Create Your Own Philosophy of Sales
Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care –Anonymous”.
Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales.
Don’t miss it – we all know that selling stuff is a tough gig. Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be tough to survive in a sales job. You need other things too.
Product and technical knowledge is important. Total command of the detail is expected by clients. However, we need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about?
Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”.
I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs?
I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth? I can sense they have already bought the new 3 series Beemer before the ink is dry?
The quote at the beginning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care” reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え).
It can be simply translated as “preparedness” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term.
As a side note, here is a little Japanese language grammar insight for you. Kokoro in Japanese means your heart or spirit and kamae means you ready position. In karate, for example, we take our kamae, fighting position, when we do free sparring. So the word kamae becomes gamae when kokoro and kamae are made into a single compound word. So we can translate kokorogamae as “getting your heart in order”. This concept is the core foundation of my sales philosophy.
This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction?
Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Huh? Does this sound a bit too “hug a tree” Californian style, overly emotional for you? Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn’t centered on their best interests and therefore they won’t buy from you.
Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the “smooth talking” salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to. Oh, they may con us once, but we will eventually work them out. In this modern age, social media can kill us very fast. Our reputation can be shredded and before we know it, we are out of business.
These single transaction orientated salespeople are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand.
The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was a criminal. The criminal part didn’t surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks (note to Sales Managers – do background checks!).
He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the role play, and WOW, what a closer! I thought “Yes!” at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong. What a wake up call to smell the coffee for me.
So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. They are under skilled because they have never received proper sales training. People often arrive into sales jobs through companies who are transactional in nature. It is the industrial model of sales.
Potential salespeople come in the front door and if they don’t magically hit their numbers, are shown the back door after a few weeks or months. Another sacrificial victim is then brought into the meat grinder through the front door and the process repeated forever.
No thought is given to investing in these new hires to properly develop their understanding and skills. It is just a throw of the dice every time, to see who stays and who goes.
This routine usually produces very unfortunate sales behaviour in the individuals involved, as they become more and more desperate to make a sale to keep their employ. Desperation drives people to extremes and the client’s interests in all of this are thrown out the window. The ethos of the organization is short-term gain and their salespeople are a type of plug-and-play item, to be switched out as soon as needed.
If you want a successful career in sales, change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a powerful personal brand.
We need clients to know, like and trust us. Establishing our individual sales philosophy based on the kokorogamae concept is going to deliver the like and trust component in spades.
If your current sales life is a nightmare of transactional relationships, burning clients for short-tem gain, unrelenting pressure on the numbers and no training, then get out of there as soon as possible.
Before you can get out of there, take responsibility for yourself, make kokorogamae your light on the hill and move forward. Watch the videos on YouTube, get the books on sales written by the famous masters and study hard about what it takes to have a successful sales life.
If you want to stay in sales, then create your own philosophy of what that means as a profession. Decide to be the very best that you can be. Decide what your personal kokorogamae of sales will be. So, no more hesitation, let’s commit and get on to it!
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
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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.
Sales Rocks, But It’s All Uphill
Sisyphus was banished to Hades for misdeeds in life and spent eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, to just watch it descend again. This is the sales life. Every end of financial year, we are back down at the bottom of the hill. Here we go again, having to push that big rock all the way to the top.
“You are only good as your last deal” is a common refrain in sales. We struggle all year to make our targets and then we go back to zero revenues and start rolling those massive KPI rocks up the hill once more.
Most salespeople struggle to make their targets and the targets are always being raised. The effort to get deals over the line before the cut off, leaves us in a disheveled heap. We go to bed one night utterly exhausted, only to arise the next morning to face an even bigger rock. We are already tired, so how do we motivate ourselves to get in the game again?
Maybe we made your target or maybe we didn’t. It doesn't matter because we are in a new financial year now so we have to start again. So the first thing is to not worry about the past. Draw lessons from it, but don’t allow yesterday’s worry to intimidate today’s attitude.
Fill our mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope. We cannot tolerate a vacuum in our minds, so either the good stuff goes in or we allow the bad stuff to disable us. We should not dwell on the negatives, but concentrate on solution finding for client problems.
Oh no! Our biggest client won’t be buying this year and that is going to leave a massive hole in our numbers. Don’t moan about it. Start work on finding new wonderful clients to replace the lost one. Get on to positive momentum to carry you forward. You have your health and that is critical in sales. It is a stressful occupation, an emotional rollercoaster that can quickly spin out of control. Make sure you maintain your health by adjusting what you eat and drink. We all know what we are supposed to do, we just don’t do it. Well, this year do it!
Expect ingratitude. This way, bad news and bad behavior never catch you mentally unprepared. Your client chooses your competitor and not you, despite the close relationship you have together. You feel like you are dealing with an unfaithful spouse and are burning up with rage. If you assume ingratitude is the usual state of the world, then you just brush it off and move forward. That good client of yours will be back at some point, so don’t blow the relationship for the sake of one deal gone missing.
Count your blessings not your troubles. You are focused on the hill and the rock but not your strengths. You have experience, contacts, track record and a good reputation in the marketplace. You are a professional, who always has the client’s interests as your first priority. You practice your craft and you study to improve even further. There are always more potential clients than time available to service them, so there is no lack of potential. Your competitors are not studying, and don’t have the client’s interests at heart. This gives you an advantage over the long term, as they just flame out and disappear.
Try to profit from your losses. Not every post is a winner despite your best efforts. Analyse what went wrong. Don’t be afraid to ask the client for feedback. Our experience is the sum of our failures. We learn what does work by finding out what doesn’t work. In the startup world they have the mantra of “fail faster”. This is an old idea. Edison applied this same concept to discovering which materials would bridge the gap in his electric bulb.
Create happiness for others. Give something back. Provide advice, volunteer, turn up and help. When we give, we receive much more in return. Our soul is warmed by the act and our spirit is strengthened.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the hill in front of us. Break it down to centimeters and roll that rock a little a day, every day and we will get to the top. Okay, we have to start again but that is the fun of the game. We get to play again and see what we can do this year. See which wonderful new clients we can help. See what creative solutions we can generate. We are an awesomely powerful learning machine and the game is our university of life.
Action Steps
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
About The Author
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A 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.
The 106 Centimeter Cold Caller
Salespeople are world class whiners. They are the most creative group amongst all professions for coming up with excuses about why they can’t meet their targets. The sale’s life requires a constant stream of new buyers. Marketing is permanently inhabited with ne'er-do-wells, who are sabotaging the sales department’s efforts with underdone campaigns and inept promotions. When the leads are few and far between, desperate measures are called for and the chief villain of the piece is cold calling. Everyone will assure you that you can’t cold call in Japan.
Salespeople everywhere are delicate blossoms. They get a rocket from their boss about their poor results and try to cold call potential clients over the phone. They get total, irreversible rejection and quit phoning after the third call. There is a variety of cold calling which is even more debilitating and that is tobikomi eigyo (飛び込み営業). You have probably seen some seriously stressed out younger person in your reception hall of your office, hanging around looking totally out of depth and out of place, getting the bum’s rush from the most lowly ranked person on your company’s totem pole. That was a tobikomi eigyo salesperson, someone who just drops by unannounced and devoid of an appointment, always unceremoniously shown the door.
Invisible Sales
Imagine if you were so short, that the receptionist can’t even see you unless she stands up and peers well over the counter. Or, that the typical unmanned reception phone and organisational chart are at such a height and depth, that you can’t even use them. This presumes you can even get into the building, in the first place.
Toshiya Kakiuchi was born with a brittle bone crippling disease that confined him to a wheelchair. He applied for jobs, found the going tough, then one day a firm which built websites, accepted him as an employee. He expected to be seated at a desk, building websites in the safe bosom of the office. His boss told him to head off to the sales department. “You have to get out there and cold call offices door to door, tobikomi eigyo style, looking for companies who need a website”.
Seated in his wheel chair, he was only 106 centimeters tall, found that most buildings were difficult to access because of vertiginous stairs. His sales comrades were seeing 40 or 50 companies a day and he was only seeing 5, if he was lucky. Yet, in a short space of time, he became the top salesperson in that company.
After his talk to the Economist Conference Network event, I asked him about how he managed it. With only a limited number of calls he could make in a day, he had to really make every post a winner. He found a way to turn his disadvantage into an advantage. We have tobikomi eigyo people coming to our office every month, trying to sell us one thing or another. Like everyone else, we send forth the lowest person in the chain of command to shoo them away (nicely of course, because we are Dale Carnegie!). Do we remember any of them 30 seconds after they have moved on to the next company’s reception area? No. Kakiuchi san, though, is definitely memorable, distinct, differentiated. You are not going to forget him turning up to you office. He told me that he had to just keep going back again and again. Eventually he would get to talk to a decision-maker who could buy and they did buy.
Stop Whining
So, for all those able bodied salespeople out there whining in their suds about how tough sales is, stop it right now – you have nothing to complain about. Kakiuchi san found a way through by differentiating himself, by having grit and stick-ability to keep going back despite being constantly rejected. He was physically weak but mentally tough.
Today he runs his own company Mirairo that researches, designs and consults on the needs of the disabled. He has produced an app called Bmaps that tells the disabled where there are stairs, elevators, physical barriers on their route to their destination. His book Barrier Value (バリアバリュー) tells his story of how he overcome his challenges. With our aging population demographics, we will all be needing his company’s services in the future, as our hips and knees weaken and those stairs are looking like Everest.
So salespeople, don’t complain about cold calling. Read Kakiuchi san’s book and reflect on how lucky you are, with so much sales opportunities right in front of you.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
About The Author
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A 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.
Japan New Client Sale’s Agonies
Japan is a huge market. This is a wealthy, sophisticated society, with a design sense second to none. People work diligently as a team and put in long hours. Achieving annual organic growth should be an expectation of bosses that sales teams should be able to realise. Yet, the results are often flat lining or disappointing. Excuses abound – the yen is too strong, the yen is too weak, competitors are discounting, new competitors are taking market share, etc.
Finding new clients is the perpetual Holy Grail of the sales world. Websites lure, social media sponsored posts promulgate, ad words harvest, email sequences are very precisely engineered and content marketing assures expert authority. But this is the world of marketing to unleash the lead flow so that the sales team can follow up. How well do the marketing and sales teams work together? Often, not well. The marketers complain the salespeople are squandering their hard earned efforts. The sales people whine about the poor quality of the lead flow. Down at your shop, are they operating as two independent empires or as hand in glove colleagues furiously plotting together to achieve world domination?
Targeting new clients doesn’t get much attention in Japan. We all know that our avatar represents the typical client and all we have to do is identify others who fit that profile and the chances are high that they too will benefit from our product or service. How many sales teams here have defined their avatar? What about your crew?
Get Your Spider
A standard operating procedure should be the Spider. If a client from a particular business has landed in your sales funnel and have bought from you, there are no doubt others in that same niche who would also possibly buy as well. Having made a sale to one company, do the salespeople take the Spider metaphor to heart and start listing up other similar targets to proactively contact. They should, but they don’t. Why?
A major ice wall confronts them – the unknown. They don’t have a contact who can introduce them, so they do nothing. The idea of cold calling the target company is judged hard graft, so they don’t try. By the way, are your salespeople cold calling?
There is a way through the OL (Office Lady) barrier by focusing on the design of the conversation that will spark buyer interest. But no, they do nothing and just leave it. It is no push over here. When you cold call a Japanese company, if you don’t already know the exact name of the person you are after, then you get cordoned off by the lowest person on the firm totem pole – the youngest female OL.
They are not very lady like though, in fact they are killers, axing your aspirations right there to speak with the buyer. They are merciless and unrelenting. If you don’t go down without a fight, they will switch you to the next level up on the totem pole. This is the spotty faced, flat headed youngest male in the section, who will promise you that their boss will call you back, as he gleefully gets rid of you, knowing that call will never happen.
No More Whimsy
These opening conversations should not be left to whim. They need to be designed and practiced, so that you do get through to someone who can make a buying decision. Untrained salespeople try to cold call without a solid plan, fail, and then tell all a sundry you cannot cold call in japan. Not true, but you need to have a proven methodology for doing this.
The fall back position may be to try to meet new clients through networking. Japan is a curious place though in the networking world, because fundamentally, no one is interested. I know you, you introduce me to Taro and I will do the same for you with my contacts. A pretty limited way of doing things, but this is acceptable here. Barefaced bowling up to a complete stranger and introducing yourself, trying create a connection, is greeted with such shock, that salespeople give up quickly.
Can you widen your network of people you have no connection to and can you work the room here? Yes, you can, but again you need a methodology and you need to take salespeople out of their self -imposed limits and practice it.
Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com
About The Author
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.
A A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, “THE Sales Japan Series”. “THE Presentation 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.
Designing Your Sales Conversation (Part 3)
With all of this preparation in hand (and it takes about a nanosecond to complete this, once you understand their role and their style), you are now ready to start asking the right questions.
A good place to start is to ask them where they would want to see the business. This helps to scope out the ideal outcome, so you need to be working on a solution for them that gets as close as possible to that mental picture they have in their mind. We call this the “Should Be”.
Next we ask them where they see the business right now, the “As Is”. Having established these two focal points we need to design questions which show that the gap between these two points is both huge and fatal. Why huge and fatal? If the gap between them is insignificant then why bother doing anything, why take on the risk of change? If the gap is big, but there is no opportunity cost or no downside to not taking action, then the client will persevere with the current situation, take no action and not buy your services or product.
We hold this part of the questioning until we uncover what is holding them back from closing the gap between the As Is and the Should Be. They know what they need to do, but why aren’t they doing it? These are called Barrier Questions, to pick out the issues where you might be the solution, because so far they haven’t been able to solve the riddle facing them. As mentioned though, the actuality of a problem and the desire to do something about it, are not the same and we must help to highlight that solving this issue is best done right now, with no delay.
To paint a picture, imagine the client has a problem retaining key staff. They are not all leaving at the same time, but gradually the organization is seeing people they want to keep depart. You might mention you have a great training solution for improving engagement, go through the tool in detail but find the conversation doesn’t translate into the application of a solution.
Instead you might reference another client, who had a similar issue and how the failure to address the engagement of the key staff leaving led to that company losing market share and encountering cash flow problems. This triggered a downward spiral, with all the staff becoming worried about the stability of the company, investigating escape options and eventually leading to them closing up operations. Here we are fleshing out the costs of non-action, to encourage the organisation to take steps to stop the haemorrhaging.
Having used questions to draw out the implications on non-action we now need to ascertain the Payout for them. If we deliver the solution and life gets great, what will it mean for them personally? We need to be addressing the “What’s In It For Me” construct. As mentioned earlier this is very difficult to isolate out for most Japanese people, because they usually reference what is in it for the team, rather than for themselves personally. It doesn’t really matter though if we can’t get them to openly express the personal Dominant Buying Motive, as long as we get them thinking about the issue.
We need to bridge into providing the tailored solution for them, and we do this with a Capability Statement. We are not delivering the solution at this point, because we are just reassuring them that having heard all they have to say, and letting them know we actually can help them. We reference what they have told us and we offer our solution capacity, addressed in terms of their Primary Interest and their Dominant Buying Motive.
From this point, we go into solution provision. This is rarely done in the first meeting in japan. We usually go away and come back for another meeting with a written proposal outlining in detail what happens next and how much it will cost.
The ability to set up the asking of questions, the designing of the questions with the specific audience in mind and the ability to provide confidence you have a viable solution sets up the solution provision platform.