Widen That Buyer Gap Or Else
Having a buying need and doing something about it can often be quite disparate ideas. There are many things we would all like to do in business to grow our companies. The constraints are usually money and people. The lack of resources holds us back and so we persevere, always hoping that somehow, we will be able to bridge that gap between where we are now and where we want to be.
At the CEO level, we are always focused on the strategy for the company and the future goals. This is something that occupies a lot of thinking time. Once you get below that level, the intensity drops off. The CFO is thinking about this quarter or this year. Worried about the finances, the cash flow, the ability to find the funds to invest, the analyst reports, etc.
If we are talking about line managers, they are concerned with meeting their targets and keeping their good people and getting rid of the not so good people. HR has a very curious take on all of this. Basically, they don’t care all that much. They have a functional role here in Japan and are the rule police. Sometimes they have to respond to internal demands and go and source resources in the form of people or training, but generally they are passive.
When the buyer is looking at the gap between where they are now and where they want to be and they judge it is pretty close, they don’t feel any urgency or need to buy. They will have certain drivers pushing them along in their role in the business, but this gap perception component is key in selling to buyers. If we can’t show that the opportunity cost of no action is too high, then they are not inspired to do anything. Doing nothing or doing what you have always done are the easiest decisions for any buyer.
They are always time poor and a purchase decision usually comes wrapped in other tasks that will need attention, as a consequence of making that buying decision. Not buying isn’t always about the money. Often it can be hesitancy around the Pandora’s Box of extra workload this buying decision will trigger. It could be the lack of resources to make the most of the benefits of the purchase and this is what is also holding them back.
We have to draw out the implications of taking no action, of doing nothing. When and how do we do that? In the questioning stage, we can draw attention to the size of the gap. Now if we say “that is a pretty big gap you have there and you should fix that”, they doubt us. We are salespeople, so the buyer is always mentally dismissing everything we say as fluffy sales talk. We need them to tell us the gap is big and needs attention. Also that it needs attention right now.
When we are discussing the Should Be question - where they want to be in the future we need to add a little question to this process. We ask where they want to be and then we follow up their answer by asking them, “What happens if you can’t get there fast enough?”. It is not useful to ask them what happens if they cannot get there, because as far as they are concerned, they can get there by themselves. No, instead we draw their attention to the speed factor. No one ever gets there as fast as they want, so it automatic opens up the idea of a gap that needs addressing. Also the current speed they are traveling at, will always be their maximum speed, so we are there to help them speed things up.
When we are asking about the Barrier Question along the lines of “if you know where you are now and you know where you want to be, why aren’t you there yet”, we have another chance to emphasise that they need our help to achieve their goals. We find out what is the obstacle holding them back and then we ask the gap widener - “What happens if you cannot clear that obstacle?” Again we are trying to demonstrate that maybe they cannot do it all by themselves or do it fast enough and they need us in that equation to make it work. When we ask about the personal payoff for them if we are successful, after their answer we need to get them to reflect on the downside for them personally if it doesn’t happen or happen fast enough. We ask, “so if the targets are not met, what does that mean for you personally?”. In Japan, buyers rarely ever attach any personal gain to success and will talk in general terms of the group. In this case, we need to reference what will it means to the team if the goals are not met? It is the same idea but just asked in a different way.
If we try to point out these aspects which won’t work we won’t be believed. We have to get them to tell us it won’t work, under their own steam, at the current pace, with the current resources and investment. Once we get them thinking about that gap we can start suggesting when we present the solution that we are the cure for all their ills. We have the ability to help them get where they want to be faster and more smoothly.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Handling Buyer Objections
None of us like to hear “no”. We are raised with this word from our parents and we didn’t like getting it then and we don’t like getting it now. We have something in our mind about how things should go and this little word means we are going to be denied. The irony is that in sales this is a very common answer to our offer. For something so prevalent, you would think that salespeople would be real experts in dealing and overcoming this comment. Not true.
Instead, often the first reaction to hearing no on the part of the salesperson is to go harder. They somehow imagine they can force the buyer to buy. They imagine that if they have some tricky technique they can reverse that declaration. The immediate impulse is to go straight to the answer to counterpoint the objection. This is exactly the opposite of what we should do but that doesn’t stop salespeople from trying it. This is mainly an emotional reaction based on the adrenalin flooding the brain with the fight response. We need to stop that process.
How do we do that? We need a circuit breaker. We need an interruption between our hearing the word “no” and going in for the rebuttal. That is where the cushion comes in. A cushion is a short sentence which is quite neutral and won’t inflame the situation with the negative buyer. We are told no because it is too expensive. Instead of plumbing the thousand good reasons why it is in fact not too expensive, we go to a cushion such as: “It is important to get the budgeting process working well in any company”.
The 5 or 6 seconds which it takes us to say that sentence gives us time to mentally regroup before we try to respond to the client. We have to override the chemicals pushing us to fight, to engage the brain before we speak. The only thing we should have running through our mind while using the cushion is “ask why it is too expensive?”.
Answering straight away exposes us to a big danger. That occurs because we are possibly not answering the right question. We hear “it is too expensive” but this is a headline. We need to read the full article the get the background before we are in any position to respond. The headline may be a fake news headline as well. Perhaps they say that initial response to us, just to hide the real reason. We do this when retail shopping, don’t we. We can’t afford the item we are looking at when we see the price tag. Do we tell the clerk we are paupers who can’t afford such an expensive good. No, we say something else, such as the colour isn’t to our taste, or we are not sure about the size.
When we hear that headline from the buyer we need to ask why that is a problem. We also cannot just go down one layer. We have to dig right in for the deeper reasons. We also need to get these out and even when we think we have exposed them all we should ask, “are there any other reasons why you wouldn’t go ahead?”. We need to uncover the hidden objections. Once the list is completed we now need to have the buyer prioritise which one is the main deal breaker for them. Funnily enough, if we can answer this one to their satisfaction the other objections fade away.
Once we hear the main reason holding them back we have to check if this is a legitimate objection or not? It might be constructed on false information. When I was selling Australian products into the market here, I found that Japanese competitor salespeople would have no hesitation in spreading false rumours about the rival Australian supplier. They would say the supplier was in financial trouble and would be going out of business shortly. None of this was true but that didn’t seem to matter. In such cases where there is a misunderstanding or some incorrect information floating around we have to go in hard and show why that is absolutely not the case. A statement to that fact is not enough – we have to come armed with proof to have any real credibility.
If the objection is true, then we should admit it. It may be that our delivery time is slow because it takes longer to create that level of quality. We explain the background and try to find a way around the timing of supply issue. It may be that we reverse the objection. If they say they cannot afford to buy because business is bad, we can point out that we are the solution to turning the business around. They are where they are today because they didn’t have us as a partner helping them improve their business.
We can answer the objection but we need to know we have our ladder up against the right wall before we embark on a reply. We need to have the breaker in there to get us to a series of why questions to dig down to the highest priority item worrying them. If we can solve their objection then fine, if we can’t fine. We just move on a find another client we can serve.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Buyers Please Object
Buyers should buy and not quibble, hesitate or question. That at least is what salespeople hope for. That may happen, but the frequency is not high and you certainly wouldn’t want to be banking your career arc on the odds of that occurring. The reality is we want buyers to object. If we don’t get an commitment to buy right then and there, the next best case is they give us an objection. No objection then no sale.
If we are giving our presentation and at the end the buyer doesn’t have any objections but are also not ready to purchase then we are in trouble. In the sales call we have to get the buyer excited. We also need to have them mentally commit to implementing or consuming whatever it is we are selling. That triggers a future state where they have to anticipate that certain things need to happen. This future state throws up questions. If they are a non-buyer then there is no trigger to go into anticipation of potential problems.
We are all raised to be risk averse. Watch carefully when you cross the road. Don’t dive into the river before you check what is under the surface. Don’t sign contracts without reading the fine print. Our parents do their best to ensure our survival and a big part of that effort is to make sure we avoid doing risky things. This carries over into our role as the buyer. We have to anticipate issues which may arise in the future and make sure they are covered off at the point of purchase. This is the due diligence of business.
Now if we have no intention to make a purchase there is no point wasting any energy on the due diligence component. The buyer will just sit there, listen inertly and then end the meeting. Everyone is time poor today, so we will not invest that valuable resource in things which are going nowhere. Such as talking with a salesperson who has nothing of interest for us.
When we get an objection, it indicates interest. Getting very poor questions is also another warning signal. If the sale is expensive or complex then we want a lot of questions. We know that those questions are the buyer running through a mental checklist to make sure they can buy. If the issues are dealt with then, it is a deal. No mental checklist and no questions means no sale.
Sometimes the person we are presenting to may not be the final decision maker. This is usually the case in Japan. There will be various stakeholders scattered around the company who have to agree. We will never get to meet them or will not even be aware of many of them, but they are there and they have to say yes. The famous ringi system of affixing their hanko or stamp to the recommendation to purchase is typical of big companies. They need to coordinate across divisions and sections. They value having a common understanding of what is going to happen. Your stamp on the document and it is usually a physical document, indicates you are aware of this and you agree that this project can move forward from the point of view of your area of responsibility.
The person sitting across from us is a catcher of data and information to relay to others within the system. They will not have many objections, because they are probably not going to be the end user. They may not have enough information to know what risks should be taken care of in this sales presentation stage. We had a meeting with a financial institution recently and the size of the deal was 10x. that means the scope of the solution was probably ten times what they were expecting. The investment amount was in line with that scope and also 10 x what they probably expected.
At the end of the meeting, I noted to my colleague that they didn’t have enough objections. If the scope was that much bigger than they were initially thinking there should have been more issues raised. Our interlocutor was a catcher of information not a decision maker. We need to get together with the decision makers and go through this idea for them again. We need to get some solid objections if we are going to make this sale.
No objections is a bad sign. We haven't shown enough value or time urgency to inspire then to take our offer seriously. So contrary to what we salespeople all want, which is a sale with no objections, in fact we need them to make the sale. Remember our objective is not to make the sale, it is to get the reorders and to do that the buyer has to be 100% convinced this is the best thing to help them build their business. We need to partner with the buyer because we bring so much value to them. To establish that fact we have to show that we are providing more value than we are asking for in terms of their investment in our product or service. The way to do that is run through their mental checklist of potential problems and cross them all off so that there are no longer any barriers to making a buy and continue to by decision.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Stop Cutting Corners
Life is full of various rhythms and flows. We have a set piece most mornings. Arise, eat, get ready for work, head out the door. We work, finish, go to the gym, hobby, etc., or go straight home. Saturday we have a certain flow going on and it is usually different to our Sundays. We like certainty, predictability, constancy. That is all fine, because we are all deep in our Comfort Zones. This is the cuddly place where we have reduced as much risk as possible and we feel safe. All of this is bad for the sales life.
Sales is chaos. It is fragile, uncertain, unpredictable, unreliable. We have to learn how to ride the tiger not how to dismount. I laughed when watching the movie Kung Fu Panda with my son, when the chubby panda says “my old enemy – stairs”, as he contemplates the long climb to the top of the temple. In sales, we have an old enemy too and it is called “comfortable”.
When we get too comfortable, we stop hustling, pushing, striving, reaching. We get into a routine because we have built up enough repeater clients to make our numbers or keep our jobs. Sales should be the ultimate meritocracy, because it is all metrics, easily and constantly measureable – how much have you sold today? That should mean that people in sales are all high performers but they are not. There are many average producers in sales, who still keep their jobs. They are not totally hopeless enough to get fired, but they don’t shoot the lights out either.
Pareto came up with the 80/20 split concept and in any sales organization there are going to be roughly 20% of the sales folk accounting for 80% of the revenue. That means that 80% of the team are only coughing up 20% of the revenue. If the raw amounts being generated in total are sufficiently large enough then it all works. Sales managers often tend to be spending their time trying to put a better shade of lipstick on the pigs, who are not producing enough. They should be spending their time on the top producers trying to encourage them to produce more, because their contribution will be at a significant scale.
Top producers are human too and they get into rhythms where they don’t grow. They are getting enough money now and don’t feel motivated to go for more. Japan is especially like this. Incentive schemes are hard to get to work properly in Japan because the individual hunger is not strong. The society rewards people who fit it in, rather than want to stand out. Being super hungry and motivated to succeed and make a lot of money seems anti-social in Japan and is punished from an early age. People grow up knowing that if they stand out they will be ostracised and put back in their place pretty quickly.
You hardly ever see “leader boards” of individual sales production in offices. The numbers get counted of course but it is all kept demure and polite. It gets interesting when that new boss just jetted in from some foreign clime, gets religion about individual production and wants to incentivise and recognize people. Often the people don’t want it. Those getting recognised don’t like it because they know the knives will be coming out immediately and they are going to become uncomfortable with all this boss approbation and attention. The rest of the crew don’t like it because it makes them look bad and they have lost face publically. Japan is the country of don’t stand out and well meaning expat bosses always struggle to understand why the sales people are not motivated by money and glory like at home.
I was coaching a client who was having trouble getting production out of the sales team. The problem was instantly obvious. They were paying a base of 10 million yen and a commission on top of that. No one was motivated by the additional commission, because the base was already high enough. Very few salespeople in Japan are on commission structures, because they all prefer safety and a defined salary with a regular bonus. They know they could earn more on commission, but they are risk averse and prefer to earn less but with more certainty.
How can we motivate salespeople? Recognise top performing salespeople privately. Take them out for a very nice swanky meal, make it personal, unique, special. Theoretically, we should try to adjust the salary structure so that the base salary is as low as possible and the “at risk” part is as high as possible. Now in Japan, at the moment, that is not easy because of the shortage of salespeople. So we have to start paying them higher base salaries and lower commissions to get them on board. We have to increase their commissions to keep them with us. Having said that, we need to try to up the ante on the rewards when they hit their targets.
It is better to keep a base salary you feel is too high to retain people and really crank up the upside, rather than risk losing staff. For example, in Japan, in this market, if the annual base salary was 5 million yen and the commission 10%, you will have trouble getting people to take a drop to a 4 million yen base for a higher 15% commission. It will be better to swallow the 5 million base and offer 20% - 30% commissions when they hit a certain target numbers.
Take another look at how you reward salespeople? It has to be motivating for them or why would they bother? Don’t be mean with the upside rewards. Remember, your top 20% brings home the bacon for the 80% of sales. This is the group you need to get out of their Comfort Zone and get going to go higher, go harder. This is how you can get scale in production in Japan.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
How To End The Year Strong
Salespeople work to certain rhythms. One of the negative rhythms is to ease off as we get close to the end of the year. In Japan, most financial years end in March, so the end of December means things are starting to slow down as people get ready for the holiday break coming up. Mentally they start to take the foot off the accelerator and get ready to cruise to the year end. This is 8% of the year we are talking about here, so we cannot afford to lose productivity to that extent at any time. We need to keep hammering away right until the last working day of the year. What should we be focusing on in sales?
Let’s contact existing customers and see if we can be of further assistance. We may have already been doing something for them, but there are bound to be other things we could also do. Whenever we have companies complete an Opportunity Matrix, we always find there are always a lot of solutions available which the buyer has not purchased yet.
Here is how to create your own Opportunity Matrix. Write your buyer solutions or products across the top of the matrix and the names of the companies you are currently serving down the side. Place check marks in the solutions column to indicate what they are already buying. We will notice that they are only buying a small number of possible solutions from us. Then looking at the other solutions available, place an A for a “good sales chance”, a B for a “so-so sales chance” and C for “no sales chance” in the solution column for each existing client. Having worked out what they may possibly need, contact them and have a discussion about where we might be able to help them grow their business.
The opportunity is also there to really work on our prospecting capability. We can never do too much prospecting. Make December the time to reconnect with our “orphans”. These are clients who we have served in the past, but for a variety of reasons, we no longer have much contact with them anymore. They no longer have anyone inside our company taking good care of them.
Maybe our champion inside the company moved sections or even companies. Sadly, their replacement wasn’t very keen or helpful. Perhaps, they bought and then economic conditions forced them to stop buying, so they have gotten out of the habit of using us. Maybe we didn’t get a positive response to our offer at that time, in that construct, with those terms, in that stage of the budget cycle and we just moved on to find another customer. For a number of perfectly good reasons they are no longer one of our active clients. This is a good time to reignite the relationship. Time to contact them and set up a meeting. Now the meeting may not be able to be held until January, but that is fine. The key thing is to make sure we can meet them again.
December is also a good time to list up look alike targets who are not our clients yet but should be. They are in the same industry or even industry sector as our current clients. They will probably have similar needs and we have knowledge of that business already. This is not random calling of phone numbers like telemarketing, but carefully selected companies with whom to make contact. If you have been supplying five star hotels, for example, then you have a pretty good idea of some of the issues they are all facing. We take this as a starting point to craft our opening conversation with the potential buyer.
Sounds rather easy but it is not necessarily so straightforward. The tricky part is often we don’t know the name of the person occupying the decision maker position in the company. We can check the target’s annual report to see who they list in key positions. Social media like LinkedIn might be helpful, but only about one million Japanese are on LinkedIn so we may not find what we are looking for. A search on the company may show some useful information, but Japanese websites tend to hide the identities of those who work there. We may have a contact who may have some information on the name of the person in that position, so we should use our network. If all of that effort fails, we need to have really drilled our credibility statement to get us past the gate keepers and allow us to talk directly to the key person.
Remember we have worked with their competitors already, so we have insight into their world, which will make our credibility statement sing. We make a general statement about what we do. Next we use evidence of where we have helped a similar company. We now suggest we could do the same for them. We use authority in our voice and command the gatekeeper to transfer us to the decision-maker right now.
The key is to work on expanding the pipeline. We need to use the month of December to try see clients and to also build up a pipeline of meetings for the new year. Salespeople must not slow down. In the Japanese calendar, December was called shiwasu or the teacher is busy, busy running around. Well salespeople need to be doing the same thing at the end of the year too. Let’s get going for a strong finish to the year and pump the action for the start of the new year.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Brand Killing Customer Service
You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed. Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients. Brands are there to decrease the buyer’s sense of risk. A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level. Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise. Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”. At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains. They have global footprints and they want clients to use them whereever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality. There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand.
When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice. The plane from Haneda to Taipei was delayed because of weather conditions, we sat on the runway for 90 minutes waiting to take off and so I finally arrived at the Taipei Westin Hotel at 6.00pm. At the check-in was told there were no rooms ready. Okay. That set off a warning buzzer in my head because the check out time for the Hotel is 12.00 noon.
Things happen though, so maybe there is some reason for this lack of expected service, but doubt has begun to arise in my mind about this Hotel’s management team. I asked when a room will become available. The second buzzer goes off immediately, when the young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn’t know. How could they not know that information, when there is a lobby full of punters like me, all frustrated about not having their room available?
My immediate thought is that this hotel is obviously not being run very well. I ask her for the name of the General Manager. This is where it gets very interesting. Her response - stone motherless silence. Not one word in reply. Nothing! Now we have identified there is a serious training and leadership issue with the way this Hotel is being run. I am the client speaking to the staff member and waiting for a reply, but absolutely none is forthcoming. Unthinkable. So I asked again. More total silence. I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response. More pure silence. This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone.
I keep going and I finally get an inaudible name offered up. I ask to hear it again but louder because I can’t catch it. We go through this slapstick three times until we can now identify the name “Andrew”. Great, so what is Andrew’s last name? More pure silence. We are now back to where we started. The client is asking the staff for information and cooperation and they are not getting either. I repeat this process a few more times, digging for the surname and we finally get a whispered “Zou”. Andrew Zou. Finally. So what am I thinking now? Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained.
There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar. I tell them I am going to be in the bar and when my room is ready please let me know. Did they contact me as promised? No, I asked the barman go find out what is the status of my room. Another brand promise destroyed right there. A full two hours later after waiting in the bar, I am in my room.
While I was waiting in the bar, I went on to the Westin site to try and find their headquarters, to complain about the service here in Taipei. I had a lot of trouble finding who to contact, but did manage to send an email into the system. An answer came back the next day, helpfully telling me I should talk to the staff in the hotel about the service. While in the bar, I rang the Hotel switchboard and ask to speak with Andrew Zou. He had gone home already. How about the Duty Manager? He was busy and will call me back on my cell phone. I never did get that call back from Andrew Zou or the Duty Manager. I did get a note from the person in charge of rooms and an email from the Duty manager the next day. Was I satisfied? No, I wanted to hear from the General Manager.
Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service. We all understand that. The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues. Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them. This would have to be a key area of training in that industry. The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership. If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well.
That evening there were a large number of guests in the same boat as I was – no room and no information. The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia. The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels.
From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company. Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise? How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide? Can people get to me easily if there is a problem? Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling? The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job. We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations. We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly. We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients. That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Back To Basics Baby
We get lazy. We start cutting corners. We get off our game. We chill, cruise and take the foot off the pedal. Sales is demanding and a life of constant pressure. The temptation is when we get to a certain level of success we think well, we have done enough. We can justify that coffee break, that longer lunch, coming in late after the first mid-morning appointment and heading home early after the last early afternoon appointment. This is not how the pro thinks. We want have it scheduled in our diary to get big and get back to basics.
That means getting our hustle on, getting our motivation going, setting out sights higher. We have to have a showdown with “average is good enough” self talk. We need to make sure we are doing the basics like a demon on fire. Accept there is a rhythm danger to our sales work. We have to become regularly irregular. That means we have to be looking for every chance to break out of a rhythm. We need to be sparky, itchy, irritated with constancy.
The pipeline tells no lies. It is either looking good or it is looking bad. That pipeline will determine the amount of business we can do in any given quarter and in any year. We need good basics in play to stuff that pipeline full of qualified clients. I love the sales expression “whose got my money”. It means, who is my ideal buyer, who is ready to buy right now? I should be sifting, hunting and corralling those buyers who have my money. I should be shelving those who don’t, because time is the main currency of a sales life. How you spend it makes all the difference between major success and mediocre.
There are basics in sales we quickly try to short circuit. We are fooling ourselves. We need to have time allocation every day for prospecting. In the process of doing that, we should be polishing our pitch until it is tight and has a massive hook attached to it. Ums and ahs don’t have any place in our explanation of who we are, what we do and why we are calling you. Getting to the decision-maker in Japan is nasty. Everyone you speak with is over qualified to say “no” and few can say “I will transfer you through”. We have to be well schooled in cold calling techniques to be successful in sales in Japan and most salespeople here in this regard are sad, sad, sad.
We need to be parsimonious with the words to explain all of that. We need to be eloquent with the explanation of the hook, as to why the person answering the phone should bother to connect us with the line manager we wish to speak with.
Every industry needs a specific hook, based on the pain points of that business. The pitch is canned and not canned at the same time. It has some common elements which are the best composed explanation of who we are, etc. The why you should care part, needs to be specific to that industry, the sector, the market, the firm in question at this point in time. In training, it needs to be said out loud over and over again, before it is unleashed on the client. It has to come out like honey dripping from the corners of your mouth, it is so smooth.
This same crisp summation of wonder is what we trot out at networking events. When people are making their first kinesthetic contact with your meishi or business card and trying to fathom what it is you do, you helpfully jump in and concisely explain how you are saving mankind. If they have got your money, you will set up an appointment to meet right there and then. If they don’t, and don’t seem to know anyone who has your money, then you politely disengage and go back to the hunt for a an actual buyer.
We need to treat every lead coming in from our website, be it from an SEO enquiry or a paid click though from our ads like it was on fire. If we don’t get in touch with that potential buyer right now, the lead will combust further and become a burnt, unrecognisable cinder. Soon it will be too cold and too feeble to sustain the follow up call required. Maybe the system at the office has to be rearranged, to improve the response time down to 5 minutes or less, but it needs to be done. Those leads go cold so quickly, it is scary. Someone has to speak to that client at that moment. A salesperson would be best but at least get someone talking with them to make contact and get some basic information.
We have to fight complacency. The enemy of great is good. So no being satisfied with good is allowed! Don’t forget our sale’s pro basics need constant work, permanent polishing, endless eagerness. Like that Rick Ross rap song, our sale’s mantra has to be, “Everyday I’m hustlin, everyday I’m hustlin”. That is what we have to do to be successful!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Sales Is Easy, So Why Do We Make It So Hard?
The object of a sale is to exchange a good or a service for money. The degree to which that money can exceed the variable and fixed costs associated with delivering it, determines the success and longevity of the company. We all know that nothing happens in business without a sale. If that is the case then salespeople have a critical role to produce as much revenue as possible for the firm. There are prices set for goods and services. Goods are tangible items and plotting the costs and the margin of profit are relatively straight forward. Buy low and sell high is an old business maxim. Services are more difficult to price because they are intangibles. In both cases, the value proposition of the price against what is being delivered, is the communication piece that salespeople have to master in order to be successful.
Imagine my surprise, as an expert in sales training, when I meet salespeople who have not spent even one second trying to master the bridging of the gap between value and cost. Sitting in the audience at a speaker event, next to a thirtyish Japanese sale’s guy, I was astounded by a few things he said as we discussed selling over lunch. I was interested in hearing what his sales process was. He didn’t really understand my question because he had no defined process. He had been selling for this firm for seven years so he was an experienced salesperson.
He contacts a lead, gets an appointment, shows up and explains the service and submits a quote, he told me. Really? On the blank side of meal menu, I mapped out the elements of the sales process for him. Prepare for the meeting and focus your intention on one thing – getting the re-order, not just the solitary sale. Build trust through establishing rapport. Create interest by asking extremely well designed questions to understand the client’s needs. Now tell the client whether we can help them or not and if we can, explain the how of our solution. There may be points of insufficient clarity, concerns, hesitations or downright objections to what we are proposing. We need to deal with those before we proceed to ask for the order, and then we do the follow up to deliver the service or good.
He was impressed by this structural approach to the sales call, as he should have been, because he was doing it the hard way. Having a roadmap makes the whole process much easier for both buyer and seller. I then asked him what does he do when the buyer says, “too expensive”. His answer had me reeling. With a cherubic mien, he told me he offered to “drop the price”. Incredulous, I asked “by how much do you usually drop it?”. He quoted 20% as the number. There were four other sales people in that team and if that is how they roll over there, then that is an expensive first response to client pushback on pricing.
Here is the snapper – do you know what is happening inside your team? Are they also dropping the price immediately as their first counter to an objection on the money? If they are then there is a huge amount of firm success and longevity being strewn on the ground here. What a waste.
He was an experienced guy but that was the best he could come up with? Why would that be? He didn’t have any other knowledge about how to deal with that type of situation. Do you think price comes up fairly regularly in sales conversations with buyers? Of course it does, so how could this continue like this, as if it were acceptable. That is the point, in Japan, these types of low levels of sales professionalism are the norm and not the exception. It is tolerated because everyone is the same – hopeless.
He should have said, “why do you say that” when told it was too expensive? Was the price objection genuine, a ruse, sport negotiation, time bound, or irrelevant because they haven’t seen enough value yet to understand the price point? There will be one highest priority element in the too expensive objection. It might be the actual volume of cash involved, budget allocation timings, internal competing project competition concerns, etc. Which one is it – we need to know.
I have been told “too expensive”, which I recognise is a short form summary of a host of reasons for not proceeding. When I questioned the why, it was a “budget issue”. Now as sale’s professionals we have to dig deeper, “why is it a budget issue?”. “Because that number will exceed our budget allocation for that quarter”.
That means it is not too expensive after all. It is just too expensive if paid in one quarter but fully capable of purchase if the payments are split across quarters. Except you would never know that, if your response was to drop your price by 20%. Would you be willing to help the client out and split the payments across quarters? I would guess you would prefer that to having to drop your price.
The moral of this story is to take a very detailed look at what your salespeople are doing. Don’t confuse seven years of sales experience with one year of experience seven times. Also, don’t imagine that they have a process, that they know how to explain the value or to deal with objections. Based on what we see in our sales training classes and talking with clients, in japan, the chances of that being the case are very, very low.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Clueless Cold Calling In Japan
Cold calling always creates a debate amongst the sales community. Some say it has seen it’s day, others defend it as part of the sales resource bank for getting leads. I don’t think anyone suggests it has a high rate of success. Yet, there are occasions when we need to call someone we have never spoken to before and who has never heard of us. Why would we be doing that? We may have observed the spider in action.
The spider is a metaphor for when you have success with a client in one industry or industry sector and you believe you can have success with other similar companies. Often the problems you discover from talking to one client are probably common for other companies in the same industry. Say you are talking to a 5 star hotel and they have a problem with turnover. The chances are that many other 5 star hotels have the same issue. If you have a solution that fixes the problem for this client of yours, then why not help out the other hotels suffering the same problem. So like a spider with its web, you branch out to the other hotels and bring them into you ecosystem of solutions.
Or, you may have run out of leads. Maybe your marketing efforts are not proving very fruitful and the lead flow is a bit dismal. There are a number of industry and association directories which list the key people in those organisations. You know who you want to speak with and that is a great starting point for making a cold call.
Now there are many difficulties with cold calling, so let’s deal with the most problematic. This is when you only have a company name and want to talk to a decision-maker. You are not even sure of which section you need. You are forced to navigate your way through the company’s phone system. In Japan, the task of taking incoming calls is allocated to the lowest person on the totem pole. Usually, the youngest female in the administration section.
Her job is to get rid of pesky salespeople. Which are the pesky ones? They are all salespeople who are cold calling the company trying to waste the time of her bosses. In this case, we need a really powerful credibility statement that will be a hook to get us transferred to the boss. We cannot be vague. We need to be authoritative, commanding and confident in our voice quality.
We need to create the impression that if she doesn’t transfer this call right now, then the company is really going to miss out on something that will fundamentally change their business. When you have that spider’s web of insight, you are able to pin point the pain point of their business and that can be a great door opener for us.
Even when we know the name of the person, we can get ourselves into trouble. I was coaching a Japanese salesperson recently and asked where was the breakdown point in her sales approach. She mentioned cold calling and being unable to engage with the decision maker. I suggested some role play to get an idea of her approach. Shock, horror, gasp. It was horrible. She began her conversation with the weakest, most lacking in confidence voice you can imagine. A voice that was begging for relegation to the garbage heap of failed cold callers. I was sitting there thinking, “no wonder you can’t get through”.
We need to consider the psychology of the youngest female answering the phone. In their company she is a nobody. She has no great knowledge of the bosses business, because she is so many layers removed. When a call comes in and sounds timid and lacking in conviction, then it is a guide to get rid of them.
However, an unknown caller might also be a good buddy of the boss, an important client, someone the boss just met or some big shot from another firm. She can only judge that by how they speak with her. If she is talked to like a junior, and told to get the boss on the line right now, she will make that transfer.
Probably the call will be transferred to the boss’s assistant, so that is always a fail safe action for a very junior person in the company. They have relinquished all responsibility at that point and they can go back to stamping documents or whatever.
When we get to the assistant, we need that credibility statement. It has to be a well designed strong hook, to convince her that we should speak to the boss. The impression is if we don’t, then the company will be missing out on a fantastic game changing, really rocking opportunity.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Dealing With Buyer Price Push Back
Pricing is usually set by the boss and salespeople are just there to get out and sell at that designation. The derivation of that price point can be quite varied. In some cases, there is a careful calculation involved. It determines the necessary return to cover direct and indirect costs, plus make a specified margin of profit. In other cases a moist index finger is thrust skyward and a price magically appears. The services industry, in particular, has a lot of finger skyward waggling going on. The trouble though is salespeople are not convinced by any price setting methodology.
They only believe in the reality of the market . The way they know the reality is the degree of pushback they get from clients, when they are trying to sell. It is also a function of the nerve of the organization to defend the price point, when there is the threat of no deal. If the boss tells the salespeople to “go out there and sell” at that price point and then the boss folds immediately, every time there is buyer resistance, then the salespeople’s belief in the validity of that price point is precisely zero. The boss has to hold the line.
When you have no belief in the value backing up that price point, your ability to sell at that rate is simply squashed. You default to discounting to get a small piece of something, rather than a very large piece of nothing. Now the boss is cranky because you are undervaluing the brand and the company’s market positioning. So around and around we go on the merry-go-round of price setting.
The crunch point is the sales price negotiation with the buyer. If you have gotten into the death spiral of last minute discounting, in order to move the product or service, you have now trained the buyer to extract the biggest possible discount every time. I sometimes get asked to make an unbudgeted purchase by a salesperson calling me. The discount they are offering from the normal price can be significant.
As the buyer, I then counteroffer a third to a half of their already lowest proffered price. Why am I doing that? This is called “sports negotiating”. I am testing their nerve to see how desperate they are. I want to know how low I can push them down. Is that mean spirited on my part? Well they called me, not the other way around. I also teach negotiating, so as an instructor, I want to see how good they are? Do they do anything interesting in the negotiating process? I usually do buy from them and I usually get a very good price. Good for me, bad for them.
Now, as your sales instructor, I advise that if you are the seller, then don’t accept their ridiculous number. If you feel you are now in the sports negotiating arena, give them an ultimatum on price and a very, very short fixed time to take it or leave it. In the meantime, call another potential buyer. If you have not built up pipeline for your sales, then you are always going to be vulnerable to price collapse.
If you discount once, then imagine that by telling the Japanese buyer this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a spectacularly rare alignment of the planets, which will never happen again in their lifetime, a never to be repeated offer, you are kidding yourself. The Japanese buyer doesn't hear any of that. What they hear is, I get it for this smaller amount this time. They think “I can probably push harder next time and maybe I will get it for even less”.
Don’t miss this. In Japan, as soon as you drop the price, you are now locked into that price point with that client forever. It is not impossible to go higher but it is very, very hard to pull that one off. You have to be ready to drop the buyer entirely, to restore your price point validation.
The equation here isn’t just with the buyer, it is with the salespeople as well. By dropping the price we tell them that this is all this is worth and they believe it. They cannot push the price back up, because they don’t see it at that level either. Now we have the buyer and and our side, the seller, in furious agreement, that the price is a fiction. The company leadership has to intervene and say “burn that buyer if they won’t accept this price”. Be prepared to lose their business. If we do that, then the salespeople will get religion about the pricing validity.
When we are haggling over the price with the buyer and they say that, “this price is too high”, “that is out of our budget”, “we can’t afford it at that level, ”can’t you drop the price”, “we never pay that much”, etc., we are in a bind. We want the sale, so we immediately go into discount mode. This is a big negotiating mistake.
I heard this exact case from a Japanese sales guy recently. We happened to be seated next to each other at a business function. I started chatting with him about how he does his sales. He had been selling for his firm for 7 years and looked to be in the mid thirties age bracket. He was an experienced sales guy. When I asked him what he does when his buyers say the price is too high, he replied that he immediately drops the price by 20%. I nearly had a heart attack. If I was his sales manager, I would have had to be restrained from throttling him on the spot.
No, no, no. Don’t fold on the price pushback. What we should be doing is defending our price. We don’t do that by arguing with the buyer. We don’t do that by force of will. We do it by trying to better understand the client’s situation. Often salespeople stop asking questions at this critical juncture and instead go into high energy “tell mode”. They start telling all the good reasons why the buyer should pay the requested price. This won’t work.
Firstly, don’t start your response by arguing with the client. Instead agree with them. We can say, “You are right and I understand it is a considerable investment”. We do this to make sure the client is still listening to us. If we disagree with them, they stop listening to us and start thinking about all the reasons their “too high” statement was correct. They mentally go into hand-to-hand combat mode to fight with us. We don’t want that response from the buyer.
While we have their attention, we have to transition and question the buyer as to why they made that comment. “You just mentioned the price was too high, may I ask you why you feel that way?”. We avoid arguing and Instead of us having to justify the price, we now need to switch it. After you make that comment do not speak. Use 100% concentration to listen to the buyer. Don’t interject Don’t cut them off. Don’t add one more word. Now the buyer has to justify why that price won’t work.
In this process of further explanation by the buyer, we pick up very valuable insights into the client’s situation. Armed with more data and insight, we may be able to come up with a flexible solution that is a win-win for both of us.
We may in fact discount the price. We might give them longer payment terms or structure the payments across two quarterly budget periods. We may offer the discount on the basis of a volume purchase.
All of this sounds simple enough, but when salespeople hear “the price is too high” they go blank and forget the basics. Don’t argue with the client. Question the client and keep questioning. If they segue off on to some unrelated subject area, then bring them back. If they digress, don’t go with them, bring them back to the core discussion. If they keep hitting you with vagaries, don’t accept them. Keep digging, digging, digging.
This is the job of the salesperson, to serve the client and that means to clearly understand the client’s situation. The only way to do that is to ask questions and you cannot release the buyer from this quest. It is not to be annoying, pigheaded, stubborn or inflexible. Quite the opposite. We are here to solve the client’s problem and we have to do that in an arrangement, that is a win-win for both of us.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Excuse Time Is Over Baby
“I would be able to sell a lot more except for all the extraneous, external factors over which I have zero control”. Actually, you have never heard this line of argument before from a salesperson. This is because this statement is an honest appraisal of what they see as the problem, but they don’t express it that way. This comes from not having sufficient self-awareness to realize this is what they are actually saying, by way of excuse, for not being more successful in sales. Instead they bitch about the boss, the market, industry changes, currency movements, the sales materials, the pricing and everything else but their pathetic sales ability.
There are excellent training courses both classroom and on-line, for becoming better at sales. Bookstores and on-line retailers have a cornucopia of books on how to become a more successful salesperson. The internet is clogged with free information about selling. YouTube is brimming with sales modules, lessons, examples of what to do as a professional. Sales gurus tour the globe sprinkling pixie dust on the faithful to transform them into sales powerhouses. Yet, salespeople are constantly whining about all the reasons holding them back over which they have absolutely no control.
Are they accessing all the good information available to become better? No. They are not bothering, because they don’t see any correlation between their lack of an internal motivation to study to become better and their non-realization of sales success. They are too busy looking outward for the problems holding them back to see that the issues are all internal. Why is that?
People wind up in sales by accident. The turnover of salespeople is very high because it is a metrics based game. The numbers tell against you when you are failing and in short order you disappear. Fresh bodies are then brought into the meat grinder. If they enter in a rising market, they may last for a while but then when times get tough, they are let go and replaced by the next squad and so it continues.
The companies invest nothing, preferring the law of the jungle to sort out who stays and who goes. The salespeople thrash around trying to find ways to stay afloat, without ever taking a professional stance to the job because they don’t see themselves as having a career in sales. For them, this is a necessary bridging job between work they want to do. The ineptitude continues and at scale, through generations of salespeople.
This is salespeople swimming in a fog engulfed lake. They are swimming hard but have no idea what they are supposed to be doing or where they are supposed to be going.
Time for this to end. Salespeople have more than enough resources to self-educate themselves about the finer points of sales. Here is how complicated this is: learn how to ask the client questions about what they need; listen carefully to the answers; tell them you either have a relevant solution or that you don’t; if you do, provide explanations that justify the trade off between the value you bring and the price you charge; supply it and follow up.
This is what they do instead: tell the client all the details about the product or service without having any clue as to whether this is what they need or not; if they don’t have what the buyer needs, then try to force the square peg into the round hole and give them what you have any way, even if it doesn’t really fit; burn that client and move on to the next buyer. All the while, continue to whine about the boss, the market, industry changes, currency movements, the sales materials, the pricing and everything else but their lack of sales ability. They repeat this pattern until they get fired.
Instead, let’s take responsibility for the results. Let’s study, apply the knowledge, keep studying, keep applying, without pause. There has never been a better time to be in sales, because there is so much rich education material available about how to become a true professional. No more excuses baby, get to it.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
“I’m Listening”. No Your Not!
Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets. In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in the client’s best interests. We know we should listen carefully to what the client wants, before we attempt to suggest any solution for the buyer’s needs. We know that by asking well designed questions, we can possibly come up with an insight that triggers a “we hadn’t thought of that” reaction at best and at worst, at least know if we have a solution for them or not. Under pressure though, salespeople can go temporarily deaf.
Even assuming they are smart enough to ask questions in the first place, they may fall over when it comes to listening to the buyer’s answers. They are not actually plumbing the depths of what the client is trying to achieve. In fact, they are ignoring the hints and nuances in the sales conversation. What are they doing? They are fixated on their needs, their target achievement, their big bonus, their job security.
The client may have outlined what they had in mind, but that won’t scratch because the salesperson needs a bigger sale to make target. They need to expand what the client wants regardless of whether the client needs that solution or not. Upselling and cross selling are legitimate aspects of sales, but the purpose has to be very clear. It is not about making the salesperson more money.
The client may not have the full view of what is possible, because they will never know the seller’s lineup of solutions as well as the salesperson. They will also not have had deep conversations with their competitors. They won’t have been allowed behind the velvet curtain, to see what their competitors are doing and how they are doing it. They will not have had a broad exposure to what other firms and industries are doing in terms of best practice.
This is the value of the salesperson, because they are constantly doing all of these things. They are collectors of stories, problems, breakthroughs, successes and can connect many dots together. In this sense, they can see possibilities the client may not have know exist or may not have thought of. This is where the cross-sell and the up-sell add value, because the salesperson can expand the client’s world and help them to become more successful. That is a long way from ramping up the number value of the sale, to make target.
Nevertheless, this is what happens when the focus is on the wrong objective. If salespeople are trying to expand the complexity of the sale, to manufacture a larger sale, at some point the client is going to drop out. Unless they see overwhelming value in increasing the scope, they are well aware that this enlarged project is over budget.
Now budget is just a fiction and we all know that. It is an imaginary estimate of where expenses could be allocated and it occupies a cell in a spreadsheet line. Many times we have seen budgets miraculously appear from nowhere, when the perceived value is great. The “Rob Peter To Pay Paul” school of accounting.
The point about value comes back to listening skills. If the salesperson is focused on the client’s benefit, then they can rummage through their memory banks for best practices that could be applied to help the client achieve their aim. In the process, this may mean increasing the investment to get a bigger return.
If the salesperson is just focused on getting their monthly number, they are not really paying attention to the client’s needs at all. They just start padding the details of the project, so that the numbers are bumped up. Once the client feels they are being ramped up for the salesperson’s benefit, then the trust is gone and the deal won’t happen anyway.
Salespeople need to be really listening to the needs of the client and should forget about what they want. As Zig Ziglar said, “if you can help enough other people get what they want, then you will get what you want”. Zig was a great listener!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Salespeople Need Better Self-Awareness
Sales is one of the few things in business you can measure accurately and immediately. Are you getting greater efficiencies from your internal systems? Is the marketing working? Are our tem becoming more skillful? These are topics which are super important but also devilish to measure. Sales however is straightforward – how much did you sell? The pressure on salespeople is enormous. There are deadlines for sales, there are accurate measures in place, tracking everything. What was the revenue return relative to the ratio of the salesperson’s total costs. For every yen the salesperson costs how much do they generate in net revenue return. Are they yielding a 3:1 return or is the ratio at 7:1 or better?
Because of all of this pressure, salespeople have become masters of excuse making. Having to justify your existence every month creates a tremendous amount of creativity in the excuse field. When you ask salespeople what is holding them back from achieving higher levels of performance, a surprising number of the reasons given are not related to sales activities. External factors are listed up very readily. The organisation needs to be better staffed, the strategy needs more work, the market is shifting, my sales manager is clueless, etc.
Many of the problems are located outside the sphere of influence of the salesperson, yet they continue to dwell on these factors as holding them back from achieving their targets. This is the lack of self-awareness. If a salesperson is really doing their job, they ignore all of the external factors they cannot control and instead focus on developing the skills they need to succeed.
What would those skills be? Knowing your product is a given. Yet this is where a lot of salespeople check out. They know the details of the features of what they are selling but they don’t plumb the depths of the benefits of those features. Now the benefits have to be in context. Where does this benefit help the client in the competitive marketplace in which they are operating? How will this give the buyer a differentiable advantage vis-a-vis rivals?
Where is the market moving toward and what does the client need to be doing today to anticipate the changes which are coming. This requires study of the client’s situation and industry. Not knowing the client’s world relegates salespeople to transactional sales solutions rather than achieving partnership status. The salesperson who can provide insights such that the client thinks to themselves, “we hadn’t thought about that” or “we haven’t properly prepared for that” is doing a fantastic job of providing value to the buyer.
Asking well designed questions is an absolute must but so many salespeople troop into the sales call woefully underprepared. They wing it from start to finish and wonder why they are not seeing any business. The preparation for the sales call is so much easier today because of our access to instant information. Yet, salespeople are not applying themselves to learn about the buyer and their industry before the call. You can’t be the font of insight if your don’t study beforehand. This is a lack of awareness about what the real role of the salesperson is. Blarney, smooth talk, verbal gymnastics, bamboozling clients are all pointless froth. The real core ability is to understand where you can be helpful to solve the client’s problem. You can’t change the external factors at play, but you can control the internal factors like your own abilities in the sales process. The famous gridiron coach Vince Lombardy talked about the key in football was mastery of the basics, which he summarised as “blocking and tackling”.
The same in the sales world. The basics are always current and mastery of the basics is mandatory. Yet, so many salespeople don’t even know what the basics are or if they do, they don’t invest the time to master them. Self-awareness of your skill deficiencies is the first step to fixing them and dwelling on external elements you cannot control is self-delusion.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Showmanship In Sales
Tricky area in sales, showmanship. The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc. Yet, like storytelling, this is an important part of the sales professional’s repertoire. Clients are card carrying members of the Great Guild Of Skeptics. They are highly doubtful about salespeople’s claims. We need to bring some powerful persuasion techniques to the fore.
Just making a statement is not going to do it. “This widget will improve your revenue by 15%”, is a statement whose veracity buyers question or worse, just ignore as fluff from salespeople. Having a need and doing something about it, are not the same thing for buyers. Everyone would welcome a 15% increase in revenues, but that doesn’t mean clients are going to take up our widget to enjoy the gain.
They have to be convinced and how do we convince them? We might offer a trial or a demonstration. We might marshal testimonials from satisfied buyers. We might provide data from independent studies, that back up our claims and assertions. All good stuff, but how do we make sure we can break through the wall of disinterest, doubt and distraction. This is where showmanship comes in.
This isn’t making up information to snow the buyer or doing a bait and switch, between what they think they are getting and what we actually deliver. This means using our communication skills to highlight the key points that will persuade the buyer, that what we are offering will help them and is in their best interests. What we say has to be true, but we don’t need to say it in a flat, lifeless, mundane or boring way.
When we offer to sell something, it has a cost associated with it. There is a difference between cost and price though, which may not be apparent to the buyer. They use the terms interchangeably. We as sales professionals should never use either word if possible. We should be talking about the investment. If price as a term comes up, we need to show the difference between price, a one time exchange and cost, which is a long term calculation.
If you buy something today with a cheaper price, how do you judge the value when you have to keep replacing it, because of some fault or defect? The real cost is the money you paid, plus the time you have lost, plus the opportunity cost of not being able to do something more beneficial with your lost time, plus the transportation impost required to go back and get a new one, plus the frustration and stress incurred. Now we salespeople know this, but are we communicating this to the buyer in an effective manner? Are we using showmanship to pile of the elements of the real costs of making a mistake by buying our competitor’s item, because it seems cheaper than ours?
Showmanship would involve using persuasive word pictures to draw out the scene of the client becoming frustrated when the cheaper model broke down, destroying the moment at hand or the lost opportunity it should have provided. It would include talking about having to lug the item back to where it was purchased and then wasting valuable time hanging around to get served.
Maybe describing the annoyance of having to line up to take a number or sit on a hard, uncomfortable bench or getting tired legs, because you have to stand. It would mean describing the opportunity cost of how that irreplaceable time was being spent on a totally unnecessary, useless task, at the expense of higher priority, more valuable items. We should be raising pertinent questions about how costly their time and focus are and mention the complete irritation of the interruption to their day.
Showmanship may involve the use of mathematics to reduce a cost down to a comparison where the purchase amount isn’t that substantial, when amortised over time. The price consideration is in the now, but the cost can be strung out across years. This makes the additional cost of our widget seem reasonable and more convincing as a wise decision. If our purchase price is three times the competitors, but because of the value we provide, the financial returns will be better by ten times when measured over the next five years, then the original price objection becomes weaker in the mind of the buyer. Clients can understand investing for the future, but we have to use the right word pictures to draw that out, so that it is pertinent and relevant to the buyer.
A favourite example of showmanship is the car tyre puncture repair story. This is used to illustrate to salespeople the importance of showmanship, when explaining choices of action versus no-action to clients. As mentioned before having a need to buy and buying are not always well paired together in the mind of the client. The example of the gas stand is used, where the service attendant notices the front left hand tyre of the car has a slow leak and offers to fix the puncture in 10 minutes. The client refuses the offer, because they are in a hurry and drive off.
The same scenario is used again, but this time the attendant employs some word pictures and showmanship. Now let me make a very key point here. The example must be a true and not some fiction dreamed up by the sales manager to con clients to get more sales.
So the attendant says:
“Mr. Customer, I notice your front left hand tyre has a slow leak. We can repair that puncture in 10 minutes”.
The client refuses, because they are too busy to spend the ten minutes repairing the leaking tyre. At this point the attendant doesn’t simply let the buyer leave, but says instead:
“Previously, we had another customer here with the same issue – a slow leak in their tyre. Unfortunately they were also too busy to fix it. We saw a report later on the nightly news about a terrible accident.
Apparently that same car tyre blew out while they were on the highway. It caused the car to flip and roll over three times. We saw the tangled mess of what was left of the car from the television station’s helicopter video. It was total tragedy.
The television reporter said the whole family of four, including the two young kids, died in that accident. When we heard that, we all felt really bad, because we didn’t get them to fix the leak when we had the chance.
We could have prevented that accident…. It will take us ten minutes to fix your puncture, let’s do it now, so we will all feel a lot better and safer”.
I don’t know if that story is an urban myth or true, but it does illustrate the importance of helping the buyer to see the full ramifications of the decisions they are going to take, both positive and negative. Notice the use of very emotive language to drive home the cost of no action. The tone is subdued but still powerful. We need to be looking for ways in which we can contrast the plus of using our solution, against the minus of doing nothing or using our competitor’s solution.
Think about what you sell and what are some ways you can illustrate to the buyer that there are opportunity costs to not buying from you and buying now. Look for powerful word pictures to draw this out for the buyer. This is showmanship and we must become masters of communicating value to the client.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
To Push Or Not To Push?
Pushy salespeople are very, very annoying. They try to bug you into buying and we really don’t like it. We may actually buy, but we don’t like them anymore and probably won’t become a repeat buyer. Fair enough, but what about when you are the salesperson? At what point should we give up on convincing the buyer that our solution is the best for them?
It often happens that we meet a potential buyer, follow up and get a meeting. We listen carefully to what they want. We even try to leverage our experience and deliver some insights about relevant issues they haven’t thought about yet.
In all of this we are trying to tailor a solution to the needs of the buyer and to add value. We want to become a trusted partner for the client, however we are not looking to make a “sale”. We are looking to make a “re-sale”. We want to have a long-term relationship with our client.
Having made the presentation, listened carefully to what they want, we go back to the office and put together our proposal. We survey the broad range of possible solutions available, select from that treasure trove and painstakingly assemble a logical, pertinent and convincing roadmap for moving forward. This is when the problems start.
If possible, we meet the client again to present the solution. In some cases the client says, “email it to me”. With every once of strength in our body we should resists this default to the modern convenience of email as the messenger. We must present it, in person and in a way that really clarifies what is written for the client. We do that and the client invariably says, “okay, we will study it”. This is when things can go silent.
We hear nothing, so after a week or so, we email a gentle nudge to the client. We could phone them except that today trying to get hold of busy decision-makers is fraught with difficulty. They are in permanent meetings or travelling. This is usually not some subtle avoidance tactic, “tell him I am in a meeting”. Rather it is part of the genuine plague of modern business life – numerous and endless meetings. Also today, nobody bothers to ring you back, so the cadence of communication can either really elongate or go very cold.
So our first email yields nothing. No response, no answer, absolutely zero, zilch. We are so brazen these days, as business manners become more informal and the rules less defined. What do we do? One preventative idea with that previously mentioned first email is to create a thread. Go back to a previous email exchange pre-dating presenting the solution and copy that into this email, so the email trail is there. This implies, “hey, I have been emailing you, but you didn’t respond this time”, without saying it directly. This is the “guilt them into responding” tactic. They still don’t respond, so what do we do now?
Some clients may genuinely not be interested and prefer silence to end the discussion, rather than having to confront you with a “no”. Maybe the situation changed internally or maybe they went with your competitor? This happened about 12 months ago. I had a great meeting, the buyer was keen and we were looking good. Then radio silence. No response at all. I kept on following up but nothing. About a month ago, I met the new head of that company and then the penny dropped. My enthusiastic guy got killed in an internal power struggle and was being forced out of the company. My little problem lost all relevance and interest but I had no idea. It was going on in secret, so the situation can change and hurt us, but we can’t tell why. In other cases, they are just drowning in emails, spiced up with all their time being sucked into meetings and traveling. They just don’t have the time to get to your questions.
The rule in sales is “don’t say no for the other guy”, but what are we looking at here? Is this “no interest” or is it “no time”? We don’t want to be relegated to the annoying, pushy sales guy or gal bin for permanent disposal. We want to preserve our good reputation and personal brand, so we want to avoid becoming a pain. On the other hand, we may be not serving the client well, by giving up too early. Their problem still needs solving. This is the dilemma.
I believe, we should try once more. We should give them a call, knowing the chances of connecting are low to miserable. We might try phoning around 8.00am in the morning, before their gate keepers arrive, to improve our chances of catching them in person. If we fail to connect, we should absolutely leave a message on their answering service, even though we know they won’t call us back. Next we should send that email thread again and add to it, asking about the next steps, have they made a decision, what is the current status?
What if they still don’t respond? We are now into the pushy salesperson territory. I recommend we wait for a week. If there is no response, then try to phone again and if that fails, leave a message and send a final email. In this last effort, say that we take their no response to mean they are not interested in our proposed solution for this problem, at this particular point in time. We look forward to catching up with them at some point in the future and remain ready to help them when they have an issue that needs solving.
We may have lost the battle, but we don’t want to lose the war by burning the relationship with the client by being pushy and becoming annoying. They are saying no to our offer – in this current format, at this point in time, in these business and organisational circumstances, at this price against the perceived value. They are not saying “no” to us personally. We need to come back and fight again another day. We need our good name preserved in the market place, when they talk about us to other potential buyers. We need them to feel comfortable to deal with us in the future. We have to play the long game.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Real World Negotiations
We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media. It could be movie scenes of tough negotiations or reports on political negotiations with rogue states led by lunatics. Most of these representations however have very little relevance in the real world of business. A lot of the work done on negotiations focuses on “tactics”. This is completely understandable for any transactional based negotiations. Those one off deals where there is no great likelihood of any on-going relationship between buyer and seller. This is false flag.
The aim of sales is not a sale. The aim is repeat orders. If you want to be permanently in 100% prospecting mode then transactional selling is fine. That gets tiring tough as you have to spend all of your time hunting because you can’t farm. Now there will be some cases where that is how it rolls and there is not much you can do about it. The majority of salespeople though are trying to strike up a lifetime relationship with the buyer, so that the orders keep coming rain, hail or shine.
The style of negotiations for this play is completely different to the one-off, transactional occasion. In this world “tactics” are only partially relevant. Going one up on the buyer isn’t sustainable in a continuing relationship. They remember and they don’t like it. They either dump you as the supplier or they even it up down the road. They don’t forgive you though.
Technique has a role in the sense that there are certain best practices in negotiating which we should observe. The philosophical starting point is key. What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to build an on-going business relationship where we become the favoured supplier or are we after a one –off smash and grab deal? If you want the lifetime value of the customer to be your main consideration, then you have a lot of commitment to win-win outcomes.
The consideration of the communication style of the buyer is another important negotiating consideration. How we communicate with the buyer will vary, if we know what we are doing. Clueless salespeople will have one default mode – the way they personally like to communicate and that is it.
Professionals understand that if the buyer is micro focused, we go with them on facts, detail, evidence, testimonials, proof etc. If they are the opposite, then we talk big picture and don’t get bogged down in the smaller details. We describe what success looks like. If they are conservative, self-contained and skeptical we drop the energy level to match theirs. We don’t force the pace, we spend time having a cup of tea to build the trust in the relationship. We mirror what they like. If the buyer is a “time is money” hard driving type, we don’t beat around the bush. We get straight down to business, we lay out the three reasons they should buy and then we get out of their office pronto.
With this analysis in mind we prepare for the negotiation by analyzing the buyer’s perspective. We use what we know to build up a picture of what they will need from the deal we are negotiating. We match that with what we can provide and we amplify the value we bring to the equation. We set out our BATNA – the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. This is our walk away position.
We have analysed the potential of this client by looking at their lifetime value as a buyer. This can have a big impact on how we see the pricing. When negotiating with a big multi-national buyer I had to take a painful hit on my pricing. I only agreed to this though, because the volume in the first year was very substantial and the understanding was that this would be repeated annually. It may not become annual, who knows, but if it does then this is a major feast of guaranteed farming that allows a better balance to all the hunting required.
In another case, I “fired” the buyer because their pricing requirement was too low. There was no prospect of any on-going business and the volume was not attractive. We all have our positioning in the market. If we want to maintain that then we have to be prepared to reject low ball offers that damage our position and our brand.
In most cases, sales negotiating requires a holistic approach rather than a “mechanical” tactics driven approach. Decide what type o relationship you want with the buyer. If it I win-win, then we are looking at trade offs for pricing against volume and repeat business. Leave all that tricky negotiating palaver to the fantasy world of Hollywood movie scripts. Let’s negotiate in the real world.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, THE Sales Japan Series and THE Presentations Japan Series, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Boozing Your Way To Sales Success in Japan
A LinkedIn post I read recorded how an American sales guy got off the booze and the client entertainment rat race. It got a lot of coverage and comment because it obviously struck a chord with many fellow salespeople. It got me thinking about the same conundrum for those of us selling in Japan.
This is a tricky issue here because, traditionally, so much client entertainment was involved. “I gave my liver for my company” is a common refrain amongst Japanese salespeople. The other one is “I gave up my weekends for golf with the client”. What about foreigners selling here? Do we have to donate our liver to the cause and get divorced, because we are never spending any time with the family?
There is a difference between bribing the buyer through entertainment and having a business relationship. I think we can provide a quality service and leave it at the professional level. You might be spending your evenings wining and dining the buyer, but every couple of years they rotate positions within the company and your guy has moved on.
Also, depending on the sector where you are working, your “guy”, could well be a “gal” these days and being taken out by you, may be of very little interest. Younger people value their private time more than previous generations and don’t necessarily want to be spending it with salespeople.
If we concentrate on providing a reliable and quality service, then we can make sales here. We can have a business relationship that doesn’t have to cross the boundaries of bribery to get the business. I have noticed some firms in Japan are applying a stricter compliance aspect to their dealing with vendors and typical client visit gifts are being refused. I visited Mazda recently and took some cookies for the people we were visiting and they politely, but very firmly, rejected receiving the gift. In the finance business, compliance rules are very strict and staff entertainment is very carefully monitored.
For many Japanese companies, the good old days of big expense accounts for staff have gone. When I was visiting Japan from Australia to sell in the 1980s and 1990s, I thought I was a really popular guy with my Japanese clients. Every visit, everyone wanted to take me out at night to restaurants and night clubs. We would have our sales meeting and they would say, “What are you doing tonight” and then the invitation would be extended. I was a slow learner. I eventually realized, rather than my considerable charm being the draw card , I was the excuse these guys needed to have a great night out on the town on the company’s dime.
Golf is also a killer here. The travelling distance to and from the course sucks up time. The game tee off isn’t until 9.00am after you had your obligatory coffee, then there is the hour for lunch, then the obligatory bath afterwards, then dinner together. There goes the whole day and night. Sadly, if you are a hacker like me, you hardly see anyone on the links anyway. You are hunting for your ball in the rough all the time. I found I only occasionally bumped into people in my party when we had the tee off or when doing the putting on the green. I thought “so much for the networking, relationship building opportunity!”. It is very hard to justify the time these days, given the demands of business. Yes, it is always pleasant to get out of the city and enjoy some nature, but can we really justify the time anymore.
Lunches are a good way to get to know people. Usually, they are booze free or are imbibed in very moderate amounts. The infamous Australian contribution to Tokyo culture, the B&B (Beefsteak and Burgundy Club) long luncheon monthly gathering on Fridays would be the exception. It may seem an anachronism in this modern age, but it still has diehard fans who keep it going. Usually though, we can get together with the client for a lunch and get to know each other a bit better. The check is often split these days, again because of compliance regulations. Breakfasts are not big with Japanese clients, usually because they are traveling long distances in the morning to get to work. Your 7.30am breakfast probably means for them a 5.30am departure from home to get there in time.
Rather than trying to buy business through entertainment, we can do very well here in Japan, if we concentrate on being the best at satisfying the buyer’s needs. Ultimately the person being entertained has to answer to their boss and the latter is all about results. Their interest in their staff ‘s good times being paid for by us is minimal.
Understand the client’s real needs, deliver value, follow up, do what you say you will and clients here will continue to do business with you. Your liver will thank you!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Jealousy, Envy and Spite In Sales
Sales is a tough enough job without having additional complications. Clients can be very demanding, often we depend on logistics departments and production divisions, to get the purchase to the buyer. We can’t control the quality, but we have total responsibility, as far as the client is concerned. There is the constant pressure of revenue results, with bosses always pushing hard on the numbers.
If we are successful and we are doing well, you would think that life would be good. We know the emotional roller coaster that is the sales life and you are only ever as good as your last deal. So, with a little bit of success should come some respite from the turmoil of hitting the numbers. No such luck!
Our colleagues, by definition, cannot all be equally successful. The Pareto Principle says that the top 20% of salespeople will account for 80% of the revenue numbers. So that means the other 80% of the team are scrambling around for the remaining 20% of the sales. People come into sales from different backgrounds, with different levels of experience, with degrees of motivation and they join at certain points in the annual results cycle. This means that some will be in the top group, a chunk will be in the middle and the rest are at the bottom.
In the West, the usual way sales teams are managed is based on the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. Those who can’t cut it are cut loose. Those who can continue to produce get to stay. If they can survive a couple of recessions, they may even be moved up into management positions. This means that those at the bottom are basically on their own. This should spur them on to greater efforts to move up the sales ranks and to strike for the top position in the sales results table. Yet often this doesn’t happen.
In Japan, most salespeople are on a salary and bonus structure, rather than salary and commission. Almost nobody is on 100% commission arrangements. This means the financial ambition to get ahead in sales is not as strong as we see in the West. Often the base salaries are large by foreign standards and so people can live on the base.
In some cases, there can be pushback against the top salespeople, by those failing, because the successful are making everyone else look bad. Snide comments can be made, negative inferences drawn and a host of other petty signals that says “we don’t like you”. This is driven by jealousy and envy. This is their “the way to build the tallest building in town, is to tear down all the taller buildings” approach to greatness.
In a small sales team this can be very uncomfortable. There is a degree of mutual cooperation involved in sales teams and this is usually where the disputes arise. Who owns the client, who owns the deal, and how is the revenue going to be split up?
If the sales politicians in the firm get going they can really do damage to the morale of the organisation. These people are usually excellent at whining, gathering whiners together and hosting whine parties. They use their energy to pull down those who are successful, instead of trying to become a success themselves.
When you are the top performer or if you are in the top ranks, you can feel you have become a target. Instead of just worrying about getting sales done, you now have to waste precious energy walking around on egg shells, to avoid criticism from your colleagues. This is kept below the radar, so the boss is often unaware of what is really going on. However, often they don’t care anyway. They are looking for numbers and they don’t want to have to deal with sales soap operas in the office.
If the bosses are any good, they would be sorting out the toxic few, but often they don’t. The top salespeople are razor focused on serving clients and doing all the hard yards needed to get the sale, so they are not politically minded. The whole mess gets made worse because in the current climate, organisations are looking at their salesperson retain strategies. They do this because they know they cannot recruit enough salespeople replacements. This means the internal war goes on for much longer that it should. We lose sight of the external competition and fight amongst ourselves.
Bosses – sack the toxic! If you don’t, you will find the whole organisation will start failing as the wrong culture takes command. For top salespeople, insulate and isolate yourself from losers. They don’t work as hard or as long, so there is plenty of opportunity to get into the work, without having to engage with them much. Winners start early and concentrate on their Golden Time – 9.00am-5.00pm.
This is when we can see clients for meetings and create business. All of the administrivia needs to be fitted in around those hours. Writing proposals, holding sales meetings, collecting data, putting together sales information, recording activities in the CRM, etc., are what happens outside of Golden Time. These days, thanks to technology, a lot if this can be done remotely
Keep the time in the office with losers to an absolute minimum and protect yourself from their influence. Remember, you are superman or superwoman and they are kryptonite.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Rejection
Everyone hates to be rejected, but not many people have this as a fundamental aspect of their work. We ask colleagues for help and they assist, we ask our bosses for advice and they provide it. Buyers though are a different case. They can easily find a million reasons not to buy and unashamedly tell us “no”. The rejection itself is not so much the problem, as is how we respond, how we deal with the rejection.
In Japan, the two areas our clients flag with us for special attention in sales training for their team are around understanding the client’s needs and asking for the order or closing, as it is commonly referred to in sales parlance.
The poor questioning skills are a result of salespeople wanting to tell the buyer a lot of stuff about the features, but not bothering to ask some well designed questions to uncover what their clients need. This in itself will explain a lot about why buyers say “no”. If we don’t properly understand what they need, then how do we suggest solutions that make sense and motivate the buyer to action?
The two problems are closely linked. Even assuming that the questions are well thought through and that the solution selected is professionally conveyed to the buyer, they may still say no. This is because the buyer’s hesitations have not been properly addressed. There was something unclear or unsatisfactory in what they just heard from the salesperson and they are not convinced this is the right solution to their problem.
This is why a “no” will certainly be forthcoming, especially from Japanese buyers. Risk aversion is a fundamental part of the fabric of Japan and buyers more than most, observe this in distinct detail. They would rather give up on something better, if they thought there was a possibility their decision might bring some stain on their record.
Failure is hard to recover from in Japan. There are no second chances here. People have learnt the best way to avoid failing is to take as few decisions as possible. Especially any decisions which can be traced back to you. Best to have a group decision, so the blame can be spread around and no one loses their job. Actually that works like a charm here, so no one wants to buck the system
Having given the sales presentation, many salespeople in Japan simply don’t ask for the order. They get to the end of their spiel and they just leave it there. The buyer is not asked for a decision, it is left vague on purpose, so that if it is a “no” then that will not have to be dealt with directly. The Japanese language is genius for having circles within circles of subtle obfuscation.
The end result is a “no” but nobody ever has to say it or hear it. To get a sale happening, the buyer has to do all the work here in Japan, because the salespeople don’t want commit, to take the plunge and ask for the order. If they get a “no”, their feelings of self worth are impacted, they feel depressed, that they are failing. Not doing fully competent work or being highly productive, yet keeping you job is a pretty safe bet in most Japanese companies. The level of productivity amongst white collar workers is dismally low. Collective responsibility helps because it lessens the impact of personal inability to reach targets or make deadlines.
Sales though is totally crystal clear about success and failure. It is very hard to argue with numbers – you either made the target or you didn’t. Sales is also a numbers game. You are not going to hit a homerun every time, so the number of times becomes important.
You will have certain ratios of success that apply right through the sales value chain and the only way to increase your sales, is to improve these ratios. You have to up the ante, regarding the volume of activity. This sounds easy, but it isn’t when you are feeling depressed, insecure and plummeting in confidence.
The key is to see sales in a different way. The increased volume of activity will even out the rejections. The way you think about rejection has to change. Rejection isn’t about you personally. Buyers don’t care that much about salespeople as people. They are rejecting your offer. As it is made today. In this part of the budget process. At this point in the economic cycle. In this current construction. At this price, with these terms. We haven’t shown enough value yet, to get a “yes’.
As these aspects change, the answer can go from a “yes” to a “no” and from a “no” to a “yes”. That decision is irrelevant of the salesperson and how the buyer feels about them. These are macro and micro factors which can impact the decision one way or another. The answer is to see more people. In that way you can have a better chance of meeting a buyer for whom all the stars align and they can say “yes”.
At the same time, you need to keep working on getting better, at showing more value. You need to harden up and become tougher. Whatever you are selling, you always need to remember your AFTOS mantra: “ask for the order stupid”. Never say no for the buyer and understand that “no” is never “no” or forever.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Fast and Slow In Sales
Time is of the essence. Patience is a virtue. Worthy aims but sometimes we mix these aspirations up in sales. We are not moving quickly enough and miss the chance. At other times , we are impatient and we force the issue when we should be more stoic and considered. We lose on both counts whenever we confuse what we should actually be doing.
Being too slow usually relates to making contact or following up, after making the initial contact. We meet people at an event, receive a bunch of meishi business cards and then we get sidetracked by something else. Usually a bright shiny object. Days float by and when we realize we haven’t followed up with the people we met, the best timing window has been missed.
There is an advantage in getting back to people we have had a preliminary conversation with fairly promptly, while the occasion is fresh in their mind. As the days drift by, the ease of giving us the bum’s rush increases. They can choose to ignore our contact attempt, be it phone or email. Or they are just genuinely busy, busy, busy and don’t get around to responding. We don’t know which is the case, but we usually assume the former.
Once upon a time, it was considered the height of rudeness to not return a phone call. In the early days of email everyone would reply. Not anymore. In Japan, trying to get through on the phone to people is always difficult, because they are always away from their desk and in a meeting. We are reduced to leaving a message. What does that look like at their end. Maybe a nothing, as the person taking the call chooses to do nothing. Maybe a slip of paper is plunked down on their desk, scattered amongst a million other papers, soon to disappear from view and relevance.
If the contact is by email, then the tsunami of daily messages pushes our little missive down the chronological chain and we get buried in that great archive called “the lower reaches of inbox”. We get ignored and now face the dilemma of how often to follow up. If we keep pushing we can become annoying. But at precisely which point is that – the second, third or fourth follow up?
Maybe the lack of a response is their subtle way of telling us they are not interested. It is easier to ignore supplicants, than telling them to buzz off. Maybe they are just busy – hard to know which is which. In my case I make it three times for follow-up. I always copy the previous email I sent into the new one, to show I reached out to you, but you have not responded.
Does it always work? No, but at least I feel I haven’t blotted my copy book by becoming a pushy pain. I have to be patent. I have to play the long game. This sounds easy, but there are weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual targets to meet. There is the ever present urgency of the now.
The other danger of patience is not to pair it with a good follow-up system. Today’s lack of response reflects today’s situation, but things change inside markets and companies. We tend though to keep moving. We hit up the next prospect and reignite the process all over again. Those who we met, who didn’t respond, now silently disappear into the morass of the daily grind and get quickly forgotten.
If it is a no or a non-response today and if we follow up in a month, their situation probably won’t have changed sufficiently, to yield us a better result. If we leave it for 12 months, there is the danger that our competitor has slipped in there and plumbed the perfect timing to make contact, because the prospects situation has changed. We need to be getting back to them somewhere in that 6-9 months zone.
Patience is having a good calendar system to flag that follow-up is needed and when it is needed. We need to be action oriented, but we need to do it in a patient fashion. Saying this sounds so smooth and easy, yet I know myself the discipline to have and maintain the systems to do this are extremely difficult. Especially in a busy life, hounded by targets, milestones and deadlines.
In sales we are enthralled by the now. What is happening today takes up all of our attention and time. We are adrenaline junkies, loving the thrill of the deal, the urgency of the action, the vibrant seizing of the moment. By comparison, storing things away for the “distant future” is a rather foreign, unattractive idea.
So we need to be better organised to take quick action on the immediate follow-up. If we get no traction, we need to be really well disciplined to get back to the prospect and follow up. Easy to say, but hard to do. Regardless, we have to do better in these two areas if we want to be successful.
Remember, if we believe that what we are representing will help the client to grow their business, then we have a strong obligation to keep following up. In these circumstances, we should never be shy about re-contacting the customer. Yes, we are interrupting them, but we are doing it for all the right reasons and in their best interests. So let’s get out there and follow up!
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Sales Stories
Storytelling in sales is our ability to express ourselves in a way which is engaging and persuasive. We capture the attention of the buyer because we have taken the client to a world unexpected. This might be because the real essence of their problem has just now been revealed to them. The salesperson who can marshal the discussion to bring forth the hidden insights for the client is the storyteller par excellence.
The content of the story can also be a description of a better place than where the clients finds themselves today. This discussion shows the path forward for the client to realise their goals. To understand that better place requires the salesperson to set up a dialogue, where the questions asked unveil a story from the client of what success would look like. Employing examples, cases and proof where this solution has worked before, must be brought to life if the storytelling is to have impact. The ability to describe this better place in vivid word pictures is what separates the average salespeople from the master.
The delivery of this storytelling facility is not just a constant babbling by the salesperson but is punctuated by periods of silence. The client is given the chance to talk without having their sentences finished for them, interrupted by a segue, observation, joke or distraction. Often sales people are loquacious, ill-disciplined speakers, who are in love with the beauty of what they are saying. Counter-intuitively, being a skilled storyteller also requires the salesperson’s patience to encourage the client to tell their own story.
The words chosen by the salesperson are important. The majority of the conversation with the client should consist of the client talking. The quota of words allowed for the master salesperson are therefore very limited. They only use clear, concise constructs because they know they need to give up the floor to the client as much as possible. Short sentences of inquiry which draw out rich information are the golden path to sales success. It sounds a snap, but to do this takes a lot of practice.
When the client hesitates, asks for more insight, information or outright rejects what they are being told, then the salesperson’s level of communication skill really becomes apparent. The balance between speaking to add light and employing silence to gauge reaction is a critical facility.
There is a natural tendency when salespeople hit resistance to want to pour it on, to overwhelm the client and their objection with a thunderstorm of data, facts and statistics. They want to dominate the discussion through sheer force of personality. This is never going to fly. “A person convinced against their will, is of the same opinion still” is an old saw, we salespeople forget at our peril.
Our way of telling the story makes a huge difference. We need to be matching the personality style of the person we are talking to. Their energy level, pacing, the degree of detail they require. All of this must go into the mix of telling the story for the client. If they are a very detailed oriented person, then we need to get with the programme. If they are action orientated, we must become the same. We like to do business with people we like and we like people who are on our wavelength.
In sales we need to foster the ability to be on as many wavelengths as possible. Our clients will be of various styles so we need to effortlessly move between each, without losing our core beliefs in what we are doing. The telling of stories draws out the situation truths needed to understand the correct and best solution for the client. It also means the capacity to package our solution up in such a way that it is highly appealing to our buyer. This storytelling skill separates the professional from the dilettante. By the way, nobody wants to buy from an amateur, so let's become more professional and tell our story well for the client so they will buy from us.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
In The Mood For Sales?
The dark morning gloom of rain clouds, snow drifts or driving sleet can have an impact on our sales mood. We may be thinking to ourselves what a “lousy day” to have run around town juggling umbrellas, trains, taxis and bags of samples to visit clients. The next day, the rains have departed. Brilliant blue skies and a warm sun seem to say “what a beautiful day to make sales calls”. Neither comment is acceptable for the pro salesperson, because they are not randomly controlled by the weather.
These are not the only mood bear traps we need to look out for. Does your mood impact completing unpalatable tasks or conversely do they impact your mood? That proposal you have to get out but don’t want to start because it is time consuming and difficult – you even have to think! Doing the CRM, which you consider a major time waster because it feels slow, boring and to you is a lower priority item. You whine later about the lack of leads from the marketing effort, but your moodiness meant you didn’t help with the CRM did you?
Where is your sales discipline for doing the dull bits of the work? A coffee break, a catch up on email, posting something on your business social media, etc., all look a lot more appealing than this piece of tedium you are facing? The sales pro doesn’t put the reward first, they put the task completion ahead of the reward. They don’t stand in front of the empty fireplace bellowing about what they want – heat. They put the logs in there first and then they light the fire. They understand the natural order of the sales universe.
What about when buyers let you down? You find out they went with a competitor when you thought it was in the bag, they cancelled their order due to headquarter’s spending constraints or reduced the size of their purchase. Your champion inside the company has been sidelined internally, but you don’t know that. All you understand is that the next phase in the sales conversation has mysteriously not progressed and you can’t fathom why.
Just to really top it off, you have already spent the money from the expected commissions. Whoops, hero to zero in 2 seconds. What is the impact on your self-esteem, your fighting spirit, your motivation? In the rollercoaster of the sales life, we are now in the terrifying “dive” stage of the process, a white knuckle ride, without any sign of probable relief.
Living an intentional life means controlling both the head and the heart. The bigger picture makes the bump and grind of the everyday palatable, because there is a higher purpose in our life. If we are dedicated to serving then we can absorb the fluctuations in the weather, the unreliability of people, the changing fortunes of the market, the gross unfairness of the sale life. The size of our WHY in the fight makes all the difference.
What if we don’t have a strong WHY or a strong enough WHY? Well, that is going to mean trouble. We better deduce, select or create one. No WHY and sales gets real hard, real fast, real often. Sit down and think about what you want to do, what you need to do and what you wish you could do. Twenty minutes on this type of introspection will soon identify some key drivers for you. Rank them into priority order, start at the top and attach timelines to their achievement. Break them down into smaller pieces, smaller projects and then get going working them. Review the goals frequently, review your work and mini-celebrate even small progress. Most importantly of all – keep going regardless.
If we decide we will determine our mood, our feelings our orientation and not let externalities invade our feelings, we can keep doing what we need to be doing. We won’t be running for cover trying to find a million other things more appealing to do than this task in front of us. We need to keep reconnecting with our WHY and see our activities like a calling where we can help people. As Zig Ziglar mentioned helping others is how you ultimately help yourself and sales being a numbers game, the more people you help, the better you will do.
Our mood control in sales is a critical function of our sustained and consistent success. The stronger our WHY the less relevant our mood cycle. Winston Churchill has a great quote about going to from failure to failure, without losing our enthusiasm. That is a brilliant summary of what is needed to succeed in sales and in life. There are always going to be more “nays” than “yays” from buyers, so we better harden up and look to our WHY to control our moods.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Prospecting For Golden Clients
Do you have a clear image and understanding of your perfect client? Authors often mention about writing for their avatar. This is their imaginary reader. They have a clear picture of whom they are writing for. They know their reader’s hopes, fears, aspirations, behaviors, goals and idiosyncrasies.
In sales, prospecting to find your Golden Client is a bit like discovering your life partner. We have to go out and meet a lot of potential partners, until we find the person who just clicks with us. We find we get along very well together – we are simpatico, share common interests, have great communication and are on the same wavelength.
Clients are our partners too. Partners in the sense that we are looking for a long- term relationship. Our chief objective is to make re-sales. Not to make a “sale”, but to generate consistent orders year after year. This can only occur when the mutual trust has been built.
If we have distilled what our perfect client looks like, then we have a much better chance of finding such a buyer. Now our perfect buyer may need to grow into that category. It is rare to find someone who is perfect from the outset. The “test and see” strategy in Japan almost ensures that the first orders and interactions will be limited, as the buyer tests us out, to see if we are reliable.
This is done for self-protection in business. The distribution system in Japan is often convoluted and there are many outstretched hands involved. This means there are also many interlocking relationships, constructed on years of obligations and counter obligations.
As a new supplier, we are caught up in this web of mutual responsibility. Failure in any one part of the system jeopardises the livelihood of everyone in the food chain and so people take this relationship building very seriously. Once burnt they are very shy to try again, so we have one shot to make a new client and we had better not blow it.
So our perfect client may actually have to grow in scale to become our perfect client over time. In the beginning, we may only see small orders which based on satisfactory performance by us, will be able to grow in importance. This is the theory anyway.
Now this gradual scale increase idea raises a problem. Which are nascent perfect clients and which are buyers just pushing hard for all they can get from us? At the start this is sometimes hard to determine. As sellers, we tend toward being especially accommodating in the beginning, because we want to grow the business with this new client. This makes perfect sense, but we should always have our BATNA at the ready, to wield whenever needed.
Our BATNA is our “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. This is our walk away position. If we get pushed unreasonably hard on price, we need to be thinking where is the point where this new client is less than perfect. In fact are they meant to become a non-client, because they are too demanding, too cheap and too problematic?
Sometimes the buyer tendency is to play the “new client” card as hard a possible. They want to force concessions. Then despite all the rhetoric and agreement about this being a one-off, once in lifetime special introductory arrangement, they then set that number as the new low bar. Against this standard all further future discounts are measured and negotiated. This is not a partnership.
We need to have a clear view of who we want to partner with and make sure that there is that level of compatibility. There needs to be win-win outcomes aplenty. We can have the correct approach to clients but not all clients reciprocate. Desperation drives bad decisions and bad partnerships. Life is short. So it is better to take our time and make sure this client is someone we want to be dealing with for a long time.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
Hard Sell Stupidity
“We are going to be in your area next week, would you be available on Tuesday or Thursday?”.
“Really? Which part of my area will you be in?”.
“Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?”.
“Wait a minute, you just said you would be in my area, so which part of my area will you be in?”
“Akasaka”.
“Really that’s interesting. Akasaka is a big place, which part of Akasaka?”.
“Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?”.
This was an outbound investment sales call. The object was to sell me on investing my hard earned cash in their company’s investment product.
By the way, this conversation carried on far beyond what I have extracted here and became even more ridiculous, if that is actually possible. The essence was that I didn't believe that what they were saying was true. They started with a suggestion that they would be in my area and could just drop by. They say this to appear indirect and less “hard sell”.
However, when you push back on the validity of what they are saying, out comes the blatant hard sell - their constant annoying refrain of “Tuesday or Thursday?”. Why would they be doing this, when it is so obviously ridiculous? The answer is lack of sales skills and proper training.
There is a set script in place and I departed from the sacred text by challenging what they were saying. I did not believe that they will happen to be in my area and therefore that they could just drop by. It sounded unlikely to me, so I pushed back on their basic assertion. If they wanted to see me, why not just say, “we would love to visit you, would Tuesday suit or how about Thursday?”. Instead they started with a lie or at best, a dubious assertion, that has close to zero credibility.
Now this sales call is for an investment offer, where you cannot see, taste, hear, touch or smell the product and you won't know if it is any good for years. The trust factor on this type of sale is huge, yet they start the proceedings with an obvious lie.
How could they have done it more professionally? They don't know me and have found my address and phone number somewhere, so are trying to begin a relationship. When you are starting a relationship you need to immediately put the other person at ease and try to build some rapport.
“Hello Dr. Story, we have not met or spoken before, but my name is Taro and I am with xyz company. We exist to serve the interests of highly discerning clients like yourself. Do you have a few moments to speak?
Thank you.
We offer information, insight and help busy executives like yourself to better manager their wealth. Our clients often tell us they are so busy helping everyone else that they tend to sacrifice devoting enough time to their own personal wealth management. Is this the type of experience you have ever had?
We may or may not have something that suits your situation, but the beauty of spending a short meeting with our experts is that they can at least outline some of the most successful portfolio structures that have been working for executives similar to yourself. Are you in a position today to be able to consider investing in products which you might find attractive?”.
This example passage does a number of things. It flatters me that I am discerning, checks that I have time to talk, tells me they are in the wealth advisory business. They also pick a problem that busy executives do have and that is that often we are not managing our own wealth sufficiently well.
By asking me if I have had that experience, this opens up a sufficiently broad timeframe range to receive a positive “yes” response. By saying they may or may not have what I need, comes across as balanced, consultative and not hard sell. Referring to the best practice examples, tells me they are only going to talk about things that are relevant and working well already.
Checking whether I have capacity to take action will save us all a lot of time. Wealthy people don't leave their money sitting around in cash. They are leveraging it, investing it, working it. Often, as a result they don't have any capacity to invest, because they are already locked into other investments. The wealth management firm is looking for people who have not committed all of their wealth because they have recently cashed out of something, come into sources of cash or have a high degree of liquidity to enable them to move cash around between investments.
Instead, all we had here was a hard sell for a Tuesday or Thursday alternative of choice, built off a lie about the fact they would be in my area next week. There is no congruency between what they are selling and how they are selling it. The young woman I was talking to was calling me from a Philippines sales boiler room and was a "phone dog", her job being to call large numbers of people like me on a list and go through the script. I departed from the script and she was lost.
We are all in the trust business and so what we say can't be tricky, smarmy or duplicitous. We are here to serve clients and tricking them into seeing us isn't a winning formula. The point of the conversation was to get an appointment, no matter what. Wrong objective!
The point of the conversation should have to been to build trust and invoke interest. They need to weed out non-clients like me, so that they are only speaking with qualified buyers. I wasn't one, but she had no idea of knowing that because the script wasn't intelligent. Now you would hope that your financial advisor would be intelligent, yet what they were doing was clear proof to me how unintelligent they were.
In this modern age, boiler room induced hard sell doesn’t work. The client’s interest has to be paramount. Salespeople who don’t get this basic point are not going to be around very long. Re-design the sales approach and put the client’s success at the center and then you will meet clients and make sales.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.
How to Properly Prepare For Client Meetings
Salespeople are very busy, rushing around finding new clients, developing leads, networking, cold calling, attending client meetings, getting stuck into preparing proposals and later executing the follow through on what has been promised. Somewhere in this process some key basics start to go missing. One of those basics is the proper preparation for client meetings.
This is rather ironic because we salespeople have never had it so good. In this modern age we have so much information available to us just a few clicks away. Listed client companies very conveniently include their financial details, strategies, corporate officer information, etc., in their annual reports on their web sites.
Invariably, we will see a modern besuited business Titan posing in the plush corporate corner office. In addition to the PR division’s photographic efforts, there will be a substantial article or interview with the CEO, outlining the way forward for the company. The key organisation goals and milestones are on display for all to see.
A few minutes finding this information and reading it will give the salesperson a very clear idea of the key business drivers for the company’s strategy. The financial section will also tell us how the entity is tracking against it’s declared goals. It may even get down to a breakdown at the divisional or country level, which is pure gold to someone about to meet a decision-maker from that firm.
Being able to tie what you sell to the goals they have set for themselves instantly makes the context relevant and places the discussion on the right basis. Talking about your contribution to their ROI is of great interest to someone in that company, who has responsibility to deliver the goals established by senior management. So rather than talking about what you want – to sell something – the discussion is better focused around how you can help them achieve their goals.
How many salespeople though bother to do this prior to calling on the client? Not enough! If we turn up to their office and say, “Tell me about your business?”, this speaks volumes about our lack of research on the company beforehand. It would be much better to ask a question that relates to the goals which have been set within the company. We should be looking for some context where we can show how helpful we can be, in solving their local issues preventing them from satisfying their corporate goals.
We should be coming into that meeting talking about the most relevant issues facing the team we are meeting. We might say:
“I notice that your company President has made it
a clear goal to grow the business by 12% over this next year.
Given the current business climate, that sounds pretty tough.
Is that also the commitment you need to deliver from the Japan business?”
This is a great question because we have indicated we have done our homework on the firm, we are aware of their goals and we are empathetic. We are also checking if the local business has the same issues or not. If they answer that the local unit has to grow by 30%, then that sets us up for a very interesting conversation about how they are going to achieve that and why their local goal is so much larger.
We want to capture the scale of the gap between their current performance and their required performance, plus their chances of bridging that gap without our help. If we find out the opportunity to grow 30% in Japan is a snap, because business conditions here are so much better than everywhere else for them, we may have a hard time showing where we can be helpful.
On the other hand if they are really suffering from having such a large target, then perhaps we may be the solution and they will be all ears to hear how we can help. We could ask them “how is business?” and they may or may not choose to enlighten us to their reality. Remember, everyone loves to buy but no one wants to be sold. So the less you have to tell salespeople anything, the less likely you will be sold anything.
If we are able to lead the conversation into a deeper stage quickly, the more likely we are to find out if we have a new client here or not. This should be our goal and we should be using the best resources available to us to achieve our goal.
Apart from the information on the firm, there is also information we will find on the individuals we will meet from the firm. They will probably have a Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube presence. A quick search on their name will turn up useful background information, which may allow us to draw out some connections we share in common. If you both studied at the same university or previously both worked in the same industry or lived in the same location (state or town) or have the same hobbies, these are speedy connectors between two total strangers.
In sales, we need our buyers to know, like and trust us. The like and trust parts are the difficult bits, especially at the initial stages of the relationship. Sharing things in common is a great way to quickly establish credibility and a relationship.
Let’s take my example. I am a proud Queenslander, grew up in Brisbane, I support the Brisbane Broncos and Origin rugby teams, studied Modern Asian Studies at Griffith University and I practice karate. There are a wealth of speedy connectors right there. You can find all of this out about me on-line in about five minutes.
Start our meeting by commenting on how well Queensland has been doing in the Origin rugby and you and I are off to a great start! It means you know about the rabid Queensland versus New South Wales State rivalry in rugby and how important it is to native Queenslanders like me to win.
I am a buyer of goods and services here in Japan. Over the last twenty 25 years here, not one salesperson has tried to connect with me through knowing some common connectors. Given what is out there now in the public domain, there is no excuse for salespeople calling on me, particularly over the last ten years, to not try to connect in this way.
It is the same for most people we meet. We can get the relationship off to a flying start, if we bother to invest the time to find out their key details. Yes, we are all very busy but that is not a sufficient excuse. We salespeople are simply not doing a good enough job to use the tools at our command today. It is crazy when you think about it. Trying to build a connection and establish a positive first impression has to be every salesperson’s goal when meeting new clients for the first time.
Yes there are unlisted companies and yes, not so many Japanese business people use LinkedIn as yet. However, there are plenty of companies though who are listed and plenty of Japanese people on Facebook etc., so we should make the effort to do our homework on the client before we meet. In this Internet age there really are no excuses.
One of the other tricky bits about Japan is the group dynamic of decision-making. We may not know beforehand precisely who will be in the room. Often there will be extra people who turn up and so we won’t be able to research them prior to the meeting. However, after the meeting we can try to find out something about them that might enable us to establish a relationship. If they support a particular interest, we might send them an article on that subject.
If they like a certain sport or activity we might arrange tickets as our guest. However, I am a bit conservative regarding individual gift giving in Japan. There are often corporate compliance restraints on entertainment and gift giving which we should be aware of. We don’t want our efforts to cause them any embarrassment or trouble. On the other hand, we could bring something to eat to be shared with the whole team and that is usually acceptable. Japan, fortunately has an amazing selection of these types of goodies for just such an occasion.
This is the age of readily available and free information. We need to differentiate ourselves from every other salesperson out there. A simple way to do that is to spend some time researching the company and the individuals. When we have these insights we ask better designed questions, we uncover more key information more quickly and we provide great context for our conversation with the buyer.
Action Steps
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.
About The Author
Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate 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.