The Sales Japan Series

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