The Sales Japan Series

My Clients Never Call Me Back Today in business, reaching anyone by telephone is nothing less than a miracle. Japan is particularly good at making sure you can never catch clients. The lowest ranked staff on the totem pole are designated as the "first impression" bearers for the company. They are invariably doing a pretty poor job of it because they are not properly trained. They think their job is to be brisk, business like and protect their colleagues and bosses from everyone who calls in, especially salespeople. Japan's risk aversion ensures that you have no idea who you are talking to when they answer the call. This is because they are careful not to divulge their name. They ensure there won't be any repercussions from the call, should it ever become a problem. They are not thinking "great, you called, we are so happy that you want to do business with us". No, they are guarded, suspicious, fearful of people they don't know and so their tone is negative, protective and doubtful of the caller's intentions. Did I mention they were the designated company's first impression's holders? Call into your own shop and I bet you will find the same. It might be time to rethink what first impressions you want to portray to the wider world. Usually, when the person you wish to reach is not there, they rarely volunteer a return call option. They just say, "they are not at their desk", expecting you will desist and duly disappear. I have found that if you remain on the line but silent, they quickly get confused. In their bafflement, they may inadvertently blurt out "can I take a message?". Great, you can leave a message now and get the person you seek to call you back. However, later you begin to wonder if that message ever got delivered, because there is never a call back. We all live in the Age of Distraction and there are so many things competing for the mind space of our clients. Technology is supposed to be helping us by giving us instant connectivity 24 hours a day, but all it has done is make sure we fill up the entire day with "stuff". Meeting frequency has become crazier and busy people can spend their entire day gracefully wafting from one meeting to another. You see these digital nomads, with their one fifth open oyster shell laptops, breezily migrating from one room to another. When they do get back to their desk, the in-basket in their email has become overloaded and they have to spend hours sorting through it. Perhaps there is a piece of notepaper, that looks like litter, lost somewhere on their desk. It has your name and phone number on it, left there by the person who took your call. This is all very disheartening, frustrating and annoying. However, never take the lack of a call back personally. Do not try to psychoanalyse the lack of response from the person you are trying to contact. You do not know why they are not returning your call, but you need to keep calling to find out why they won't call back. When you call them again and get their voice mail service, always leave a message. If you get Mr. or Ms. Lowest On The Totem Pole answering the call again, leave another message to call you back. You should keep trying to find out why they are not returning your call by sending emails, snail mail, and dropping by, that is, if you can access their building without a prearranged entry pass. If you do finally get hold of them, be professional, don't complain about the fact they were so hard to contact or that they don't respond to any of your calls. Rise above the personal insult you may be feeling. Yes, you are fiercely frustrated by their lack of common courtesy, but this call back courtesy is no longer common. We have to realise we are in a different age. One of my friends who runs a big foreign multinational operation here tells me that his younger Japanese staff absolutely avoid the phone at all cost. They simply don't want to answer it. This is the new age we live in. Remember, you are the salesperson and it is your job to make contact with clients. It is not their job to do anything helpful or useful. Now what if the client complains about the fact that you keep calling them and leaving messages? You should just ignore it completely. Remember, this is part of your job, not theirs. They may be feeling guilty that they never got back to you and want to switch the blame to you. Don't get emotional, defensive or aggressive. Apologise in a light hearted manner like this, "You know…you are probably right, I have been calling a lot lately haven't I". Then immediately explain that, "The reason I have been calling is because what we have is so good, I consider it my duty as a sales professional, to at least make sure you are aware of it. Whether you do something about it or not, is entirely your business decision and responsibility on behalf of your company. My role in business is to help you as much as possible to expand your business, if it makes sense". Go on to explain that you are here to help them do ju

The One Minute Pitch If you have been following me for a while, you know how down I am on pitching. This is the standard modus operandi in japan. Turn up to the meeting with the buyer and bludgeon them with detail and data on your solution. Ask no questions but keep throwing a ton of mud up against the wall hoping some will stick. I always stress you need to get permission to ask questions in Japan and then you need to have a good questioning formula which will allow you to uncover the buyer's needs. Once you have achieved that you make a judgment on whether you can actually help them or not. There are occasions though where we don't have that window to the client. This is where the one minute pitch can help. This will typically be when there is very little face to face time with the buyer. I go to a lot of networking events and the time available to chat can vary. Often it is very short, because you are filtering the people you meet, to see if there is an opportunity to have a longer, more valuable conversation back at their office. We don't want to get caught up in a riveting conversation, that sees us manage to meet just one person at the event. Like in the fairy tales, one of these frogs will turn into the beautiful princess, once they are kissed by the handsome prince. We just don't know which frog to kiss, so we need to kiss them all. As we apply our filter, we realise we have a beautiful princess here and we need to grab their attention to smooth the path to a follow up meeting later in the week in their office. This is where we need a brief pitch to grab interest and apply the hook for the next meeting. Numbers are always good for grabbing attention. While chatting they may look at your business card or meishi and ask what your company does. This is very common in Japan. Instead of going into a spellbinding recitation of the incredible history of the firm, the triumphs, the awards, the accolades, try throwing out some mysterious numbers. They are mysterious because they are in isolation and therefore it is impossible to have any idea what they represent. This piques the client's interest and curiosity. So, as an example, when asked what we do, I might say something like this, "Let me give you four key numbers to explain what we do – 108, 64, 100 and 95. 108 is how long the company has been going since Dale Carnegie launched his soft skills training firm in New York. 64 refers to the number of years Dale Carnegie Training has been teaching in Japan. 100 counts the number of countries where we have offices on the ground to help clients with global businesses and 95 refers to fact we conduct 95% of our soft skills training here in Japanese language". In this power packed short burst I have pointed to the fact we teach soft skills, the robustness and reliability of the business in the USA and in Japan, sustained over many decades, our capacity to match the breadth of their coverage across the globe and the fact most of training is in Japanese, when most people think we only teach in English. At a reasonable clip I can get through those numbers and their explanation in 30 seconds, which means I have plenty of opportunity to take my time, use pauses for effect and let some of those numbers sink in. Following this, my immediate question to the client would be , "what do you do for helping the team with their soft skills at the moment?". This will lead into a conversation to gauge whether there is any point in having a further chat. If there was, I would just say, "Sounds like we might have something to help you grow the business. I will reach out to you after this event and please allow me to swing by and show you what is available to help your business". I wouldn't add anything or explain anything further, because I want to have that face to face meeting in their office, in order to get down to the details of their business needs. The one minute pitch is just an entry point to getting them to accept my email outlining some times for us to get together. Think of some numbers which would work for you and three or four are enough, so give it a try!

Add Some BANTER To Your Next Sales Call I am a permanent student of sales. I study the books and tapes from the greats – J. Douglas Edwards, Charlie Cullen, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar. I follow this generation of sale's trainers such as Grant Cardone, Jeffrey Gitomer and Victor Antonio. Now Victor Antonio is someone I like, because I can see that his methods will work here in Japan, unlike a lot of other sales training which is more suitable for an American environment. Victor mentioned something in his recent Sales Influence podcast that I thought was a great insight. He was talking about how to measure if a sales call was successful or not. He came up with the acronym BANTER and I wondered how we could apply this to Japan. Victor reckons you should be getting six out of six. Let's try it and see how Japan stacks up He nominated a simple scoring system of one point or zero depending on whether the elements of BANTER had been successfully gathered during the sale's call or not. Acronyms like BANTER are difficult to apply in Japan because they are based entirely on the English language, so they don't translate well. Nevertheless the idea is a good one. To score perfectly would give you six points and so you can gauge how well the call went, based on how close to six you got. The B in BANTER stands for budget. We need to know this from our sale's call don't we. Does the client have budget for the good or service you are going to provide? Do you know what the budget is, has it been fixed, are there limitations on size or timing of expenditure? Japan is a difficult place to find out specifically about the budget. Often the answers given are vague because the buyer doesn't want to release that information. They worry if they tell you too much, they will be lured into overspending the money. We will probably score zero for B. The A stands for authority and this relates to were the people in the meeting authorised to make a decision? In Japan's case, we will definitely score a zero here too. It is usually the case that the consensus decision making system requires people sitting a few meters away, hidden behind the meeting room wall, to have some say in the final decision. They do not ever attend the meetings, but they can veto the decision. We may have our supporters in the meeting with us but they rarely have final say over the expenditure for the budget. We score another zero. The N relates to need. Does the buyer have a strong need for our solution. We must get permission first in Japan in order to ask questions to uncover need. Here the usual methodology though is to pummel the buyers with details of the solution prior to uncovering what the need may be. Japan would get a zero score in this category. The T is for timing. When does the client need the solution by? This is a critical factor because we might have a supply problem if the need is strong but the logistics cannot match the required timetable. Japan is a country where decision making is glacial but the execution expectation default is yesterday. Usually we can find out the required timing in Japan, so we score a one. The E is for engagement. Was the buyer showing interest, were they engaged in the details of the solution. Were they asking the types of questions that tell you the interest level is very high. There is both a quality aspect and quantity aspect involved here. Japanese buyers all have strapped on their laser beam for determining potential trouble so they definitely want to ask a lot of questions and really wrestle down the detail. It is like the issue of objections. Getting no objections is a worrying sign of no interest whatsoever. We should prefer to get an objection than to get no interest. Japan scores a point in this category. Finally R – was there a request for a proposal or a trial or a second meeting. Was there some interest in advancing the sale to the next level? In Japan often the meeting end is left very vague. "We will think about it" being the most common result and they do need to think about it, because there are decisions makers not in the room, who need to be consulted. So Japan would score a zero. Adding up the scores, we have reached two out of six for judging meeting success in Japan. That is about right I would say. If you can make here in sales, then you can make it anywhere, because it is so difficult here!

Success Negotiating – Part Two In Part One we covered the four steps involved in negotiating: Analysis, Presentation, Bargaining and Agreement. Today we are going to go a bit deeper. Before getting to the negotiations stage though we need to determine our position and that of the other side. Which items are negotiable and which are not? What would an ideal outcome look like? What would be a realistic outcome? What is our fallback position? We need to do the same thing from the client's perspective. Looking at it from their point of view, what do we think the client fallback position would be? What do we think they would consider a realistic outcome. What would be an ideal outcome from their point of view? In the majority of B2B situations, we are not looking to master tricky negotiating techniques, because we are looking for an on-going relationship with the other side. However we need to consider some pertinent elements and also recognise when negotiating tactics are being used on us. The walk away option Establish your BATNA - Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement. We need to decide at what point we will leave the negotiating table, if the client is unreasonable. We need to have established this walk away point very clearly before we start negotiating, so that we know where are the limits of patience. Silence The pressure of silence can cause people to make concessions or offer up valuable information we can use in the negotiation. Japanese people are much more relaxed about having silence in the gaps of the conversation that most other nationalities. Western business people feel pressure to fill up the empty spaces in the conversation, because it makes them feel uncomfortable. Resist the urge and just sit there patiently. Authority to negotiate We mention we need to refer the offer to a higher authority in the company. This can buy time or let things cool down if they get heated. This can be true in Japanese companies where a lot of the decision makers are never in the room. Ultimately, they have to apply their hanko or seal to the internal document recommending the course of action, so they need to be worked on internally by those who want the deal to go through. Ultimatum This is a deal/no deal decision point, similar to the walk away. The deal may be very close to agreement, but there are usually a couple of conditions which are hard to be flexible about and these become deal breakers. The point is to know what these are in advance and try to come up with alternatives which will defang these barriers to getting to a "yes" Persuade We add value to sweeten the deal to get them to agree. There may be things on our side which are not overly expensive for us which we can tie into the deal, but which are perceived as having high value by the other side. We should have considered what these might be during the preparation stage. As the negotiations ebb and flow, we can see if one of these sweeteners are needed to be brought forth or not. Time pressure We deliberately shorten the decision-making period to force an answer. Having an "opportunity goes away" option is good for getting everyone to concentrate on doing the deal. When we know we will miss out if we don't act, we are more motivated to make the deal happen. It is rare that there is only one buyer or one seller in the market at a point in time, so if action isn't taken, someone else will grab the deal. Delay or Inactivity We slow things down. We don't respond as quickly to their communication. This is similar to the "silence" tactic. By extending the time, pressure may start building for a decision. We never know what pressures the other side are on and slowing things down may force them to act quickly. Add-ons These are the additional concessions which are offered to close the deal. Research shows that 80% of the concessions are made in the final stages of the negotiation. We might have something which has value to the client but which is not a big cost to us, in order to make easier for them to say 'yes". It is often easier to add some additional condition, once the decision has already been taken. Having to go through all the internal approvals and gaining consensus may seem too much work relative to agreeing to this extra condition. So there we have Success Negotiations Part One and Part Two. Go out there and be superbly prepared for your next negotiation.

Success Negotiating: Part One Our image of negotiating tends to be highly influenced by the winner takes all model. This is the transactional process where one side outwits the other and receives the majority of the value. Think about your own business? How many business partners do you have where this would apply? For the vast majority of cases we are not after a single sale. We are thinking about LTV – the life time value of the customer. We are focused on the proportion of our time spent hunting for new business as opposed to farming the existing business. Where do you think the trust barometer would be located, if we started "outwitting" our clients in our negotiations? Especially in Japan, where trust is such a crucial element and everyone is focused on long term relationships. So success in negotiating in Japan will be very different and it will definitely be a win-win approach. Fine, but do you have a consistent process to apply to your negotiations? Often we do it the hard way without a roadmap or we forget parts of the process. We are all rank amateurs anyway, because the amount of negotiating we do is limited and the size of the deals are usually modest. Have we got the basics covered? Here are four steps we need to cover: Analysis We begin by clarifying our own position. What is it we want to achieve and then we identify alternatives we can live with, if we can't achieve all that we wish. We also look for ways to add value in areas other than price. Price is only one lever in a negotiation although most people get stuck on the idea it is the only lever. We want to understand the client's positions and interests and the background reasons driving their approach. This is especially useful when looking for alternative solutions, as we might have something that is valuable to them, but not a great impost to us. We also should look to reframe the conversation to avoid confrontation. There are trigger words which can rapidly inject emotion into a logical discussion and we need to know what those words are for the opposite party. We can then phrase things in ways which is not incendiary. Presentation When we do public speaking we know that if we rehearse what we are going to say, it will go much better. When the American political leaders have their famous televised debates, they practice taking difficult questions so that they will appear unruffled and credible in their answers. Doing the same thing before a negotiation makes sense doesn't it. Have well prepared what you are going to say and how you will say it. Have a colleague hit you with "toughies" – questions you would rather not have to face thank you very much. "More sweat in rehearsal, less blood in negotiating" should be the mantra. Like lawyers do when getting ready to go to court, we should also prepare the opposite sides case, the client's case, as though it were our own. This gives us an insight into the likely approach they will take and we are then much better prepared to deal with it. Price isn't the only thing so we should be ready to present added value alternatives to simple numbers. Because we have rehearsed their position, we can more effectively link our solution to the client's positions and interests. Bargaining At some point there will be a gap between offer and acceptance and this is when we start trading things we want, for things they want. Bargaining down at the bazaar, in the souk, at the local flea market and in the B2B business world are entirely different. Our object is a sale with a nice regular, perpetual re-order attached to it, rather than "a one and done" outcome. So at the start we decide our ideal, realistic and fallback positions. We do this through the prism of our current demand, local and global business conditions, future business trends, price point profitability and our cash burn through rate. Negotiating tactics will be applied to us but the key is to respond logically rather than react emotionally. Easier said than done! However if we did our preparation well then we should be rock solid. We should be looking for win-win so we are trying to make it easy to agree with us and hard to disagree. Agreement Japan isn't much for legal contracts compared to the West. Most of our business is done without any contracts, as we agree verbally and then carry out our word and they carry out theirs. If we are talking about huge amounts of money however, then absolutely contacts will be needed. So even if a formal contract is not involved, we need some specification of all points of agreement. Put every key item in writing, be it the form of a quotation, invoice or just an email capturing the joint understanding of what is going to happen going forward and how much money is involved. To make it very clear, create a checklist and schedule for fulfillment. These four steps are not rocket science, but remember we are mostly amateurs in the field of negotiating and are you using this simple methodology or just winging it? P

How to Present To A Diverse Buying Team This is very tricky in Japan. Because of the convoluted decision making process here, there will be many voices involved in the final decision. What makes it even harder is that some of those key influencers may not even be present in the meeting. Those proposing the change have to go around to each one of them and get their chop on the piece of paper authorizing the buy decision. In the case of Western companies the decision tends to be taken in the meeting after everyone has had their say. In Japan there is a lot of groundwork needed so that the final decision is a rubber stamp exercise, because the actual decision has already been taken. Nevertheless, we turn up for the meeting and the buyer side has a number of representatives sitting in the room. Often it will be me facing across the table to five to ten buyers. Where do we start? Well the meishi or business card exchange is a critical step. We can quickly understand exactly who is in the room. We can determine their function and rank immediately and this is very helpful. Before we know how to present to their team, we have to analyse the people in their team. A buyer team will often comprises multiple layers. We might have some functional interests represented such as: Executive Buyer Financial Buyer User Buyer Technical Buyer Our Champion Each one has different drivers for making buying decisions. We can mentally list them in order from those with a long range vision to those with shorter range views. In the case of the Executive Buyers they are thinking about their strategic vision, the opportunity and growth potential. For the Financial Buyers their attention will be turned to items such as cost, terms and flexibility. User Buyers will be interested in the features, ease of use and reliability. Technical Buyers are looking at efficiency, practicality and capacity. Our Champion, the person driving the decision on the buyer side, will be concerned about relationships, influence and recognition. This sounds daunting enough but just to spice things up a bit, there are also the buyer personality styles. The Amiables take their time, don't rush into things and are concerned about the impact on the people from the decision. The Drivers (often the CEO) are the "time is money" types who are always in a hurry, can make an immediate decision and solely focus on the outcomes. The Analtyicals (often the CFO or the Technical Buyer) are comfortable with numbers to three decimal places, are keen on the micro detail and want tonnes of data to support their decision. The Expressives (often the Head of sales and Marketing) want the big picture, do not want to get immersed in the weeds and want to have a big party to celebrate the success, at the end. So their role within the company and their individual personality styles will be key factors to understand when we present. Just when you thought we were getting a handle on the complexity of the task, there are also going to be attitudinal differences. It will vary according to the individual and even their mood on that day at that time. Different people will be hostile, resistant, discontent, ambivalent, favourable, supportive, enthusiastic. We are not finished yet with the complexity. There will also be different levels of expertise in a team. Different experiences, education, biases, problems, positive issues, goals, expertise and culture. Before we present we need to know who is going to be in the meeting and try to understand what will be driving their reaction to what we are going to say. We need to work on our Champion beforehand where possible and yet we may not know this completely beforehand. We will have to start placing people into different sectors once we get into the meeting room. Have I talked you out of presenting to buyer teams yet? It is a bit overwhelming when you break it all down into its component parts but harden up, you have to move forward anyway. Your Champion will have fed you the problems they are facing, you will have analysed them and this meeting is to present the solution phase of the sale. We need a presenting structure which will be well regarded by the majority of people in the room. We need an opening to grab their attention. They will various things buzzing around in their brains competing with your message, so you need to blast a way in to get everyone to listen to you. A startling piece of news or data is always good to grab attention. Next we need a statement of need for change. You can list up the enterprises which have gone to the wall because they couldn't make the changes needed to adjust to the demands of the market. Suggesting this is a fate awaiting many more is a good step to get people thinking about their own longevity. Very few firms are invulnerable and everyone is always worried about what comes next, in particular things they may not be properly prepared for. Japanese buyers are always very interested in what their competitors

The 80/20 Rule Of Selling We are all familiar with the 80/20 Pareto Principle, where 20% of buyers account for 80% of the sales and 20% of the salespeople, account for 80% of the revenue. There is another 80/20 split which we need to adhere to. This refers to the amount of time we are speaking relative to the buyer. Salespeople love to talk. They love to dominate the airwaves and through strength of will and determination subdue the client and make them buy. This is total nonsense. Okay you may not be that bad, but if we taped your sales call and did an analysis of how much time you spoke compared to the buyer what would we find? I will guess that it will be getting close the 80% number. There are a couple of reasons for this. In Japan, the buyer's expectation is that buyer and seller have clear and specific roles. The salesperson's job is to give their pitch and the buyer's job is to rip it to shreds. This requires that the salesperson launch straight into describing their widget and all the things that are great about it. The buyer then trounces all those arguments with why it isn't suitable or is too expensive or is out of doubtful quality. So the pitchpeople do all the talking and then get torn to bits by the buyer. The salespeople only describe their solution, when they know what the buyer needs. Prior to that they are very circumspect about what they say. Yes, they will indulge in some small talk at the beginning to build the trust with the buyer. After that though they will go rather quiet. They will ask questions about the business and how it is going. Or they may start with asking the buyer where they would like the business to be in a few years time. The intention is to discover the gap in results. This is where the listening part becomes very important, especially listening with the eyes. Matching words with body language must be a developed skill in salespeople and in the ability to read the buyer. Unsurprisingly, not every buyer wants to trot out all the dirty laundry on the firms failing to someone who just walked in off the street and who they hardly know. So what we will be told is often just the top of the iceberg and the real problems are hidden below the waterline. Our job is to find out what are the real problems and then mentally confirm whether we have a solution for their problem. To do this we have to dig a bit deeper into the issues with simple questions that will get us to heart of the matter. We may have to add in some explanation of why we want to know. This type of assurance that they can trust us doesn't have to be a retelling of our life story or of the firm glorious history. We may just simply and concisely state, "We have a broad range of solutions which have worked for our clients. Maybe, one of these solutions will also work for your firm. I have no idea, however if you will allow me to better understand the core issues facing your business, I will be able to tell you if we can help or not". This is a very disarming conversation. The key is to once having run through this reasoning, to sit there and SHUT UP. Don't explain further, don't add, don't comment, don't say a word. We must allow time for the buyer to digest what we have just said and allow them to make the decision they are prepared to trust us enough, to tell us what is really going wrong. Even when we get to the solution provision point of the conversation we have to be careful we don't start letting our mouth run off without control. As we explain certain elements of the features, benefits, application of the benefits and provide the evidence where this has worked before, we need to be careful. We have to stop at various points and check for buyer understanding and agreement that this is a viable solution. The tendency is to get lost in the detail and spend a huge amount of time thereafter dealing with objections and pushback. It is much better to flush these out along the way. In order to do that we have to learn to let the buyer make some comments on what we have said and switch the balance back to 80/20. We are all guilty of talking too much, me included. Whenever I hear I am doing all the talking, I realise I have flipped the 80/20 balance and I need to ask a question to get them talking again. It is time for me to be silent and regroup. If we keep an ear open during the conversation and if we hear too much of our mellifluous voice we know something is wrong. Stop what we are doing and have that 80/20 rule at the forefront of our focus. We will definitely make more sales and have happier customers when we do that.

How To Disagree But Still Keep Your Customer The Customer is King. How do you say "no" to the King? In ancient times, if you said "no" to the King, you would lose your head. Keep your head - learn how to say "no" to the King in the modern era. It is even worse in Japan because the customer isn't King, the customer here is God! However, the customer is not always right. Sometimes they are being unreasonable or they are requesting things which are beyond our scope to fulfill. There are times when we have to say "no" to the customer and not accept their demands. How do we disagree with the customer and still maintain our good relationship? We need to practice some self-awareness first. Are there certain words or phrases, that cause a strong negative reaction within us? If we know that when we hear words like "that is impossible" or "that is nonsense" and it triggers a strong defensive attitude inside us, we need to recognize that fact so we can control our reaction. We need to stop the release of fight or flight chemicals and allow the brain to take over. When we hear something from the customer we know is going to be a problem or trouble, we must stop ourselves from wanting to respond immediately. We need to firstly consider why we believe the opposite of what they say to be true. We have a different opinion, but why is that? What do we think, why do we think that, what is the evidence to support our viewpoint? We have to accept that we might be wrong and the customer is correct, rather than just disregarding the customer's opinion, because we haven't thought of that possibility before or we haven't done that procedure before. Here are 6 rules for disagreeing agreeably with customers: Give The Benefit Of The Doubt Give the customer the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are right and we are wrong? Don't just reject what they say out if hand. Really Listen Listen and really try and understand why they hold that opinion. We also want to feedback that we have heard what they have said and that we are genuinely trying to see things from their point of view. Stay Calm We have to commit to react unemotionally. We need to stay very calm, no matter how upset or angry the customer becomes. Use A Cushion We use a cushion to give ourselves thinking time. No "Buts" We eliminate words like "but", "however' from our responses and we replace them with the word "and". Provide Context We respond by telling a short story that delivers the context of why we believe what we believe. We don't go into providing the evidence of our beliefs without first providing the context. We need to use a story to tell the background that led us to the belief that we hold to be true or which we consider to be the best option. Only after delivering the context as a story, do we state our opinion. If we state our opinion immediately, the customer will reject it because they don't have any context against which to judge whether what we are saying is reasonable or not. For example, if the customer was very unhappy about the delivery time not being the next day, we need to give them some context as to why we can't do it the next day. Context We might say something like this, as we tell the story: "I was talking to Suzuki san in our HR division the other day at our headquarters. He told me that delivery issues have become quite a topic in Japan. He said the number of young people has halved in the last twenty years and that the projections are that they will halve again over the next forty years. This is going to have a big impact on all industries in Japan. He said, it means that young people are going to be in short supply. We see it already because jobs like delivery drivers are becoming harder to fill. He told me it now taken us three times as long as it used to, to hire people for these jobs. He said it is a nightmare if they leave because it takes many months to replace them. Every industry will start to suffer these same problems but the delivery sector is feeling the problem right now. Amazon has created a lot of pressure on the delivery sector. They are being forced to move away from same day or next day delivery as a result, because the delivery teams can't take the pressure due to understaffing". Having told that short story, we have provided context as to why we also can't maintain the same delivery systems as in the past and the customer is more likely to understand our situation and accept what we are proposing. Recommendation At this point, we would say, "We really want to maintain the same delivery timings as before, but frankly the change in Japan's demographics is now making all of us accept we need to factor in longer delivery times. Please be understanding of our position, we have no choice any more". If we just said we can't do it, we could easily get into an argument with the customer about how they believe we are going to have to do it, whether we like it or not. We can avoid that type of response if we follow the six steps. So t

Survival Tips For Stressed Out Salespeople? When we are under stress our concentration and productivity levels are much lower than normal. Sales has to be one of the most stressful occupations on the planet. It is an emotional roller coaster, where we go from one meeting feeling elated, to being totally depressed after the next meeting. We are swinging in the breeze between making our target and missing our target. Our boss is giving us a hard time when we are behind on the numbers. If we are on commission then we are not making enough money to live. These realities add to our stress levels. We have to know how to manage our stress, because we know that too much stress can affect our health and our work. One place to start is with our self-talk. We need to switch our language away from the negative to the positive. For example,the negative view would sound like this: "I feel hopeless at persuading customers". We have to switch our language to a positive view, so we say, "I can better prepare for my customer meetings". The action step attached to this would be to write down the likely objections from the customer, before you go into the meeting and have your response properly prepared. The act of preparing better for the client meeting will help you to relieve your stress. There are also some handy stress management principles we can employ. Live in day tight compartments We put pressure on ourselves by allowing sales disasters in the past drag us down. We also add additional pressure by projecting what could go wrong in the future. We imagine we can't make enough sales, so we don't have enough money, our partner leaves us as a result. Actually none of this has happened, but we worry about it nevertheless. Instead of that, don't allow the past worries or future worries into your today. Just focus on what we have in front of us. We can plan for the future, but we don't have to worry about it. Ask yourself, "what is the worst that can happen" Often we are feeling stressed but have no clear one thing to concentrate on. Call out the big problem facing us, by identifying it. When we do that, our mind gets clarity and we can start working on solutions. For example, we may not be making enough appointments with clients. We have isolated the core issue so we now get to work on fixing it. In this case, we can increase the call rate or contact rate with clients we haven't contacted in a while and drum up some business that way. Write down answers to four key questions: What is the actual problem? What are the causes of the problem? What are the possible solutions? What is the best possible solution? This is so simple but it really works. We get great clarity around where we need to concentrate our energy. Cooperate with the inevitable We can accept that the thing we fear is going to happen. Rather than continuing to worry about it, we accept that it will be the case and instead we can now concentrate on what we can do to mitigate it or reduce it. This gets us out of victim mode and into action mode and that pivot is critical to moving ourselves forward. Expect ingratitude Our expectations can lead us into stress when things we expected to happen don't happen. If we don't expect anything from other people, when they let us down, we don't feel any stress. This is because we had already discounted receiving anything from them. The client with whom we have a great relationship, buys from a competitor or doesn't choose your solution in the pitch contest. We don't take this rejection personally. We know it is never "no". Only no to the offer at this time, in its current construct. We get busy serving the next client and don't get depressed about losing one sale. These stress management principles are very practical. The key is to change our thinking about the thing that is causing us stress. We know one thing for sure, the amounts of stress we are all going to be facing in the future are not going to get smaller. Controlling our stress is a key skill set for success in sales and one we must master. So how will you apply what your learnt today in your daily sales work? Why not start by taking some other typical negative self-talk content and start creating positive versions, like"I am too busy to do all the followup" and change it to "When I plan my day, I can get the highest priority items completed" Which of these stress management principles can you practice each day, to relieve the amount of stress you are feeling? Remember, either we control our stress or it controls us. We will only face increasing levels of stress in sales, so we must master our stress management.

In Sales We Need To Create Super Re-Order Customers Here is an important mantra: We don't want a sale, we want the re-orders. That task however is getting harder and harder. Customers today are more educated, better prepared and have more alternatives than ever before. Satisfying a customer is not enough – we have to exceed their expectations and provide exceptional customer service. Customer service has only one truth – how the customer perceives the quality of the service. Forget what we think is good customer service. We have to be really clear about what is the customer's perception of good customer service. This is a totally subjective idea on the part of the customer, but that doesn't mean we can't have influence on that perception. Here is a quick audit on your understanding of the customer. How well do you know the customer's perception of high quality customer service? When was the last time you asked about how well you were doing with serving that customer? Are you assuming that because there are no claims, that the customer is fully satisfied? Do you have a clear idea of the level of service your competitor is providing in terms of customer service? The building of a strong fan base amongst your clients is a key step to becoming more successful. We all know the acquisition cost of finding a new customer is many times more expensive than deepening the scope of the relationship with an existing customer. That is fine but we need to also expand our numbers of customers. We always need more good customers, but how can we create new fans? How do we do that when there are so many rivals? Here are four approaches to consider. Have broad product knowledge Whenever we ask a salesperson a question and they cannot answer it immediately, we doubt their value to us. Often however, we salespeople can become concentrated on just a few products and lose touch with the broader perspective. We need to keep studying our total product line-up, so that we have broad knowledge to show we are professionals in our business. Prove that we can be trusted to serve the customer. So ask yourself, how well do you know your own product line-up? Have an extreme desire to help So many times, as customers, we are told "no" by salespeople. Are we ever happy about that response? Buyers are looking for salespeople who they feel are really motivated to serve. The way to prove that is to show your strong desire to serve at every customer face to face meeting, on every phone call and in every response. Great in theory but are you really doing that now? Have a sincere interest in the customer's situation We have targets to achieve, pressure to perform and so often we can become totally focused on our own situation. By the way, here is a newsflash - the client only cares about their own situation and how dedicated you are to helping them. Are you really sincere about helping the customer or are you focused on yourself, your numbers, your deadlines? Don't be in any doubt - customers can feel the difference. Understand the customer's expectations Customer expectations change, but often salespeople are not changing with them. Business moves and what was enough some months ago, may not be suitable enough now. We have to really monitor the customer's situation to see what has changed. That means we have to keep asking them about their expectations of service from us. Are we serving them in the way they want to be served. Most salespeople never want to ask this type of question because they are scared of the answer. We have to be brave and ask and if we do, we will be delivering exactly the type of service the customer wants and expects. When we do that, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors So what percentage of your customers would you count as your loyal fans? What are you currently doing to drive that percentage score much higher? Customers will become someone's loyal fan. We have to make sure that is us and not our competitor. Assume that the customer's expectations and perceptions of what they consider outstanding service will keep changing. We have to keep up with the change but are we doing it?

Sales Bad News Travels In Threes Our financial year ends in August and we are up over 20% on last year's revenue results. I should be ebullient, chipper, sanguine, fired up for the new year, but I am not. Is it because we are back to zero again, as we all face the prospect of the new financial year? That sinking feeling of , "last year was hard and here we go again, but this time with an even higher target". Maybe that is it, but it is hard to tell. There are three other things which are gnawing away at me, regarding incidents which happened this last week. Sales is an emotional roller coaster, we all know that. Well knowing that and being able to deal with the emotional downers is another thing altogether. I am a positive, upbeat person, for whom the glass is always half full. My glass got severely drained and it is still bugging me. I had a pitch for a client's business to help their sale's effort. Actually they said they wanted a "transformation programme". I had met the CEO previously and had understood what he was after. I came back to him with a comprehensive proposal. In the interim, a new HR person was recruited and I was informed we are now going to have a five entrant beauty parade. They had various needs. They wanted transformation for their senior leaders, middle level sales managers and also wanted an internal trainer-the-trainer functionality, because the size of their sale force. That cost would preclude an externally delivered vendor solution. I gave them that transformation formula. I even brought all of the training materials to the pitch, so they could see the professionalism we offer. I went through in detail what each group would need if they wanted to transform the business. This week the HR guy wrote to me and said we didn't get the business. I have no idea why, but I do know I won't find out the real reason by talking to the HR guy. All I will get will be vagary. I will seek out the CEO directly and get some feedback. We rarely ever lose pitches, so I was a bit perplexed. To be honest, my ego was bruised, hurting and I found this news depressing. The point here is that although I know intellectually, that sales is an emotional rollercoaster, it doesn't make much difference in the moment when you don't get the deal. The second piece of bad news was a delay in commencing a project. I had done a similar project for their company and they asked me to come back and do another one. That last project was a real nightmare. I was dealing with a young staff member who proved to be very demanding and sucked up a lot more of my time than was expected. Frequent changes were de rigueur and often without much actual requirement, except for whim. Frankly, I was a bit gun shy to go again. However, it was a different member of staff this time, again quite young, but I agreed. Deja vu. Very demanding, very picky, but despite recurring nightmares about last time, I decided I wouldn't throw in the towel and would tough it out. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger type of thing. Then I get the email telling me to put the project on hold. I am guessing they are shopping the project around and are putting me on ice. I was wondering what was the issue? Was this a generational thing? Both individuals are quite young in business. You have to have some degree of experience, to have perspective and to know how to judge what you are looking at. Is this why there is a gap between what we are both looking at? Another deeper thought occurred to me. Am I secretly blowing it up, because I actually I don't want to do it? I know how much time it required last time and it looks like we are going down the exact same path again? I was wondering, what is my psychology here? Am I trying to get out of doing it? Or am I too old and inflexible to deal with these demanding young whippersnapper pups? That is a depressing prospect. The third one was a case of sports negotiating. This is an ego trip for buyers, who like to see who is the sheik of the souk, the biggest wheeler and dealer, the cleverest negotiator, the bargain hunter extraordinaire. They like to play a little game of "beat down the supplier" to show how tough they are. Okay, you do run into that from time to time, but on this occasion it came from an unexpected source. You meet people in business who are attractive, charismatic, your type of person. This buyer was like that. We have a lot in common and I like the cut of his jib. He asked for some training previously and I sent him my proposal. He came back with a counter offer that was at a steep discount. I like the guy and reluctantly agreed, because it was the first business with his company. I thought , "well once he experiences our quality, he will pay the right price". My big mistake right there. So I delivered the training and then find out that the next round will be done by someone I know who used to work with us as a contract trainer. This guy has a full time job in HR and does some training on the side.

Why No Omotenashi From Some Chinese Retail Services In Tokyo? This is a controversial piece today, because I am singling out one race, one group in isolation. It is also a total generalisation and there will be exceptions where what I am saying is absolute rubbish. There will be other races and groups, who are equally guilty as well, who I am not singling out or covering, so I am demonstrating a blatant and singular bias. I know all that, but let the hellfire rain down on my head, I am just sick of some of this lousy service here in Tokyo. It is a mystery to me how the service in some Chinese restaurants here can be so oblivious to Japanese standards of omotenashi. Omotenashi is that sublime combination of anticipating and exceeding client's expectations, that has made Japanese service so famous. I love Chinese cuisine and I enjoy the high quality standard of Chinese food in Japan. They have the best, most expensive quality, very safe ingredients and really great Chinese chefs here. When I go to places in Tokyo like Akasaka Shisen Hanten in Hirakawacho or Heichinro in Chinatown in Yokohama, the service is very, very good. My observation is that is probably the case because the serving staff are Japanese or Chinese who have grown up here. Whenever I go to some "all Chinese" affairs, with only Chinese staff, I find the service is disappointing. I had this experience again recently in the Azabu Juban. It was a first and last time to go to this particular restaurant. The food taste wasn't the issue, in fact some dishes were delicious. It was the total disinterest on the part of the serving staff and their manager. You don't feel any particular need to go back there, when there are a hundred other restaurants within a five minute walk. This makes no sense to me, because when I am Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, the restaurant service is usually very good. Obviously, the more expensive the restaurant, the better the service of course. So there is nothing inherently missing in the service mentality and capability, that couldn't be applied in Japan. Why then is it so lacking in omotenashi? I remember reading a purported Chinese saying that, "A man who cannot smile, should not open a shop". Obviously, some of the Chinese staff working in these establishments I am complaining about, have never heard of that piece of ancient Chinese wisdom. Smiling, making you feel welcome, treating you well are a big fat zero in my experience. The way of serving is very perfunctory, even rough, in some cases. Japanese style restaurant table service is generally very much more refined. What is driving this difference and what does it mean for the rest of us in the service business? Perhaps some of the Chinese staff we are seeing serving in Japan are students. According to the media reports, many are actually working almost full time. They are not professionally trained service staff, in the sense that this is their career. Coming from certain parts of China and from different socio-economic backgrounds, they may have had no exposure to what good levels of service looks like. I went to China for the first time in January 1976 and have been back a number of times over the years. I studied Chinese language, history and politics at Griffith University's Modern Asian studies faculty. I like many aspects of Chinese culture and studied Tai Qi Quan for about ten years with my excellent teacher, Cordia Chu in Brisbane, before I moved back to Japan. I haven't been back to China for a while, but I don't recall the service being particularly bad when I was there last. Perhaps some of these local serving staff living here in Japan only ever eat Chinese food, so they are never exposed to how Japanese restaurants serve their clients. I find that hard to believe though. The thing that puzzles me most is that despite the fact these Chinese staff are working in Japan and are floating in a deep ocean of omotenashi, some don't seem to picking up any ideas on how to treat their clients. Why would that be? The managers are also Chinese, so they are responsible for leading their staff in the restaurants. Are they oblivious to the service market in Japan and how it functions? Are they just poor managers, who cannot place their operation in a broader context of local service standards. Are they inflexible and incapable of understanding the lifetime value of a repeater client? This is a very competitive restaurant scene here, has more Michelin starred restaurants than Paris, so you would expect that everyone, including some of these Chinese run establishments, would be doing everything they can to build a loyal, repeater client base. This challenges me to consider what we are doing in our own case, with our customer facing service. If I am going to bag some of the Chinese restaurant's service here in Tokyo, then I had better consider our own standards at the same time. We are a gaishikei or foreign run establishment here. I am not Japanese, but I am the boss.

Why We Mess Up Customer Service Poor customer service really irritates us. When we bump into it, we feel betrayed by the fIrm. We have paid our money over and we expect excellent customer service to come with the good or service attached to it. We don't see the processes as separate. In this Age of Distraction, people's time has become compressed. They are on the internet through their hand held devices pretty much permanently. We all seem to have less time thaN before so we become cross if things from the internet don't load or load too slowly. If we have to wait we don't like it, regardless of what the circumstance. We are perpetually impatient. Here is a deadly breeding ground for customer dissatisfaction. There are five elements usually driving customer unhappiness with us. Process We need processes to run our organisations on a daily basis. This includes how we communicate and align the features and value of the offering with the customer's expectations. In constant drives for great efficiencies, we tend to mould the processes to suit the organisation's needs, in prefer to the customers. Japan is a classic in having staff run the business based on what is in the manual. If a decision requires any flexibility, this is usually dismissed because the staff only do what the manual says. As the customer, we often want things at the odds with the manual or we want something that diverges from what the manual says. Take a look at your own procedures. Are there areas where you can allow the staff to exercise their own judgment? Can you empower them to solve the customer's problem, regardless of what is in the manual. Our processes often become covered in barnacles over the years and from tine to time we need to scrape them off and re-examine why we insist things can only be done in this way. Roles Who does what in the organisation. This includes agreement on tasks and responsibilities and holding people accountable to these. Japanese staff, in my experience, want their accountabilities very precisely specified and preferably to be made as tiny as possible. They are scared of making a mistake and being held accountable if things go wrong. They have learnt that the best way of doing that is to become as small a target as possible. The usual role split works well, but what happens when people leave, are off sick or away on holiday? This is when things go awry. Covering absent colleagues requires flexibility and this is not a well developed muscle in Japan. What usually happens is everything is held in abeyance until the responsible person turns up again. Customers don't respect those timelines and they imagine that everyone working for the firm is responsible for the service rather than only the absent colleague. We need a strong culture of we pick up the fallen sword and go to battle to help our customer, if we are the only person around. This is particularly the case with temp staff. They are often answering phone calls or dealing with drop in visitors and they need to be trained on being flexible and fixing the customer issue. Interpersonal Issues How customer service personnel get along with each other and other departments is key. This includes such things as attitude, teamwork and loyalty. Sales overselling and over promising customers drives the back office team crazy. They have to fulfil the order and it is usually in a time frame that puts tons of pressure on the team. This is how we get the break down of trust and animosity reigning inside the machine. This leads to a lack of communication and delivery sequences can get derailed. When colleagues are angry, they tend not to answer the customer's phone call as sweetly as we might hope. We need to be careful to balance out these contradictions and have protocols in place where we can minimise the damage. What are your protocols and does everyone know and adhere to them. Now would be a good time to check up on that situation. Direction How the organisation defines and communicates the overall and departmental vision, mission and values is key. This is the glue. We need this when things are not going according to plan. When we grant people the freedom to uphold all of these highfalutin words in the vision statement with their independent actions, then we introduce the needed flexibility to satisfy clients. Are your people able to take these guiding statements issued from on high and then turn them into solutions for clients? External Pressures The resources available to the customer service departments such as time and money become critical to solving customer issues. How much control do we give to the people on the front line to solve problems for our customers? Often we weight them down with rules, regulations and procedures, which make them inflexible. Check how much freedom you have granted to your team to fix a problem for a client? You may find that during the last recession you wound that whole process in very tight and forgot to loosen it off, after t

Typical Japanese Salespeople's Objection Handling Issues Getting pushback, rejection, disinterest when you present your solution to the client's problems is the natural state of things. Getting a sale is an exception. That is why the best salespeople are exceptional. There are so many ways to fail in sales, it is no wonder that getting to a '"yes" answer is so hard. One of the common questions or issues we get in our sales training classes from Japanese salespeople, are about how to handle the client's objections. There are some key techniques we need to be applying at this point in the sales conversation. Obviously, we should always question the objection. The words we hear are an abbreviation, a headline for a much longer reason or more elaborate reason for them not to proceed with us. We want to hear the full thinking behind their rejection of our offer. We also know that we shouldn't get busy answering the first objection they share. This may not be the real objection. Always have the tip of an iceberg picture in your mind's eye and imagine there is a big chunk of reasoning as to why it is a "no", hidden below the surface. We need to keep pushing for other reasons not to go ahead, after they have told us each one, until we have exhausted their supply. We then ask them to rank them in order with the highest priority first. That is the one we attempt to answer. When we get to this point we have to make a couple of judgement calls. Is this a real objection? Is it a legitimate reason? If it isn't, then we have not uncovered the real culprit yet, as to why they can't proceed with us. We need to keep digging for their actual issue with our proposal. If it is a legitimate reason not to proceed, we need to move on to the second judgement. Can we actually supply what they want, at the price and in the way they want it? Can we overcome the objection within our resources and within the bounds of our pricing and profit model. Some clients love to play a game called "sport negotiating". They have a big ego and want to see how hard they can push us on price. This isn't as much about the economics of the deal, as about their need to win. We may conclude we don't want to play that game and walk away. That is always my preference when I meet these types of buyers. You can usually tell from their attitude what they are doing. I would rather find a client who will become a repeat buyer and with whom I can cement a long term, rather than transactional relationship with a bully. If you conclude that you can deal with their price issue, then it is a matter of judgment on how low you need to drop your price. In Japan, once you drop it, then that becomes the ceiling and they want to push you even lower. Never go in with your best price, unless you want to get massacred. Always have some margin in there, so that if you are forced the drop the price, then you can still make the deal worthwhile from your own financial point of view. Another common objection is that they are satisfied with their current supplier and don't want to change. This objection is much harder to deal with than price. The risk averse nature of business here drives everyone to find someone they can trust and then to keep using them. It makes sense in a society which doesn't tolerate errors or failure. You may disagree with that philosophy, but nobody cares what you think. There must be some clear differentiation to what you are offering, compared to what the incumbent provides. This may be speed, quality, reliability or cost. Proving this through salesperson hot air and bluster is impossible. You need to ask for a trial or a test or a period of engagement to demonstrate why you are the superior choice. Japanese companies are always very focused on what their competitors are doing. This means that the idea that what you have is really good and will certainly be going to their competitor, to make them an even more formidable rival, if they don't buy from you now, will get people's attention. When we talk about a test or trial, expect it will be an elongated affair. No one gets rewarded in Japan for making a quick decision, but plenty of people are made to suffer if they make a wrong decision. They will want to test and observe, test and observe at their leisure, rather than addressing your preferred timing. I would rather take part in a long test maturation process with the client, than get locked into some disadvantageous pricing. We recently had that case with a global automotive company. Their foreign headquarters decided that our Japan pricing didn't fit into their global model and we should reduce it. This particular class they wanted to do, always has a long waiting list. This is at the current pricing and there is a limit on how many can take part in each class. I had no hesitation in telling them we couldn't match their expectations. I tried to educate them on different cost frameworks, country by country. I asked them if they were willing to reduce th

Generating Your Own Leads In Sales Marketing plays a key role in generating leads. They are trying to maximise the accuracy of the segmentation of the data base, to make offers that resonate specifically with different segments. They are producing content marketing pieces that will spark leads through the SEO route. Buying ad words to get pay per click activation from buyers, searching for your specific good or service is another channel. Potential buyers raise their hand when they download a white paper or an eBook from the website or leave an inquiry. However this is never enough from a sales point of view. Salespeople want to fill the top of their funnel of leads. They know they have certain ratios which will unveil the KAIs or Key Activity Indicators. If we try to email or phone a certain number of prospects, then we will get a certain amount of replies or contacts. By tracking how many we make contact with we can get a ratio of our activity relative to our success. The next stage is converting those contacts into face to face meetings. In Japan, for the vast majority of B2B sales, this is required, especially if you are a potential new supplier. There will be a ratio of success here counting appointments achieved against attempts to get a meeting. Then obviously we can count how many of those meeting led to a deal being done. That is another key ration. We can calculate the value of all the deals we did against the number of deals and work out our average sale value. If our average deal size is 1 million yen and our annual sales target is 30 million yen then we can work backwards and nominate how many original contact we need to be making to generate our target number. The problem is very few sales people have any clue what their KAI is and they just ramble thorough the year. When we know our KAI we know we need to put aside what marketing is doing because we can't control that process. We can control though, how many networking events we go to, how many cold calls we make, how many reactivation calls to orphan clients we need to make. We have a clear idea of what an ideal client looks like. We have clients in an industry who have rivals in the same business. The chances are high that the problems and issues facing one five star hotel in Tokyo will probably be shared with other similar hotels. Our insights derived from dealing with one can provide us with a battering ram to break into the other hotels. Commonly, cold calls fall on stony ground in Japan unless you know the exact name of the person you need to talk to. The lowest placed young woman on the totem pole is always designated to pick up the phone. Despite her tender years she has become a hardened, ego demolishing, expert at keeping her bosses protected against pesky salespeople. "Who are you", "Why are you calling, "We will call you back", then crickets is usually how it goes. Most salespeople just ask to speak with the sales manager, false promises are made to get rid of them and deafening silence on the return call front is all they ever experience. The Sales Manager never contacts you and you are never ever confident that young Ms. Call Killer even passed your message on to the boss in the first place. Based on our insights gained from working with similar companies in the same industry, we can try a different angle. "Hello, this is Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan, we are global soft skills training experts. We have been working with your direct competitors here in Japan. What you will find interesting is we have been having great success helping their sales teams to win new business for their Hotels. These rival sales managers have loved seeing their teams going after new business, succeeding and so substantially expanding their sales. Maybe we could do the same for you. I am not sure. Please allow me to discuss this possibility with your sales manager, to see if we can help you achieve similar success. Would you please transfer me to the sales manager?". Invariably the Sales Manager "isn't there", even if they actually are there. At this point Ms. Call Killer often goes stone motherless silent. She will not offer to take a message, as she is hoping you will crack and say "I will call back later". That makes her feel good about getting rid of you, because experience has taught her that most salespeople don't try again. She will not tell you the name of the sales manager if you ask. If you don't give up so easily and you ask to leave a message, she will take down your name and number - maybe. You have to rely on her tender mercies for your message to be passed across. Here is a key tactic. You should keep calling back every few hours, until you get to talk to the sales manager. You have to be that persistent to break through the wall. Making these cold calls needs discipline, guts, a thick hide and time. Everyday you need to make a key appointment. That is the one with yourself, to hive off time to get on the phone and hit the

Stop Slamming The Square Peg Into The Round Hole When Selling One of the most dangerous people on the planet is the salesperson who doesn't listen well enough to the client's needs. They miss the key cues, misunderstand the problem, can't override their fixation on what they want and do most of the talking during the sales call. They wonder why getting an agreement to buy is so hard. One of my sales coaching students was relating how he took the client meeting into negative territory from the very kick off of the sales conversation and then proceeded to dig the hole deeper and deeper for himself. Small talk at the start is needed to set the foundation for building the trust, as buyer and seller get to know each other. In this case, the small talk conversation went into a death spiral. This is when the redirect button is pushed to make it more meaningful for the buyer. In this case, he just lent harder on the shovel and dug faster. If we find things are not going well, then stop talking and start asking questions. This allows the buyer to feel in more control to direct things the way they want them and for you to regroup and prepare to take back the reins of the conversation. Usually we have the selling plan, but the buyer doesn't have the buying plan. They are wandering around with no direction in mind, because they expect to hear what they need from us. We need to keep that conversation on track. When we hear what the client is trying to achieve, the solutions we suggest have to be in line with delivering that. You would think that is the most logical thing in the world, but salespeople do the most surprising things. They try to redirect the client's needs, to match their own needs. If there is a higher commission being paid on one product, over the others, then they want to stress that product, regardless of whether that is the best one for the client or otherwise. They may be under pressure from their boss to push a solution that benefits the company the most. This is where you start getting into hole digging territory. The client may be following our advice because we did such a very good job of establishing rapport and building trust at the outset. When we FOIST the wrong solution on the client, we are haemorrhaging that trust immediately. The ROI we should be focused on is the client's ROI not ours. Our intrepid hero was sadly successful in convincing the client to buy the thing which would have zero return. When we had our coaching session together, I was drilling down into what would the client get in return for their hard earned money, based on the conversation that had covered what the client was trying to achieve. It was obviously zero value for the client but good for the seller, who was having trouble moving this product. Great, but this destroys your reputation in the market. You do get the sale and usually the size of the sale is a peanut, as it is the first sale. You blow all your credibility at the start and then the client tells everyone in town you are radioactive and to be careful of dealing with you. The lifetime value of the client means that the loss is enormous, when measured that way. That peanut will also be expensive, given the way it will shred your reputation. We worked on a more custom solution for the client and took the solution in a completely different direction. This customisation process is always the best idea. We tend to have ready to go, off the shelf solutions, which are cost and time effective, but these won't always match the needs of the client. The more customised the solution, the better in terms of client satisfaction, ROI and perceived value. Make the solution fit the client's needs, rather than make the client fit in with the seller's needs. No more square peg solutions please.

Really Understand Your Expectations Of Your Sales Team We hire people and they don't perform as we expected. The time passes and the numbers are not rolling in. We thought they would be more proactive and more skilled at getting new business. We fire them and start over again. Except that in Japan, you can fire them, but replacing them is a different and difficult matter these days. Recruiting salespeople is horrendous, so the retain component is the mirror piece we have to master as well. Turning the tap on in the sink, with the plug removed, isn't getting us anywhere and this revolving salesperson door is just that issue. We are wasting a lot of resources. We are often the problem though. I have a start-up founder client who is a nightmare. I have interviewed all of his direct reports and finally the big man himself. Actually, I don't want to work with his company. They can keep the money. He is the issue as to why they are having such significant staff turnover. He has a "plug and play" mentality with people. When you find a problem, you just hire someone in to fix it and then go back to running around like a headless chicken as before. In this case, the leader is the problem. ' His expectations are unrealistic with the current state of the market. He thinks we are still back in the old days, when there wasn't the same amount of job mobility and where people tended to stick around, because it was hard to get another job. He had key people jump and rather than try and fix the problem, starting with himself, he just wants to throw another body at it. There are three areas where we need to audit ourselves and our expectations. Are we sure of what we are looking for in our salespeople when we hire them? If we hire a farmer and they don't hunt, we fire them. Whose fault was that? Ours not theirs. We need to know at the very start are we bringing in another farmer here or a hunter? In Japan, farmers are much more numerous and so the chances of getting a farmer on board are statistically higher. How can we tell which is which, in the interview process? Ask the candidate about their current client base. Where did those buyers come from? If they say through the marketing team's efforts generating leads, the pool of "orphan clients", their boss or from departed colleagues, then that tells you they are farmers. If they talk about how they recruited new clients, by beating the bushes and finding them then, you have a hunter there. This is not to say one is better than the other, but that in Japan you are more likely to wind up with a farmer than a hunter. Once you know that, you adjust your expectations and know you need to get busy feeding them. Another case is how fast we expect people to get up to speed. When the months roll buy and the numbers don't role in, we get frustrated. We need revenues and we need them now. The costs in salary, insurances and expenses flow out like a flood and the revenues from new salespeople comes in like a trickle. Where do we get our expectations from? Are they rooted in numbers, experience or hope. Often it is the hope component, followed by our personal experience and rarely are any comparative numbers involved. It is always dangerous to judge others through the lens of ourselves. "I did it, so they can do it too", makes sense at one level, except when you uncover that very few other salespeople are like you. A better analytical tool is performance. Take every salesperson who has worked for your organisation over the last five to ten years and trace them all back to Day One when they started. Track their revenue production monthly. In this way you can compare like for like. There will be some averages you can apply to give you a measuring stick, against which to gauge their output. If you have a sufficient number of people to look at, you can take out the worst and the best performer and form an average from those left. If you don't have enough people, then a straight average is enough. This gives you quarter by quarter, what, on average, you should expect from your people after they join. This has nothing to do with what you did and so is a more objective means of defining performance and tempering your expectations. The third thing to look at is your sales incentive scheme. American style 100% commission systems are not much in evidence in Japan, except in very dubious occupations, closely associated with skulduggery. Usually salespeople are on fixed salaries with bonuses. This is not a great system and so try to change it. A better case is where the base salary will be lower and a percentage of sales as commission is paid. If your scheme is mainly to benefit your pocket, then don't be surprised if people don't get excited about it. I have a friend who is mean, when it comes to paying salespeople and has tremendous turnover, wondering why. I keep telling him why, but he is too greedy about getting the money and not spreading it around with his team, so he refuses to change. I jus

Presenting Manufactured Products Industrial products are rarely sexy. They tend to be very technical, specification heavy and chunky. They are normally being presented in a catalogue of products. The pricing, quality and the after sales service tends to be the differentiator with the rival suppliers. The salespeople presenting these often boring, utilitarian products, are also usually do so in a boring, functional manner. Not much pizzazz going on. This flies in the face of what we know though about buyers buying us, buying our confidence and being injected with our belief in the product. We don't have to present these types of products in a dull way. The features of the product are usually a mass of measurements. This can be dry as a subject for getting buyers excited. However what about the benefits of the product? This is where we should be able to shine in our presentations. Intellectually, we all know we don't buy the product. We buy what the product will do for us. Describing that part of the occasion is where we can stand apart from our competitors. The problem is we forget about this bit and we just drone on and on about the spec. Talking about the benefits of the product purchase are absolutely fundamental in sales. However, rather than just talking about the benefits of the product, we need to be outlining how the benefit can be applied in their company. Having a benefit and doing something with it are not the same thing. We need to be drawing out word pictures of how our product can help them in their business. Usually it is through better efficiencies around life of the product or better quality, leading to fewer maintenance issues. It might be the ease of use of our product when compared to others or the ease of instillation. Whatever it is, this is where we need to capture the attention of the buyer. By taking the discussion beyond the spec, to the integration into the customer's systems, their staff's daily interactions with the product, the their customers happiness with the finished item, then we can bring a dry subject alive. Numbers lend themselves to comparisons very easily, so we can contrast our product with the alternatives. We can break the cost down, amortised over a long period of time. The lifetime of a lot of industrial products can be quite long, so long range number crunching works well. It has to be related back however, to today though. We need to provide context about how this long term saving will translate into financial benefits today. There may be some speed of delivery elements creating savings on inventory or storage costs. Improved quality deliverables may create benefits for the customer, which allow them to pass on savings and gain market share. Tax savings and investment costs amortization allowances may in fact save money. The key is to find things which can be applied to today's bottom line. If there are less maintenance issues, then we can calculate the labour costs and down time savings that it brings. If it is easier to install, then we can talk about the diminished disruption to overall operations, the lesser need for technical specialists or the speed of installment leading to cost savings. Finding creative ways to express these differences is one part of the equation and the other part is the way we present the information. Charts and graphs are basic but good visual clues for our buyer to see the difference for themselves. These days we can have video delivered via our iPads, which can tell the story of how great this will be for the buyer. Seeing is believing and it doesn't have to be all spreadsheets, still photos and matrices. This is particularly so around marshaling evidence to prove what we are saying. Seeing the product installed and operating gives a better sense of reality to the buyer. Interviews with happy customers and them talking about the advantages is very compelling. The humble blender became a viral social media sensation in the hands of some creativity. Blendtec, like many manufacturers, producers blenders. To demonstrate the toughness of their blender they hit upon the genius idea of shooting a video called "Will It Blend". Twelve years ago they started blending mobile phones, iPads, glow sticks, hockey pucks and other unlikely items. The one on glow sticks got 12 million views on YouTube and the iPad video got 18 million views. Tom Dickson, the President, is dressed up in a lab coat, has the industrial glasses on and away he goes. Today they are still getting hundreds of thousand of views of their videos. Everyone else is just making blenders. My point is industrial products don't have to be boring in the hands of a skilled salesperson. Yes going through the spec is critical, but that is not enough. By the way, is that all that your salespeople are capable of doing? Are they fully boned up on describing the benefits to the buyer. Can they then take those benefits and integrate them into the client's business and show how when applied t

How To Use Sales Progression Bridges With Clients We have a defined sales cycle in our interactions with our clients. We build the trust, ask the key questions to understand need, present the solution, deal with pushback and ask for the business. Of course, there is the pre-meeting preparation and the post meeting follow up, but the actual sales call runs through this cycle. Between these key phases there are bridges we need to put in place to make the sales talk flow run smoothly. What do you do now? Do you have defined phases or is it looking like spaghetti, rather than a road map? One of the key bridges is the very start Of the conversation. In Japan this usually starts in the lobby or their office, as you wait for your buyer or when they enter the meeting room their staff have shown you to. Many Western countries have gone all modern and dispensed with business cards or meishi but what a gold mine they are in Japan. I usually receive the meishi English side up, facing me, because that is the polite format in Japan. I read the English side and then flip it over because the Japanese side will have better information. If the kanji for the name is a bit on the rare side, I will mention that and ask if their family comes from a particular region where that name is more common. This is handy because it shows them I can read Japanese, I know about Japan well enough to know their name is rare and it gets them talking. Or I might just ask them about the position they hold inside the company. Japan is pretty good at small talk before we get into the main business. That is not how we do it in the West. I remember meeting a high powered, foreign President of a major multi national here recently, who had just arrived from the US for his Japan posting. I started with some small talk, got about five seconds into it when he announced, "Let's get down to business". I was fine with that but I was also thinking he was going to have a tough time in Japan, because he doesn't understand the niceties of Japanese social interaction. Having hopefully built up a convivial atmosphere with the buyer, we get into the sales conversation proper. Japanese salespeople won't ask the buyer questions because it is considered rude to ask the buyer, aka GOD, questions. This means they go forth blindly delivering their pitch. We have 155 training modules in our line up, so how would I know which ones to focus on, if I didn't ask some questions first? Pitching is a sure formula for rejection in my experience in Japan, compared to finding out what the buyer needs. So we need to get permission from the buyer to ask questions, as the next bridge in order to move the conversation forward.' We do this by saying, "We did XYZ for ABC company. Maybe we could do the same for you. I am not sure, but in order for me to know if that is possible or not would you mind if I asked a few questions?". Or, we could say, "I have never been to the American Congressional Library, but I imagine it with books running from floor to the ceiling five stories high. I have the same thing in my brain, regarding not books but solutions for client problems. We have such a huge line up. In order for me to select only the most relevant, pin point solutions for your issues, would you mind if I asked a few questions, so I can narrow down what I should talk about?". Having been able to ask our questions, we now make the decision for the client as to what they should buy. We only introduce those solutions and no more or we have the danger of overwhelming the client with so much detail, they can't buy anything. Before we get into the solution, we need to use a bridge to inform them that we can help them. We might say, "Thank you and now I understand clearly what you are looking for. The specification, quality and speed of delivery required are all with in our capability. Allow me to take you through the details". Or, "Having listened to what you need, I have refined our range, down to the best solution to fit your needs. Please let me take you through it". At the end of the solution presentation process of feature-benefit-application of the benefit- evidence, we go into a trial close, as a bridge to the next stage of the sales cycle. We say, "So how does that sound so far?". We are trying to flesh out any further questions, clarifications or objections. When we face an objection such as "your price is too high", we need a bridge to be put in place before we attempt to answer it. We should always smile sweetly and say, "Thank you. May I ask why you say that?". And then shut up, add nothing more, make no interventions, just sit there in silence until they answer us, even if we have to wait until hell freezes over. At the end of our explanation dealing with their concerns, hesitations and objections, we just say, "So how does that sound, have I answered all of your concerns?". We want to know if there are any hidden objections or sticking points preventing the deal from going ahead.

The Mental Game Of Sales There are two players in this mental game of sales. The buyer and the seller and they are playing with entirely different strategies. For the buyer, the idea of a salesperson symbolises risk. Can they trust this person? Their experience and a variety of media images, have coalesced to ensure buyers are always sceptical about people trying to sell them stuff. As we say, "We all love to buy, but none of us want to be sold". That is why all that American style hard sell, tricky closes, tie downs etc., fall flat on their face here in Japan. I enjoy watching Grant Cardone's sales videos but that aggressive style of selling will never work here in Japan. Buyers everywhere are cautious when it comes to dealing with salespeople, but ever more so in this country. Risk aversion is super powerful in Japan. This is not the country of declaring bankruptcy then making a stunning comeback with your next company. This is fail once then you disappear forever. The credibility is gone and with so are you. There are no second chances in Japan. This applies inside companies too. The sizes of the salary packages for Japanese executives would seem a joke in America. This means that all the way down the line the rewards are not that huge. The salaries are good but not spectacular. The upside of taking risks is small and the downside huge so the clear lesson in Japan is "don't take risks". Again, by definition dealing with a new supplier is risky. The unknown in Japan is fearsome. The tried and trusted are always preferred over the unfamiliar and untested. This is us though – the untested, the new seller. We are always going to be unknown to the buyers at the start. So as salespeople we begin below the waterline and have to work our way up. We have to demonstrate to the buyer that we can be trusted. We can do this by employing referrals from satisfied customers, starting small with some demonstrations, small tests, trial periods, free samples, limited orders etc. We need to establish a track record that reduces the fears of the buyer about making mistake. The mental game on the seller's part is about confidence. We are all mainly failing in sales. We don't get every order. We don't get every appointment. We get rejected more often than when we get an agreement on a deal. Now Japan is a country of face. Losing face is a big deal here socially, so everyone is hell bent to make sure they don't get themselves into situations where they will lose face. Asking for the order may mean you lose face if they say no. Ergo, don't ask for the order. Just leave the end of the sales call vague and don't try and close the deal. Walking up to strangers at a networking event and introducing yourself may result in your being rejected and losing face, so better to only talk to the people you already know. The fact you don't meet many new people is fine because you didn't lose face. Not asking the buyer any questions and just launching straight into your pitch is fine, because you won't lose face. The fact that you are flying blind and have no idea if anything in your pitch is relevant or interesting to the buyer is better than being rejected and losing face. The buyer is God in Japan, so better not to annoy God with any questions. The upshot of all of this in Japan is that salespeople are very strong with existing buyers and very weak regarding getting new clients. We hear this all the time from company Presidents. They cannot get their sales teams to focus on expanding the size of the business by finding new buyers. They don't want to do cold calling because of the difficulties associated with at. They don't like networking, because of the difficulties associated with that too. They don't ask their existing buyers for referrals because they don't want to lose face in case the customer says no. The Japanese world in sales is small. So when we put these two mental games together, where the supreme sceptic meets the timid, not much happens. We can't do too much about the sceptic but we can do a lot with the timid. We can give them the means to break out and become much more professional in their sales life. They are woefully undertrained and so are wandering around clueless, just aping what their seniors have been doing. Here is the bad news. The seniors are also clueless, so it is sad cycle of despair in sales in Japan. Action Steps Mentally place yourself in the mind of the buyer with all their fears about salespeople Definitely ask God, the buyer, for permission to ask questions before you present any solutions If the buyer says NO, we don't lose face because the buyer isn't rejecting us, just our offer, at this time, in this construct, with these terms, in this budget cycle

Keep Selling After The Sale The sales agreement is followed by the delivery of the product or service. In some cases they are immediate and in others there is a time delay. It is often the case that after the agreement to buy has been achieved we move onto the next deal and a new client or opportunity. In the prospecting phase we can become extremely busy running around town beating the bushes and trying to conjure up some revenues to meet our targets. The delivery of the product or service is usually done by someone in the back office, down at the factory, an agent or a contractor and not by the salesperson. Schedules get booked up and there is the danger we have not made a sufficient effort to get ourselves into the diary of the buyer, after they have received the goods or service. We may have moved on to the next deals and are fully preoccupied with them. We have received our commission and are happy. Bad move. We should without fail, always arrange to see the buyer after delivery. We want to know a number of things. If it was a product was it in the format and at the quality standard that they expected. Better to know this earlier rather than later because then we can fix it immediately. In Japan, speed is key and there are so many interlocking pieces in business here. Storage costs are high, so everyone gets by with minimum stock and expect regular top ups, as the business demand increases. Those down the line in the food chain becoming very irate when they have promised something to their own buyers and we cannot deliver it because of some logistical mess or quality issues. We need to be there on the spot to rectify the situation and quickly. We also need to be there to get feedback on the degree of satisfaction in play. We promise a lot as salespeople and we can be very sold on what we are selling, but sometimes the buyers are less enthusiastic. We want know to what extent that are still sold on the product. In some cases it will be because there is the reorder prospect and in others a chance to cross sell or upsell. The best time to talk about any of these things is upon delivery, when the client has had a chance to gauge the reality, against what we told them. If the two coalesce then we are in a good position to talk further business. Japan likes to test the seller. Often we are given a smallish order, to see how we perform. Everyone is concerned about mistakes or problems and their risk aversion meter is always finely calibrated in this country. If we pass the test, then there is the possibility of more business. The next time there will be a slightly larger order. This keeps repeating itself, if we show we are able to provide a consistent, reliable level of service to the buyer. Similarly the client may have many needs, some of which they didn't mention in the first meeting. Something may have happened in the market or the business since that first meeting or they may just be waiting to see how much they can trust us. Fortunately we are sitting in the meeting room across from the buyer to find out if there is a greater need. If we are still chasing down new buyers, we may be missing this chance to build a deeper relationship with this specific buyer. We have a matrix we use in our sale's training for account development. Across the bottom we attach the name of each client for that column. Down the left side we list the name of each product we deal with for each row. We place an A for products or services we currently supply, a B for items which have high probability or interest the buyer and a C for those with less scope for success. What is always horrifying is how many additional opportunities exist to further sell to the buyer, which we do not realise. We get stuck in a rut with only a few possibilities when there are actually many more chances to become a key partner for that firm. This is how hard it is, "I am very pleased to hear you are so happy with our service. May I ask you if there are other needs you currently have, with which we may be able to assist you?" The trouble is we don't take the time to seize the opportunity of a satisfied customer, to ask for more business when there is a heightened state of happiness on their part. This is also the time to ask for a referral. "Do you know anyone…" is a disaster of a question, because if we leave it too broad and wide ranging, they have to process the entire known universe and it is too much for them. We need to narrow it down. "Thinking of your golf group, can you think of someone who would also benefit from the solution you are enjoying today?". This is much tighter and easier to answer as they see the faces of the members of the group in their mind. Busy is good, but sometimes we become too desperate and too busy to close the next deals that we neglect the money left of the table from further business or from great referrals to new business. Action Steps Always schedule in time for the buyer after they have received the product or serv

Be Careful Of Friendly Fire When Selling Sales is usually a solitary life. You head off to meet customers all day. Your occasional return to the office is to restock materials or complete some processes you can't do on-line. Japan is a bit different. Here it is very common to see two salespeople going off to meet the client. If you are selling to a buyer, it is also common to face more than one person. This is a country of on the job training and consensus decision making, so the numbers involved automatically inflate. Even in Western style operations there is more of a tendency to send more than one person to the sales meeting. Often, there is a need for a technical person or someone with highly specialised knowledge to attend the buyers meeting. This can present some issues if there is no plan for the meeting. I was coaching a salesperson recently who related a horror story to me. The person in question is relatively new to sales, so still finding their way. A more experienced salesperson from a different division was joining the meeting. The intention was to provide more than one solution to the buyer. Without any prior discussion, the accompanying salesperson offered 70% off the pricing in exchange for a volume purchase, in order to grow the relationship. Hearing this, I was so shocked, I nearly blew my coffee out through my nose. There are so many things wrong with this vignette. These are both salespeople on a base and commission arrangement. One salesperson is hacking into the commission of the other, for a product line-up they don't represent. This is outrageous behavior. If you are in that meeting and your partner blurts out a combustible like that, you cannot reel it back or reduce its lethality. It is stated, out on the wild now and you have to live with that statement having been uttered by your side. This was first meeting too, so the damage is even worse. Now the client automatically discounts any rack rate or stated pricing by 70%, because that is what you have trained them to do. When you are in a first meeting in Japan, it would be reasonably rare to even get into pricing. The first meeting has some fixed requirements. The first is to build the trust with the buyer. They don't know you so they are suspicious. They are not sure if your word can be trusted, whether you are smart enough to deal with them or if they like you. This takes a good chunk of time to achieve. You also have to understand if there is any point in talking at all. Do you have what they need. In order to make that judgement, you need to be asking them questions. What are they doing now? Where would they like to be? If they know that then why aren't they there already? What will it mean for them personally if this goes well? We have to be running a scanner over them to understand their needs and then match it up with our catalogue of solutions. All of this takes time. We usually only get an hour with the buyer in Japan, so we need to grab as much information and insight as we possibly can and then high tail it out of there. Back at the lab we brew up the perfect solution and craft it into a killer proposal. Now we go back and present the solution. They may want us to email it to them, but with every fibre in our body we resist that option. We never ever want to be sending an unprotected proposal to the buyer. It needs us right there alongside it, to underline the value attached to the pricing and deal with any questions or misunderstandings which may emerge. We only talk price in the second meeting and we never start with a discount. We offer the set price and this is the anchor that sets the terms of the discussion. We may drop the price in exchange for a volume purchase but by 70%? That is the stupidest thing I have heard in a while in sales. As it turns out, I know the guilty party in this case, so it is even more shocking. They should have more common sense. The problem is they state it and there is nothing you can do. Common sense is not common. The horse has bolted for our hero in this story but we should all take note. Don't expect that the people accompanying you to have common sense, especially if they are selling a different line of product from you and they have no skin in the game concerning a heavily discounted sale of your offering. Before the meeting, set the ground rules, just in case. "When we get to my line-up explanation, I will be the one making the offer and that includes pricing. When I state the price, absolutely do not speak. The number will generate some tension in the room. Do not release that tension by adding a comment or a justification or anything else. Be silent as the tomb". Fix the way you will both handle the components of the meeting before you get anywhere near a client. Be very direct with what you want. This is your livelihood derived from your commission we are talking about here. Don't let an uninterested party destroy your pricing arrangements. Once they shoot their mouth off it is t

Storytelling In Sales For Fun And Profit Salespeople are brilliant on telling the client the detail of the product or service. When you think about how we train salespeople, that is a very natural outcome. Product knowledge is drummed into the heads of salespeople when they first join the company. The product or service lines are updated at some point, so again the product knowledge component of the training reigns supreme. No wonder they default to waxing lyrical about the spec. These discussions however, tend to be technical, dry, unemotional and rather boring. We know we buy on emotion and justify with logic. If we know that, then why are we spending so much time on the logic bits? Finding relevant stories to wrap the product or service up inside is the answer to getting clients emotionally involved. For example, I could say, "Dale Carnegie has an excellent sales programme that is very complete and comprehensive". All true but very dry in the telling. Or I could say, "In 1939 Dale Carnegie decided to revolutionise sale straining. In those days, if your company provided sales training you were trained but if they didn't, you had to work it all out for yourself. Dale Carnegie introduced the first public training classes for salespeople. He created the material with Percy Whiting, one of the top securities salesmen in America at that time". The second telling is a story and more engaging. It adds impressive elements about Dale Carnegie's thought leadership about sales training, his partnership with an expert salesman to create the programme and the longevity of the training methodology. These are all USPs or unique selling propositions wrapped together in a story. In this way they are more easily absorbed by the listener. We think in pictures, so we need word pictures to be employed in our storytelling. When we read books we tend to best remember the stories being told. We all grow up listening to stories so our brains are hard wired to remember them with just one exposure. A famous American sales trainer Charlie Cullen in the 1950s was one of the first to record his sales training on vinyl LPs. His recommendations on what salespeople should do, were all backed up by examples conveyed through stories. In more modern times, Zig Ziglar's whole approach to sales training was telling a series of parables for sales. Growing up in America's Bible Belt, perhaps lessons communicated through parables came natural to him because of the culture of bible study in those regions. Brian Tracy, another great sales trainer is constantly mixing science and psychology with story telling to get his point across. Gary Vaynerchuk the modern marketing guru is a master story teller. They are almost exclusively about himself, but that is his style – supremely confident, self-opinionated, self-absorbed and constantly drawing on his own experience. He has a huge following of fans, including me. What he teaches is easy to follow because of the way he employs stories to get his key messages across. So look into your line-up of products or services and pick out the stories that go with each item. It may come from the history. Or it may be the technology. It may be client stories about users and we relate what happened to them. We need to look for an angle that will make the story interesting for the buyer. It should bolster the USPs of the offering and project pots of value. We don't necessarily need a Hollywood production here in the storytelling. It doesn't have to be War and Peace either. Let's keep them brief and to the point. If we can engage the listener's emotions and bring them into the story, then we are succeeding. This takes some work and some creativity. This is why it is often a good practice to involve everyone in the sales team to work together to brainstorm some great stories. There is no doubt stories work. When I record my own sales talk I realise how many stories I am employing. When I listen to the gurus of sales training their whole underpinning platform is built on stories. They work, so let's start creating them and using them with our buyers.

Customer Service: Problems and Solutions Things go wrong. Deliveries don't turn up or are incorrect. Dates and deadlines are missed. The quality promised doesn't eventuate or live up to the promise. Internal communication isn't working well so the coordination of the delivery of the service is confused. One part of the organisation oversells the deal and the other bit cannot deliver on the inflated promises. Customers complain. Japanese customers in particular, really complain. Most of this society is rather muted but they let it all hang out, when they are unhappy about some service or product delivery gone wrong. PRIDE is the problem. This is an acronym for the usual five suspects causing the issues. Process This is the accumulation of how the organisation has divined how to best operate. This involves communication and aligning the features and value of the product or service with customer expectations. Roles Who does what in the organisation? This includes agreement on tasks and responsibilities and holding people accountable to these. Japan is genius at making sure no one takes responsibility for anything. The consensus decision making system means we are all responsible, so none of us are individually responsible. Interpersonal issues How well do the customer service personnel get along with each other and with other departments. This includes such things as attitude, teamwork and loyalty. Marketing hates sales, sales is hated by the back office, everyone hates IT. Because mistakes are so seriously frowned upon in Japan, everyone tries their hardest to shift the blame elsewhere. This leads to internal feuds, strife, vendettas and internal guerrilla warfare. Direction How the organisation defines and communicates the overall and departmental vision, mission and values is critical. Japan is curious in that those at the bottom can quite wilfully ignore what those at the top want to happen, if they don't agree with it. Poor performance and not following direction won't get you fired in Japan, so in a way, the troops are in constant state of rebellion. Senior management imagine that middle management is making sure everyone is on board with the direction of the company. Not true. The "what" is communicated and the "how" is worked out, but the "why" has often gone missing in action. External pressure The resources available to the customer service department such as time and money can be insufficient. There may or may not be capacity to control your own destiny. Okay, so what can do about all of this PRIDE coming before a fall? We need to get consensus and collaboration about solving the issue. We begin by involving people from each section to form a project team to look at the root causes of the issues. Putting a band aid on the wound doesn't deal with why the wound was there in the first place. We craft a statement of the problem. We need to define exactly what is the issue we want to deal with. There may be a lot of noise surrounding the problem, but we need to cut through to the essence. Having identified what the issue is we now need to look for the drivers, the causes. We need to trace back to the source of the problem. If that is not forthcoming then that tells us that our systems are weak and unclear. Using brainstorming techniques we now look at possible solutions we could apply. There are no dumb ideas at this stage and no evaluation taking place. We want to be awash with ideas and we will sort them out in the next step. Taking the ideas, we attach priorities to them, to isolate out which ideas are the strongest. We now attach names, milestones, budgets, evaluations, etc. to the plan, to put the solution in place. We monitor it and make changes where needed. We need excellent communication about what is happening. We need to make sure the key people are involved and that everyone is committed to fixing the issues. Despite all of this excellent planning, future issues will arise. We have to be vigilant and ensure that we can take quick action, employing this system immediately. Making modifications on the way through is way better than having to build everything from scratch. Keep this template handy and roll it out whenever major incidents pop up. We never lack for challenges in business so there will always be plenty of scope for refining our skills through opportunities to practice.

Why Everyone Hates Salespeople We don't deserve it, well most of us don't deserve it, but there is a very strong negative perception of salespeople. Pushy salespeople, dishonest salespeople, bait and switch salespeople, disappearing after the sale salespeople, the list goes on. We only meet that client once, but they have met so many dodgy salespeople in the course of their careers. They have seen the worst of everything in sales by the time we get to them. We might be sweetness and light, but those who have gone before have muddied the waters. We start from underneath the water line in terms of trust and have to rise up into the fresh air, to show we are here to help the buyer succeed. Stereotypes about salespeople abound and like me, I think you will struggle to come up with one that is positive. We have to show we are different. The good news is that surveys show that buyers still look to salespeople for advice and information on their purchases. This is natural because hopefully the seller will have deep and expert knowledge on the suitability of the product or service for the buyer's needs. We do this ourselves when we are out consumer shopping. We ask the clerk about the product we are going to buy and we can tell immediately whether they know what they are talking about or not. When we are being "sold" by a salesperson an alarm bell goes off in our brain. We must remember that everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Listening skills are always a struggle in sales. Our brains are very concentrated so we are constantly filtering what we hear, searching for signs of interest or signs of resistance. We race ahead of the conversation, start tuning the buyer out and put all of our brainpower into the wondrous comment we are going to make. If they waffle on too much, we might lose our thread or they may change the subject before we can inject this gem, so we cut them off and talk over the top of them. We need to let them be heard, check for understanding to make sure we really have got it, before we begin introducing our solution. It is natural to talk about ourselves, our company and our products and services. What happens from Day One of joining the firm? We are taken through the hard core details of the product, because product knowledge is considered a foundational stone in building a sales career. This is all true, however some organisations don't venture beyond this. They get stuck on themselves and neglect to teach their salespeople about spending time understanding the customer. The customer needs to know their needs are understood first before we can even try to build the trust. If we begin our discussion like this, "Thank you for your time today, let me tell you about us and what we do", then that is pretty average and sadly somewhat standard. It would be better to start, "My only role here today is to help you grow your business. I would like to know if that is possible and the way to do that is to clearly understand your business and what you need. In the process I will show, if it makes sense, where we can fit into the picture". Which conversation would you prefer with your buyer hat on? When I started selling encyclopaedia's door to door, my first job out of High School, we had to memorise word perfect, a twenty five minute sale's pitch, coordinated with leafing through the gorgeous product pages. Many salespeople are following a script today as well. It might be those dreadful pitches we get over the phone, where you can hear from the cadence that they are reading it off a screen. Or it might be the pitch of a thousand deliveries. The salesperson has given this so many times they are bored with it. The lifeblood has been drained from the words and phrases and it is dead on arrival. If you are hearing too much of just your voice, ask a question and shut up. Get the buyer talking, because that is where all the useful information you don't already know is located. Flailing arms, wild eruptions of energy, piercing eye contact, loud delivery, exaggerated body language all point to a salesperson out of control. Their enthusiasm for what they are doing has trumped their common sense. Perky is good in some cases. Overly perky is not and there is a clear line between the two. The problem is what is the preferred style of the buyer? Are they conservative and see all this excess energy as childish. Are they shy and retiring and want to call for sunglasses, because of all the radiation glare coming off the salesperson? We need to channel our energy effectively and appropriately depending on who we are sitting in front of. The failing salesperson has one calibration, no matter who they meet. Everyone gets the same treatment. I might like overly perky myself, but I might be a small minority of buyers, so what happens to the others? They all get put off by you and you get put out the door. Remember to tailor your communication style to what the buyer likes and you will find it much easier to make

Why Japanese Salespeople Won't Question The Buyer Consultative selling, value selling, insight selling, etc., all rely on one crucial factor to be successful. That is the use of questions to get enough information to make sure the buyer hears what they need to hear, in order to choose that salesperson to buy from. This problem is not exclusive to Japan. There are failing salespeople scattered all around the world, because they are making the most basic mistakes. There is an astronomical amount of free and paid information available today about the best practices of selling. There is always a big swathe being cut right through the middle of this output devoted to asking the buyer questions. Despite all of this goodness, the majority of salespeople never study anything and so fail to drink from the sale's fountain of youth. Whenever we teach salespeople in our sale's courses, we invariably find their questioning skills are either non-existent or very shabby. Once they get the structures and the practice, we see them become much more professional in sales. In other words, they can do it. So what is it with Japanese salespeople that they won't ask the buyer questions? During a recent sale's training session the following reasons were offered up by the Japanese salespeople taking the programme. Here are seven reasons why salespeople here say they won't ask the buyer questions during the sales call. They worry about angering the buyer Somehow the buyer is perceived to be quick to temper, anger and unhappiness if they are questioned. The idea is that this is not the behaviour the buyer is expecting and a frosty sales call is in scope immediately if questions are asked. They fear they will be insulting them There is the fear that the salesperson might ask a question which the buyer can't answer and the buyer will lose face. This is insulting and a guarantee that the salesperson will never do any business with that company ever again. I have experienced this myself. We deal with a lot of HR people who are looking for training on behalf of line managers. When I asked the HR team certain needs based questions they clearly had no idea, because they weren't briefed or had no insight. They said they wanted my pitch. I resisted that option. Instead I innocently asked if I could talk directly to the line manager, to find out what I needed to know. I was immediately bundled straight out the door. They feel it is being too direct The types of questions needed to be asked are quite specific and quite direct. What are you problems, what is not working, where are you failing, why aren't you fixing it, etc. The whole culture here survives through indirectness, vagaries, tonnes of grey. Ambiguous conversation is a well refined art in Japan. Asking direct, pointed questions upsets the social harmony, so this must be avoided. Concerned the quality of their questions may be too poor Asking a dumb question is also a fear. That would be embarrassing and show a lack of professionalism or a lesser intellect. It reveals poor research before the meeting and so a cavalier attitude toward the buyer. You have to know the industry well to hone in on pertinent issues. Failure to ask smart questions says you are clueless and not to be taken seriously. Better to keep that dirty little secret to yourself, by keeping your mouth shut. The buyer will feel you are trying to snag the company's internal secrets Asking about the current state of the business, the firm's plans, strategies, pricing, delivery quantities, activities etc., is usually confidential information and it is highly presumptuous and arrogant to be asking for this forbidden data. They just get straight into their pitch and don't think to ask questions Because salespeople are mainly trained by the untrained, that is to say, their seniors, who were trained in the same sad way by their seniors too, the bloodline of question asking ability ran out decades ago. Pitching without having any clue what the buyer needs, never even registers in the salespeople's mind as an issue because they think their job is to turn up and go through the flyers or the product catalogue. They think, "Questions? Who needs questions, when I am here to tell the client everything about the product, so they can buy it". The buyer is God and God is too high in status for a salesperson to be asking for anything I remember when I first got to Japan, I noticed that very low ranking people in very large companies, were treated as superior by the Presidents of much smaller firms. Social hierarchy is very defined here by both the size of the company and the rank of the individual. By definition the buyer always outranks the seller. The buyer's point of view is that the salesperson will pitch their offer and the buyer will tear it to shreds and reject it. No questions brooked, entertained or tolerated when God is involved in the sale. Therefore salespeople are in no social position to be asking anything to God, the buyer.

What To Do When You Screw Up The Delivery Sales is the front of house part of business but often the delivery of the product or service is done by someone else. They say that the real measure of the service culture of a company is the decision by the guys on the loading bay not to drop the customer's package. They are not highly paid, the job is pretty dull, boring and thankless. If you can get the people at the bottom of the hierarchy to buy into the vision, mission and values regarding customer service then you are a rare bird. Most of the time the disconnect between what the suited denizens of the executive floor, with their thick carpet, tasteful, expensive paintings and carefully selected executive assistants are thinking is taking place and what is really going on, are light years apart. Sales is often a hotbed of exaggeration. Wild and fanciful promises are made to secure the sale at which point the back office gets involved. Production deadlines are totally unrealistic, the pricing is a sad joke that won't stack up, the quality level promised cannot easily be achieved. Bad things start to happen because now the system is being subject to trauma. The delivery is entrusted to the lowest common denominator for reliability and performance. The "care factor" hovers close to zero. The customer's promises are vaporised and they are not happy. In Japan the blame game is well established. Mistakes are not acceptable in Japan, so first order of business when making a mistake is to take zero responsibility for anything. The second order of business is to hide the mistake if possible. Absolutely no early advice to the boss that there is a problem. Keep it under wraps in the hope the boss never finds out at all. If that doesn't work, then deny everything. Failing that, blame somebody else. The group accountability system here is genius in avoiding individual retribution. We are all responsible, so none of us are responsible. Perfect. Does the customer just roll over and accept this. Absolutely no way. They go on attack and are relentless on getting justice. Knowing this you have to wonder why the guilty parties don't fess up and accept the blame? In litigious societies like the USA, no one accepts blame for anything, because they know they are going to court against a fired up lawyer looking for their percentage of the judgment. Well in Japan, they do eventually take responsibility , but only after being given a thorough tongue lashing by the buyer. Japan is great for turning up bearing gifts, usually some food items like expensive biscuits, cakes or fruit from a major Department Store, like Takashimiya or Mitsukoshi. A lot of deep bowing is also required while repeating set phrases like "I am sorry, I have no words…". It sounds better when expressed in Japanese, but that is the raw translation. At this point the unhappy party berates the offender for their failures. If it is a serious enough problem, then the top brass get rolled out to atone as well. This is usually a last resort though. What do we need to do? Creating the right culture in the company is key. Make sure the WHY is understood by everyone. Also, there needs to be the right approach to handling mistakes. If the team know they are not going to be executed for mistakes, then the chances of finding out early go up. Bosses going apoplectic when problems arise and publically balling out the errant, ensures a culture of keeping problems a secret. We don't want that because if we can get on to the problem early, we can usually limit the damage. The boss has the money and power to fix things, so the sooner they get involved the better. It also pays to get the boss bowing to the customer from the start, rather than resisting this. By wheeling in the big boss, we can demonstrate our sincerity in how seriously we are taking this issue. There was a problem with some business in Kobe. The amount of money involved wasn't much. Nevertheless, I got on the Bullet Train went down there, did a lot of bowing and saying sorry and then came back to Tokyo. That blew off my whole day. However, if you want to establish the right culture about customer service, then you must lead from the front. The staff member who created this problem wasn't publically humiliated or blasted. They were spoken to in private and assured there had better not be a repeat performance. They were allowed to live on and fight another day. The British Admiralty in the early twentieth century had a simple strategy. Build the biggest ships, get there first, sink everything. Not bad advice for dealing with mistakes. Send in the big boss, act immediately and keep apologising until they have no more to say.

Attribute Selling For Salespeople We all know that selling ourselves is the first key sale we have to make in order for the client to buy our services or products. How do we do that without being boorish, a windbag or coming across as if we are desperate? Selling ourselves requires subtlety and nuance. We have to weave this into our sales talk with the buyer in a way which is not obvious or obnoxious. How do we do that? Clients are primarily interested in a few key things about salespeople. Can they be trusted, are they reliable, do they do what they say they will do? Before we get into a sales discussion with the client we should list up the personal attributes we have, which we think will be of greatest relevance for this buyer. Buyer by buyer, the point of focus will be different, so we want a long list of sterling attributes we possess which we can talk about when needed. Depending on the client and the flow of the conversation, we can dip into this reservoir of goodness and draw out some key descriptors about us. Telling the client these words is not particularly effective unless they are wrapped together tightly with proof. The best evidence is from actual experiences, cases and examples. We should have a list of these prepared to match with each attribute. If we felt our important attribute was reliability and this was key for the buyer, then we need to bring this up in the conversation in a subtle manner. For example, "I know that in this industry, there are many distributors downstream who depend on surety of Just In Time supply, because they don't have extensive storage facilities for holding stock. I take it as a point of pride that none of my clients has ever experienced a delay in supply of the product and we have always been able to meet their schedules". Here we are noting our understanding of the issue, our commitment to serving the client and our peerless track record of achievement. All the while not sounding like we are boasting or puffing ourselves up. If we feel there is a concern about trust on the part of the client, we can say, "I believe that good business is built on a foundation of trust. My clients do trust me and I know that because of the repeat orders and consistent business we get from them". So without bragging about how great I am, I provide evidence on my trustworthiness though the flow of repeat orders. These demonstrate that the clients favour our company as a reliable supplier, who services they value highly. The reference point is not us and what we say, it is what the existing customers are saying. Where possible we should reference actual buyers by name. "Mr. Tanaka from XYZ company became my client ten years ago. We have been continuously supplying his company every month like clockwork. We have become an extension of his firm as a trusted supplier who partners with their company to help them grow their market share". Trying to tie these things into the sales conversation spontaneously on the fly is a hit and miss activity. Before we get to the buyer, we need to have prepared this cross link of attribute and evidence and have it ready to go. We need to have prepared our examples and be able to dip into the specific case that matches this client and their business. We need to be saying how great we are through the experiences and feedback of the existing buyers. We talk about what mattered to them and how we supplied that. In this way we are able to blow our own trumpet without seeming to be doing that. The evidence part is the key and it has to be real. If the client wants to talk to Mr. Tanaka, then everything we have said has to be true. Preparation is vital to making this subtle and convincing. Anyone running around saying how great they are invites doubt, distain and skepticism. If the existing client is saying it however, then that makes it all true. We need to have worked up our attributes-evidence construct for the meeting, so that it is ready to roll out when we see the chance. No matter which direction the client takes the conversation, we need to be ready with a story that illustrates we have that requirement and they should rely on us as their trusted business partner.

Emotional Selling "We buy based on emotion and justify with logic". We have probably all heard that before, but when we are selling what do we do about it in practice? Actually, we spend the vast majority of our sales interview time with the client, focusing on the logic bit. If we are hopeless as a salesperson, then we are pitching the product straight away, with absolutely no idea what the client actually needs. Nevertheless, the pitch is constructed on a logical basis, going through the nitty gritty of what we do and what it entails. If we have a clue, we ask questions to uncover client need. Again we are immersed in a world of logic. We are asking intelligent questions to get to the facts. So where is the emotion part in this sea of logic? Building rapport and trust with the client is an emotional idea. Of course, there is a logic component around talking about business relevant topics, rather than spending all of our time rehashing the football game played on the weekend. We are business focused. The way we are business focused though, is to impart we can be trusted. We are appealing to the emotional side of the buyer. The way we speak and what we say are important, to build a connection with the client. We are warm, considerate, charming. We ask questions to get them talking, as we know this usually relaxes our interlocutor. We look for connections to build the trust, be it shared educational experiences around the school brand or similar faculties where we studied. We look for common hometown or similar residential experiences, mutual friends, colleagues or acquaintances. When I worked at the Shinsei Bank, I was to brief a newly hired section head on what my section did. He ignored all of that and started a process of divining who we knew in common. We spent the whole time talking about other people we knew and he never did find out what my section did. But this was his way of building trust and rapport, and he went for the emotional rather than rational approach. Spending all of our time on this with the buyer would be too much, but establishing something in common is important and is constructed through emotional triggers. Another prime place for emotion is when presenting the solution to align it with the clients needs. It is fine to go through the benefits, the application of the benefits, provide evidence and head into a trail close, but it doesn't have to be all logic. When we talk about the application of the benefit, we can look for emotional anchor pieces which will resonate with the buyer. This is where storytelling is powerful because it allows us to paint a word picture that outlines how people felt or will feel, as a result of buying our widget. Yes, the spec part will be dry, but we should be aiming for a more human touch in the "application of the benefit" part of the solution presentation. For example, a new faster internet connection can talk about a lot of logical, technical stuff to do with IT. We can also talk about results. What that increase in speed does for our team and their clients. We could mention, "We know that 5G will increase connection speeds by 100 times. The power of this will make video calls unbelievably powerful. The client can see your every facial expression change and can hear the tone of your voice emphasing key words. This will be in real time with fantastic screen clarity and connection stability. This will create a supreme personalisation of business being done remotely. This is new, it hasn't been possible until now. With this level of engagement, you will feel so close, like you can almost reach out and touch them. The typical cold tyranny of distance will be replaced with warmth and familiarity. Imagine the power of seeing each other smiling, laughing and engaging in real time. For highly valued existing clients, this will open the door to more agreements signed, no travel time lost and no loss of the personal touch". In this example, we are trying to focus on the human interaction component of the increased connectivity speeds and not just on the tech of how this is made possible. We are moving the discussion to the outcomes the technology provides and not just focusing on the spec detail of how it does that. We can also extend the emotional bridge to how happy the team will be with the new arrangements. "Your team is going to feel a new lease of life. They will start striding around the office with increased confidence and purpose, because now they can reach many, many more clients everyday, more than was ever thought possible. They can now reach them with a very high level of human touch, even though they are connecting remotely. As the deals roll in and their commissions get paid out, you will see that look of pride and satisfaction in their faces. A new energy will become felt, optimism will replace doubt, negativity and fear. Success builds further success and now the 5 G flood gates have been opened". We are focusing on how people will feel, what

Product Knowledge In Sales It is an obvious thing that we need good knowledge of our product to instill confidence in the buyer, underlining that we are a reliable partner. We need extensive product knowledge so that we can mentally sift the right solution for the buyer, from amongst the many possible alternatives which exist. Actually, we make the product purchase decision for the buyer. It may seem that the buyer is choosing, but in reality, the seller is choosing. This is based on what the client has told us about their situation and their needs. Salespeople who just launch willy nilly straight into their pitch get themselves into trouble. They can't make a good decision about what the client needs, because they don't know. They don't have any information yet. They are using the "throw enough mud up against the wall and some of it will stick" process. Basically they are idiots. As salespeople, we will always have a much more in depth knowledge of our product lineup than the buyer. This is obvious. We need to make the decision for the buyer and then lead them to arrive at an acknowledgment that our selection is the best one for their business. To understand the buyer however, is not always so straightforward. They may be reluctant to share all their dirty laundary with a relative stranger, an outsider. They may not always have a clear idea themselves about what actually is the problem. In our own case, we deal a lot with HR Directors, who are looking for training on behalf of other divisions within the firm. This means we are often getting the information second hand, which can lead to gaps in understanding. Hard to hit a target which is vague. The skill of the salesperson is to have experience with similar problems. To be able to offer solutions which have a track record of success. The grey areas for us are where we don't have that much experience with a particular solution and we don't know the solution in that much depth. Often salespeople have a very large catalogue of solutions and it is very difficult to know all of them thoroughly. Again using our own example. We have 155 modules from which to teach broken into two hour classes. It is basically impossible to hold 300 hours of that much detailed information in your brain. Naturally there will be some solutions which are more called upon by clients than others, so we get to become more expert on these. The danger is we become too reliant on knowing the core products and don't invest the time to know other solutions in the line up. This requires time to be allocated to study the full line up. Clients understand that we cannot be fully expert with every solution in a big catalogue, but they expect us to be able to find the information quickly. This means we need to have a system that allows us to plug in quickly to the product line-up in order to search for best solutions for the issue. Fortunately in Japan, it is rare that we will ever get a deal done in one meeting. What usually takes place is we have the first meeting and collect information. We then go away, use that information and create a proposal on the solution we recommend. At the second meeting, we go through the details and convince the buyer that this is the best course of action. This allows us to comprehensively research our line up for the best offering to the client. By consistently making time to study the lineup of solutions, we are better able to draw on the full resources of our company to help the buyer. In a busy world though, making that time is easier to imagine than to pull off. Nevertheless, we need to keep updating our knowledge of existing solutions and add in the new ones as they emerge. One of the issues we should be careful of, is to also work on how to present the solution to the client. The product itself should be integrated into the sales training system, so that the sales training delivery is always in context. Each solution in the product line up has its own benefits and we need to draw in the application of those benefits, the evidence of where this has worked before and then move smoothly into a trial close to see if we have fully dealt with any issues the client may still have. This means we need to devote time to studying the products in the context of how we will present the best solution to the buyer.

Taking A Hit On The Price We all hate having to take a hit on pricing. We establish a price based on the value we provide. Clients however can take no great notice of that and just plunge right in, demanding a big discount. The rationale behind the requirement for a discount is often related to what they think it should cost or is a negotiating ploy to drag you down into the mud and blood of haggling. Of course the biggest pushback on pricing comes at the precise time you are the most desperate for some business, any business. Like sharks, some buyers can smell blood in the water and want to take a big bite out of your sale's price. Our pricing is a benchmark related to our positioning in in the market. We set our prices with the aim to reflect the quality of what we do. Well that is what we think. Our buyers may have a different take on the value or may have alternatives, which are much cheaper, with little perceived difference in the value. This is what happened to Starbucks in Australia. This is the one country where they basically failed. The alternative product and service from local coffee shops was perceived as having a cost to performance advantage over Starbucks. They had to close most of their outlets. We have to make a choice. Do we suck up the discount to get the business or do we walk away. If we want to defend our positioning, then we may have to walk away. If you believe you provide a value of service, that is superior to the competition, then you need to defend the pricing by rejecting attempts to drag it down. You need pipeline of other buyers who will happily pay that amount to get away with this. If you are desperate, you will probably have few options but but to take the business and the pain. Once you start down the slippery slope of discount pricing, the buyers start beating you up on price every time. For some, they enjoy a nice game of sports negotiating, where they have the winning hand all the time. They want see how much blood they can get out of you, by offering ridiculous numbers to determine how desperate you actually are. I was coaching salespeople from a firm where they would have to ring around offering discounts to get orders to make the monthly quota. They would get smashed by tough negotiators playing games with them. This was killing the sales team's motivation. You need to jump out of these types of toxic discussions and call someone else. This sports negotiating dead end destroys your confidence and hits your motivation hard. You plunge into a vicious cycle of negativity and despair. Don't go there to titillate the nastier side of the buyer. The effort is not worth it. Look for more professional, ethical business partners instead. If there is further business in the offing, then we are often persuaded to take the hit to get the other piece of the pie. The tricky part though is when the additional business is just that, "in the offing" and not nailed down and fixed yet. We can try and bake these in together, to get an agreement that we are pricing the first one at a discount, because we are getting the second piece of business. Buyers tend to resist this though, because they don't want to commit. So it comes back to where is your walk away point and how capable are you financially, of actually walking? In Japan, taking a hit on the price at the point of entry dooms you forever to be set at that price boiling point with the buyer. No matter how much you may want to lift the price back up, the buyer now has you slotted in at that low price forever. I have had this happen to me over and over again and I hate it. So going in with a discount to get more business is a deadly game here of lock in to permanent low profit margins. Walking is painful because you are giving up business, with no replacement there to make up for it. Your mind is plagued with thoughts like "well a little bit of business is better than no business". The impact on your positioning, your belief in the value of what you offer is very negative. Instead, put forward a credible number and if they don't buy it, then you walk. The crazy thing is one buyer's "ridiculous" price from you, is considered "quite reasonable" by another buyer. These two reactions have happened to me in the same day. After one meeting you are down in the dumps, then the later meeting has you back up again, with a spring in your step, instead of dragging your feet around. Don't allow the buyer to drag you down, because sales is tough enough anyway, without having more negativity piled high on your head. If it isn't right, then walk and find yourself another buyer.

Helpful Selling As salespeople, we can become very focused and tunnel vision like, when it cones to dealing with our clients. This is especially the case when they are existing clients. We get into very narrow territory, when we discuss possible solutions to help them achieve their goals. This process continues for many years and then one day you hear they bought a service or product you have, from a competitor. That hurts big time. That happened to me recently. The client bought leadership training from a guy I know who only specialises in sales training. I was really shattered to hear that news. I was thinking ,"why would you do that". I realised I had not followed up enough with the President on what he needs. Painful lesson right there. We have an exercise we do in our sales training, where we get a blank spreadsheet ready. Across the top, in the columns section , we write the names of our existing clients. Down the left side, in the rows section, we write down the various solutions we have to offer clients. Then in the cross section cells between the two, we mark with a letter Y for "yes" if they are already buying, or P for "possible", if they are not yet buying. It is a shocking exercise, because you are always amazed at how many of your solutions your clients needs, but they are not buying from you. Why is this? Mainly we get into a rut with our buyers. We only talk about the existing business. In effect, we become order takers. We never go back and investigate if the needs have changed, or if there are further needs. Maybe we tried to have those broader conversations in the past, but they didn't have any interest. We therefore assume that subject is closed. This is why finding out they bought from your competitor really kills you. You have been calling on them regularly, but had no idea there was a possibility to sell them other things in addition. We have to keep our eyes open too. There may be a change in the market that will make our offering more attractive and now possible, when it didn't generate any interest previously. Or we might raise a new idea that hasn't been discussed previously. I was calling on a client recently and had that experience. We had been talking about sales training for his team of new recruits. This was a follow up session to one completed a few months earlier and now the new recruits were on board, so we could get down to the details of when, where, who etc. I happened to have seen him on video talking about a collaboration they had with a foreign chamber of commerce. I noted he was on camera making some remarks about the tie up. Here is the interesting thing. I didn't jump in with a statement, "hey, I saw your recent video with X Chamber, you really need to do our High Impact Presentations Training, because it is a such a phenomenal course". Like all serious salespeople, I asked him if he was likely to do more such videos? I was probing to see if there was a new and regular need emerging. We had never discussed High Impact Presentations before, because we were focused only on sales training. He told me he was doing more and more of these types of things. So I asked, was there a need to do this at a high level, as the face and representative of the brand? He said "yes". I asked, if I had something that was perfect for taking these types of skills to the highest level, would that help him in what he doing with the brand promotion? He said, "Yes" and that is when I introduced the High Impact Presentations Training. Now if I hadn't seen that video, I would have had no idea that there was a possibility of selling presentations training, as well as sales training. The point is we all get trapped into narrow gauge conversations discussing the detail of what we have done in the past and can become blind to possibilities for the future. What should we do about that? We need to be disciplined to ask about new or different needs every time we contact the client. We don't have to come across as desperate, grasping or pushy. We can just say, "I know we have been discussing X for some time now. Business is in constant movement though and needs change and new needs emerge. We haven't had a discussion for a while on whether what we are currently doing is fully matching all of your needs. Have there been any changes to your business which may have created some needs we may be able to help with?". This is a good closed question, which clarifies if there is or there isn't a need. We want to know one way or the other. If it is a "no" we just park that information and make a note to ask on the next occasion, if there has been a change or not. And keep asking, every time. These things are not difficult, but sometimes our habits defeat us. Having a mouthful of the bitter ashes of defeat, after finding out your competitor got there first, makes this type of exercise more compelling. There is no penalty for asking, provided you do it in the right way. So ask. Every time.

Breaking Into The Mind Of The Buyer Life is busy, busy today. Communications has sped up business to an extent unthinkable even ten years ago. Every company is a publisher now, due to social media's pervasiveness. Content marketing is driving original content creation and release. LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are favouring live video, so we have to become television talents. Voice is the next big thing, so podcasting requires us to be radio personalities. If you are in business, your personal information is out there, easily searchable and found. We check out the buyers and they check out the sellers, before we meet. When you turned up at a client meeting eighty years ago, you came with some good jokes, some market information, some competitor intelligence, etc. You did this to break the ice with the buyer. Even if they were an established client, you needed to break the ice for that day. Buyers then and buyers now have a lot going on inside their heads when we turn up and almost none of it has anything to do with us and what we want. In Japan, meeting room space is always at a premium, so getting time with buyers has some automatic limitations placed upon it with certain companies. After thirty minutes you are given the bum's rush, because that space has been booked for the next meeting and they are loitering with intent outside the glass wall waiting to get in for their meeting. That doesn't give us much time to carve out some mind space with the buyer, get into questioning mode, talk about the solution, deal with any objections and seal the deal. If the first part of the meeting isn't well planned then there won't be any result. We cannot let the first few interactions be random events. We need to plan in detail how we are going to establish some rapport with this buyer or reestablish some rapport if they are an existing buyer. We will have checked some of the media aggregation sites to see if there has been anything released in to the public arena about the client company, which we can then refer to. If it is a first meeting then checking the annual report is a must. There will be a glossy coverage of the CEO's vision and strategy for the enterprise, with photographs in a swish corporate setting. We are looking for things we can ask about in this meeting. Our objective is to get the client talking as soon as possible. Most salespeople still cling to the idea that they have to dominate the airwaves, so they just keep talking, talking, talking. We don't want that. We only have a limited amount of time, so we want the client talking as much as possible. When we do that, the client will have stopped thinking about all of the other things going on in their work and private lives. We will be concentrated on the business at hand and that is exactly what we need. We hopefully will be able to check whether some insight we have found is relevant to what they are doing. We deal with that industry vertical so we are picking up ideas across companies on what is working and not working. We share these ideas as a means of demonstrating we provide value to their enterprise. They may not go for it, but they will go for our intention to assist them to make their business more successful. A discussion with a drill manufacture company I called upon, prompted a suggestion by me that they copy Blendtec's "will it blend" phenomenon, but for drills not blenders. Blendtec's CEO Tom Dickson video's the blending of iPads, golf balls, whatever and post it on YouTube and they get massive views. My idea was to copy this for Japan and create some buzz around the product line up. They didn't go for it in the end, but I have no doubt that I have a closer relationship with the President today, because of my effort to think out of the box for them. I had his attention for our discussion. Getting the full attention of the buyer is no longer a given. They are permanently distracted today and we are competing with so much noise, more than ever before. We need to have a strategy to get their attention. We cannot leave it to chance or expect that, "of course they will be paying attention – we have an appointment". That concept is way too indulgent. Ask well thought through questions to get them talking, bring insights and valuable market intelligence. Today, we have to do this every time, even if they are an established buyer. Just because we have a relationship with them, doesn't mean we have automatically broken through all the completion for their attention. Start fresh every time as if it were the very first meeting. In this modern age this is the new normal.

Saying "No" To Buyers Normally, as the seller, we are getting told "no" in sales, rather than the other way around. When salespeople become desperate to hit their numbers, they start to do crazy things. They start telling lies to the buyer, they exaggerate the scope of the solution, they savagely discount the price, they overpromise on the follow-up, they agree to horrendous delivery dates, they become visibly agitated during the sales call. All bad. When we meet the client, our brain has to get into a specific gear. That means we are focused on how can we contribute to build the client's business? What can we do that will grow the buyer's revenues, cut costs or expand market share? That mental gear is entirely different to questions such as "how will I make my monthly sales quota?", "how will I stop being fired?", etc. The latter are solely focused on you and not the buyer and this impacts what comes out of your mouth. If we are doing a proper job of prospecting we will always have alternatives. When the pipeline is too thin, desperation sets in. The existing clients get worked over, to try and squeeze blood from a stone, because there are no other options. It is easy to talk to an existing client than go and find a new one, which is so why salespeople hate prospecting – it is hard and tough work. Nevertheless, prospecting and building pipeline are the keys to positioning ourselves as sellers. When we have a strong pipeline, we are not dependent on any one sale. When we are doing the questioning phase of the sale's call we start to understand what the client needs. We may realise that what we have isn't really a fit. When we don't have pipeline, we start to think how we can make it fit anyway. This is desperate thinking and ultimately very damaging to our trust, brand and reorder possibilities. We are thinking single order, rather than the start of many orders. We may know that to take on this project is going to put a lot of pressure on the back office or the supply chain within our organisation. We have to keep in mind the opportunity cost that this deal represents, not just the income it will generate. We are impinging on other better quality work to do this deal. If the pricing for doing it was at a premium, it might be justifiable but that is usually quite rare. Or if the scale of the work is considerable and sustained over a long period of time, it might be viable. In fact, usually, a bad deal more often than not comes with other ugly lumpy bits attached to it that are not very attractive. We are better to say "no". When deals come that are outside of our usual scope and therefore require a lot of work, the price needs to be high, to warrant doing it. If it is not, then get back to being busy building pipeline and let that deal flow to a competitor, who is either better suited to handle it or more stupid than we are. It hurts to give business away to a competitor, but that is the better choice than damaging your own operation. A deal came to me though LinkedIn and the buyer was a substantial company in Singapore, with a strong brand name. The details of what they wanted to do in Japan though, had potential grief written all over it for me. It was somewhat related to what we do, but just that bit off to the side, where we would have to do a lot of work to make the project work. The money mentioned was so, so and really didn't cover the extra work that would be needed. I introduced the deal to a "frenemy" rival company and asked if they were interested. They said yes and so I connected them with the seller. I heard later, that they got hammered on the pricing, when they came to deal with the lower level operations people inside the company. A typical Singaporean business play where they are very tough on pricing, often known as the "squeeze all the juice out of the deal for the buyer" play. The "frenemy" took the pricing offered, rather than saying no or demanding more money and got smashed. It turned out to be a huge amount of work, sucked up a lot of their time and burned some of their contacts. This is exactly what I thought it would do to me too. I was glad I missed that bullet. Saying "no" was a very, very good choice on my part. It was also a one off deal, so there was no hope of repeat business. This made it less attractive, because I couldn't see any return on the investment of time and effort. I didn't take it because I had pipeline, alternatives, other potential business. Say "no" to a bad or marginal deal and keep working on building pipeline to find better deals. You will spend the same amount of time, but the rewards are vastly different.

Three Keys For Sales Success Know, like and trust are critical components for success in business. The "know" bit hopefully is being taken care of by your marketing efforts and your personal brand. What about the like and trust elements? If the buyer doesn't like us, then the chances of getting a sale becomes so much more difficult. What makes you likable? If they don't trust us, then the business won't advance. How do they know we are trustworthy? This whole frame of reference is especially important in the case of creating a new client. Most Japanese salespeople love their clients. That is to say, they love their existing clients. They are not so keen to do the work to go out there and create a new client. It may be the case that at your scale you don't need any new clients, so bully for you. For the rest of us we need them. Old clients drop out and must be replaced. We also want to grow our business, so we need more from the clients we already have and we need to add new clients to do that. If we are calling on a new client there are a lot of difficulties involved around being liked and trusted. They do not know us. We have a very small window in which to connect with them in the right manner. How we look, how we carry ourselves and what we say, become make or break equations. Everyone is super busy today, so when we meet them they have a lot on their mind about what has happened so far in the day and what must happen later in the day. We have to break through all that internal noise. We might bring some useful information on the market or the industry. We might start with a question to get them talking. We have to be careful with small talk though. If they have a really impressive office and it has a special feature, do you think you are the first person they have met who has commented on it? After the first week of moving in they have heard the same comments from everyone who has visited them. We need to ask a question that relates the impact of the new office to their business. We might say, "This is a beautiful office. I am sure everyone is very proud to work in this environment. Have you noticed a change in staff morale since you made the move?". This gets them talking about their business and that is what we want. Get the focus off us and on to them. We need to become excellent listeners. This combination of them talking and we are passionate listeners builds likeability. It also allows us to gauge what type of personality style they have and their preferred communication preference. During this phase we need to tell them about what we do and gain their permission to ask questions. In a Japanese context, almost all Japanese salespeople are scared to ask questions of the buyer, which is why they get stuck giving their pitch and then having it torn to shreds by the buyer. Asking for permission is not hard, if you know what you are doing. "Dale Carnegie is a global corporate training organisation specializing in soft skills training. An example would be XYZ, where we have been helping their engineers with their presentation impact skills. They have noticed a big improvement when they put these engineers in front of the clients compared to before. Maybe we could do the same for you. I am not sure, but in order for me to understand if that would be possible, would you mind if I asked a few questions?". Once you have permission now you can start to uncover what the clients needs. The way we ask the questions communicates to the buyer that we have their best interests at heart and that we are trying to find the perfect match between what we have and what they need. To do this, the questions have to be well designed. "What do you do?", isn't one of them. We have done our homework prior to the meeting. A better question would be, "Your global president has set down a growth target of 12%. Does that number get spread equally across every market or does Japan have a higher number?". What a great question. Hopefully it is a higher number, because we are here to help them reach it. By asking excellent questions we uncover what they need and then we have made a decision. We know if we can help them or not and if we can't we leave. We don't try and jam the round peg into the square hole. We go find someone we can help. They appreciate the honesty. If we can help them, then the solution we provide will be perfect for what they need. They will understand that we have heard them and we have found the match between their need and our solutions. This builds trust. We have our aim front and center, which is to become a key partner for them to grow their business. We communicate this in the way we operate and by what we say. So to be liked we need to be well planned with the first impression with a new client. We need to say things that make them feel good about us. We need to ask questions in order to understand what they need. When we deliver the solution they see that this works for what they need. This builds the tr

How To Deal With The Dog Days Of Sales Nothing goes in a straight line in sales, does it. That order we received gets canceled, suddenly, inexplicably and mercilessly. The client disappears from the face of the earth and despite initial interest, is now permanently incommunicado. Appointments are not coming your way, as we learn that everyone is too busy, not interested, already have it, the brother-in-law is the supplier, etc. Meetings go badly, as the buyer demands our pitch, then opens up the 12 gauge shotgun and proceeds to blow it to shreds, with all the things which are thought to be wrong with it. Depressing. This series of disasters, coming on top of each other, one after another, eats into our self-belief and confidence. We doubt whether we can actually sell anything anymore. The pipeline is high and dry, there are scanty meetings planned and time weighs heavily upon our shoulders. The boss is a maniac, beating down on us with heavy expectations and threats of elimination. The money isn't flowing and our spouse isn't understanding about the lack of dough. "Whatever was workin before sure ain't workin now". What do we do to climb out of this funk? We need to look at our original strategy. Perhaps we had too much at stake concentrated with too few clients, so that as they dropped out, the cupboard became bare. We may have neglected to keep prospecting as we were servicing our orders. We need to get busy and stop focusing on what we can't do and switch mental gears to what we can do. Get out a large sheet of paper. Make a column of existing and previous clients on the left, noting the industry in the adjoining column on the right. Taking the list of clients, start calling them and ask for referrals. Don't say something useless like, "Do you know anyone who would be interested in our widget?" The answer will be "no" because you have now confronted them with the entire world and they can't think of anyone. Narrow it down to a group of people whose faces they can see in their mind's eye. For example, "Thinking about your fellow chamber of commerce members, would there be some in that group who are having similar issues to what you have had and who similarly would benefit from finding a solution?". This is easier for them to come up with possible candidates. Ask them to introduce you by connecting you both on email, so you can follow up with them. Back to our strategic planning. Continuing with our chart, in the next column, again to the right, start listing up lookalikes. These are companies in the same industry who are not already clients. We have some degree of experience with one company in the industry and all of their problems. The chances are high that other companies in the same industry are also suffering from similar problems. This gives us better insight to suggest reasons why we should have a face to face meeting. Start calling them. You will hit the ubiquitous gatekeepers, whose only joy in life is ditching pesky salespeople trying to talk to the boss. Call before 9.00am, when the boss is likely to be there and the lowly gatekeeper won't be there. Call just after 1.00pm, when the gatekeeper is at lunch and the boss will be back, and call after 6.00pm when the gatekeeper has tootled off home. The chances of talking to someone a bit more senior, who will better get the value of the call goes up. Grab another big sheet of paper. In the first column start listing up ideal clients you would like to target. In the adjoining column on the right list up any contacts you have, who can introduce you to decision makers in that company. Start calling them. Be prepared for tonnes of rejection in Japan, because this country is not geared up for dealing with unknown companies and individuals. Nevertheless, work on crafting a great credibility statement. It should start with a brief statement of what your company does, then immediately transition into an example of where you have done something wonderful for another client, including concrete, verifiable numbers or percentages, and suggest maybe you could do the same for this company. Immediately state however, that you are not sure if that was possible, but that it would be worthwhile to have a conversation to find out and segue into whether this week or next week would be better to get together. It might sound like this, "My name is Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training, we are global soft skills training experts, with a long history of over 100 years in operation. Recently we did sales training for XYZ company and they registered a 30% increase in sales as a result. Maybe we could do the same thing for your company, I am not sure. In order to find out if that is possible, would you be available this week or is next week better, for us to get together?" Are these strategies guaranteed to strike success. Of course, not. However, by getting into action, good things start to happen. The chances of getting meetings with clients goes up dramatically. These mee

"Your Price Is Too High" - Your Reply Is? When your client hits you with 'your price is too high" what do you say? Are you flustered, wondering how to reply? Is your brain freaking out, as you flash possible answers through your mind. Or are you straight off the blocks and into an argument with the buyer? Are you telling them why it is not too high and why they are wrong, wrong, wrong? By the way, how is that working out for you so far? Rule number one is don't be stupid. That means don't argue with the buyer. Because the "your price is too high" comment immediately triggers a chemical reaction in our brain, we have to short circuit what is going on and regain control. To do that we need to have a circuit breaker, like we have in our houses if there is an electricity overload. We have this so that we don't burn down our house. Same with sales, we don't want to burn down the deal. We insert a cushion. This is a non-descript sentence that neither inflames the disagreement with the buyer nor agrees with what they are saying. It would sound like this, "yes, budgeting is important in all businesses". In the few seconds it takes us to say that sentence we don't allow ourselves to kick off an argument with the buyer about why their comment is totally flawed, incorrect, ludicrous and ridiculous. It gives us enough breathing time to remember how a professional handles objections from clients. After they tell us our price is too high, we very softly ask "why do you say that?". This pushing back process is like reading a newspaper. We see a controversial headline splashed across the front page. It grabs our attention. But to really understand what the headline is saying, we need to read the accompanying article. That is where the detail is and we need to know it before we know how to answer their objection. Our combativeness with the headline is pointless. We need to know is their pushback just plain wrong, because they don't have the correct facts? Or wrong because they have misinterpreted something we have said? Or is it correct? Our price may in fact be too high for the current value it brings to their business in their mind. We have no idea of how to answer "your price is too high", until we have more information. Here is the professional's next step, after we have discovered the reason behind their statement – we keep digging for other issues. We park the first one and move into asking, "apart from X are there any other concerns you have?". Objections are also a bit mysterious because the client may not be giving us their primary concern upfront. There may be a hidden objection we don't know about and we merrily go about answering the first objection and wonder why they didn't buy. There was a bigger problem, but they didn't share it and we didn't ask. Always ask. After they give you the second objection, ask if there are any other concerns. Keep doing this around three to four times maximum. "Are X, Y and Z then your major concerns or is there another?" We have to dig these out before we even attempt to answer any objections from the buyer. Once we have them out then ask for some guidance on which of the three or four is the most problematic for them. "You have mentioned X,Y and Z as issues for you. Of these three which one do you feel is the most pressing?" It is very important to stop speaking at this point. Don't add anything or qualify anything. The question leaves a certain amount of tension in the air, but let it hang there, don't relieve the tension by saying anything further. If you have another person with you, tell them before the meeting that when you ask a question and it creates tension with the buyer to sit there and shut up. Don't release the tension. We need to hear from them, so that we can concentrate our efforts answering their key concern. Once we know what that concern is, then we bring all our weight to bear on the value we provide with our rationale, statistics, data, testimonials, evidence, proof, etc. to show why the price is just fine and dandy. Usually, once we have answered the ley concern the minor concerns drop away. If we have done all of this and they still don't want to proceed, then it means there is still a hidden issue we need to surface, so we can deal with it. If we haven't done a good job of building the trust, the client may be reluctant to tell what they are really thinking. This reinforces the importance of the sales cycle to build trust first, ask brilliant questions to uncover needs, tailor the solution to exactly the key points they have raised before we ask for the order.

What To Say When You Get A "No" In Sales What are the chances of getting a "no" to your offer in sales? Probably around 70% of the time, this is what we will get. Given that type of frequency and hit rate, you would think that salespeople would be masters of dealing with this type of response. You would be wrong. The chemicals kick in and sales people lose all reason. I was reminded of this recently when we were conducting sales training. It is hard to create a new habit for salespeople. They have egos and they are easily entrenched in less productive ways of doing things, because that is how they have always done it. Stupid, is what I would call that, unless you are really shooting the lights out with your results. The issue is when we see the body language signaling a negative response the fight response starts and then we hear the words and we go into overdrive. Our brain is on fire concerning the thousand good reasons that no should be a yes. We are delving deep into why the client is wrong and we are right. WE are rapidly processing our line of attack to counter the argument they have proffered. What a complete waste of time. Instead we need to get smart. Stop the chemical reaction from getting out of control. Throw the Breaker Switch, like we have with the electricity in our houses, if the power load gets too dangerous. Shooting your mouth off in sales is even more dangerous. That intervention comes in the form of a cushion. No, we don't put a cushion over our mouth, so that no words come out. We put it over our brain instead. We offer a very neutral response to the buyer, that neither agrees with nor inflames the situation. The point of this neutral statement is to give us critical thinking time. Are we using this critical thinking time to dream up a killer response that will shut the buyer down in their tracks and turn that "no" into a "yes"? Nope. We use it to stop the chemical rush and regroup. We need to go into question mode. When we hear a "no" it is a headline, like we have in newspapers. A short form of reply that gives the key details and no more. We want to know what is in the article accompanying that headline. Why is it "no"? So we sweetly and gently ask, "May I ask you why you said "no"; or "your price is too high"; or "we are happy with our current supplier"; or "we have no budget for this"; or the thousand other dubious reasons buyers give us for declining our genius offer. Give me the article accompanying the headline, so I can understand how I am supposed to answer this rejection. Now we have to be patient. We hear the reason and again we are sorely tempted to go into counter attack. We know can tear that shabby reasoning apart and want to bombard the buyer with a million reasons why they should buy. Hold your horses there pardner. What if this isn't the killer objection? What if a more vicious version is lurking in the long grass, ready to bite us at the first opportunity? We need to keep digging. After we hear that reason, we sweetly and gently ask, "Apart from that are there any other concerns for you?". They will usually have another one. Again we don't go into rambunctious reply mode. We ask why that is a problem for them, just like we did the first time. They tell us and again we must be patient. We must keep our power dry, hold the line, keep our nerve. Again, we venture forth on our seeker journey and sweetly and gently ask, "Are A and B your only concerns or do you have another? If they do, we still don't rush in where angles fear to tread and blurt out our killer retort. We sweetly and gently ask, "You have mentioned A, B and C. Of these which one is the most pressing concern for you?", and then we shut up and don't even breath, let alone speak. They make a choice and now we open up both barrels and answer that concern and ignore the other two. Usually, if we successfully deal with the main concern, the lesser concerns fade away like the dew on a spring day. When we were doing some role play practice in the training, it was interesting that the person playing the buyer gave a reason for not buying and the seller was starting to jump in. We tied them up and physically restrained them so they couldn't answer right then and there. Okay, that is an exaggeration. Actually, we just asked them to keep digging, to follow this procedure and not answer yet, until they know what to answer. Sure enough of the A, B and C reasons given, it turned out that it was C that was the concern of most import. "A" was price by the way and "C" was quality in this case. We don't know what to answer until we know what to rebuff. Hold off on answering the pushback, until you know what is their key concern. Don't be fooled by smokescreens, wild goose chases and other buyer subterfuges. If we do this we will be a lot more successful closing the sale and building a strong relationship with the buyer.

When Is The Best Time To Call A Prospect In Japan? Japan is merciless with salespeople. When you call the client's company everyone is doing their absolute best to make sure you don't get to talk to the boss. They won't tell you their name, they don't offer the take a message for you, the whole vibe is "get lost". If you don't know the precise name of the person you want to speak with, then the wall of steel descends very quickly. They will question you as to why you want to speak to the person in charge, tell you that that person will call you back. They never will. No one wants to take any responsibility in the Japanese system, so that is why they won't share their name. They don't want to get scolded by the boss, so that is why they won't put you through. The boss is a salaried employee and they won't take calls from people they have never heard of. They don't think, "this might be a business opportunity that will help my company". They think, "I don't want to have to deal with people I don't know, especially foreigners, because it is risky". Risk aversion is a big thing here and the easiest way of never taking a risk is never doing anything new or different. It has worked for thousands of years here. So how do we break through the steel barrier. Many companies have meetings on Monday mornings, so invariably no one is around to take the call, even presuming you know their name. The last day of the month is also a very busy day for many companies, so that is another hard one. Days with a five in the date called gotoobi(5th, 10th,15th, 25th) are also busy days in Japan because they are cut off dates for invoice submissions, monthly invoice payments, salary payments, Government department submission dates, etc. If we want to call a company and we don't know the person's name, then we should try and do it before the gate keepers arrive for work or after they have left for lunch or for after they have departed at the end of the day. This is not fool proof, but the chances of talking with someone with a bit more authority goes up. Those tasked with taking general calls to the company or section, are usually female, young and at the very, very bottom of the hierarchy with no authority, except to make your life a misery. Companies don't understand that these staff are the bearers of the brand to the outside world, so invariably they are not properly trained. They think their job is to screen out all salespeople and all unknowns. I called the new President of a major Italian brand here in Tokyo to say hello and thank him for his business, as we had been commissioned by his headquarters to provide training for them. I didn't know his name because he had just arrived and that information was not public at that point. I could never get past the gatekeeper. She would always tell me he wasn't available and that he would call me back. That never happened. I am the President of the company delivering training for his company, to develop his business, to help hit his targets. You would expect he would want to talk with me. No such luck. In the end, I got so frustrated, I just gave up trying to talk to him and left the training delivery logistics to my staff. I never did meet him in fact and he has probably been posted to a new country by now. Here are some ideas. Even if you don't know the name of the person send a package to their title within the company. If you do even better. This package might contain your company brochure or a small gift, but whatever it is, preferably make it slightly bulky to excite curiosity. Then, when you call asking for them, mention to the gatekeeper that you want to follow up on the package you recently have sent to them. That package, by the way, will probably go straight into the waste paper bin sitting next to their desk, unread, possibly unopened, because they don't know who you are. This "send the package then call" technique will slightly increase your chances of getting put through. Try to make the call before 9.00am, after lunch at around 1.10pm and again after 6.00pm. The junior people will usually arrive around 9.00am or 9.30am. They will have to man the phones from 12.00pm while all the important people go to lunch. This means you have a slightly better chance of talking to the boss when they are back from lunch and the junior person is not there. Companies are more concerned these days about junior, non-manager staff working overtime, so the junior people will be gone after 5.00pm or 5.30pm. The managers however are still there. Obviously the same considerations apply if you know the person's name. Your chances of connecting will go up. If you have met them before, you can say that you are calling to follow on with them on that recent conversation you had. Or you are calling to follow up on that email that you have sent them. Or that you are calling to get an answer to your question in the email you sent to them. More senior staff will generally recognize you have a business con

Sales Call Roadmap Because the vast majority of people in sales have no idea what they are doing, they are making it up as they go along. Wouldn't it be better to have a roadmap to progress the making a sale? This roadmap will keep us on track and not allow the buyer to take us off on a tangent that leads to nowhere. Foundering around with no central direction wastes a lot of key buyer facing time and we don't want to do that. We can't expect unlimited access because of their busy schedules, so once we are in front of them we have to get it all done in usually around an hour. The sale call roadmap starts even before the call. These days with so much information readily available, we can't turn up and ask basic questions about the company. We need to have done some research beforehand on media reports, their website, annual report, social media and using LinkedIn where possible, to check on the individuals we will meet, before we meet them. Having done all of that, we are well armed to get the conversation off to a great start. We may have friends or contacts in common; or shared a similar working experience in the same company; or lived in the same town; or went to the same university. When we have done our research we will have an opportunity to try and find these little connectors. I was working with an American guy when I was at the Shinsei Bank. He was an absolute master at this. He had just joined and I was supposed to brief him on the work my division was doing. We spent the whole time with him making connections between people we both knew. He did this to break the ice and establish rapport. This is important. We know if we don't get a good relationship going at the start of the conversation, then it is unlikely they will buy from us. Even if we don't have much in common, we can use other techniques like bring some interesting industry data or intelligence to them. We might have seen something work somewhere else and we can introduce this idea to them. In this initial meeting process, we need to make a very important intervention. We need to get permission from the buyer to ask questions. When they are happy to meet us and having established some rapport, they are more likely to say "yes" to our request to ask questions about the inner details of what the company is doing and all the problems they are encountering. In other words, all the firm's dirty laundry. If there was no rapport or trust created would you be keen to share that with strangers? Now in a western business environment, asking questions is no big deal, but with Japanese buyers it is crucial we do this. They are used to being hit with sales pitches, so the concept of them being questioned by the seller is not something they are used to. Having gotten that permission we should ask very intelligent questions, so that we can fully understand their needs. Now buyers sometimes don't want to tell us their precise situation. We have to ask our questions in a way that gets around that reluctance. We are searching for an entry point where we might become useful to them, to solve a problem they have. If they don't have a big enough problem or if they think they can fix it themselves, then we will have a lot of difficulty making the sale. We have to show why this issue is best addressed now, rather than after. And why they should leave it to us to fix, rather than trying to do it themselves. If we don't deal with these issues up front, then no sale. Once we understand their needs, we move along the roadmap to the part when we present the solution. There will be a discussion about the technical pieces of what we will do, talking about how this solution will fit their company. We can't leave it there though, because that is still too abstract. We need to talk about how they can project and apply these benefits inside their company, in order to get better results. This is where word pictures are very powerful. In most cases, we are selling a future that they can't fully appreciate. So we need to explain how we can add to their business through increasing revenues, reducing costs or grabbing greater market share. If we have been able to uncover what the success of this project will mean for them personally, then we wrap that bit around the benefit too. The client naturally doubts what sales people are telling them, so we need to show evidence for them that this has worked for other companies. Once we have done that, then we can test the waters to see if what we have suggested is the right solution for them. We do this by asking a simple trial closing question like, "How does that sound". We want to flush out any resistance to place an order. If they don't have any problems, then we just ask for the order, "Shall we go ahead?". If they have issues with what we are suggesting, then we need to confirm what these are? They may have problems with our pricing, payment terms, quality, delivery or schedule. It doesn't matter what they mention, we shouldn't a

Technical Salespeople Must Be Good Presenters Too Knowledge of the specifications, functionality, inner workings are all fine and dandy but not enough anymore. Increasingly technically specialised people are being asked to deal with people other than their normal counterparts. Once upon a time, the engineers spoke with other engineers on the buyer side and that was about it. A nerdy lovefest of specs. Today there are broader spectrum buying teams. These "civilians" are often the key decision-makers and are not technical in the traditional sense. This means the technical person has to be able to communicate and present to them in a way that they can understand. Communication skills have always been low on the totem pole for technical people. At High School they hated English and thrived on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry etc. At University the key focus and preference was on technical subjects. In fact these technically oriented people were creating problems in the workforce to such an extent, that Universities had to create a new programme for them. This was the basis for the origination of the Masters in Business Administration. The aim was to teach technical folks the non-technical sides of running a company. I was reminded of the big gap in fundamental presentation skills recently at a presentation I attended. It was a big crowd and the speaker had a star studded resume. He had a Ph.D. in his technical field and was a Corporate Officer in his very, very large, global firm. He was a big deal in that world and someone often called upon to give technical presentations, representing the firm. When he started his presentation proper, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that someone in his position, with his experience, in that role, with that amount of responsibility for the brand, would be making such a basic, basic mistake. The first slide went up and it was all densely packed with text. I thought it was the typical compliance required disclaimer statement that usually goes up first. No, no, no. This was his first slide of the actual presentation. To make it really exciting, he had made the text in ten point sized font, so it was almost impossible to read. To add insult to injury the bottom quarter of the page was blank, unused white space. He proceeded to basically read the slide to us. The next slide was even worse. Same ten point font, but this time about half of the bottom of the slide was tantalisng white space. After that ordeal by tiny text, we got on to a series of line graphs. This was a relief ,except that a lot of the graph text descriptors were impossible to read too. I was sitting there thinking WOW. In the 21stcentury, how could this be possible? A High School student would do a better job than this gentlemen of presenting the information on screen. The snapper is that he is in a role where he would be giving these types of presentations a lot. He is highly technically trained and often graces the boardrooms of major companies, who are clients of his firm, giving this and similar presentations. He has been doing this a long time. He is one of the most well recognized public faces of the company, after the President and Chairman, because his role is to promote the technical expertise of the company to grow the stock price. After the slide deck shock, I started zooming in on how he was delivering the presentation. There were a lot of numbers involved, so it was a rather dense talk. Pointedly, there were no stories to bring the ramifications of the numbers to life. These were just dry, dull data points that were not thought to need any elaboration. The audience however were a mixed industry bunch, so there were varying levels of technical expertise in the room. Pulling out experiences with similar numbers in the past, would have been great pointers to what we might expect in the future. Dry numbers can come to life when wrapped up in an interesting example. Also, we are much better at remembering stories, than acres of data points. He did look toward his audience, but somehow managed not to look at the people in his audience. You have seen this one before too, I am sure. He moved his face from left to right and back again, sort of rapidly scanning the room, but not actually making any eye contact with anyone in particular. This precluded his ability to make a stronger connection with the people in the room. In the time he had allotted, he could have connected with each one of us individually and directly, if he had tried. We know that around 6 seconds of eye contact works very well. It is not too intrusive, yet allows us to engage with individuals one at a time. His voice was soft and even throughout. It hung perilously close to a monotone. This habit is deadly for a presenter, because it robs us of some key tools to add luster and strength to our argument. When we give each word an equal emphasis in a sentence, then we miss the CHANCE to highlight particular key words for our audience. In that las

No Value, No Sale We believe in our product and we are very knowledgeable about the facts, details, specs, etc. We launch straight into our presentation of the details with the buyer. They want to negotiate the price. Do we see the connection here, the entire catastrophe? Often salespeople are slogging it out, lowering the price, hurting their positioning of the brand, lowering their own commission. In Japan once we have established a low price for the product or service it is very difficult to move it up thereafter. What is missing? The conversation isn't hitting the high notes on value and instead is a pitch based on the details of the product. Japan isn't the only place where this is an issue. Despite all of the resources available to American salespeople and the long history of consultative selling there, they are failing massively as well. According to a study by Accenture, called the "Death Of the Salesman", buyers are not seeing the value of the proposition. In 77% of cases, the buyer found no value in the offer during the sales call. In a separate study by Forrester, they found that from the buyer's judgment, 92% of salespeople didn't understand their business. These are pretty miserable figures, no matter which way you look at them. I haven't seem any similar numbers for Japan, but based on my experience with salespeople here, I would guess they would only be worse. "Pitchpeople" is how we should properly term Japanese salespeople in my view. They are not asking the buyer questions and are zeroing in only on the details of the product. As the Accenture and Forrester studies show we need to know our client's business and we need to counter price objections by showing value. Excellent advice Greg and just how do we do that you might be thinking? Knowing the client's business these days is unbelievably more easy than in the past. Listed companies very nicely put up their annual reports on their websites. We can gain an understanding of the strategy and direction they are going and what are the major initiatives that are so attractive, we will part with our hard earned cash and buy their shares. Not that many Japanese are on LinkedIn, so this is a more difficult resource to use here, than in the West. There will be press coverage of companies, which we can search easily through Google. We may have other clients in the same industry and can probably assume many of the issues will be the same. Even if we can't get much publically available information, we can ask the client. Now in Japan, this is verboten, so Japanese pitchpeople don't ask any questions of the buyer. The reason is the buyer is GOD in Japan and GOD won't answer our questions, because we are impudent minks for having the temerity to ask anything. Well it is verboten if you play by God's rules, so that is not a wise choice. Instead we can give our Credibility Statement and get permission that way. What is our Credibility Statement? For example, if we take Dale Carnegie Japan, we could say "Dale Carnegie is a global corporate training company, which leads the field in soft skills training. An example of this would be XYZ company where we trained all their sales staff. They told me they got a 30% increase in sales as a result. Maybe we can do the same thing for you. In order for me to know if that is possible or not would you mind if I asked you a few questions?". Another approach might be, "Mr. Client, prior to this meeting I spent quite a bit of time researching your business, so that our talk today would be valuable and efficient. To my surprise it was very hard to find any publically available information on your company. Before we go any further, would you mind helping me to better understand if I can actually help you or not, by asking a few questions about your business? Once we know what their issues are, we can make a judgment on what is the best solution for them from our lineup. We may in fact conclude that we are not a match for them. If so, we should not waste anyone's time and we should go find someone we can help. If they are a match, then having identified the issue we explain our solution. When doing this, we need to go beyond just the product spec. We MUST explain how these facts transform into benefits for them. That is not enough. A benefit applied is where they will understand the value to their business. If we leave this step out, they may not be convinced we can help them. They next need proof of where we have done this for another client. Salespeople talk a lot, so clients have learnt to be skeptical of salesperson blather. After providing evidence we now ask them "how does this sound?", to draw out any residual concerns, issues or related questions. If we do this, we will be in the top 1% of successful salespeople in Japan without a doubt. We bring value to them and we show we understand their business. As the surveys have shown, this is what buyers are looking for. Let's give it to them.

How To Handle "We Are Happy With Our Current Supplier" Pushback Japan loves the Devil they know over the Angel they don't know. Change here is hard to achieve in any field, because of the inbuilt fear of mistakes and failure. This country takes risk aversion to the highest heights in business. There are no rewards for salaried employees to take risk. There are massive career downsides though, if things go wrong, due to an initiative they introduced. Personal accountability is not very popular here. The decision-making system here is also a nightmare in this regard. Who is the decision-maker? Probably no single person. The meeting we attend may have one to three people present in the room, but they are the tip of the iceberg. An iceberg we will never get to meet by the way. Behind the walls of the office, sit their other colleagues who will have to sign off and agree on the change. The checks and balances of Japanese organisations guarantee a few things. One is it makes for good communication internally. No one faces an unpleasant surprise. I have found most Japanese, as individuals, are not good at dealing with the unexpected. The sudden emergence of something that had not been previously factored in, has these staff rushing for emergency exits in fear. The other thing this system supplies is the opportunity for all the vested interests to have their say. Fast action is not viewed as a plus. Reaching a consensus is very important in Japan and people expect to have input into any new arrangements. The piece of paper suggesting the change physically moves around the section head's desks and each one applies their hankoor stamp to the document, indicating they are okay with the change. Nothing will happen until all of those stamps are there. Turning up and finding the buying team are already quite happy with their current supplier, means a lot of work has to be done internally by the people we are meeting, to make a change away from the known and established order. Who wants more work? No one in Japan, that is for sure. When you are dealing with small to middle size firms the supplier arrangements can be even trickier. They often have a strong owner running the show. They make a lot of the key decisions and then everyone else does the execution of the decision. You may not get to meet with the dictator directly. In many cases, the current supplier company was supplying their grandfather who started the business. Many a good time was had on the golf course, being entertained in the Ginza by geisha and visiting expensive cabaret clubs together in the good old days. Gifts flowed thick and fast as well, to cement the relationship. The current generation of the heads of the respective businesses may have been at school together, have marriage links between their two families or belong to special clubs as members. I see these connections at my very exclusive Rotary Club here in Tokyo. These are successful families who move in the same circles. The third generation of family business heads have deep links together built up over the last generations. Why would they change their trusted supplier to you? Be it a big corporate or a smaller concern, there are a lot of barriers to change in supplier relationships in Japan. Frankly, we have few levers at our disposal as a result. The one thing that companies fear in common though is getting left behind by their competitors. The globalisation of business has meant these harmonious relationships between supplier and buyer are getting shaken up. Just explaining the details, benefits, quality and pricing advantage of the solution you provide are not enough. We need to lob some dynamite into their current cozy little supplier arrangements, by bringing up their exposure to being blindsided by a competitor. We need to remind them that the best solution will win in the market or at least reduce their market share. We need to point out that in a competitive industry, no one cares about the depth of the existing relationships, because they are fully focused on their survival. Rivals will make key supplier changes and these will trigger changes across the industry, as everyone else has to adjust accordingly. By getting ahead of the curve, they can win time to adjust and win market share for themselves, vis-à-vis their rivals. Price and quality differentials only become meaningful in this light in the current market. Just talking about price or quality in isolation won't move the buyers to make any changes. The effort to make new or change supplier arrangements needs a strong reason in Japan or else everyone just defaults to a "do nothing" stance. This requires we come armed with examples of where a change in supplier arrangements wiped certain companies out. The best option is relating changes in their industry, but even if we don't have that, we need to show evidence of how dangerous it can be to avoid change. The drivers of change are plain to see: globalisation changing supply opti

Selling In The Coming 5G World The release of 5G or fifth generation mobile networks is only a few short years away, probably around 2020. There is a lot of controversy at the moment about the reliability of different providers, but the real story hasn't been grasped yet. Our phones currently run on a 4G standard, which provides a certain connectivity speed. Interestingly the move from 4G to 5G, isn't a simple speed doubling process. Reports are that the difference is 5G will be 600 times faster than 4G. Wow! What does that mean for salespeople across all industries? The capacity to upload heavier files, to send at lightening speed, grabs your attention. What are some of the heaviest files at the moment? Video! YouTube is already the second largest search engine after Google. It is true too. I have noticed myself that I prefer going straight to YouTube to find out how to do something, rather than wading through all the links on Google. The union of content marketing with blinding connection speeds, means the search function for YouTube will overtake Google in the next few years. Are you prepared to be found there staring in your own video? Now this is not to say that the importance of audio is going away. Podcasts are also a key to getting value in front of buyers. That is why I am releasing three ever week. People are multitasking these days like they have been possessed. They want to listen to audio, while they are at the gym or walking the dog. Don't miss the implications of audio access to our information from all of these devices like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Home, etc. We will be tapping into information through audio, to a greater extent than now, but today I want to feature more on video and 5G and what it means for us in sales. Producing video content and uploading that to YouTube will become a more important aspect of "know, like and trust" than we have at our disposal today. Video gives a very strong impression about us. How we look? How we sound? Are we trustworthy? How we relate to the audience? As some of my friends have unkindly remarked, "Greg, you have a good head for radio", meaning I am not very photogenic. We may be shy to video ourselves thinking that we are not handsome enough, smooth enough in front of the camera, or attractive enough on tape when a microphone is involved. Forget all of that. This will be the age of discovery by buyers, before they ever meet us. This is how they will be searching for experts to bring solutions for the problems they face. They will be able to "try us before they buy us" by watching our video, to see if we have the goods or not. What if we are not attractive enough for video, won't that work against us? Well, I wish I was more handsome, but there is not much I can do about that. My parent's DNA contribution has spoken. I have to go with what I have got and so do you. I don't have a great sounding voice either, because it sounds husky, from all that shouting or kiai I did, in my 47 years of karate training. Can't do too much about that either. One of our Dale Carnegie trainers in America is DJ Thatcher, who has a voice you would die for. Very deep and melodic. I can't become DJ Thatcher, but I can control what comes out of my own mouth. So despite how we look and how we sound are we providing value? Our videos have to show we know something special about our subject and we can be useful to the buyer. Don't think you have to hold the "best bits" back either. You have to go the other way and provide strong expert authority in this environment and do it for free. Won't my buyers become sated on my free video offerings and not need more from me? I don't think this is a concern. When they need more than what they can get from a video, you are the one they will select over everyone else you are competing with. By the way, if a video can fix their issue that simply, then there probably wasn't a substantial engagement involved anyway. Won't my competitors steal all my best ideas? The old style control function of buyers by suppliers, through exclusive, high value, proprietary knowledge, still exists, but only just these days. Almost everything is out there today. There are not many secrets left anymore. You have to jump in because everyone else is. Now, they can copy you, but they can't be you. I could order a big truck right now and send all of our training manuals to my competitors, but it wouldn't help them. They don't know how to deliver it the way we do, so all they get is an empty shell. This is the same with your competitors. They can't replicate who you are, your company culture, your approach to clients, quality, reliability, plus all the human interaction pieces which are the sum of all that you are, down at your firm. As an example, I recently did the recordings for the audio version of my book Japan Sales Mastery. Anyone could have read the text but no one would emphasised key words the way I did. This is because I wrote it, I know what I

Selling Yourself First Selling yourself first can have two dimensions. One is selling yourself on the product or service, so that the client feels your integrity when you recommend the purchase. The other aspect is that the buyers buy us first and then they buy the product. They are related, because our belief in what we are doing shines through and the client feels they can trust us. Conmen will fluff themselves up, look pretty, be honey tongued and ever so charming. They will make one sale and then have to find a new mark, because they can never go back. I don't mean this type of "selling yourself", where it is all skullduggery intended to fleece the buyer. I am referring to the real objective – securing the re-order because the trust has been built. How can we sell ourselves in an ethical way? We can start with having the client's interests firmly in the front of our mind. The kokorogame concept or starting with our true intentions, is the basis for all that we do. This concept defines how we approach the client and the sale. Their success is our primary aim because in that success is wrapped up our re-orders, testimonials, positive word of mouth and referrals. The clients can feel if you have your hand in their wallets pulling out cash like a pirate or if you are working hard to make them super successful. We often hear motivational terms like "Ten X" your business but the client wants to hear how you can help to "Ten X" their business. Sincerity is revealed by the way we conduct the sales call. We are dressed professionally. The smallest details are taken care of, to reinforce "you can trust me to be a quality provider to your company". That means being on time, every time. It means shoes gleaming, heels properly shed, no food stains on ties or scarves, colour combinations matching, hair neat and tidy, properly shaved, make-up perfectly applied. These days it may mean business suits or something more casual, to match the client's world. The clothes must fit, not looking like you are wearing your younger siblings gear, that you are too big for. The way we have done our homework before the call, tells the client a lot about how serious we are about getting the business. Asking low level, basic "duh" questions shows arrogance or stupidity. A classic is "what do you do?". Clients are not keen on stupid questions. Bringing valuable information is appreciated by the client. "Ms. Client, we have seen a pricing formula which works very well for our other clients, perhaps this might be of interest to you too?". Even more impressive is asking insightful questions which cause the client to have an "ah hah" moment. This possibility stimulation is pure gold. For example, "Mr. Client, how do you know if the current pricing is optimum for your business. You have kept the same pricing for a long time and so is there now an option to raise prices and improve profit margins? We have seen companies similar to you raise their prices and see no drop off in demand. I wonder if this might be a possibility for you too?". We all get into ruts. Insightful questions might trigger thoughts we have not previously considered. This is how salespeople can be useful to buyers, rather than asking, "tell me about your business?". Telling the client you can't help them is real trust building. It sounds ridiculous to tell the client you can't help them and forego sales. We are talking about the long game here. If what we have isn't the best thing for the client, then we should never try and slam the square peg into the round hole. Better to tell them that what they want isn't something we can do and direct them to someone else who can help them. That type of honesty gets remembered. Maybe they will never be our client because we are not a fit for them. However, your good reputation is established within their circle of business contacts. When people ask about you, this non-client will sing your praises as a trustworthy person. Under promising and over delivering has taken a beating as a sales execution approach. It sounds manipulative, false and deceitful. If we are told that something cannot be delivered by Friday and it promptly arrives on the Monday of the same week, we are happy, but also suspicious. We were told that Friday was the earliest that the delivery could be made and we believed that statement from the salesperson. It arrives much earlier. Now we realise that they were sandbagging the timing all along. Yes we received the delivery faster, but we also feel we have been lied to. The salesperson has not been transparent with us. If it came late afternoon on the Thursday, well that would be acceptable, we can understand that. But almost a full week early says that either, they were trying to con us or they are disorganised and can't control their scheduling of work. Be realistic, transparent and honest with clients about the execution of the fulfillment of the order. Use showmanship wherever you can. I don't mean a full vaudevil

Lying Salespeople Riffraff inhabit all corners of the business world, but the sales profession suffers more than many others. Bankers do all sorts of evil things with our money. Stock brokers do all sorts of evil things with our money. Real estate agents tell one version of the truth to buyers. Government officials purloin our money. Everywhere you look, someone is ripping us off. However, these industries and institutions do not get blanket smeared with the failings of the few, like in the case of salespeople. We are our own worst enemy in many ways. There is a taint to the profession, an odious odor, scandalising the hallways. Desperate people do dumb things and tell lies to buyers. There are no common standards of conduct being adhered to in the sales profession. You just become a salesperson by dint of putting your hand up for a sales job. After that point, you are free to unleash your reign of terror and destruction on all around you. "I am not like that" you may say, but how would the buyer know that? They have been trained to expect to be ripped off by salespeople. It is one of my pet hates with the profession. Lo and behold anyone who calls me up with a lie. A lie? How could anyone be that stupid, you might be wondering? Well, have you heard this one before, "Hello Mr. Story, how are you today? I am from XYZ company and we handle a range of investment products. One of our representatives will be in your area and so are you available for a meeting next week?". This industry of selling investment products is tricky. I know, because I oversaw the sales of these products at the Shinsei Bank and the National Australia Bank here in Japan. What makes them difficult is you can't hear, see, touch, smell or taste these intangibles. Investment products are abstract ideas. The buyer will have no idea if the decision to buy was a good one, for many months and in some cases, many years. So the obvious thing we are all buying is the trust that what we have been told will in fact happen. Given the trust element is so vital, how could the leadership at XYZ company come up with a sales script, built on a lie? Amazingly, this is the first thing coming out of their mouth. Reality check: their representative won't be in my area. That is a total fabrication, a complete lie. Why? They think that somehow this will convince me to see that person. When they call, I ask them which area their representative will be in. They panic, look at the suburb address on their screen and blurt out "Akasaka". So I ask, "Well given Akasaka is quite a big place, which exact part of Akasaka will they be in next week?". More blustering and panic, because now we have gone off piste. Japan is a very honest culture. This means though, that when people tell lies, they never admit to it. They never take any accountability. Instead they will tell you anything, in order to not admit that what they told you was crap. They try and move the blame back to you, by claiming you misheard or misunderstood what they were saying. This honest culture can blind us to this quaint trait to lie. So when we are leading our salespeople, we can't just assume because everyone is so honest in Japan, that our salespeople won't lie to the client. This is also a culture where the buyer is GOD and whatever the buyer wants the salesperson will make happen. This can include lying, breaking the rules, over promising and being disengenuous. The delivery component of the company cannot easily deliver on salesperson over-promised goodies. Now we have a new set of problems to deal with, as sections within the company start to feud amongst themselves. Or they agree to a deal that is bad for the business. Being truthful with clients also means delivering bad news too. Salespeople in Japan have to be guided to do this, because of their own accord, they will avoid it every time and prefer to sow chaos internally. It is important to state and keep re-stating what should be obvious – don't lie to buyers. We have to explain we would rather forego a deal than get it by lying. This gets harder when their bonuses and commissions are linked to the sale. Also, a hard nosed selling culture will force people into positions where they will compromise their personal and the firm's integrity to do the deal. Suruga Bank has been a very aggressive lender in the market. They are now reaping the whirlwind of negative media coverage, because of all the lies told by the bank staff to get loans written. Wells Fargo had a similar issue with staff creating fake accounts to meet aggressive quotas. The real cost of those episodes play out over many years. We may have our own aggressive targets too, but we also have to ensure that we are guiding people along the correct path of how to make those targets. If we all agree that trust of the buyer is key, then we can start to build that trust by ensuring that our salespeople are never lying to the buyers, in order to make a sale. We have to remind salespeople of

Client Need Clarity Do we have a clear understanding of what the client's needs are? These can vary beyond the obvious of increased profitability. It might be more important to gain market share, than drive profits. Or, it may be that profits are not as much emphasised, as investing in further growth. How do we seek to understand their needs and at the same time differentiate ourselves from every other salesperson, equally raring to go with their interrogation of the client's needs? What does intelligent client question design look like? If we access the client's website and they are a listed company, we can find out a lot of basic information about the firm's business, strategy and direction, from the annual reports there. If they are an unlisted company, we can do a media search on their activities to get an understanding of how they are positioning themselves in the market. Failing that we can use our industry knowledge to make some insightful comments about where the market is at the moment and ask them how they see it. Turning up at the client's office and simply asking "what does your company do?" is pretty pathetic, but very common on the part of unprofessional salespeople. We would be better off asking things like, "I see that your global CEO is calling for 15% profit growth in the annual report. Is that also the number for Japan or have you been allocated a higher number?". Hopefully the answer will be 15% or a higher number. This will mean they are challenged to meet the targets and maybe, we can be of assistance. If they answered 15%, then we would ask, "So how realistic is that target in the current economic conditions in the market here?". We are trying to get a feel for their confidence to achieve these targets by themselves. Of course, we want to know where they are now in their business and where do they want to be, so we can gauge the size of the gap and their appetite for change. The worst sales conversations are with client's who don't see any big gap, that they can't close on their own. No matter how whiz bang our question design, if they feel they are close to where they want to be, they won't be seeing us as adding any value beyond what they can do internally. What do we do in this case? We have two levers to pull – opportunity and fear. There might be some opportunities they haven't thought of. In sales, we see many companies and what they do. We have the ability to take a successful idea from industry "A" which could be applied to industry "Z". The people working in those distant industries never mix, but we do. We can see applications for ideas across industries and we should be playing a positive role to make these suggestions to help grow their business. A recent example was when I was calling on a foreign manufacturer, who amongst other things, makes industrial drill bits. I asked the President if he had ever seen Blendtec's "Will It Blend" videos on You Tube. These are viral video sensations by an American company making food blenders aimed at consumers. They are very strong blenders and to prove it, the President, wearing a white lab coat and protective goggles, blends iPads, mobile phones, hockey pucks, you name it, captures it on video and posts it up on YouTube. I told the Japan President, "what about a "Will It Drill" local version in Japanese, hosted by you because you speak Japanese, to highlight the strength of your product?". Blender companies and drill company's representatives are unlikely to ever meet, but we salespeople can be great connectors. There will be many such opportunities where we can prove ourselves useful to the client and we should be constantly thinking of how to do that. Even if nothing comes of "Will It Drill" as an idea, I have been able to differentiate myself from every other salesperson coming through his door. This is what we all want. Often, not taking action is thought to be a safe option by clients, but it also has a cost – an opportunity cost. Our job is to open up the client's thinking to taking the opportunity to aid their business in the future, by taking action now. We might say, "You know we talk about saving up for a rainy day, don't we. Well in business too, we know there are up and down cycles the economy passes through and the worst situation is to face a downturn and run out of cash. You have mentioned you feel confident about the current situation of the business, but have you factored in dealing with a downturn in the next few years? We know it will come, we just don't know exactly when. What if we were able to take the opportunity now to position ourselves to deal with that eventuality, would that be helpful for your business?". We are trying to move the clients thinking from "I am okay and don't need to do anything" to "maybe I am not okay and need to do something I haven't planned for yet". The other option is fear. We know our own situation and we have knowledge of our business, but we are not alone. We have competitors who c

"Never Forget A Customer; Never Let A Customer Forget You" This is an old saying in sales and one we forget at our cost. We might have made the sale and then we keep moving forward. We get wrapped up in the intricacies of the getting other customers to commit and in the logistical details of delivering our previously sold service or product. Our schedule fills up quickly and we have filled it with the present and future, not the past. That customer we sold to gets forgotten in this busy life and they return the compliment and forget about us too. We know that creating new customers is more expensive on an acquisition cost basis and that selling again or selling more to our existing customers is easier than making a new sale. Why then don't we do a better job of developing further business with our existing customers? We usually do a good job in the immediate post sales service period, but the key word there is "immediate". We don't schedule in the "just checking in " contact, because we are too busy chasing down the new contacts. Now that the customer has had the benefit of our product or service, we don't call back and ask, "How has it been going? Are there any subsequent issues that have arisen that we can help with or fix?". A good rule to apply is always make the time to connect with the buyer. They will either be happy and we can see if they know others, who would also benefit. If they are unhappy, we can fix the issue for them. Silent, unhappy customers are not what we want, because we are killing our brand and our reputation without even knowing it. Clients may have cyclical needs when there is a certain cadence to their buying. Upgrades or replacements require follow up. When these are scheduled into our diaries, we can make sure to re-contact the client. It may be that there is no sequence logic and so we have to create a schedule, so that they don't forget us. There are few things more disheartening then contacting an existing client to find they did have a need and they filled that need with our competitor's solution. I really hate having that conversation. We can add the client to our email mailing lists and they get updates. The problem is that they don't read them or even notice them, so a "set and forget" idea is a bad idea. We have to be able to cut through all the clutter and noise of daily life to reach out to them, so that we stay top of mind. This is harder today, more so than it has ever been. There are so many emails, so much social media, so many meetings, no wonder our buyers get swamped. Trying to get anyone on the phone these days is mind numbingly hard and it is like a miracle if you succeed. No one calls you back anymore either. Japan has a set pattern of seasonal gifts which are sent to clients for the express purpose of reminding them that they have not been forgotten. Depending on how many clients you have, this can become expensive and is probably easier for larger firms. A hand written thank you note on the anniversary of the business conducted with the client is not expensive and because hardly anyone gets postal mail anymore, it will stand out. Even though you can't get people on the phone so easily, don't just hang up. Don't expect to get called back either but always leave a voice message, so they hear your voice and understand you have been thinking of them. Some of my business contacts here tell me that their millennial employees avoid the phone like the plague, much preferring to text. It doesn't matter, young or old, leave them a voice mail anyway. Sending relevant White Papers, books, reports, media clippings are always good ideas, but you can't leave this to chance. It is a good discipline to be looking for these items, with specific customers in mind. When you see something that will resonate with them, this is when you have to be disciplined to send it. This doesn't have to be every month of course, but probably twice a year is a good practice, on top of the email blasts and newsletters that existing clients receive anyway. Making appointments with yourself, is one of the best ways to make sure we actually do the immediate and the sustained follow up. Good intentions are terrific, but planned, disciplined contacts are better. Choosing electronic or analogue systems is not the issue, the real key is having a system that delivers the updating, reminding process to the buyer. If we don't have a system then we need to create one and the best time to start was yesterday.

Join The Conversation Going On In Your Prospect's Mind We have all had the experience of talking at cross purposes with someone. We are both having a conversation that makes sense to ourselves, which is logical and congruent, but which baffles our interlocutor. After a while we realise we were both talking about unrelated things. This is not the type of conversation we want to be having with buyers. We want to be on song, on topic, right on the button with what we are discussing. There is no point in solving a non-issue or a minor issue for the buyer, because we had misunderstood what the real issue actually was. Great and all good. However, how can we be sure we are understanding the critical issue for the buyer. Part of this is structural, in the sense of how we construct the conversation with the buyer. Part of this is linguistic, our ability to parse the language being used. Part is our communication skillset, to fathom the nuances, perceive the unstated pieces of the puzzle, read the body language. Structural here means how good a job did we do in building the foundations for the meeting. What research did we do prior to meeting? How much time did we allocate for thinking about how the conversation might flow. How much effort did we put into designing the questions we would ask, in order to understand where they are now and where they want to be? The buyer has two conversations going on in his or her mind. We need to join both of those conversations. One is the conscious conversation. This is based on their present awareness of the issue, the scale and scope of the problem. The other is the subconscious conversation that has been crushed by the weight of the world's current dilemmas requiring immediate, total attention. The issues are there, they are just mentally superseded by other dramas that are grabbing their more immediate attention at the minute. They have something worrying them and we need to know what that is. We do this by asking questions about the business. If we have arrived at the meeting with a mental list of what questions we need to ask in order to find out what the key requirements of the buyer are, we will do much better. What normally happens though, is the salesperson just turns up and gives a pitch or if they do manage to ask a question, it is too spontaneous and isolated to be really effective. It is much better to have mentally worked out the flow chart of questions like those you often see in project planning diagrams. If the answer is "yes", then we go to this next question or action. If it is "no", then we to to this next question or action. It is our flow chart of the sales conversation, constructed before we get into the meeting. Obviously, the client conversation never follows the exact path but our job as salespeople is to bring the discussion back on track, so that we can gain the answers to the questions we are asking. The client has some self talk around the business. There are things that are concerning them. They are plagued with what has happened in the past, as they replay those events in their mind and are fearful of a repeat performance. There are issues in the future they fear will unfold to their detriment. They are hazy ideas at this point, but there are always dark clouds on the horizon in business. There are a tonne of conversations going on in the conscious and unconscious minds of our buyers, so we don't lack for opportunities to find a connection. The point is we want to connect with those particular conversations around issues we can fix for them. To increase the chance of that happening, we need to have planned out the conversation before we get there, looking for hooks and triggers to help us to connect. We need to be designing well structured questions, which will get the client talking. When they talk at length, we receive a lot of valuable information, and guideposts to help us to, in turn, help them. We are not doing this is in a cold, hard, bright lights in their eyes, interrogation fashion. We are doing it gently, with the highest of purposes in mind– to make their businesses thrive. We need to be very circumspect on asking the questions. It cannot be blunt or hard or harsh or too intrusive. This is our advanced communication skill on display now. We have to be able to phase a question in a way which is easy and comfortable for the client to answer. This is how we join them in the conversation they are having in their own mind and when we do that we will be on their wave length and on point. This is how we can tailor our presentation to suit them. To introduce our solution in a way that is totally relevant and makes sense to the buyer. What we are offering is exactly what they are looking for and this is no accident. It is the sum total of our efforts in planning and plan execution to hit the bulls-eye – that is to solve their biggest problem.

The Successful Salesman and Saleswoman Has A Plan "We don't plan to fail, we fail to plan", is an old saw that is still true today. Despite an avalanche of tools to help us plan well, we still manage to do a lousy job of it. Another oldie goldie is "a good workman doesn't blame his tools" and so this applies perfectly to the tech panoply we have at our fingertips. Having tools available and using them at all, much less effectively, is the bugbear of most sales organisations. The firm buys the tool or the monthly subscription, spends a lot of money on it, only to see the salespeople barely engaging with it. The information stays in their head or on loose bits of paper, perhaps in a notebook or in an organiser. Anywhere but where it needs to be, to be of any assistance to the marketing effort, to properly segment and go after specific, defined markets. Salespeople like people and they like talking to clients. This is relatively easy. Keeping records of those conversations is another matter. Getting those records into the Client Relationship Management (CRM) system is a different ask. Setting up the meetings is a process which can be very poorly done in the hands of poor salespeople systems. The timing of meetings should be done with a mind to geography, so that you are not traipsing across town over long distances. You need to be grouping the visits together, so the time lost travelling is kept to a minimum. There is a funny commercial you can see on the monitors in taxis in Tokyo about selling in Japan. A new guy is being welcomed to the sales team and one of the tanned veteran sales guys enthusiastically shakes his hand, but then notices the newbies calf muscles are puny. Mr. Suntan and the other veterans proudly show off their super muscular calves, built from going door to door to see clients and deride the new guy. The point of the commercial is that this is old style sales and you can use computer programmes much more effectively to reach clients today. To make appointments needs a prospect list. A prospect list comes from leads coming in through SEO, your website, pay per click ads on Google etc., also existing clients, prior clients who have gone cold, networking, referrals, inbound phone contacts or highly selective cold calls. There are new clients to be targeted and this requires real research and effort. Today in Japan, you can't easily buy client lists anymore. There are so many restrictions now around privacy of information and getting permission to connect. Getting simple information is much harder today than it was even five years ago, so we need to allocate sufficient time to do the research. If you don't know the name of the person you are calling, then the staff taking the call are all pros at getting rid of you. They make sure you never get through to the person you seek, who is always in a meeting by the way and who never returns your call. No one is thinking "let's all make sure the wheels of industry are turning faster and faster and let's grease the wheels to make sure that happens". They are in full shield wall defensive posture of protection and denial to invaders from outside. So you at least need the name of who you want to contact to get on the first rung of arranging a meeting. Keeping track of how many people you are contacting, how many you are actually reaching, how many appointments you are winning, how many deals you are concluding and the average size of those deals, is critical for the well organised salesperson. This provides us with success ratios and norms around how much activity is required to generate new business. Yet how many salespeople know their one ratios, know how many calls they have to make to achieve their monthly budget? When we do meet the client, how good are the notes we are taking? Are we talking notes or leaving it all to our ironclad memories? Remember that the faintest ink is vastly superior to the best memory. Write it all down. If for some reason you can't take notes during the meeting, get it all down immediately thereafter. The next step is to get the key bits into the system. This way your notes are kept safe, can be accessed from anywhere and can easily be shared. When you are looking for case studies of success these notes are goldmines. They usually describe the client's problem in detail, the proposal you put together talks about the solution you provided and the P&L provides the results. When we know how many contacts have to be made to meet budget, have the prospects identified to pour into our sales funnel, we can use our excellent time management skills to make sure we are doing our tasks in priority order and that we are doing the most productive thing at every given moment. None of this happens by itself. We have to plan our activities carefully and plan our days fully. Record keeping is boring but for those salespeople who get it, they know that is where the gold is buried. What are you doing about all of this?