "process of elimination". Why on earth are they doing this? I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, "in your success Greg, is my success"? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs? I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth? I can sense they have already bought their new Beemer before the ink is dry on our agreement? Actually, there is no agreement, because I don't buy from these types of amateur salespeople and that is the same reaction from most people. The quote at the beginning, "People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care" reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え). It can be simply translated as "preparedness" but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. I would prefer to translate it as "getting your heart in order". This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Huh? Does this sound a bit too "hug a tree" California emotional for you? Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn't centered on their best interests and therefore they won't buy from you. The trust is never established. Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the "smooth talking" salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to. They are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand. The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was a criminal. The criminal part didn't surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks (note to Sales Managers – do background checks!). He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the role play, and WOW, what a fantastic closer! I thought "Yes!" at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong. What a wake up and smell the coffee for me. When you have the client's best interests in mind, you do all the right things. You ask well designed questions to fully understand how best you can serve the buyer. You present your solution in such a way that the buyer feels this is exactly what I have been looking for. You calmly handle any hesitations or concerns from the client, reassuring them that what you have is exactly what they need. And you are confident to ask for the order. That is the sales professional in action So let's ignore the outliers, those riff raff of push sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not e