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.