We are slowly emerging from Covid, yet a few leftovers are still hanging around, making our sales life complicated.  One of those is the sales call conducted on the small screen using Teams or Zoom or whatever.  These meetings are certainly efficient for the buyers, because they can get a lot of calls done more easily and for salespeople, it cuts out a lot of travel.

Efficient isn’t always effective though. In my view, we should always try to be in person with the buyer.  Some may say I am “old school” and that is quite true.  Old school though has a lot of advantages when selling.  Being there with them, we can take the client through the materials much more easily and we can read their body language in depth and minutely.  Buyers are always sceptical about salespeople, because everyone is risk averse and concerned about getting conned or taken for a ride.  When we are in the room together, they can get a better sense of who we are. They can read our body language to make sure our words match up with the intentions we are spruking.

I had a sales call with a new client and, being in the room together, I could hand over the training manual and take him through it page by page, explaining the content of what he would be buying.  I could easily control what page he was on so that we were in synch.  We have to be careful when handing materials over that we are on page five and so are they, rather than they are racing ahead of us to page twenty.  The commentary coming out of our mouth has to line up with what they are looking at in the materials. It happens that they race ahead of us, so we have to be aware of that danger and control what the buyer is looking at very carefully.

I had another new client sales meeting, this time online and with three people on their side. They degenerate into three tiny little boxes on screen and it gets worse once you start sharing documents online. It is very hard to read three people’s reaction when you are in the room with them let alone trying to do it remotely. 

As we know the current systems aren’t as good as teleprompter technology.  You can look into a camera lens on a teleprompter and read the text appearing on screen at the same time.  With these various virtual platforms, the camera is located on one part of the computer screen, usually at the top and the people you are talking to are located way down below.  You have to make a choice – look at the camera and not at your audience or look at your audience and not at the camera.  The teleprompter technology eliminates that choice, but it hasn’t been applied to the virtual world as yet.

In this situation, I look at my camera and give up trying to read the reaction of the buyers online.  This is a big give up, by the way, and most unsatisfactory.  I do it this way, because what they see is me speaking directly to them, making eye contact all the time.  From their screen angle, they see me staring straight at them.  This creates the sense of trustworthiness.  On screen, I can keep staring at them intensely, without it creating any tension, as would happen in Japan if we were in person.  Japanese culture avoids too much direct eye contact.  This is why people look at our chin or throat or forehead.  On screen, though, we are safely removed and so if we look down the barrel of that lens, we can keep applying the eye contact without it becoming intrusive.  It allows us to connect with the viewers.

Yes, we cut out the travel time and the costs to get to the client, but we are giving up a lot more in return.  Being there is so much better and more valuable.  Yes, it may take three hours there and back to hold the meeting and only one hour to do it online. But that one hour in person enables us to be so much more persuasive. We are also better able to recognise pushback or reluctance.  It is almost impossible to read the vibe going on between the attendees on their side.  When you are together in the room, you can see if there is any difference of opinion amongst the buyer group or cases where one person is not onboard with the idea. Onscreen, that is much more disguised. These various elements are hard to gauge on the small screen.

We often find ourselves doing too much talking to compensate for the restricted nature of the small screen interaction.  We feel we have to add energy and vitality to the sale process in a way we don’t feel such a strong need when we are in person.  The communication distance gets us ramping up our side of the conversation to try to inject some enthusiasm into the buyer group.  We are trying to will them to buy because we feel the remoteness of the situation.

Buyers are often working from home these days and so they insist on online meetings.  Remember, for them, not buying is the safest and preferred option.  We, on the other hand, have a duty to help supply solutions to buyers and for us we should always choose the best medium for that purpose.  That superior medium is definitely face to face, so let’s try to make sure the vast majority of client meetings are held in person.

Getting a deal done in a single meeting is an extremely rare event in Japan.  Usually, the people we are talking to are not the final decision-makers and so they cannot give us a definite promise to buy our solution.  The exception would be firms run by the dictator owner/leader who controls everything and can make a decision on the spot.  Even in these cases, they usually want to get their people involved to some extent, so there is always going to be some due diligence required.  In most cases, the actual sale may come on the second or even third meeting.  Risk aversion is a big thing is Japan, so everyone is very careful to make sure their decision is the right one and that there will be no blow back on them, if things go bad.

I met the owner of a very successful accounting business at a networking event.  It was a very crowded affair and as is my want, I will just shanghai strangers and introduce myself. “Hi, my name is Greg” as I extend my hand to shake theirs, followed in short order by my reaching for my business card. 

I followed up to set up a meeting, which we had, and it went quite well.  He invited me back to meet his team.  The people I met were quite well established in the company and focused on the administrative side of things.  He was obviously thinking about the training arrangements and logistics and that is why he wanted me to explain what we will do to these two staff members.  He was the decision maker, but we still had to involve other members of the team to get the internal buy-in.  We had a third meeting with just him and I, to sort out the final arrangement and set dates, etc.

In another case, I met an insurance company representative at an event and followed up for a meeting.  He directed me to one of the staff who takes care of HR and I had an initial meeting to uncover their needs.  Following that discovery meeting, we had a second meeting where I presented our options to solve their issue.  There was a competition with other suppliers of training to see who they would choose.  We then had a third meeting, and he brought a colleague from their department and I explained what we do and what we do for them in that meeting.  Again, the decision had been taken as we had won the competition and now he was harmonising the next stages internally, to get it to become a reality.

Because the steps are elongated, I often don’t even bother to bring any Flyers with me to the first meeting and spend the whole time trying to best understand their needs and wants.  This way, the full hour of time usually allocated can help me clearly ascertain if we have what they need or not.  It is always a good idea to set up the next meeting at the end of the first meeting, because everyone in Tokyo is so busy you need to get into their schedules fast. Once I have done that, I bring the materials to the second meeting to support my recommendation and we go through them together.  It is not uncommon to have to come back a third time and go through specific elements once more, to help them gain a clearer understanding of the contents and its suitability for their situation.

Once you understand the cadence of doing business here, you are not getting exercised by how slow the process is or by trying to cram everything into one meeting and driving for a “yes” decision.  That is very unlikely, and we need to be thinking in terms of three meetings rather than one.  If we can get it done in two, then magic, but don’t expect that to happen.

Risk aversion and team decision-making ensure that things will move slowly.  No one is in a hurry to buy anything we have to offer and we have to keep that thought firmly in the front of our minds.  No one gets fired for being overly cautious in Japan and risk taking is not well regarded as a concept.  Patience and a full pipeline are the requirements for doing business here.  If you are desperate, then you will have a rocky time because no one is on your timeline and frankly, they don’t care.  We have to adjust ourselves to the way they do business, and trying to reverse the natural order of things here is a fool’s mission.  “Ride the wave in Japan” is always the best advice.

We often hear that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  The strange thing is where is this emotion coming from?  Most Japanese salespeople speak in a very dry, grey, logical fashion expecting to convince the buyer to hand over their dough.  I am a salesperson but as the President of my company, also a buyer of goods and services.  I have been living in Japan this third time, continuously since 1992.  In all of that time I am struggling to recall any Japanese salesperson who spoke with emotion about their offer.  It is always low energy, low impact talking, talking, talking all the time.  There are no questions and just a massive download of information delivered in a monotone delivery.

As salespeople, our job is to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer.  But it is also more than that.  The buyer’s mental meandering won’t necessarily have the degree of passion we need for them to make a purchasing decision.  So we have to influence the course of that internal conversation they are having.  This is where our own passion comes in.

I always thought Japanese people were unemotional before I moved to Japan the first time in 1979.  The ones I had met in business in Australia were very reserved and quite self contained.  They seemed very logical and detail oriented.  After I moved here I realised I had the wrong information.  Japanese people are very emotional in business. This is related closely to trust.  Once they trust you, they have made an emotional investment to keep using you.  No one likes to make a mistake or fail and the best way to avoid that is to deal with people you can trust.  How do you know you can trust them?  There is some track record of reliability there, that tells you the person or company you are dealing with is a known quantity that will act predictably and correctly every time.

The problem with this approach though is that you will only ever be able to sell to existing accounts.  What about gaining new customers?  You have no track record and no predictability as yet.  When you meet a new customer they are mentally sizing you up, asking themselves “can I trust you?”.  Naturally a good way to overcome the lack of track record is to create one.  Offer a sample order or something for free.  This takes the risk out of the equation for the person you are dealing with.  To get involved with a new supplier means they have to sell the idea to their boss, who has to sell it to their boss, on up the line.  No one wants to take the blame if it all goes south.  A free or small trial order is a great risk containment tactic and makes it easy for all the parties concerned to participate in the experiment.

The other success ingredient is passion for your product or service.  When the buyer feels that passion, it is contagious and they are more likely to give you a try to at least see if there is some value to continue working with you.  When he was in his mid-twenties, my Japanese father-in-law started a business in Nagoya and needed to get clients.  He targeted a particular company and every morning he would stand in front of the President’s house and bow as he was leaving by car for the office.  After two weeks of this, the President sent one of his people to talk to him to see why he was there every day bowing when the President left for work.  When he heard that my father-in-law wanted to supply his company with curtain products, he told him to see one of his subordinates in his office to discuss it.  That company eventually became a huge buyer and established my father-in-law’s business.

Was that a logical decision, just because some unknown character is hanging around your house everyday like a stalker? No it was an emotional decision. What my father-in-law was showing the President was his passion, belief, commitment, discipline, patience, seriousness, earnestness and guts.  That is a pretty good line-up for a new supplier in order to be given a chance.  We need to remember that buyers are wanting to know our level of belief in what we are selling.  The way we express that is through our passion and commitment to the relationship and the product or service we supply.  Is our demeanour showing enough passion, without it seeming fake or contrived?  Do we have enough faith in what we are selling, that it naturally pours out of the pores of our skin?  Are we painting strong enough word pictures to get the buyer emotionally involved in a future involving what we sell?

Audit your own levels of passion when you are in front of the buyer.  Do you sound sold on your own offer?  Do you sound committed to go the extra mile?  Do you sound confident and assured, showing no hesitation?  Are you honest about what is possible and what is not possible?  Always understand that buyers, whether for themselves or for the company, buy on emotion and justify it with logic. Make sure you can supply that emotional requirement as well as the strong rationale for them to buy your offer.

I recently launched a new project called Fare Bella Figura – Make a Good Impression.  Every day I take a photograph of what I am wearing and then I go into detail about why I am wearing it and put it up on social media.  To my astonishment, these posts get very high impressions and a strong following.  It is ironic for me. I have written over 3000 articles on hard core subjects like sales, leadership and presentations, but these don’t get the same level of engagement. Like this article, I craft it for my audience and work hard on the content and yet articles about my suit choices get a lot more traction.  What I take away from this is people are interested in how we present ourselves in business.

The thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that first impressions are so important.  In sales, people judge us hard based on how we look, before we even have a chance to open our mouths.  If we don’t get that initial visual interaction correct, then we can be playing catchup to correct an unhelpful first take on us.  “Clothes maketh the man” is an old idea and is related to this first impressions equation. 

The other thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that I dress for the meetings I am going to have that day, rather than some random selection of what is back from the dry cleaners. We are going to make an impression with the buyer one way or another, so I want to be in control of that impression as much as is humanly possible. 

I believe there is a direct link between how we present ourselves and the degree of credibility we can instil in the client.  If we make a mess of the fabric and colour combinations, we are screaming “unsophisticated”.  I do not recommend for men to ask their wives for advice.  Study this “dress for success” topic for yourself and become the master of your own universe.

If we are turning up with ancient stains on our tie, or our suit, it is interpreted as sloppy and there is now a strong doubt about our quality consciousness. If our shoes are scuffed or not displaying a high shine finish, it says we are lazy, not detail oriented and unreliable.  The term “down at heel” means “poor” and it comes from the fact that the back of the heel of the shoe has worn down and has not been repaired.  Either we are too poor and obviously not a success in the sales profession to be able to repair it, or too indifferent and either way, it is a bad sign for the buyer.

If we are wearing a brown or tan belt with black shoes or vice versa, it says “hick” and someone who lacks common sense.  The exact matching tie and pocket square colour combination is another faux pas these days.  Would we want to accept these types of salesperson as our “trusted advisor”?  I doubt it.  I certainly wouldn’t take their advice on anything if they can’t even dress themselves correctly.

Suits too large or too small are another bad indicator.  They have either lost a lot of weight, but haven’t bothered to get their suit taken in, or they are getting chubbier and haven’t had the suit taken out, because they won’t spend the money.  It isn’t that expensive to alter an existing suit, and the difference is total. If the suit trousers are too long or too short, it looks off – go and get them altered or replace them.

Style and fashion are difficult to navigate.  Suit jacket lapels get skinnier, ties get wider and then get narrower, trousers get slimmer and then get fuller, socks get discarded when wearing shoes – all sorts of temporary fashion trends take over the dictates of what is appropriate.  Suits can last more than one fashion trend and you have to debate with yourself whether that wide lapel is still going to present the right image with the client when everyone else is wearing a narrower lapel these days. 

I struggle with this.  I have a favourite double breasted Versace suit from years ago and because the style is dated; I don’t get to wear it much or at all and that seems a waste.  However, if I am dressing for my client, then the answer is simple – leave it in the wardrobe for a day in the future when that trend makes a comeback.

My mantra when I leave the house every day is to check my look in the mirror and ask myself, “do I look like one of the most professional people in my industry?”.  If I don’t, then I go and make a few changes, until I am satisfied I can pass that test.  Here is a caveat. For a lot of men in Europe, they will be wearing a jacket and trouser combination, rather than a suit and the American trend is to much more casual clothing.  In certain industries, like IT, you will hardly see anyone wearing a suit.  Now I sell in Tokyo and everyone here wears a suit.  I remember I was so surprised when met the President of a gas stand and he was wearing a suit, so men’s suits are predominant here. Therefore, I dress for this business environment and you should do the same for your reality.

There is a correlation between the quality of our clothing and our personal financial success.  Buyers judge us based on what they see.  If we look cheap and nasty, they won’t want to trust us with their business because we don’t look successful.  On the other hand, if we are overdressed, it can have a negative consequence.  It can make them feel inferior, so the balance is important. 

If we roll up in our expensive Brioni or Kiton suits and Rolex watches, and they are just a salaryman tasked with purchasing goods and services for the company, they can feel inferior and experience some discomfort.  We look a bit too sharp to them and they don’t want to get cut.  As I say, getting the balance right is the key.

We will make an impression on the buyer based on what we wear, so we need to determine what that impression will be. We don’t leave it to luck or chance. We make sure it is the right choice – the one that leads to the deal getting done.

Do you need to sell more?  Is your sales manager stressing you about making your monthly sales quota? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43kQpsN )

To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj )

To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK)

If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training

greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま

Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki.

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan.

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Public speaking spots are a great way to get attention for ourselves and what we sell.  This is mass prospecting on steroids.  The key notion here is we are selling ourselves rather than our solution in detail.  This is an important delineation.  We want to outline the issue and tell the audience what can be done, but we hold back on the “how” piece.  This is a bit tricky, because the attendees are looking for the how bit, so that they can apply it to fix their issues by themselves.  We don’t want that because we don’t get paid.  We are here to fix their problem, not for them to DIY (Do It Yourself) their way to a solution.

All selling is public speaking and presentations skills.  However, very few salespeople are trained as speakers or presenters.  This is incongruous, isn’t it?  We need to be able to present to the one person in front of us or to hundreds of prospects all gathered together at an event.

First of all, we are selling our personal brand and then by extension the solution we are representing.  That is the correct order and just jumping to the solution won’t work.  Buyers buy us first and then what we sell.  We all know we can’t do good business with a bad guy or gal and our talk is a due diligence process to see if we can be trusted.

The dumb way to sell from stage is to provide all of the content up front and then come in at the end with the shiny sales pitch.  There is a discernable break in the flow and the audience braces themselves for the pitch.  This isn’t the way to do it.  We need to be interspersing our pitch throughout the talk, so there is no discernable shifting of gears by the speaker.  This way, there is nothing to brace against or push back on.

The way to do this is to determine what are the key problems and fears confronting the audience.  We have the fix for these and can be a trusted partner for them.  Once we have determined what are the key problems, we construct our talk to address all the most high priority needs in the time allotted.

The talk is broken up into specific chapters, rotating around the key issues.  We need to create hooks, which will grab the attention of the listeners. In each chapter, we outline the downside of not doing anything about fixing the problem we have raised.  We also talk about what needs to be done to fix it, but we don’t reveal how to fix it.  To get the point to register with the buyers, we pose rhetorical questions about what will happen if they don’t take action to deal with it.  We are painting a dismal picture for them of the future ramifications of leaving the mess as it is.

The fact that we understand the problem in detail tells the audience we are an expert in this area.  If we have some visible proof of our expertise, all the better.  We might point them to our books, blogs, podcasts or our video shows.  Today, all of these things are much easier to pull off than ten years ago.  For example, Amazon prints my books one at a time if I request it and so no garage is full of unsold books, which used to be the reality for most authors.

Today, creating blogs and pushing them out through social media gives us credibility at almost no cost.  The same with podcasts and videos.  There might be some small cost to recording the shows and hosting podcasts on a platform like I use with LibSyn, but really the cost is marginal.  YouTube hosts my videos and it is free.  Our mobile phones provide amazing quality for recording video and video editing software is not prohibitively expensive. Editing things yourself is possible in a way it wasn’t before.

This means we can project our expertise beyond the physical limits of the stage.  Let me give you a case study. Please go to LinkedIn and find my page.  You will see I am posting all the time on three subjects – leadership, sales and presentations.  If you scroll down through the feed, you will just see over three thousand posts.  My prospective buyers don’t need to read them all, but they can see there is a substantial collection of my expertise there. They can read what I publish and check it for themselves, whether it is good enough or not. This substantially bolsters my personal brand.  It also allows the buyers to follow up after the talk, to check me out further before they buy what I am selling.  For risk averse buyers, this is very important.

By incorporating the key hooks into the talk itself, using well-crafted questions to create fear that they may have trouble if they don’t fix a problem we have flagged, we eliminate any resistance against what we are selling.  When there is an obvious transition from sharing information to now selling, there is a large barrier created between the speaker and the audience.  They are thinking, “I love to buy, but I hate being sold. Now I am getting the hard sell by this speaker”. Doing it the way I have outlined, we never have any barrier, because we have been working the crowd all the way through the talk. 

If our questions hit the mark, they will want to know the “how” from us, after we have sold them the “why” and the “what”. We are aiming to create two concerns: 1. We haven’t considered that possibility and 2.  We have not prepared for that possibility.  If we are successful in doing this, then we will get sales. We have caused them to self-discover their own needs without us forcing it down their throats. This is ideal in sales.

Would the people who know you or meet you describe you as persuasive? Do you think you are persuasive enough? Persuasion power is the most important, but the most commonly lacking skill in the business world. Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. It is time to change things up and get that key skill.  There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/3VhvR2B )

To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj )

To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK)

If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training

Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま

Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki.

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan.

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Finding clients is expensive.  We pay Google a lot of money to buy search words. We pay them each time someone clicks on the link on the page we turn up on in their search algorithm.  We monitor the pay per click cost, naturally always striving the drive down the cost of client acquisition.  If we have the right type of product, we may be paying for sponsored posts to appear in targeted individuals’ social media feeds.  This is never an exact science, so there is still a fair bit of shotgun targeting going on, rather than sniper focus on buyers.  If we go to networking events, we may have to pay the organisation membership fee to be able to access the event and the fee for attending that meeting.  Or we may pay a usually very expensive amount to attend as a guest. If we do old style advertising, then we pay for the ad and it has a very brief shelf-life before it is discarded, usually unseen and unread, despite our best wordsmithing efforts with the copy.

Given how difficult and expensive it is to get a client, you wonder how we could be so crazy as to lose a client we have already spent time and treasure on acquiring?  It usually happens for a number of reasons.  Our solution fulfilled a need they had at that time, but that need is a one off or not a consistent feature of their spending.  It might be a seasonal spend, so there are limited time during the year to interact with the buyer and the connection isn’t as strong as it needs to be.  The company may have run out of dough because of the market, currency exchange rates, wars disrupting supply chains or a pandemic killing millions of people and disrupting the entire global economy.

Maybe our quality slipped up or our consistency of delivery wasn’t where it needed to be and the buyer punished us by going to another supplier.  Perhaps the buyer got moved around inside the client firm or quit and a new person has appeared.  The new broom has their own ideas and wants to mark out their territory by bringing in their own preferred suppliers and we are now out in the cold.  Or we have had a change of personnel. The person responsible for that firm has left the organisation and a new salesperson has to take over the account.  The chemistry is not there and the buyer moves their business to a rival firm.

Client bonds are very fragile and so many things can destroy the continuity of the business.  Even if you get on well with the buyer, they have bosses and maybe they have a different idea about how to move forward.  This travels all the way to the top of the organisation back in headquarters.  So many times the boss of the global business changes and a few months later you find yourself out on the street, because the purchasing has been centralised or rationalised or right sized or whatever and you are out.  I have seen so many deals fall over because someone up the decision-making tree has decided to override the decision of the buyer I am dealing with.  There is a policy change and now hiring is frozen, expenditures are reeled in and suppliers are cut loose.

A lot of this is beyond our control and we just have to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in business.  When we make the change, we can do a better job of controlling the transition from one salesperson to the next.  Unless we have fired the individual and they are out the door quick smart, there is usually a month period of notice that gives us the time to glue in the new person to the buyer.  Japan as a formalised cyclical redistribution of jobs every few years, so firms here are used to people moving. 

This should give us time for the existing client salesperson to take their replacement for them to meet the buyer and do the handover. What happens after that is the critical piece.  If the new representative doesn’t work on creating their own connections with the buyer, then the business continuity can be at risk.  This requires time together and busy salespeople may feel they are already maxed out taking care of their own existing clients.  That is a big mistake and this is where some strong guidance is required to make sure they make the time and build up a relationship with the buyer.  Just going once with your predecessor and then not making subsequent contact is a formula for losing the business. 

Yes it takes time to go visit these individuals, but so does finding new clients to replace the ones you lost.  We know that existing clients are like gold. We need to keep them close to us, but not everyone lives that truth and problems arise. Building chemistry between two strangers doesn’t happen overnight and it requires great skill in communication and time management to get all the right synchronisation to occur.  We need to take this transition process very seriously and make sure everyone knows their role and responsibilities. 

Despite our best efforts, it does happen that the change in staff leads to a loss of the business.  Obviously, we need to make sure that is a rarity.  We should assume the business will continue and then work backwards and decide what has to happen to make sure that becomes the reality.  Strong boss leadership is needed here, because busy salespeople can justify just about anything to themselves.  They need to be set the task and then we monitor what they are doing to safeguard that client relationship.  Don’t leave anything to chance or good luck.  Let’s make our own luck.

Salespeople are good talkers.  In fact, they are often so good, they decide to do all the talking.  They try to browbeat the buyer into submission. Endless details are shared with the client about the intricacies of the widget, expecting that the features will sell the product or service.  Do we buy features though? 

Actually, we buy evidence that this has worked for another buyer very similar to us, in a very similar current situation in their business.  We are looking for proof to reduce our risk.  To get us to the proof point, we make a big deal about how the buyer can apply the benefits of our solution inside their company.  Is that what happens in reality though? 

In Japan, judging by what our clients tell us and by the raw material we find attending our training classes, it would be a miracle if the salesperson went through these critical five phases of the explanation of the solution: 1. feature 2. benefit 3. application of the benefit  4. evidence and 5. trial close.  Most Japanese salespeople are absolute experts on the most intimate details to do with the features. However, they completely forget to expand that information to elucidate the benefits and beyond that, they have no clue what is supposed to come next.

In fact, finding a similar client in a similar situation in the current market is usually a stretch for us in sales.  Even if we had such a rare case, often we are precluded from talking about it because of certain clauses in the contract or by a Non-Disclosure Agreement we signed.

How do we prove what we are saying then?  This is where a trial session or a demonstration comes in handy.  We can talk as much as we like about how great we are and our solution, but seeing is believing.  If it is equipment, then running the machine can show whether the output will satisfy the demands of the buyer.  If it is a service, we may have to recreate the situation and show how we do things.

Recently we did both.  We had a request from one of Japan’s biggest financial institutions to run a sales training session, to see if we have what they want for their 3000 person sales team.  In any trial, we have to make a decision on what we will choose for the content? 

My advice would always be to choose the most difficult content.  Isolate out the areas where everyone really struggles.  This is usually the most relevant content and also the content which they currently have the most trouble with too.  If the content is too easy, then they will think they can do it themselves and therefore they don’t need us. 

In the services sector, this also raises the bar on the delivery side of things.  Complex content needs a lot of expertise to deliver it professionally.  If they are thinking to bring it in-house, they may watch the session and decide that they do not have the right resources to pull that off by themselves.  Ergo, they have to buy from us to eliminate the gap they are facing between where they are and where they want to be.

In a demonstration, similar to a trial session, getting the participants to get their hands dirty is critical.  Theory is fine, but doing it for real is a totally different thing.  I was teaching a module on “How To Disagree Agreeably” to the leadership team of one of the 5 star hotels here in Tokyo.  We went through the theory and then we had the role play practice.  It was revealing how much they struggled to replace their old habits with what they had just learnt.  It really brought home the importance of not just understanding things intellectually, but the importance of getting it to gel inside yourself and make it your own.

When we run a session or a demonstration, the client can see the content relevancy for their need and our expertise to deliver it to the team.  We can usually customise the content further, if it is not quite where they need it.  The delivery part shows our professional standards, our ability to relate to the team and whether we can be trusted. We have talked up a big game in the first few meetings about how great we are and now it is “game time” to show what we have.  These impressions have to match up or there is no trust.  No trust means no sale and we can’t have that outcome, can we!

I am very active networking here in Tokyo, scouring high and low for likely buyers of our training solutions.  I attend with one purpose – “work the room” and as a Grant Cardone likes to say, find out “who’s got my money”.  I have compressed my pitch down to ten seconds when I meet a possible buyer at an event. My meishi business card is the tool of choice in this regard.  Most people here have English on one side and Japanese on the other.  I was like that too until I got smarter about selling our services.

Typically, I would hand over my business card - Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training.  The recipient would then ask me “what do you do?”. I realised I needed to have a better organised approach to that frequent question.  Knowing that we do better remembering things we hear and see at the same time, I created two cards – one for English and one for Japanese. 

On the front of my card is all the logistical information – title, location and contact details.  On the rear of the card is the pitch deck. On that side, I note we are experts in “soft skills”  training, we have been here in Japan for 61 years and around the world for 112 years and that we cover five main areas – communication, sales, leadership, presentations and diversity, equity and inclusion.  At this point I ask them which one of these they need the most at their firm and then I shut up.  In ten seconds, I have them telling me their needs. This opens up the opportunity to visit them after the event and go through what we might be able to do for them. It is not the right occasion to attempt to have that conversation in a busy networking event. By the way, if they say, “all of them”, I still ask them which one is of the most interest. I need to get them to prioritise otherwise, it is left too vague and the conversation cannot advance.

Naturally, I write to them immediately and try to set up the appointment.  Most people ghost me and don’t reply.  I know everyone is busy, so I also know I have to keep following up until they consent or tell me to buzz off.  Those who agree to meet will answer my questions and listen to what we have.  At this point, things slow down as they work their way through the labyrinth behind the meeting room wall, where their decision-making colleagues sit – out of my sight and touch.  They need to reach a consensus internally, to do the training and pay the dough.

The problem is they are never on my timetable with their decision-making.  Don’t they know I have a monthly target to hit?  Don’t they know we need money now, not later?  Aren’t they aware we don’t like 60 and 90 day payment terms, because that is grossly unfair to the little guy? 

So often when we complete a deal and I look back at the spark of that deal, going from the initial ten second pitch deck networking event chance encounter, to the time of payment, it can be six months or more.  If you have a cash flow issue in your firm, that is a big problem.  Yes, you can discount fees to speed up payment and you get less, but you get it faster. The better approach is to keep stacking your funnel with deals, so that if one is slow to fruition or falls over, you are not wiped out. 

Deals falling over is super painful.  You have spent a ton of time marshaling this payday through their elaborate and baroque system. Everyone is ready to go, the contract is agreed by their legal beagles and then “someone” intervenes and scuppers the entire enterprise.  That payday may happen or it may not happen, but if that is all you have on the go, then you are naked and alone in a harsh world of pain.

I am reminded of watching a show on television when I was a kid.  A performer was keeping plates spinning on top of cane sticks.  As one would falter, they would leap in and wobble the cane stick to get the plate back to maximum speed.  It was always fast-paced and frantic. I am sure it must have been incredibly stressful for the artist.  That is the sales life to me.  We are busily spinning the plates to make sure none fall and we get a deal done and get paid.

Too many plates and the things start to go awry or too few plates and you don’t get fed.  Finding the balance is difficult, but I reckon we should always err on the side of too many deals rather that not enough.  We can always work harder to make the deals happen. 

There is a contradiction between being so busy we can’t prospect and being able to spend a lot of time prospecting, but not getting paid yet. This is the plague of coaches and consultants.  If they are in the act of coaching or consulting, they are getting paid but are not prospecting.  You don’t get paid for prospecting. So no earner there while you search for the next client.

There is never a balance and we have to live with that inequity, because that is the sales life. The key is to keep in mind the buyer is never on your timetable. You need to stack the funnel all the time, no matter how busy you become.  If you don’t, you enter the Valley Of Sales Death as the deal flow evaporates and you have no clients in the funnel and therefore no money coming in for months.

To keep those plates spinning, we need to be out there finding new clients, prospecting, following up, being ghosted with monotonous regularity, but never giving up is the answer.  Ryan Serhant says he keeps following up with potential clients until they die and he never gives up.  Let’s be like Grant and find out who has our money and be like Ryan and never give up chasing them down.

Access to social media has really democratised salespeople’s ability to sell themselves to a broader audience.  Once upon a time, we were reliant on the efforts of the marketing team to get the message out and, in rare cases, the PR team to promote us.  Neither group saw it as their job to help us as a salesperson, and they were more concentrated on the brand.  Today we have the world at our beck and call through social media.

We can promote ourselves through our intellectual property.  We can post blogs on areas of our expertise.  We can do video and upload that to YouTube, one of the biggest and most powerful search engines.  There are so many paths to the mountaintop, and they are all free.  Of course, the platforms are looking for money and so they shaft us and only show our stuff to a minute section of our followers, but the price is right.

I was making this point in a recent speech to the American Chamber here in Tokyo, which you can see on YouTube.  One question following my recommendation to salespeople to get out there and promote theirexpertise and experience, was “what about the haters?”.  It is a good point and if you are delicate and sensitive, then social media could be a bruising encounter for you and your content.  Or like me, you can just ignore it and work on the basis that people who get it know you are an expert, because they consume your content and they will ignore the haters as well.

Let me provide a real life case study for you. I was recently involved in a thread on LinkedIn responding to a post by the author about promoting your credentials when speaking in Japan, otherwise the audience won’t trust what you say.  I didn’t agree with the way this was characterised by the author and so added my “expert” comment.  Most people just ignored what I was saying, because they had what they wanted to say as their main interest and fair enough.  One person though said, “master trainer and executive coach coming in to bash an entire 125 million people country as non-professional in a single comment and blatantly disregard any suggestion on how to customize the message to appeal to a specific audience. Excellent communication strategy! 笑”.

So what would you do with this type of criticism? 

We can ignore it, as I suggested during my AmCham speech, or we can choose to expose it.  On this occasion, I decided to expose it.  This was my reply, “tell us your experience and share your insights. I am relating mine based on my experience here since 1979 and over 550 public speeches in Japan. Your comment doesn’t match with what I am suggesting from what I can see. What do you suggest that is diametrically opposed to what I am saying? I have published 373 blogs on LinkedIn on presenting in Japan and the same number of recordings for my podcast The Japan Presentations Series and published my book Japan Presentations Mastery as well as teaching the High Impact Presentations course. How about you - tell us what you have done?”.

As you see, I am heaping on my own credibility in my reply and asking the critic to pony up and tell us their credentials.  I chose this route for a simple reason. I have a very high profile here because I have published 7 books, including three best sellers, and release six audio podcasts and three video podcasts a week. I also pump out four additional videos a day through LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram and Threads.  You may not have this type of onslaught happening and can simply ignore the irritation.  I didn’t plan it this way, but I also drown out any critics, because of the constant flow of content I keep posting every day.  Their previous negative posting gets pushed down the fold in the screen and just disappears.  It remains high in their postings on their page, but is crushed by my new posts on my page and is soon forgotten.

In my reply, I made a special point of not criticising the person making the negative comment, but challenged them to put up and tell us what they would recommend.  This reply comes across as reasonable and not getting bogged down in the mud and the blood of personal recriminations. Never go there, because this is our public profile and we have to maintain our professional decorum.

Will I keep going in my responses, if they keep adding criticisms?  Probably not.  They have been challenged to show what they know. If they go the personal attack route, it is better to stand above the riffraff and ignore their salvos.  People reading the thread will see they have got no experience or expertise and will discount what they say as mere opinion.

As salespeople, we should use social media etc., to get our expertise out there for potential buyers to find us and to assure potential buyers we meet, that we are the real deal.  Today, buyers will search us out before they meet us to better understand who they are dealing with. 

Now, if they searched on you, what will they find?  In my case, everything is business.  I chose to not to mix business with personal on social media. I want to present myself as an expert in leadership, sales, communications and presentations because as a training company, that is what we provide to our clients.  It is always congruent. I don’t stray from those areas because I am conscious I have a limit to my time and my expertise.  I try to control what the potential buyer sees from me.  In this way, I can control my personal and professional brand.

Japan is facing a serious shortage of staff in many industries.  The job-to-applicant ratio rose to 1.28, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced recently. The ratio means there were 128 job openings for every 100 job seekers.The figure has not yet reached the pre-pandemic level of 1.6 in 2019. The hospitality sector in particular, lost a lot of part-time staff during Covid and they haven’t returned in numbers sufficient to match the needs of employers.  Hotels are getting back to pre-Covid occupancy rates, but they worry they don’t have enough staff to clean rooms and run the Hotel at the standards they adhere to.  In July, the Japan Times noted 75.5% of surveyed hotel operators said they face shortages of regular employees while 78% said they lack part-time and other nonregular workers.

The Immigration Services Agency recently announced the total number of foreigners in Japan has topped 3 million for the first time. The Japanese government has created a new skilled workers No. 2 visa category, just for the construction and shipbuilding industries. The Nikkei Asia in April quoted the Japan International Cooperation Agency estimates that, given Japan’s labor shortage, reaching the government’s economic growth target for 2040 would require nearly quadrupling the number of foreign workers to 6.74 million.

This is a profound change for Japan, which as a society highly values conformity and harmony.  No “melting pot” for Japan. Foreigners in large numbers may threaten that harmony, because they don’t appreciate how things work here.  The Government is facing that labor shortage head on though and creating more visa availability for foreign labourers to enter Japan and do the jobs locals don’t want to do. 

In the white collar world, the language barrier and the weak yen, both guarantee that there won’t be a rush of foreigners coming here to take up jobs.  That means that for most multi-national companies, there will continue to be a war for talent for Japanese staff.  If you require English as well, the pool of talent available becomes tiny.  If you are a large corporation, you will have deep pockets and can offer large base salaries to attract people to join you.  If you are a small to medium size business, then the nightmare has already started and will only get worse.

The Council for the Creation of Future Education, chaired by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, has the goal for Japanese students studying abroad to reach 150,000 students seeking to earn degrees by 2033. The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō) conducted a survey in 2022 which showed 30% of new employees quit their jobs in the first three years. This more mobile younger group, called the Dai Ni Shinsotsu (second stage fresh graduates) will be attractive to target, especially those with international exposure, better English and a few years of work experience.  They will still need extensive training, though.

In the world of sales in Japan, the picture is very grim.  If you need English speaking capability, the pool of talent available is very shallow and we are all competing fiercely for a limited resource. In my hiring experience, I have noticed over the last seven years that salespeople are becoming more expensive and certainly very expensive relative to their ability. The vast majority of salespeople everywhere are untrained and they are working it out by trial and error.  Japan is just the same.  Assuming that someone knows what they are doing after working for a number of years in sales is too optimistic in my experience.  Bosses need to accept that they will need to give these salespeople training to get their skills to the levels required.  We teach a lot of salespeople here and we notice some common trends. They need particular work on asking questions to fully understand the buyer’s needs rather than just delivering their pitch. Also, they need help on handling pushback from the client on pricing in Japan. The typical response here to drop the price by 20%, when confronted with the buyer’s “your price is too high” statement, isn’t the best choice. They need to be taught how to handle objections properly.

The sales staff supply shortage moves the locus of power to Japanese salespeople.  They know they are in strong demand and they can be very picky about who they join.  The resume flow is also very brittle and thin.  The range of choices is not there and if you get to interview someone, you are thinking this is a good day at work.  Like me, if you have been hiring people on and off over many years, the first thing you notice is the quality is going south at a rapid clip. 

Facing sub-standard talent, we have to make some serious adjustments.  We have to totally rework our on-boarding process and make it much longer, more comprehensive and intensive.  We need to really train people hard during the Probation period, so we need a longer period of six months. The quality of people we will meet will likely stay low and more often than not, they are the dregs of this Japan sales life. 

We have to get someone, so we will hire the upper echelons of these dregs of the sales world here in Japan. They are going to need serious, professional sales training and considerable constant coaching to get them up to speed.  This is going to be resource heavy. The improvement process won’t be fast either, so we have to accept that additional burden on our small businesses.  Our old idea that we can just hire them in and then fire them when they don’t perform is well out of date.  Current entry funnels are too shallow and so we will have few choices.

Our future Japan sales staffing prospects look bleak, choices are few and we must make legendary compromises. The answer is to invest in training our salespeople in order for us to survive.

Sales people are in massive competition today, with all the distractions that are out there for the client’s attention.

We want to get our message across about how we can help build the client’s business, but it is a tough row to hoe because of all the competition we face from meetings, emails and social media. There are so many things that are occupying the minds of our clients and our buyers before we get to talk to them. We have the appointment, we have their time; we turn up on the day. But inside their minds, there’s a lot going on about what has already happened in the day and what is going to happen in the day. They are thinking about many things, but not about us.

There’s a great little acronym, C A R E S  cares, which will help us break through some of that competition we have for their attention.

C stands for compliment. When you go to someone’s office, there might be something there that’s really spectacular or something that’s very impressive, so pay them a compliment. But don’t pay them the sort of compliment that every other salesperson coming through the door is giving them.

There’s a company here who have a very beautiful foyer entrance wall.  It is a very spectacular wall feature. Now, I know every single salesperson who goes there will say, “Oh, what a spectacular wall feature”. We have to do better than that. We can go in say, “You have a beautiful office.  Have you found that it has really impacted the motivation of the team since you moved here?” We have to say something a bit more intelligent. We are now asking about the impact of the feature on their business. Importantly, we are now on a business topic.

A is for Ask.  We ask a question. It might be something like, “how have you found things going with the prospect of a rise in taxes. Is your company confident that this is not going to have a big impact on your business?” So we get them into a business discussion straight away about where their business is going, getting them to talk about how they see the future. This is good for us, because we get an idea, a glimpse, into where they’re going.

R is for referral. Now a referral could be someone who’s introduced us to them or someone that maybe we know mutually. “I was talking to Takeshi the other day and he said you guys are doing a great job over here. He suggested, maybe I should come and talk to you, and so here I am today. I’d like to really find out a bit more about your business. Let’s see if there is any possibility where we we can help you take your business even further”. We can say something like that to get into a business discussion.  We break into what they have been thinking, to move them to where we can go with our conversation today.

E is for educate. Now as salespeople, we often turn up, and we have this great questioning model. We want to ask a lot of questions. We want to find out about their business, where they want to go with it, what is stopping them, what is it going to mean for them if we can see some success, etc. The problem is, this is all very much one way traffic in our favour.

It is more important that we can come in and talk about something which is really valuable to them. We can share some information we’ve picked up in the market, something we have seen in the media or something we have seen that is relevant to their industry or their sector of the industry. We can talk intelligently about these topics because when we are in sales, often we are dealing with a very broad range of industries and companies. We will see something working in another industry which might have some good benefit to them in their industry. When we connect the ideas together, they see a benefit in talking to us because they are being provided with some information they didn’t have to help grow their business.

Lastly S is for startle.

Now this is a technique where you can break through all the competition going on in their minds, which is conflicting with our delivery of the message. We need something which is really going to make them sit up and take notice. For example, “The youth population in Japan has halved in the last twenty years. It is going halve again in the next thirty years.  We are going to run out of people for staffing our companies. We will run out of clients. What do you think about this for your company? What are your specific market demographic prospects? How are you going to deal with this major change?”.

From the very start of the conversation, we get them on to a business topic.  We get them thinking about business with us. From this point, we are going to move along the sales cycle and go into the sales questioning phase. The bridge to our solutions explanation will be our credibility statement.

 This CARE formula is useful to get a little bit of conversation going, so they start to feel comfortable with us. They will like us, and trust us, so we that can ask for permission to ask questions to really dig in and fully understand them. CARES is a great way to break into a very packed day for a very busy buyer and get them to concentrate on our conversation. We slay all distractions.  If we can do that, then we will have a much better sales conversation. This is how we can get great outcomes, which will work for everybody.

Our circle of friends will usually be people with whom we share a lot of commonalities.  Our viewpoints merge, our interests are similar, we like the same types of things.  We get on easily.  Life however throws us many curved balls, as meet new people who are not like us. Often we struggle when dealing with them.  There are nine tried and true human relations principles we can use to improve our ability to get on with everyone, rather than just a select few who are more like us.  I am going to analyse some different types of people we are likely to run into and align the principles with each type.  This will create a handy guide on how to do better with people – all sorts of different people. 

Some of these principles in the wrong hands can stray into manipulation, but that is not the goal here.  We want to be able to form a good relationship with people who are different to us, so that means we have to make some changes to how we communicate with different types of individuals.  You can have one mode of communication and be great with people like you, but you lose all of the others and we don’t want that.

The easiest type for me to deal with is the “time is money” type because that is how I am wired.  This type is busy, businesslike, interested in outcomes, results, revenues, tolerates no excuses and is driven hard by their own standards and self-expectations.  Don’t ever whine to them about anything, because they don’t care and they hate negativity.  Don’t bother giving them appreciation because they sense flattery and doubt it. They don’t care what you think.  They are driven by their running theirown race and your opinion is irrelevant.   

They are perpetually interested in doing better, so we can arouse in them an interest in doing new things which will get them to their goals.  You can try and become genuinely interested in them, but actually, they don’t care because they are totally self-contained.

Smiling is good, but they don’t tend to do a lot themselves because they are serious people, focused on winning.  Using their name is good because they like to hear that magical sound, but don’t overdo it or they will think you are conning them.  

Be prepared to listen to them pontificate and tell you what they think.  Don’t interrupt them, cut them off or finish their sentences – they hate that when they are talking. Your role is to sit there quietly and listen.  They have a lot to say so get them talking, especially about themselves.   

Talk about the things they are interested in and despite how busy they are they will make time for you.  You are warned beforehand that you only have fifteen minutes, because they are so busy.  In fact, you spend ninety minutes talking with them because you found a topic which excites them. You don’t have to say anything to make them feel important – they already know they are and don’t care what you think.

The opposite type is the most difficult for me to deal with and these are the quiet, thoughtful, reserved people who border on timidity.  They like to have a cup of tea to get to know you before they can open up to you. My energy overwhelms them, so I have to really tone it down when dealing with them. 

They like people so don’t criticise others to them because they want to see the best in everyone.  They do enjoy honest appreciation, so share that with them.  They are interested in people, so if you have something in mind which benefits others, they will become interested in learning more. Smiling is good because they like to smile too. Using their name is good but again don’t overdo it.

Be a good listener and get them talking about themselves. They enjoy sharing their experiences and insights. Let them to do most of the talking because they feel comfortable when they are in control. Talk about the things they are interested in and they will grow close to you, because they feel the simpatico. 

Make them feel important but do it sincerely, honestly.  Everyone is an expert with flattery so don’t go there.  Find things you admire about them and express your feelings to them openly, genuinely.

Another personality type I struggle with is the person who likes data, proof, evidence, testimonials and numbers to three decimal places.  Don’t bother criticising anyone to them because unless you bring overwhelming evidence, they don’t believe it and basically they don’t care anyway. 

Don’t bother giving them sincere appreciation, because words don’t count with them. You need to stump up the evidence before they are going to take any notice. You can get them interested in topics as long as you are supplying the proof and data. They will want a lot of it, because they have an insatiable appetite for information. They are not interested in you becoming interested in them.  That is a diversion away from the numbers and they are not excited by what you may think about them. 

Smiling is not a bad thing, but they don’t do much of it themselves, because they are serious people. Using their name isn’t important to them, so don’t bother. You will have a lot of difficulty getting them talking about themselves, because that has nothing to do with the business at hand. It feels invasive for them.

The topics you should address should only be those of interest to them. Find out what they are interested in or concerned about and go deep there. Don’t bother trying to make them feel important – your opinion is worthless.

The opposite type is the big picture, don’t drag me into the weeds, very outgoing person who enjoys people and parties. Don’t criticise anyone to them because they are doers and love positivity. They enjoy sincere, honest appreciation because they have a high self-image.

If you find out what they want and what they are interested in, they will enjoy talking about those items until the cows come home. They want people to be interested in them so they are happy to share a lot about themselves to everyone.

Smiling is easy for them and they like it when you do the same. They love the sound of their own name but again don’t overdo it. Be a good listener because they have a lot to say and will willing share a lot of information with you about them. Find the topics they are interested in and talk about those and they will be very happy. Make them feel important in an honest, sincere way that doesn’t smack of flattery or sycophancy. 

As I mentioned, some of these principles in the hands of evil people can be used for manipulation.  Our goals is to get on well with all types of people. With that goal in mind, we switch our communication style from what we like to what they like.   We stay the same personality style but we speak different languages, depending on who we are speaking with. 

Of course you can say, “I am me. Take it or leave it”.  That is fine and you will get on with all of the people who are similar to you. If you want to get on with people unlike you, then try these principles with the various types you meet and see the results.

In the first two parts of this three part series we have gone deep on how to become known and liked by buyers.  That is all very well, but if they don’t trust us, they won’t buy our solutions if they can avoid it.  If you are in an industry where the supply side is totally restricted and the buyers have to compete for supply, then lucky you. I have never had that luxury and I would guess 99.9% of salespeople are in my boat. 

How do we get buyers to trust us?  The answer is in our kokorogamae.  This is our true intention.  What is in our hearts as salespeople?  Are we focused on what we get, our commissions, our new car, our benefit, making our targets to get the Sales Director’s jackboot off our neck?  Or are we focused on the buyer’s interests.  Is our success wrapped up inside the buyer’s success?  One of my favourite sales trainers is Zig Ziglar, whose famous insight is: “you can get everything you want in this life, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.  Zig has passed away already, but he hit on a profound building block of gaining buyer trust with his philosophy. 

Speaking of which, do you have a sales philosophy?  Have you set out your approach to sales, to establish the guardrails and boundaries of your actions and behaviours.  Of course, a wonderful sales philosophy is easy to embrace.  Remember though that everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth.  In sales, that means not selling and if you are on 100% commission that means not eating.  Even if you are not on 100% commission, it means getting fired and having to find another job.

Are you pushing certain solutions to buyers because they are the group with the highest commissions for you?  Are you putting your personal interests ahead of those of the buyer?  When things are going well, then all of these issues can be eliminated, but when you are hungry and can’t support your family, then your own rules get thrown out the window and you become desperate.

There is nothing worse in the business world than a desperate salesperson.  They will damage two brands in perpetuity.  One will be the company brand. They will create distrust of their company because why would an honest, reputable, reliable company tolerate dodgy salespeople?  The other brand is their personal brand as a businessperson.  I remember a salesperson relating to me how he had to keep going to new towns in the US to find new clients, because the quality of his solution was bad and once the buyers discovered that fact, he couldn’t show his face in that town again.  That was a companywide issue, but I silently asked myself why did he keep working for that dodgy company?  What was his kokorogamae as a salesperson?

In another case, we were talking with a well-known businessperson here in Tokyo, about a possible collaboration, when up popped this note in my social media feed;  “Has anyone seem Mr. X, because he owes me money?”.  Wow!  I knew the author of this social media post, so I went online and checked Mr. X out a bit more thoroughly and what a tangled mess I found. So many accusations of no trust and broken trust that it was scary.  Needless to say, we stopped the talks with him immediately.  What was his kokorogamae?  His reputation never recovered from this incident.

My point of view is that if you are not making it in sales, then get out and leave the profession to the rest of us, who know what we are doing and who have the correct kokorogamae.  All that bad actors do is pollute our profession and make it that much harder for the vast majority of us to win the trust of our buyers.

When you have the interest of the buyer at the forefront of your approach to the deal, then you will always make the right decisions.  Your will take the long term view and try and build up a reputation of being trusted and always dealing fairly with everyone.  That personal brand is worth a fortune and only an idiot would do anything to destroy it. 

It takes a lot of consistency to build it and this is where having a correct kokorogamae comes in to guide us, when we have to make tough decisions.  If we are in a transactional business model then maybe none of this matters.  But seriously, is that the type of sales life we want? Don’t we want to have a solid book of repeat business, with buyers who trust us and who appreciate our kokorgamae? 

We all know what is the right thing to do. We have to make a choice about whether we are going to defend that approach, against all of the pressure and temptations which will arise or not. Yes, sometimes we will make less money on a sale.  Yes, sometimes we will leave money on the table in a sale.  But if our mindset is long-term, then we can amortise these occasions against a long successful career in sales. We will benefit a lot more from being the choice of partner by our buyers, because they know we are honest, can be trusted and we always have their interests as our first priority.

Where do you locate your kokorogamae – your true intention?

 In Part One, we went deep on the KNOW Factor in sales and today we turn to why we need to be likeable.  Actually, do we need buyers to like us? Maybe not in every case, but it doesn’t hurt does it?  As a buyer yourself, would you rather deal with someone you like, rather than a person you didn’t like?  We will all prefer to work with people we like, but what makes us likeable?

Some clients we get on with like a house on fire and others not so much.  In my case, I want to turn all of my clients into my friends, and I want a lifetime relationship with all of them.  Does it always work out that way? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I should stop trying for that outcome.

We tend to be most comfortable with people who are like us, who have similar interests and who are easy to talk to.  To get on well with others we need to know how they work.  None of this is an accident, by the way. We are constantly sorting through the people we meet to find those who are the most similar to us. This is the easiest group for us to deal with.  

The problem comes from dealing with the rest of the population, who are not like us. There are four basic personality styles we need to be aware of, to help us understand how we should communicate and work with different types of clients.  We want to capture all of the business available and not just a share based around our comfort.  What if we can make buyers who are nothing like us feel quite comfortable in dealing with us?  Won’t that open the door to doing more business and isn’t that what we want?   

To do all of this we have to make two decisions when we meet buyers.  The first decision is to place them on a horizontal scale of whether they are highly assertive or not.  If they are assertive we place them on the right of that scale. If they are not assertive, we locate them on the left side.  How do we tell?  If they have strong views on a subject and readily state their opinion, they are assertive.  If they rarely venture their opinion and seem passive, then they are less assertive. 

The other decision is on a vertical scale, regarding whether they are outcome driven on the bottom of the scale or more interested in people on the top of the scale.  How do we tell which one they are?  If they talk about KPIs, ROI, targets, goals, etc., then they are going to be results oriented.  If they talk about how to get the team to work well together and how to build a strong culture etc., then they will be people oriented.  This locates them on the top of the scale.

This gives us a four-quadrant frame to understand better who we are talking to.  Amiables are top left. They are less assertive and very people oriented.  When we meet them, we should be talking about how the solution we are offering will positively impact their people.  We should take our time, have a cup of tea and reduce our voice strength and body energy when we are with them.   

I was supposed to give the new guy a brief about my Division, when he joined the firm.  I started out explaining the detail and he immediately diverted me to talk about people we both knew.  I never did brief him on what my division did, because he spent the whole time talking about people – definitely an Amiable.

Smile when you talk to them and be friendly. Give them honest, sincere appreciation. Make it real and not flattery. If you mention some positive attribute back it up with proof, so that they know it is real and not some dodgy salesperson snake oil. We should not cut them off or finish their sentences when they are talking and we should encourage them to do as much talking as possible.  Try to be genuinely interested in them. We should use their name when we are talking to them - just don’t overdo it.

The direct opposite type is bottom right in the frame - the Driver, with which I am very familiar!  They don’t care about your smiles, because they are results and outcome oriented and have little time for small talk. They want to get down to business and hear about the outcomes they can expect.  “Time is money” is their mantra, so don’t waste their time wanting to have a cup of tea together and get to know each other.  Be high energy, strong in voice and body language.

If that is not your natural play, then you have to switch it up when you are with them or you will just irritate them. Now that is not the position a seller wants to find themselves in. Be strong and get straight into the three reasons why they should buy your solution, the concrete measurable results this will bring and then get the hell out of their office.  They like that.

I was in a sales meeting with a foreign executive, newly arrived in Japan, talking to him for the first time.  As he joined me while I was waiting in the meeting room, I began to engage him in some typical small talk.  After five seconds of this, he cut me off very abruptly and said , “let’s get down to business”.  That told me straight away he was a Driver and I knew I had to be quick, concise, confident and assertive with him.  We did the deal for training for his leaders in fifteen minutes in that meeting, because he was a busy man and had other things to do.  A classic Driver.

Never criticise the competition, the government or the weather to them. Instead, always be positive and upbeat.  Use their name, because that is music to their ears. Make them feel important, but do it sincerely.  They are usually powerful people with a lot of confidence and often big egos.  Get them to talk about themselves, because that is a favourite subject. Talk in terms of their interests and cut everything else out of your conversation. 

Work on supplying what they want and keep that conversation tight.  Don’t keep adding details, because they are interested in outcomes not getting bogged down in the weeds.   Superfluous details just dilute your key messages.  Don’t bother complementing them to get into their good books. They don’t need you approbation or any one else’s for that matter. They just dismiss it as propaganda and pap. They are inwardly directed and emotionally independent. 

Bottom left is the Analytical. They are not demonstrative and can be rather quiet. Your dynamic salesperson energy needs to be toned right down and you should mirror their body language as much as possible. Speak quietly and be circumspect in what you say. They love numbers to three decimal places, want proof, testimonials, evidence and lots and lots of data. They don’t care much about people, but they do care about numbers, so come bearing lots of numbers for them.  Try to get them talking, but don’t expect them to share much about themselves.  Don’t bother flattering them, they are not interested in what you think.  Bring proof to back up what you are saying.

Top right are the Expressives.  They are big picture people, who don’t like masses of detail.  They are usually high energy and we have to match that energy. They like people and enjoy talking, so smile and get them talking about themselves – a favourite subject.  They appreciate honest, sincere appreciation, because it agrees with their own positive, confident self-image.  Use their name, because that is a sound they like.  Make them feel important, but avoid anything which smacks of flattery, because that insults their intelligence.

We are simultaneously more than one of these styles. I am a Driver, but when I am selling, leading or training, I move up to the Expressive personality type.  When I am looking at the results forecast and the P&L, I move across to the Analytical.  In my case, I rarely wander into Amiable territory though. 

We cannot just work well with people who are the same personality style as us, because that means we are missing out on three quarters of our buyers.  We have to migrate our communication delivery to other styles’ preferences, depending on who we are dealing with.  Does that mean we will suffer severe psychological problems and become schizophrenic?  No! We keep our own individual style within ourselves, but we learn to speak the languages preferred by the other styles. We stay the same, but we change the language we use, depending on who we are talking to. 

As human beings, we all like people who are more like us, those who have similar ideas and interests.  As salespeople, we have to be flexible and quickly understand who is in front of us and then change our communication and behaviour to suit.  Is this deceitful?  No, we are just adapting how we do things, to how they like things done. We still offer the same wonderful solutions, but we change the way we explain the solutions to a format that they can easily accept.

To be liked by buyers, we need to understand where they are coming from and meet them there.

In Part Three we will look at how to be trusted by your buyers.

We have all heard this bromide about Know, Like and Trust in sales, but have we really deeply explored what it means in today’s post-Covid business climate?  Over the next three contributions, I am going to go deep on these three aspects of sales.  

The Marketing Department will work on promoting the brand, but it very rare that they ever promote individual salespeople.  Let’s assume they won’t be spending any money on us and so we are on our own. Grant Cardone is a really hard driving, hard core American sales trainer who I like, but who I know would be a disaster in Japan. Nevertheless, he makes a very good point when he says in sales we are all invisible.  This is the “know” problem. How can people buy from us, if they have never heard of us.  

During Covid, the entire networking apparatus just broke down.  Participating in online events, we could see people trapped in their tiny little boxes on screen, but we couldn’t connect with them.  What a frustrating time that was in the sales profession.  Fortunately, networking at live events is now back in fashion. Are you making the most of this opportunity?  This is such a great chance to meet people and make a personal connection directly with buyers and allow us to set up a sales call with them.  Within ten seconds you should be able to tell if this person is a prospect or not. If they are not, then go find someone who is.  It is time to get back out there and “work the room”.

Cold calling was a nightmare too.  The decision-makers were camped out at home and we didn’t have the foresight to collect their mobile numbers prior to the pandemic.  That meant a call to the general number was the only alternative.  Astonishingly, many firms I called hadn’t mastered the logistics of remote work. They had a central phone number, but no one was picking up the phone.  What a mess.  Even if you rang the central number and managed to speak with a human being, they were savage beasts, hell bent on getting rid of salespeople. 

They are still savage beasts post-Covid and getting through to buyers is still tough, tough, tough. Target the person you want to connect with and send them a package by mail and that same junior person who was blocking your call from getting through will diligently place that parcel on their desk for you.  Existing clients are always the backbone of most sales efforts, because finding new clients is so difficult.  That doesn’t mean we should give up on cold calling though.  As I said, we should carefully target who we think we can help and sniper-like, focus on connecting with them.

Social media is another dimension where we can become known.  Where is the attention focus in Japan for your buyers?  Finding out this type of general information would be straightforward you would think, but across the various sources, the discrepancies in reported numbers are just astonishing. I honestly don’t know who to believe, but according to humblebunny February 2023’s 8^th edition, the order of ranking of monthly users in Japan is YouTube (102m), Line (92m), Twitter (59m), Instagram (49m), Facebook (26m), TikTok (18m), Pinterest (9m), and LinkedIn (3m).

This is where your clients potentially have their attention, but do you know which platforms they visit? Also, what about you - where can you be found?  Are you using the same platforms as your buyers? Think about who is your target market, which platforms are they using and most importantly, what is your presence on those platforms?  Are you just a consumer of other people’s content and not a creator for these platforms? Does that demarcation make any sense, if you want people to know who you are? 

As a creator, which mediums are going to get you in front of your potential clients.  Can you produce text content which marks you out as an expert in your field?  Can you get your text content on to platforms to distinguish yourself from your competitors? Even if you cannot do this easily, AI has the capacity to assist and it is very fast.  The danger is that at this stage in AI’s development, the content can easily become rather generic. That is why if you can add your secret sauce, your special spice, to help you to stand out in your fellow AI dependent crowd. 

Can you produce video?  Absolutely. Everyone has a high-quality camera in their mobile phone today, so the barriers to video production have really come down.  Video is good, because we can see you and we can more easily connect with you. We feel like we can know you.  What about audio?  The soundtrack can be easily stripped out of video and bingo, you now have an audio version of the same content.  Or you could create a podcast and have your guests provide the majority of the IP and you just add your two cents worth.

Do you have to be handsome and beautiful and sound fantastic for these mediums?  Many people won’t do video or audio, because they lack confidence in how they look and sound. Is that you? Think about rock musicians?  Are they all gorgeous and good looking with great voices?  Mostly no, but they still sell millions of albums.  I like Sting, John Lennon and Bob Dylan and do they all have great voices?  Handsome? Not really. So we don’t have to be self-conscious about how we look and sound thus limiting ourselves in terms of becoming creators for our audience of buyers.  If the content is compelling, people will ignore how you look and sound. 

It is time to network, cold calling and maximise the use of social media.  How else are you going to get known?

In the next edition we are going to look at how to be LIKED in sales.

AI has opened the floodgates to allow any idiot to create content. If content marketing is an important vehicle for promoting your credibility in business, then be concerned.  Most content is currently created by people who are literate, that is, they can write the pieces themselves. 

One notable exception is Gary Vaynerchuk and I am a big fan. He is a prolific creator of content, including best-selling books and readily admits he cannot read or write well.  However, he is really able to talk and as we say in Australia, “he can talk under wet concrete with a mouth full of roofing nails”. He has others transcribe his comments and clean up what he says. This then becomes his output in text format. 

A funny irony is that he doesn’t read his own text when he records the audio versions for his books. He basically speaks the book again, so that the two versions are never the same. Anyway, his “speaking” idea to create content is not a bad one, if writing is not your forte.

There are no longer barriers to entry for text content because of AI.  At the moment, anyone can command the machine to produce content for them and they can upload this as their own work.  Well, we had this before didn’t we, when people were using ghost writers.  I remember reading a really good article by an Aussie guy I knew here in Tokyo. Let’s call him Mr. X.  I was surprised by the quality.  Frankly, I didn’t think he was that smart or that articulate. In fact, he wasn’t. He paid a professional to write the piece for him and then he put his own name on it.  The difference with AI is it is cheap, fast, prolific and good enough to pump out standard content.  

Now, if you are trying to show potential buyers that you are an expert in your field, by uploading relevant text content to social media, expect that all of your rivals will be able to do exactly the same thing using AI.  In fact, expect a flood of new content into social media by your rivals.  How can we differentiate ourselves in this frothy “red ocean”?

The bad news is that AI can produce generic content at scale and speed.  The good news is that your rivals are all tapping into exactly the same sources for their content, so they cannot easily differentiate themselves as a consequence.  It is going to be mass plagiarism on a grand scale.

To stand out from the crowd, the missing secret sauce here is “you”.  When creating content, you must inject your ideas, experiences, insights, feelings, observations and examples into the text.  AI cannot do this.  It cannot be you at the creation point.  Yes, it can write content in your style, but it still isn’t you. It didn’t see what you saw today or experience what happened to you today.

Basically, it comes down to not just our writing ability, but more importantly our storytelling craft.  The stories we can tell will be what will differentiate what we are saying from the grey blob mass of AI generated sameness polluting our creator world.  Perhaps you are not used to sharing things about yourself publicly.  Get over that idea.  We all need to personalise our content much more and that means injecting ourselves into the picture.  It is easy to pontificate. I know, I do a lot of that on the subjects of leadership, sales, presentations, communication and DEI. Apart from preaching what we believe, we need to insert our stories into the content to ward off AI derived competitor pontificating.

They may be our own stories or stories from other people’s experiences.  It doesn’t matter, as long as the content reflects a personal approach, something which is not generic in the slightest.  This requires us to start working on collecting our stories, rather than just moving forward in an orderly manner every day.  Things are happening around us all day long and we need to spend some time to capture them for use in our creative work.

Gary Vaynerchuk was very clever.  He realised he was a not going to sit down and write stuff out, so he decided to capture what he was doing every day and turn this into his content, called “The Daily Vee”. He has Daniel Rock, AKA “D-Rock” follow him around all day videoing his activities. He always had D-Rock video his keynote speeches for the same reason. Behind him, there is a 30 person “Team Gary” crew who work on this content and slice and dice it to feed Gary’s social media machine.  Genius.

I don’t have “Team Greggy” of thirty people to do that for me and you are probably in the same boat, but what we can do is start collecting what happens in real life.  We can generate stories to add to the point of view pieces we publish.  These events happen everyday, but we don’t record them and allow ourselves to access them, to add as a special spice into our content creation.  These stories are items that AI cannot create, because they are your stories and you are the only one who knows about them.

To deflect the tsunami of AI generated content, which is about to consume the entire world, we need to work on how we can stand apart for the dross.  Maybe in the future AI will also start generating stories based on what it sweeps up from the internet, but it still won’t have your stories from today.  Maybe it can eventually capture and use your stories from the past, but we can always be one jump ahead of the machine.

Think storytelling when you are observing the world around you and make some notes as prompts to tell those stories.  Start collecting them now and look for other people’s stories to tell, to make your point, like I did with Gary Vaynerchuk and Mr. X for this particular content creation.  AI will homogenise everything in this field and we cannot stop it.  Instead, we have to be clever and find ways of differentiating our content and keep ourselves at the forefront, so that AI and our rivals are always in our creative wake.

Sale’s solutions are what make the business world thrive. The client has a problem and we fix it, our goods or services are delivered, outcomes are achieved and everybody wins. In a lot of cases however these are only partial wins. Problems and issues are a bit like icebergs – there is a lot more going on below the surface than can be spotted from the captain’s bridge. The salesperson’s role is to go after the whole iceberg and not just the obvious bit floating above the waterline.

The standard sales interview is based on two models comprising the outer circles surrounding a bull’s-eye.   The extreme periphery is the “telling is selling” model. This ensures the salesperson does most of the talking. The client is subjected to a constant bombardment of features, until they either buy, die or retreat. The second model, the inner circle adjoining the bull’s-eye, is the solution model of providing outcomes that best serve the client, based on what the client has understood is their problem.

The latter is a much better tool and is in pristine condition because so few salespeople use it. The rapid fire of features at the client, rarely provides success because of the randomness of the proffering of alternatives. Welcome to the “toss enough mud at the wall and some is bound to stick” School of Sales. Aligning the fix with the client need in the solution model is the mark of the semi-professional. There is nothing wrong with this model but what are the rock star sales masters doing?

They are zipping up their wetsuits and diving into the icy water under the iceberg, inspecting things closely and really understanding the full scope of the situation. They are on a mission to try and find what nobody else is seeing. Their ability to deliver previously unseen, unconsidered insights is pure gold for clients.

Mentally picture our big red bull’s-eye at the center of a series of concentric circles. Stating the features of a product or service is the first level, the very outer circle. Our solutions constructed around what the client knows already is the next inner circle. The highest level is providing solutions for problems that the client isn’t even aware of yet.

A truly magical client statement would be: “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that or allowed for it!”. Think about your own experience. Anytime we have been a buyer and have uttered those words to ourselves, as a result of insight from the salesperson, we have experienced a major breakthrough in our world view. Now that is the bull’s-eye we want right there.

 The salesperson who can provide that type of perspective, alerting clients to over-the-horizon issues, provides such value that they quickly become the client’s trusted business partner. Be it in archery or business, hitting the bull’s-eye is no easy matter. Insight can’t be plucked from the air at will. Plumbing one’s experiences, sorting and sifting for corresponding relevancies and then diving deeply into the client’s world looking for alignment are the skills required.

In a way, ignorance is an advantage. Paraphrasing Peter Drucker, our success can come by asking a lot of “stupid” questions. A salesperson has an outside perspective, untainted and pure. There is no inner veil obscuring the view, no preconceived notions or ironclad assumptions clouding judgment.

Counter intuitively, the fact that we don’t know, what we don’t know, becomes our strength. Ignorance allows us to question orthodoxy in a way that insiders can’t because of inertia, group think, company culture or the internal politics of the organization.

When salespeople serve numerous clients, be it in the same industry or across industries, they pick up vital strategic and tactical commercial intelligence. Researching various client’s problems, experiences, triumphs and disasters is valuable – but only if you know how to process the detail.

In all of our companies, we can only see clearly what we are doing ourselves. We all exemplify that Japanese saying: “the frog in the well does not know the ocean”. Everything is too familiar and so we don’t ever question everyday normality. We don’t have the opportunity to peak behind the curtain and look into what our competitors are doing.

It is also very rare for company personnel to do study tours of totally unrelated businesses. If we classified industries alphabetically, in a standard business setting, representatives from A and Z would rarely meet, let alone get to trade ideas and experiences. Salespeople however are floating around businesses and therefore able to know many wells and oceans. The ability to select and apply one particularly successful thing in a different context is a commercially valuable skill.

How can salespeople get that skill? Some ways salespeople can provide over-the-horizon value include being highly observant. Take what you have seen working elsewhere for one client, in a different company or industry and then apply it for your current client. Sounds rather easy doesn’t it. The reality is pressured salespeople miss much, record little, remember less and blag their way through most of their client meetings. Let’s all slow down, listen, think, and then innovate. The answers are often right there, but we miss out because we are too busy and not looking for them.

Another way to get that skill is to do practical research. Based on what you already know, build up a point of view on an industry, check it against what your clients are telling you (or conduct company surveys). Delve into nascent potential problems, arrive at your hypothesis and be the first mover. The real time insight garnered from this type of activity, allows salespeople to become rockstars in the business world. They are providing “take it to the bank” added value for the buyer.

We won’t always be able to conjure up a bull’s-eye. However, in trying to do so, our aspirations, general direction and thinking will be correct. Our kokorogamae (心構え) or true intention will be on track. By comparison, our competitors will lag well behind, still waffling on about features or playing detective interrogating clients. We have to move on to a higher dimension, where clients seek us out. They do so because they recognize the value of what we offer. In sales, the inner-most circle, the big red bull’s-eye, leads straight to the winner’s circle and that is where we must be. Let’s make “insight” our springboard to success.

 Action Steps

1. Look for what is working for one client to apply to clients in another industry
2. Keep good records of insights so you can deploy them when needed
3. Don’t be afraid to ask “stupid” questions
4. Look for every opportunity to differentiate yourself by providing unmatched value through insights

He slid effortlessly into the chair and before I knew it, he had popped open the oyster shell of his laptop and was pointing his screen menacingly in my direction. Uh oh! Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After 20 minutes he stopped the torture. “Wow”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting”. His business card announced he was the Sales Director – that seemed a definite worry if he was responsible for others.

The irony of this sales presentation was that I had requested it. I was in fact, a hot prospect. I had heard his President at a function talking about the new whizbang service their firm offered and I was intrigued. So intrigued, I approached the speaker and asked that he send one of his crew over to see me.

I should have suspected something was amiss though, by the reaction of the President when I made my “visit me” request. Did he become buoyant with anticipation of a sale and reassure me that this product was the best thing since sliced bred? Surprisingly aloof, I found him, in fact almost disinterested. Was this a Nordic thing, I wondered or just his personality? I will never know, but what I did think to myself was, how important it is in sales to be positive and upbeat about your product at all times.

So back at the meeting, after a death of a thousand powerpoints, I miraculously revived and questioned the Sales Director. Why? Well despite his incompetence, I still had a need. In the end though, I was not a buyer.

What could he have done with me? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. He could have holstered his weapon before drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the “hotties”. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything, instead of only those things I needed to know, to make a buying decision.

Reading this little vignette, I hope you take immediate action and self-audit whether you are any better at questioning than this guy? Do you have a sales process in place. Are you spending the bulk of the client interface time, laser focused on where they have the greatest likelihood of success?

If you are a “teller”, then here is a simple questioning step formula that will help you get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”. By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Clients are never on the our salesperson schedule and will take no action, unless they clearly understand there is a benefit to doing so.

Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already. This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves.

Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff? They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators.

Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant.

If my sales Powerpoint maestro had applied some of these basics, he may have had a sale that day. He was in his forties, so one can expect that he has probably been repeating this same flawed performance for decades. Adding it all up, the total amount of lost sales over that period would be mind boggling. Such a shame really and so unnecessary. If you want to see revenues go up, ask clients questions, before you mention one word about your magical widget. Do this one simple thing and watch the difference.

In 1936 an unknown author, despite many frustrating years of writing drafts and receiving publisher rejections, finally managed to get his manuscript taken up by a major publishing house. That book became a classic in the pantheon of self-help books – “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Surprisingly, many people in sales have never read this work. Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius etc., were all around substantially prior to 1936 and we still plumb their insights. Dale Carnegie has definitely joined that circle of established thinkers, offering wisdom and valuable ideas. His aim was to help all of us be better with each other, particularly in a business context. He did this by laying down some principles, which will make us more successful in dealing with others, especially those people not like us.      

Salespeople should definitely be friendly. Ancient Chinese wisdom noted, “ a man who cannot smile should not open a shop”.   What this is saying is there are some pretty basic things we must do to be successful with people. We know all of this, but we forget or even worse, we know but we don’t apply our knowledge. Here are nine principles for helping us all to become friendlier with our clients.                     

Become genuinely interested in other people

Our buyers are actually more interested in what we know about what they want, than in what we know about our product or service. It is a common mistake though to be wrapped up in the features of our offering and lose focus on the person buying it and what they want. At the extreme, transactional thinking means you don’t care about the individual, you only care about their money from the sale. That is the hyper short career in sales option.              

For a long career, we better get busy really understanding our clients. The key word in this principle is ”genuine”. Having a correct kokorogamae or true intention, means we will be honestly focused on understanding the client so that we can really serve them and build a partnership. We must be fully focused on their success, because wrapped up inside that outcome is our own success.

Talk in terms of the other person’s interests

Salespeople have a self-defeating habit of selective listening and selective conversation around what they want to talk about. Their kokorogamae is centered around their interests and the buyer’s interests are secondary. Sales talk is a misnomer - there is no sales talk. There are well designed questions and there are carefully crafted explanations around solution delivery, which are tightly tied back to what the buyer is interested in. Questions uncover interests and with laser beam focus, that is the only thing we talk about.

Sounds simple, but salespeople love to talk, they love the sound of their own voice and they become deaf to the client, often without even realising it. Check yourself during your next client conversation – imagine we were to create a transcript of your words, would they be 100% addressed to the buyer’s interests. If not, then stop blathering and start talking in terms of their interests. By the way, Japanese buyers are rarely uncomfortable with silence, so don’t feel pressured to fill the conversation gaps with pap!

Be a good listener. Encourage the other person to talk about themselves

Good listening means listening for what is not being said, as well as what we are hearing. It means not pretending to be listening, while we secretly think of our soon to be unveiled brilliant response, witticism or repartee. It means not suddenly getting sidetracked by a single piece of key information, but taking in the whole of what is being conveyed. It means listening with your eyes – reading the body language and checking it against the words being offered.

Talkative salespeople miss so much key client information and then scratch their heads as to why they can’t be more successful in selling. The client doesn’t have the handy dandy sales handbook, where the questioning sequences are nicely aligned and arranged for maximum efficiency. Instead the client conversation wanders all over the place, lurching from one topic to another, without any compunction.

I am just like that as a buyer. I have so many interests and will happily digress on the digressions of the digressions! Well designed questions from the salesperson keeps the whole thing on track and allows the client to speak about themselves at length. In those offerings from the buyer we learn so much about their values, interests, absolute must haves, their desirables, their primary interests and their dominant buying motives.

Japanese buyers usually need a level of trust to be developed, before they may open up and talk about themselves. It is exceedingly rare to wrap up an agreement in Japan with just one meeting. So salespeople, play the long game here and don’t be in a rush. We are limbering up for a marathon, not a sprint in Japan.

Arouse in the other person an eager want

This is not huckster, carnival barker manipulation. This is becoming a great communicator, someone who can arouse passion and enthusiasm in others. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, based on the salesperson’s belief in the “righteousness” of doing good, through supplying offerings that really help the buyer and their business.

One of the biggest barriers to success in sales is client inertia. They keep doing what they have always done, in the same way and get the same results. Our job is to shake that equation up and help them to get a better result, through doing something new – buying our product or service.

We have to help them overcome their fears and persuade them to take action. In Japan there is a penalty for action if something fails and less of a penalty associated with inaction, so the bias here is to do nothing. Having a need and taking immediate action are not connected in the client’s mind, until we connect them. We have to fully explain the opportunity cost of no decision, no action or no response to our proposal.

We achieve all of this by using well thought out questions, which lead the buyer to draw the same conclusion that we have come to – that our offering is what they need and that they need it right now. This Socratic method of asking questions works because it helps to clarify the buyer’s own thinking. Most salespeople don’t ask any enough questions, because they are too busy talking about the features of their widget. We can arouse an eager want if we frame the questions well.

 Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers

Telling is not selling. Ramming our proposal down the client’s throat is not selling. Being bombastic and dogged is not selling. Naturally, we will always have more information, data and knowledge about our solution than the client. Blabbing on about the fine detail won’t persuade the client to buy. Often Japanese buyers expect a sales “lecture” on the proposal, so they can slip into the role of the critic. Avoid that scenario at all costs. All you will get out of that type of meeting is the thin cheap green tea being served and little more. Instead, go and find some buyers who will accept your questions.

We all own the world we help to create. Our job is to help the client create a world we can share, that they feel deeply connected to and about which they feel some ownership. If I tell you some worthy insight I still own it. If I ask questions that spur your thinking and help you to garner some of those “lightbulb” moments, then you own that insight. We are always more likely to execute on our own ideas than other people’s.

Sales is about assisting client’s to see possibilities they haven’t considered. We have probably all had the experience of shopping for something and the store clerk’s explanation alerted us to something we hadn’t even considered, which immediately framed our subsequent approach to that purchase. This is the job of the salesperson – to help the client re-frame their worldview with rich and valuable insights that lead them to make the best buying decision – with us!

Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view

We have reached the age we are today, built on a firm foundation of mistakes, errors of judgment and ineptitude. None of us were born perfect, we had to fail in order to learn what not to do, as well as what to do. We were not brilliant from the start with new tasks. We had to spend time to master the new and unfamiliar. In the beginning, we were inept until we gained some solid skills.

In other words, we are all hauling around prejudices, biases, painful memories and firm views on the world, built on our foundation of hard won experiences. Salespeople trying to inject their views into this construct, will feel like they are trying penetrate a block of marble. “Education” in the original Greek and Latin meant “to draw out”, not “inject in” information and ideas. We should embrace the classics and like Michelangelo, draw the hidden David out of the marble.

In order to be successful in doing this our communication skills are required to have empathy, to really get deep with the client’s worldview and experiences. We need to understand their concept’s creation platforms which reveal who they are today. Let’s get to know them at a more substantial level so that we really get where they are coming from and more importantly, we need to understand their WHY. Most Japanese buyers are not as open to being frank about what they want. To get there, we need to build trust through multiple meetings, big dabs of patience and a correct kokorogamae or true intention.

 This requires we stop concentrating on ourselves and what we want and focus on the buyer instead. We need to suspend our own surety of our concept’s creation platform and see things fresh, in an open, unbiased way. When we can get that clarity, the words coming out of our mouths will be perfectly aligned with what resonates most deeply with the client’s needs and they will buy our offerings.

Get the other person saying, “yes, yes” immediately

“Yes momentum” is an old idea in sales. It works on the psychological principle that a series of positive responses will lead to an acceptance of our offer. A simplistic understanding of this idea would see our hearty sales hero designing a long set of killer questions, the only logical answer to which must be expressed in the affirmative.

For example, asking a question such as, “if you were able to reduce costs, would this be of help to your business?”. Everyone wants to save costs in business, so the only answer is yes. The problem with this type of approach is it becomes manipulative, as the salesperson belts a whole series of these “can only be answered by yes” questions.

It reminds me on those nodding animals in the back of cars, that bob up and down with the ride. Expecting to fast track your way into a sale through this client head bobbing subterfuge is a misunderstanding of the principle. The latter is saying let’s get “yes, yes” responses immediately, but not exclusively. In the Japanese language Hai means “yes”, but this is the “yes” of I hear you, not the “yes” of I agree with you. We need to understand this and ask the question in a way that differentiates between the two responses.

We do want to design questions that help the buyer clarify their thinking about our proposition. We should start with one or two “yes” questions that narrow the focus down to a positive investigation of the value of our solution, when judged against all the alternatives. It should not become a “Yesfest” though.

After getting some positive responses we should begin asking the WHY behind the response. This helps us to dig deeper into the drivers of an affirmative decision. Clients, as mentioned, will wander all over the prairie once they get going, so we have to shepherd them back on topic. A good way to do that is to ask a closed question to which they can easily answer yes. Now we can keep the conversation moving in the right direction, without the whole process being manipulative. “Yes momentum” – yes, but in moderation is the better approach.

Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires

Understanding the dominant buying motive of the buyer is the Holy Grail of sales. Of course we need to know the primary buying motive – the WHAT, but to really serve the client we need to know the WHY. In particular, how will this buying decision advance their career or their business? Where can we fit in, to become a booster for their success?

Risk aversion is a strong emotion in all of us, especially among Japanese buyers, concerning the buying process. We have all been burnt at some stage through a purchase that failed to satisfy us and which we immediately regretted. We paid too much or it broke straight away and the sales person’s spiffy spiel wasn’t matched by the good’s performance. Some people may have an MBA, but we all have an MS - an advanced Master’s Degree in Skepticism. The Japanese buyers by the way all seem to have a PhD in Skepticism Of Sales People, especially foreign sales people.

As salespeople, we need to be mindful of the client’s emotions and find ways to legitimately prove our solution will not disappoint. The client’s desire is to improve or defend their situation – no one wishes to go backwards in business. They have their own ideas about how that is done best and our job is to find out WHAT they think and WHY they think it. We may have reached a different conclusion on the HOW, but by understanding what is driving them, we can more easily explain where our solution gels with what they want to achieve. Getting them to do most of the talking and by prompting new thoughts through great questions, we can make that happen.

Dramatise your ideas

When we pick up the phone to speak with our client or when we sit down in the meeting room with them, they are bursting at the seams with “stuff” in their heads. They are wrestling with what happened yesterday, what they have to get through today and worrying about what will happen tomorrow. These days, we are all having much more face-to-device time than face-to face time. There is no down time any more, as we slip out our phone to check everything we ever wanted to know and lot of things we don’t need to know. Salespeople are competing for client brain space with all of this internal “noise”.

We need to be primed to break through all the clutter and grab the client’s attention or we will never be able to sell our wares. We need to be working out how our client likes to be communicated with. Are they micro or macro focused? Are they interested in people or task outcomes? Once we have established the form of communication which best resonates with them, we should be looking for various ways to dramatise our recommendations.

Verbal word picture drawing is a great skill for a salesperson, as we choose evocative words that our listener can see in their minds eye. Collect “power words” that you can pepper your sales explanation with, in order to register the greatest reaction with the buyer. We need to become great story tellers with lots of “colour and movement” to grab their nanosecond attention spans. In regards to the delivery it may vary quit a bit. We may be very direct or we may be very thoughtful in our expression, according to the client’s preferred style of communication.

We are giving them the floor for the bulk of the meeting time, so we have only a limited window for our words, so we need to be very deliberate in what we are going to say. Salesperson blarney is a thing of the past – you simply don’t have enough air time to blab on anymore. We need word injection precision when we speak.

The words themselves and the vocal range we use to articulate them, are both important. We need to use speed – fast and slow for emphasis. We need to put the power in for some words and take the power out entirely for others. Word emphasis can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Try this sentence: “I didn’t say he hit his friend”. Repeat the sentence seven times but on each occasion, emphasise one word, much more that all of the others. By doing this the inference of the words also changes. This simple exercise underlines that we have a powerful tool at our disposal – our voice. We also need facial expressions and gestures which are congruent with what we are saying and which add strength to amplify the key message.

Dale Carnegie was a leader in thinking about being good with people. His principles are universal and timeless. All of us in sales can adopt these principles and become more effective in our dealing with our buyers.

Salespeople are carrying around a lot of baggage with them when they visit clients. The smooth talking, dodgy sales person trying to con us, is the folkloric villain of the piece. Reversing that doubt and hesitation is critical to gaining acceptance as a valuable business partner for the client. This entire problem is magnified when we meet the client for the first time.

Because the client’s don’t know us, their default position is one of caution and doubt. We have all grown up being rewarded for being risk averse and so we are resistant to change. The new salesperson represents “change” – because they are asking the client to buy something new or to change suppliers. So that we can properly serve them, we need to breakthrough that mental protective wall erected by the client and establish trust and credibility,.

Great – but how do we do that? Try crafting a Credibility Statement. This is a succinct summary that will grab the attention of the client and help to reduce their resistance to what we are offering.

It unfolds in four stages:

First we give an overview of the general benefits of what we do. For example, “Dale Carnegie Training helps to deliver the behavior change needed in the team that translates into improved results”. Next we need to quote some specific outcomes, as evidence that we are a credible supplier of services. So we now might say something like this, “An example of this was where we helped XYZ company, a very high end retailer with training their entire sales staff. They are now enjoying a 30% increase in sales”. Now, we introduce an important suggestion that makes this benefit and result summary relevant to the listener. “Maybe we could do the same for you?”

Finally, we need to create a “verbal bridge” so we can move on to questioning the client about what they need. In Japan, a lot of buyers expect to control proceedings, such that the seller turns up, gives their pitch and then the buyer happily shoots it full of holes. What Japanese buyers are doing is trying to ascertain the risk factor of what you are proposing, by disparaging everything you have just said. They now want you to provide answers that eliminate their fears. You are immediately on the back foot. The client, not you, is controlling the sales process. Good luck with that and let us know how that is working out for you?

To break this pattern (which has a very low success rate), we need to ask pertinent questions and find out what they really need. In order to do that, we need to get their permission to ask questions. This transition into the questioning part of the sales process is absolutely critical.   Don’t miss this: in Japan the buyer is God. Hence, buyers here may feel our questions are impertinent, intrusive and unnecessary, so we must gain their permission to proceed.

Every single time I have been forced to just give my “pitch”, because the buyer has denied me the opportunity to ask questions, there has been no sale achieved. We need to better skilled, to get them to allow us to fully understand how we can best serve them. That is why we need to be asking questions and listening carefully to their answers.

So that we can make that transition, after saying “Maybe we could do the same for you?” , we softly mention, “In order to help me understand if we can do that or not, would you mind if I asked a few questions?”. We say this, almost as a throw away line. No big deal, nothing to see here.

When they agree, we are now free to explore in detail their current situation, what they aspire to, what is holding them back and what would success mean to them personally. If you don’t ask these questions you have little chance of convincing the client you can help them solve their problems.

Amazingly, the majority of sales people don’t ask any questions, but just blab on about the features of their product. I had a sales presentation given to me recently here in Tokyo by the Sales Director of a software vendor and after some initial pleasantries, he plunged straight into walking me through his powerpoint presentation of the functionality of his solution. Forty minutes later he finished. Not one question about my needs or about my difficulties – nothing. Amazing – he was an experienced guy who had always been in sales! Come on - as salespeople, we all have to do a lot better than that!

So putting it all together, the sequence flow would be like this: “Dale Carnegie Training helps to deliver the behavior change needed in the team that translates into improved results. An example of this was where we helped a very high-end retailer with training their entire sales staff and they are enjoying a 30% increase in sales. Maybe we could do the same for you. In order to help me understand if we can do that or not, would you mind if I asked a few questions?”.

This Credibility Statement should be short (under 30 seconds), delivered fluently and confidently (no Ums and Ahs). This takes a lot of preparation and practice because it is so short. Every word is vital in the design stage and we must deliver it perfectly. It can also be multi-purposed as an ideal “elevator pitch” for those occasions when we have to briefly explain what we do. This might be face-to-face or over the phone.

If it is over the phone, then we would drop the permission to ask questions part and instead ask, “Are you available next Tuesday or is Thursday better?”. Unless your product is specifically suited to being sold in that way, don’t sell solutions over the phone. Instead, secure a day and a time to meet. That is all we should be aiming for – the appointment.

I was talking to some clients in the pharma industry and recently hospitals here in Tokyo are restricting salespeople to just one day a week to see the doctor. See the doctor being the key word here because they only get one minute of the doctors time! I gave them some Credibility Statement strategies for dealing with that nanosecond window using our Dale Carnegie sales system. What is said in that brief encounter has to have a hook so sufficiently attractive, the doctor wants to hear more. Therefore the design is so important and so is the delivery in this extreme case. Regardless of the industry, turning up and blurting out your random whatever is a joke. Are you properly planning your sales conversations or are you constantly winging it? Stop winging it and get serious about sales.

The driving objective of sales is to solve client’s problems. We need to establish the client relationship based on a professional, competent first impression. The Credibility Statement does just that and opens the door to permission to find the issues, offer solutions and serve as a trusted business partner.

So key action items from today:

1. Craft your Credibility Statement very stringently – each word is gold and treat it as such
2. Practice the delivery over and over so that it is confident and smooth
3. Always ask for permission to ask questions before you say one word about your solution line-up

Apply these ideas and join the top 1% of professionals in sales.

The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal and professional brand suicide.

There are elements of the sales process which are so fundamental, you wonder why I would even bring them up. For example, believing in what you sell. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe but keep selling. You don’t have to look far to find them. They are going through the motions but you never feel they have your best interests at heart. They usually don’t have any other sales process than blarney and BS. We may buy from these people, but we come to bitterly resent being conned and we don’t forgive or forget.   Today with social media, your “crime” is soon broadcast far and wide, warning everyone to be very careful when dealing with the likes of you.

The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people. They get into sales by accident. They should have been screened out from the start but sadly the world is just not that logical.

When I joined Shinsei’s retail bank, I recognised immediately that 70% of the salespeople should never have been given a sales role. My brief was “we have 300 salespeople and we are not getting anywhere – come in and fix it”. The vast majority of people in the role of convincing wealthy Japanese customers to buy our financial products were really suffering. They lacked the communication skills, the people skills, the persuasion power, the warmth, the concern for the customer, etc., which they needed to be successful. Why on earth were they there then, you might ask?

Many of them had never been in a sales role, many had been in backroom jobs, never facing customers. When Shinsei moved all of the operations components out of the branches they gained tremendous efficiency. The operations part became centralised and worked like a charm, but the operations staff were still there and were given sales jobs. Disasterous for them! How about your sales team? Are all of your colleagues in the right role? Are you in the right role?

As Shinsei, we worked out who was best suited for a sales role and gave those people the proper training to equip them for success. The remainder were given a role elsewhere in the bank. What training did we give them? Before I arrived, mathematics was thought to be really important for bankers. It probably is for certain roles but the ability to ask good questions, to fully understand wealthy customer’s needs, was much more important. So was the understanding that first impressions should not be left to chance but need to be created. If I don’t like you or trust you, why would I want to buy anything from you?

At Dale Carnegie we do a lot of sales training and we see the same client issues come up continuously. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. This sounds a bit ridiculous except that many people in sales roles don’t smile easily. They don’t exude warmth, coming across as cold, hard, clinical, mercenary and overly efficient. We all love to buy, but we hate being sold and “efficient” sales people make us nervous.

Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty. Record your own sales conversations and check if what you are saying is coming out in a professional manner, bolstering the confidence of the buyer in what you are saying.

A totally canned sales speech is the opposite problem. I sold encyclopedias for Britannica as my first sales job and we had to pass a memory test, where we could recite the entire 20 minute presentation precisely. Having passed, we were then dropped off in a forlorn, working class outer suburb in my home town of Brisbane and turned loose on an unsuspecting public. There were no questions involved, but a lot of data dumping going on in that canned speech.

Astonishingly, despite all we know 40 years later, there are still people trying to make careers in sales while wading through minute after minute of the features of the “whatever”. Where are the client questions, the needs understanding, the explanation of the benefits, the application of the benefits, the evidence – the proper sales basics?

Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on three powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how your solution satisfies their need.

If you want to be successful in sales, make sure you introduce a proper sales process, get certainty, get fluency and get going!

It has always been astonishing to me how hopeless some salespeople are in Japan. Over the last 20 years, I have been through thousands of job interviews with salespeople. We teach sales for our clients and so as a training company we see the good, the bad and the ugly - a very broad gamut of salespeople. We also buy services and products ourselves and so are actively on the receiving end of the sales process. Well actually that is a blatant exaggeration. There are almost no salespeople operating in japan using a sales process. But there are millions of them just winging it (badly).

Why? On The Job Training (OJT) is the main training pedagogical system in Japan for training the new salesperson. This works well if your boss has a clue and knows about selling. Sadly, there are few sales leaders like that populating the Japan sales horizon. So what you get are hand-me-down “techniques” that are ineffective and then even worse, these techniques are poorly executed in the hands of the newbies.

We like to buy, but few of us want to be sold. We like to do business with people we like and trust. We will do business with people we don’t like and very, very rarely with people we don’t trust. Neither is our preference though. The million dollar question is, “what makes YOU likeable and trustworthy?’

Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust. When you think about it, this is just the same as in a sales job interview. In both cases we enter an unfamiliar environment and greet strangers who are brimming over with preoccupation, doubt, uncertainty, reluctance and skepticism. If a sales person can’t handle a job interview and build rapport straight away, then it is unlikely they are doing much better out in the field, regardless of what is glowingly written down in the resume.

So what do we need to do? Strangely, we need to pay attention to our posture! Huh? It is common sense really - standing up straight communicates confidence. Also, bowing from a half leaning forward posture, especially while we are still on the move, makes us look weak and unconvincing. So walk in standing straight and tall, stop and then bow or shake hands depending on the circumstances. Smiling at the same time would also be good, depending on the situation..

If there is a handshake involved then, at least when dealing with foreigners, drop the dead fish (weak strength) grasp or the double hander (gripping the forearm with the other hand). The latter, is the classic insincere politician double hand grip.

Some Japanese businesspeople I have met, have become overly Westernised, in that they apply a bone crusher grip when shaking hands.  Recently I have met a couple of Japanese businesswomen, who are trying to out man the men and are applying massive grip strength when shaking hands. It sounds very basic advice, but please teach your Japanese team how to shake hands properly. Too weak or too strong are unforced errors which impinge on building that all important first impression.

By the way, we probably only have a maximum of 7-10 seconds to get that first impression correct, so every second counts. We are all so quick to make snap judgments today, we just can’t leave anything to chance. When you first see the client, make eye contact. Don’t burn a hole in the recipient’s head, but hold eye contact at the start for around 6 seconds and SMILE. This conveys consideration, reliability, confidence – all attributes we are looking for in our business partners. We combine this with the greeting, the usual pleasantries – “Thank you for seeing me”, “Thank you for your time today”. Now, what comes next is very important.

We segue into establishing rapport through initial light conversation. Japan has some fairly unremarkable evergreens in this regard – usually talking about the weather or about the distance you have travelled to get here, etc., etc. Don’t go for these bromides. Try and differentiate yourself with something that is not anticipatory or standard.

Also be careful about complimenting a prominent feature of the lobby, office or the meeting room. I was in a brand new office the other day and they have a really impressive moss wall in the lobby. I will guarantee that my hosts have heard obvious comments about the moss wall from every visitor who has preceded me. “Wow, what an impressive moss wall ” or “Wow, that is a spectacular entry feature”. Boring!

Teach your salespeople to say something unexpected, intelligent and memorable. In this example, “Have you found that team motivation has lifted since you moved to this impressive new office?”, “Have you found your brand equity with your client’s has improved since moving here?”. This get’s the focus off you the salesperson and on to the client and their business. For example, if you are a training company like us, you definitely want to know how the team motivation is going, as you may have a solution for them.

Having a good stock of conversation starters should be basic for every salesperson. It might mean imparting some startling statistic that they may not have heard. For example, “I read recently that the number of young people aged 15-24 has halved over the last 20 years, are you concerned about future talent retention as demand exceeds supply?”.

We might educate the client with some industry information they may not be aware of but which would be deemed valuable. An example would be: “Dale Carnegie’s recent research into Engagement amongst employees found three critical factors impacting motivation. The relationship with the immediate supervisor, the team’s belief in the direction being set by senior management and the degree of pride in the organization – what are you seeing in your organisation around the area of engagement and motivation?”.

We face a lot of competition for the mindspace of our prospective clients. Busy people have a lot on their mind and we are an interruption in their day. Some of our prospective clients may be moving continuously from one meeting to another, so the attention span is shredded and the details begin to blur. They may have their eyes open but don’t imagine their mind is in the room and focused on you. To counteract that possible external pre-occupation and to get them back in the room with you, use a question.

If I suddenly asked you, “what month were you born in?”, I will guarantee I have your 100% attention. So questions are powerful disrupters of pre-occupation and we should have stock of little beauties we can wheel out when needed. For example, “most people I talk to say Abenomics is not having any significant impact on their business as yet. Have you seen any benefits yet?”.

Another might be, “My clients’ opinions seems to have changed – they are becoming more concerned about the possible future increase in consumption tax – is that an issue for your company?”. We want them talking about their business, because this is going to provide us with insights for a later line of questioning, as we try to uncover their performance gaps, needs, aspirations, etc.

The very first seconds of meeting someone are vital to building the right start to the business relationship. In modern commerce, we are all so judgmental and quick to make assumptions. Dressing the wrong way may even disqualify us before we get to open our mouths. Simple initial errors in posture, greetings and conversation can be our undoing. Let’s get the sales team’s basics right and make sure they totally nail that first impression.

So key action items from today:

• Refine an image through dress, posture and eye contact that projects confidence
• Stock your opening comments such that they are really well differentiated from all of your competitors, who have swanned in ahead of you
• Provide useful business references to introduce something new to the client that gets the attention off you and on to the client’s business

This is the rapport building stage of the sales process and it is both a science and art we need to perfect.

Do you subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc? The following morsel popped into my inbox the other morning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care–Anonymous”. Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales.

 Don’t miss it – we all know selling stuff is a tough gig. Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be mentally tough to survive in a sales job. You need other things too. Product and technical knowledge is important. Total command of the detail is expected by clients. This has to be a given, so if you don’t know your stuff cold then get studying. However, we also need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about?

 I am a buyer too and am constantly amazed by what some people get up to. Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies?   You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”. Why on earth are they doing this?

 I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs?

 I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth? I can sense they have already bought their new Beemer before the ink is dry on our agreement? Actually, there is no agreement, because I don’t buy from these types of amateur salespeople and that is the same reaction from most people.

 The quote at the beginning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care” reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え).

 It can be simply translated as “preparedness” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. I would prefer to translate it as “getting your heart in order”.

 This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction?

 Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Huh? Does this sound a bit too “hug a tree” California emotional for you? Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn’t centered on their best interests and therefore they won’t buy from you. The trust is never established.

 Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the “smooth talking” salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to. They are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand.

 The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was a criminal. The criminal part didn’t surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks (note to Sales Managers – do background checks!). He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the role play, and WOW, what a fantastic closer! I thought “Yes!” at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong. What a wake up and smell the coffee for me.

 When you have the client’s best interests in mind, you do all the right things. You ask well designed questions to fully understand how best you can serve the buyer. You present your solution in such a way that the buyer feels this is exactly what I have been looking for. You calmly handle any hesitations or concerns from the client, reassuring them that what you have is exactly what they need. And you are confident to ask for the order. That is the sales professional in action

 So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of push sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. Change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a power personal brand.

 Action Steps

1. Don’t even raise the subject of your product until you know what the client needs
2. To uncover client needs ask well designed questions
3. Get your kokorogamae right before you do anything
4. focus on the client’s success before your own success

We have all seen it – the pendulum swings of organisational change.  You can basically break out your stopwatch and get the timing down perfectly.  The new CEO arrives and reverses whatever the predecessor was doing.  If things had been centralised, now everything will be decentralised. Then here we are five years later, another CEO and we reverse course again.  In the sales area, the goalposts keep moving.  The raw numbers chase may now be leavened with big numbers, but from a better quality of client, as we move more up market.  Or it may be that we spread the risks, by having a lot of middle level clients, rather than being too exposed and dependent on the big fish and our occasional whales.  Or it may be profit, rather than market share, is the Holy Grail of the moment.

There is no doubt that these types of changes are distracting for salespeople.  We get into a rhythm, and we are well organised and then next thing a big change swings through and we have to re-organise our lives and clients.  We may have a campaign to get behind which alters how we have been working.  It may impact the pricing, as we trade profitability for volume or the other way around.  We may be on a mission to increase the number of new clients and bulk up the sales funnel. 

One of the issues is that these distractions take our eye off the ball with our clients.  We are suddenly wrapped up in admin activities and our time for prospecting is being diminished with endless meetings, new systems and more reporting requirements.  Most salespeople are big picture expressive types. They hate the admin, the forms, the inputting, the detail focus. They feel they could be better off spending their time with buyers.

We may get a new Section or Division boss and the whole picture changes immediately as the new broom makes changes to territory or client allocation or commissions or whatever they feel like doing.  These changes drive the entire team’s focus inwards and away from clients. We know this is bad, but we are swept up in the changes. We are desperately trying to navigate a fast flowing stream, which has just transitioned into deadly white water.

The answer to these externally generated woes is our time management discipline.  If we think about it, time is all we have.  Therefore, what we do with it determines our level of success.  When we are under siege by these types of changes, we can lose control of our time and feel we are just being buffeted and beaten by the waves of the broiling white water, as we try to avoid the rocks and waterfalls.  We know that Quadrant Two is where the gold is kept – Not Urgent but Important activities like planning. 

We cannot do everything every day.  That is just impossible in this modern business world, so we need to be focused on doing the most important things every day. The only way to get that done is to plan to do it and to stop all of the noise and distraction from taking us away from our most important goals for the day.  The number of things we can get done during these distracting times may be less than normal, but at least if we are only doing one or two of the most key things, we will stay on track as the chaos unfolds around us.  The important thing is that this is what we do every day and not just occasionally when the planets align.  That regularity builds the discipline, because our time control is working to help us do better, with the time we have.  Okay sometimes we are swept away by the chaos and our time is being wasted, but that loss needs to be sequestered to just that day. The very next day we get back into the discipline of regaining control over our time.

There are three groups of clients we face.  Those who will never buy from us, those who will buy eventually and those who will buy right now.  In times of chaotic organisational change, we need to be concentrated on those who will buy now and keep working on those who will buy at some point in the future.  We need to be brutal with sorting out who is who and making some tough decisions about where we spend our time. 

It may require us to fire some argumentative clients who take up a lot of our time, but don’t want to pay our fees and are basically a noisy pain.  When we are short on time, we have to place a high value on how we spend our days and with whom we choose to spend them.  Time is all we have so, we must invest it wisely and in chaos, that dictum become even more important.  You can calculate the cost of your time – divide the income you want by the hours available to earn it and you come up with your effective hourly rate.  It is always humbling to do this exercise. You quickly realise if you don’t keep a tight rein on your time, you can easily be working long hours for peanuts.  Troublesome clients are expensive in this calculation. Fire them and concentrate your energy and time on wonderful clients, who will become lifetime business partners.

Pitching for the business is quite different to selling to a client representative we may be meeting in a meeting room.  In the latter case, we have only one or sometimes two people to persuade, but in a pitch it could be department representatives from many parts of the firm.  The worst possible pitch environment is when on this occasion you have had no chance to meet the client beforehand to understand their situation, aspirations, issues and problems.  Hopefully the pitch would be after you have had a chance to consider all of their requirements and instead of just sending in a proposal, they ask you to deliver it to the key people in the firm.  There should be no reason why you cannot meet with some members of their team beforehand, but let’s assume that worst case is the scenario. 

Even though we may not be able to meet before the pitch, we can still do research.  Often we have other clients in the same industry, so we will have some broad ideas about the current issues facing similar firms.  Even if we don’t have such clients, we may know someone working in the industry or we can find access to someone to find out more about what is going on at the moment. Additionally, we can do a literature search on media reporting on the company in question and on the industry in general.  There may be stock analysts who follow the industry, who for a fee, will provide us with their findings on what is going on.  Through LinkedIn, we might be able to connect with a senior person who has left the firm recently, who may be willing to provide some broad insights.  We shouldn’t expect to get all of the company’s dark and dirty secrets, but they may be happy to share in broad brush terms.

ChatGPT is a bit useless as a research tool for current information.  For example, when I asked about the current state of the 5 Star Hotel industry in Tokyo, I get this answer: “I’m unable to provide real-time or the most up-to date information as my knowledge cut-off date is September 2021”.  In Tokyo 5 Star Hotel terms, September 2021 is like a hundred years ago in terms of vacancies and losses in revenues thanks to the pandemic.  Today they are doing a booming business, as foreign tourists flood in to enjoy a very cheap yen environment. 

Anyway, back to the pitch question.  We may not have been given direct access to company staff, but we can still try and do a matching process between what we offer and what we believe would be of most value to the firm.  As we don’t exactly know what is ailing them at the moment, we need to offer up a few alternatives, on the basis that if we just burst into action on one and it isn't resonating, we will be out the door in short order. So we draft up a few scenarios which we think could be reasonable cases for seeking our help with finding solutions to their problems.

There is no point starting with the weakest case and moving to the strongest.  Everyone has limited time, patience and availability to listen to us, so we have to go in hard with the best case we can come up with.  When we are delivering this first case, we will be able to tell by the reactions whether we are on track or not.  This is not a perfect angle though. There is also the issue that different departments have different interests and they may respond variously depending on what strikes a chord with them.  If we are striking a chord with no one at all, then we better move on to case number two and keep going.

There will be senior people in the room and the rookie mistake is to only talk to them.  Often the President is there, but he or she is not a sole decision-maker.  The top executives may only look at the possibility of working with you, after those lower down the totem pole have worked on the due diligence. 

I have made this mistake, imagining that if I could win over the President, then the orders to work with me would rain down on the rest of the crew.  I remember sitting in the President’s office as he got very excited about all the wonderful things I was telling him about our training.  He jumped on the phone and called the heads of the HR team to drop everything and come to his office immediately, to meet me and hear what I had to say.  I was getting very positive about the direction this sales call was going.  These two HR guys turned up and did a lot of nodding in front of the President. When I left I said I would contact them to have a further meeting to go through the detail.  I am still waiting for a reply to all of my follow-up emails to these two guys. I presume they didn’t like him getting involved in their world and so did nothing, despite the President’s excitement.

So when we present our pitch, we should assume everyone will be involved at some point in the decision.  This includes those junior people who will do the due diligence, to those who will shepherd the idea through the labyrinth inside the firm, up to the senior executives who will approve the consensus decision.  That means we work on everyone in the room and don’t just look at the President the whole time and ignore everyone else.  The other people we shouldn’t favour with our exclusive attention are the English speakers, if we are doing this pitch in English.  Often they have no decision-maker power within the hierarchy and are treated like language technicians.

If we got close to the mark on what they are needing, we can hope that there will be some clarifying questions after our pitch, which will give us a better idea of what they need.  We should also be looking to find key people in the room, with whom we can have a follow-up meeting, to try and get some feedback on whether we need to change the angle of our solution or whether our solution is relevant or not. 

This type of pitching is clearly the most challenging, but if we do our research and if we bring multiple angles to the pitch, we may be able to break through the wall of silence they have thrown up.  Not every company wants to open the kimono to total strangers, with whom they have no existing relationship or with whom they are yet to build any trust.  If we keep that in mind, we will do a better job of pitching to the potential client.