In Sales Don’t Soldier On Sick

We are experiencing the highest outbreak of influenza in Japan this year. The winter daytime temperatures have dropped well below zero in Tokyo which is pretty unusual. We still have a lot of snow lying around from last week, which was the largest snowfall since 2014. Everyday, staff are reporting in sick with colds, the flu, headaches etc. What happens to your sales output during these physically demanding times? Growing up in Australia we were all taught to “soldier on” when we got sick. Maybe this was a leftover mentality from Victorian England or maybe it was a product of the pioneer society, but being ill was something you pushed through.

The reality though is that we are all working in a much more complex business environment today and just “soldiering on” won’t cut it. Watching illnesses being passed from staff member to staff member, really reinforces the sense of the fragility of teams. The last thing we want is for the whole team to get taken down because of the overwhelming sense of loyalty and work ethic of one sick individual. Japan has its own version of soldier on and that is called gaman or perseverance. This means turning up to the office wearing a mask, but still working when you are sick.

The problem of infecting others is still there, mask or otherwise. There is also the question of the damage to the health of the individual. Something which could be dealt with in a few days, now stretches into weeks, because the initial recovery period wasn’t long enough. There is also the question of the quality of how well you can work when you feel miserable. It is a bit like Japanese staff working longer than necessary hours, at minimum productivity levels, to demonstrate their devotion. In both cases everyone is much better to go home.

Japan has a strong sense of not letting the team down, so turning up sick is the proof of commitment to the cause. The idea that someone in a sales job could go and call on clients while sick is completely out the window. The client won’t appreciate one of our team turning up to wipe out their team. This is felt to be selfish, inconsiderate and basically pretty dumb.

So if you are sick that means you are restricted to working in the office. Why do that, when we have so much excellent technology allowing us to work remotely today. Better to stay nice and warm at home and work there if you feel you must. If there are some really urgent matters then handle them from home.

But must you work when you are ill anyway? Well some simple things can be dealt with by email while at home. Meetings already arranged will have to be reset and the client notified. Follow-up items won’t be followed up as promised because the time has slipped out and that has to be informed to the client. The sales numbers are going to take a hit. This might happen immediately or it may show up in a few months time, depending on the business you are in. What do we do about it?

The idea that we can push our people through their ill health to create the quota numbers is a crazy idea. Not an idea though that doesn’t occur to owners and sales leaders who have responsibility for the production of results like cash flow. We need to consider how short-term and crazy that actual thought is. In this environment, your people are everything. Their well being is everything. Transactional thinking around squeezing out the results, no matter what, is an organization destroyer.

The sense of being valued by the organisation is the key driver for engagement with staff. When everything is humming along smoothly, there is no stress test of the company’s actual, as opposed to stated values and the boss’s real commitment to the team.

Staff are taking careful note. There are more jobs out there, than salespeople in this market. When you pressure your people to keep pushing for targets, you will drive them out the door. They realise they are expendable in your eyes and they will leave. They are thinking “show me the love”.

Instead of expecting everyone to harden up, encourage your people to rest. One of Dale Carnegie’s stress management principles is to rest before you become tired and this is a very sound idea. Staff illnesses will eventually disappear and you are left with how they felt about how they were treated by you, when they needed your support. Keep those with major flus away from contact with everyone. Give them sufficient time to recover, because these modern malaises really take it out of you. Lead from the front. Stay home yourself when you get sick and model the type of behaviour you want in your staff.

Forget the revenue numbers in the short term. A highly engaged team will catch things up, as much as it is possible. The ability to keep the team together is more important than one or two month’s revenue results. Be generous with your people and they will understand your true intention is to care for them. Only when you show that, will they be motivated to show they care for you and the organisation.

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.

Sale’s Case Studies

Getting client cooperation to create sale’s case studies in Japan is tough. Japanese companies are very careful about how much information they let outside of the firm. When you are thinking to yourself “we did a really great job and this would make a great case study”, get ready for rejection. Not everyone in Japan says “no”, but the percentage is very, very high in this country. When you think about it, this is a great opportunity gone begging. What can we do, to get around this problem?

Well the “no” usually means exactly that and companies do not relent in their negativity toward the idea. Our persuasion powers always fall short because this tends to be a company-wide policy issue and the people we are dealing with can’t change the policy. When you ask them why we can’t turn this magnificent triumph into a case study, they say annoying stuff like “if we do it for you, we have to do it for all the other providers”. Or, “the other providers will feel we are favouring you”. As a foreigner you are inclined to think “oh yeah, so what?” and want to question why any of this would be a problem. Well it is a problem, it isn’t going away anytime soon, so we have to be more creative.

We can create two types of case studies – the verbal and the print variety. The format can vary but if we think about how time poor everyone is today, clarity and brevity are virtues in both cases. We should start with the outcome, the result. Why begin at the end? We want to keep people reading or listening, so we need to break through all of the competing distractions and grab their attention. Extolling the wonderful and extensive outcomes of your solution gets them interested to see if the same pixie dust magic can be sprinkled on their enterprise. We are also showing our credibility. The outcome must be a relevant example that the potential buyer of your services or product can mentally extrapolate to themselves in order to have real meaning.

After dangling the goodies in front of the client, we now talk about the issue we solved. This is best delivered in the form of a story. Just going into the mechanics of the issue is boring and not likely to motivate the listener. If we can describe the people involved and the pain the issue was causing, we can start to ignite the listener’s emotional connection with the story. We can say things like, “The pressure from our client’s senior management had been intense. From last spring the section manager Shimada san was so stressed by the pressure for delivering the results on time, that he was developing an ulcer in his stomach. He even started to take time off to go to hospital. His whole team were worried because they felt they would not be able to get their piece of the project done in time. They saw a potential big loss of face because their colleagues would feel they had let the rest of the company down. They were all working hard but were concerned they were getting nowhere”. Now we have put some flesh on the bone. We have counted the human cost of failure. This is much easier to identify with than numbers in a spreadsheet cell coming up short. We have introduced a situation the buyer can mentally visualize in their own frame of reference.

Next we describe the solution we provided to fix this gap. This is the “how we did it” part of the story and again it shouldn’t be a simple mechanical telling of how what happened. We need to combine the solution description with the impact it had on individual members of the team. We talk about the features of the solution but we have to link those to the benefits we delivered to the company, how they took those benefits and applied them. We can say something like this, “The XYZ software we installed used a combination of our big data and artificial intelligence capability to isolate out the critical steps to meet the deadline. We saved hundreds of hours of team time and the additional efficiency actually delivered the project pitch perfect and ahead of the deadline. Shimada san could finally stop his ulcer medication and the team were regarded as the heroes of the hour. We were invited to the celebration dinner and what a phenomenal night of major partying that was. Everyone was ecstatic with what we had done together and they really thanked us for saving them”.

Even if you cannot reveal the client’s name, get these type of rich episodes into print and in front of potential clients during meetings. There is the dry rendition version – avoid that one. Instead use storytelling to emotionally involve the listener. If you do, then the story brings the key points alive and makes the buyer identify with the scenario in a way that they care what happened. This is powerful and we do not do enough good storytelling in our sales work. The irony is we are all dripping in rich and valuable detail, have plenty of scope to do this, but we don’t pull all the parts together. Find your hero stories. Collect the details and turn them into tales that reek of applied benefits gushing forth from the feature nitty gritty details of the solution. But remember to make it memorable through your storytelling.

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.

Story San, We’ll Think About It

In Japan, this “We’ll think about it” response is often the result at the second meeting with the client. In the first meeting, the salesperson is establishing trust and credibility. They are trying to identify if they can actually be of assistance to the client or not. There will be permission sought to ask questions to better understand the buyer’s needs. In the second meeting, the proposal is presented, objections are dealt with and the seller tries to gain a client agreement to buy. Actually this is all fantasy and not what happens.

In reality, the Japanese salesperson gets straight into their pitch and starts bombarding the client with all the nitty gritty features of the product or service. They get to the end and then wonder why the client doesn’t buy and all they hear is “we’ll think about it”. In this case, the clients are using this answer to get rid of dud salespeople.

Sadly, even if you are a pro and were following a proven sale’s process, where you did all the necessary steps, you will still often get this response of “think about it” in Japan. This is usually because we have not gotten enough clarity during the questioning process. Sometimes we have misunderstood the client or they have not been clear enough themselves. It could be that there was a hidden objection they are reluctant to share with us and we have failed to address that concern, so no purchase can be made.

What do we do about this? We can certainly accept that they do need to think about it and we need to set the date for the followup meeting right there on the spot. We can try a formula from Victor Antonio, where we don’t accept that simple headline answer and we dig deeper. We can say, “when someone tells me they need to think about it, they means one of two things - they are not interested or are interested, but not sure. Which is it?”. If they say interested but not sure, then we question further about whether the purchase is a fit, whether the functionality is all there or not, or is it a question of finance?

The idea being that if the problem is anyone of these three reasons, we drill down further in order to understand how to handle it. If it is not a fit, why not? If the functionality is not there, what is missing and can we overcome that issue? If it is the money, then we look at how we might arrange the payment terms to allow them to make it in this budget cycle or spread it out over a few cycles.

In a Japanese buyer context, this line of questioning would be considered very aggressive and obnoxious. The buyer isn’t King in Japan – the buyer is God and it is not the place of pipsqueak salespeople to question God as to why they need to think about it. The group decision-making process in Japan almost ensures they really do need to think about it - together. The person receiving the sales call may be on board and may have been satisfied with the proposal, but they are rarely the sole decision maker. Inside the company, the buying decision will impact on various sections and the views and concerns of those groups need to be smoothed off, before anyone can make a final affirmative decision.

Trying to pressure the buyer during the sale’s call is meaningless, because that person still has to gain the internal alignment of the group on the next steps. It would make more sense if the seller instead addressed the issue of pushback toward the other internal parties who may have a problem with the decision to buy. In this case, rather than asking the person in front of us these aggressive questions, we could ask about other players involved.

For example, “Sometimes there are concerns from other interested parties about the appropriateness of the fit between our solution and your company’s needs. Do you foresee any internal concerns in this area? What about functionality – do you anticipate any difficulties with the functionality of our solution from within the other sections involved? What about the finance aspect, do you expect any resistance to what has been proposed?”.

In this way we can indirectly ask the buyer about the concerns without appearing to be questioning what they have just told us about they need to think about it. We can also take the opportunity to again provide antidotes to any concerns, because our interlocutor will be “our voice” during the inside meetings where the proposal will be discussed. We need to lead the witness, so to speak, to prepare for internal pushback. So when you hear “we will think about it” and you know you have done a good job of understanding the client’s needs and your proposal will help their business, just relax. Still definitely make that appointment for the follow-up meeting right there and then and get into their schedule but don’t keep pushing or you will hurt the trust you are trying to create.

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.

Admitting Wrong In Customer Service

Sometimes things go wrong. Mistakes are made, errors pop up, best laid plans are laid low. Stuff happens. How we deal with these incidents makes the big difference. Some societies are legalistic, litigious and phalanxes of lawyers are lined up telling us to deny everything. Japan isn’t one of those cases, so we expect a different way of doing things here, admitting that blame can be accepted, as long as it is handled appropriately.

Troublesome word “appropriately”. It is a bit like “common sense” which often proves to be very uncommon. What we may think is appropriate isn’t shared by others. This is where things get murky in the service sector world. When things go wrong what is the appropriate response by both parties? The aggrieved party can completely lose it and let go with both verbal barrels, tearing strips off the offending service provider.

Given nearly 30% of the Japanese population is over 65 these days, we can all look forward to various short fuse jichans or granddads exploding with rage, when some level of service is not delivered at the “appropriate” level. Those long Japanese life spans, combined with ever shortening tempers and easy irritation from others creates an explosive service sector cocktail.

A friend of mine was lamenting some poor service provision in the IT area. The project was 9 months late and when it did finally come on line it didn’t work properly at all. We all know that everything in IT takes longer than promised and always costs more than expected, but at least it is supposed to work. There can be many reasons for this. The brief may have been unclear, the execution could have been the problem, there may be extenuating circumstances, maybe it was basic incompetence?

When I was working at one of the retail banks here a very, very large amount of money had been carted out to sea and set on fire, in the form of a new internal operating platform not working well at all. It was launched then immediately scrapped. The autopsy of why it didn’t work, became one of those failure orphans, where there was no one responsible. No one lost their job and no lessons were learnt. It was like it never happened, as it was swept quietly under a rug and forgotten.

Anyway, back to my friend who was rather perplexed by the reaction of the IT service provider, who was not at all responsive. Magically, the perpetrator of this grief managed to switch the tables around and blame my friend for being the problem. Now this reaction is puzzling? Why would you take that path?  

Not answering the plaintive emails, texts and phone calls gets aggrieved people worked up. They feel slighted and frustrated at the same time. So lesson number one is make yourself easy to reach out to the solve problems. Is your name there on your website to be contacted, if people have an issue with your service and they want to complain directly to the boss? Our Japanese staff are all ninjas at hiding trouble from the boss, so always expect to be the last to know what has occurred, until usually when it is absolutely too late.

Also don’t be mealy-mouthed about the problem. If you didn't deliver from the buyer’s point of view, then admit it, because the beauty or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder here. Perception is the key and that is to say the perception of the client. There is money involved obviously, but there is something much more valuable involved and that is trust. If you want to try and wriggle your way out of your responsibilities, as was the case on this occasion, then expect bigger ramifications down the road. My friend is very well connected and will not be speaking highly of the services of this provider to any and all who will listen. That will become an invisible cost line in the P&L ,where revenues are being negatively impacted by reputation damage. You cannot see it necessarily but you can be assured it will be there.

I am reminded of another case, where a very “sharp” businessman I know has quite a big following on the Internet. Various people who feel they have been duped, have created some scintillating reading on the internet, whenever you Google his name. When people are looking to do business with you, this type of prominent, smelly baggage will hurt you forever.

It is surprising how some people don’t take any responsibility for poor service. My son had a bowl of sauce spilt all over him at a ramen shop in the Azabu Juban recently. The waitress was Asian, not Japanese. To everyone’s astonishment she did nothing, just stood there looking quizzical, seemingly wondering to herself “now how did that happen?” No apology, no frantic provision of towels to soak up the sauce, absolutely nothing.

The Japanese manager was busy apologising, eventually providing the towels and wiping up the catastrophe. The guilty party just went back to grilling some meat like nothing had happened. Maybe she didn’t speak Japanese or English or was just stupid? Who knows what was going on inside her mind?

Luckily for her, it wasn’t some short tempered jichan she spilt the sauce over, as I am sure she would have been given a severe tongue lashing, the manager would have been given a good serve too and it would have turned into quite a public imbroglio. When departing, only the manager came outside to bow and apologise at the door. Where was the errant staff member, who should have been standing there looking contrite and sorry for the kerfuffle?

The point here is we all know that things will go wrong and yet how well have we trained our staff to take responsibility for their mistakes? This young woman had been given no guidance at all and yet here she is working in a retail food environment, where accidents are bound to happen. She may be part of that foreign, low pay, hourly “trainee” brigade that will increasingly be called upon to staff Japan’s restaurants, shops and retail outlets, but so what? They still need to be trained and prepared to work in one of the most demanding retail environments in the world, where standards are high and forgiveness is low.

This is a good time to take another look at what we are doing in our companies to prepare ourselves and our staff for mistakes, incidents, accidents, chaos and trouble. We can’t rely on people’s common sense or their capacity to take “appropriate” action. We need to tell them clearly the WHY of what we are doing. We need to explain our VALUES and we need to train them on how to respond to trouble, as viewed through the eyes of the aggrieved client. We also have to keep telling them because even though we may get sick of saying it, they need to hear it all the time for it to sink in.

No Warning Speaking

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.

Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.

Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.

Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.

I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn’t provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.

Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.

You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don’t have much preparation time up your sleeve.

Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.

We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long presentation.

We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.

Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.

I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn’t so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.

So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don’t just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.

You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don’t you think.

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.

Don’t Blow The Solution Presentation To The Buyer

Finding clients is an art and so is building trust and credibility that you can help them solve their business problems. We might be very charming when we first meet the client, sending out a competency vibe that the client relates to. They are open to our inquiries into the current state of their business, where the gaps are located and the urgency of filling those gaps. So far so good.

We are now working off a trust base sufficiently large enough to allow the client to pull back the velvet curtain and reveal all the difficulties and problem nuances they are actually facing, as opposed to that pristine image the marketing department has been publically propagating. Dragging out the dirty laundry for outsiders to see is not something clients are going to do if the trust has not been established, so good job and well done getting to that point in the sales cycle.

Presumably you are skilled and have refrained from suggesting any possible solutions, until you have done a proper job of digging deeply into the real issues facing the client. You have not leapt in with your off the shelf product or service, the one size fits all, cure all snake oil. No you are a pro.

You have been asking well designed questions, which have been helping the client come to their own conclusion that what you have is the solution to their needs. And the real beauty of this skill set is that the client, as yet, doesn’t even know what you have ready to help them. Your questions have guided their thinking about the types of solutions they will need and hey presto, your solution is a perfect match.

Now we come to the unveiling, the drum roll, as the solution is presented. This is the time for capitalizing on all the good work that has been put in beforehand. We cannot get to this point and then blow it with a mediocre solution presentation. We can’t start by only ploughing straight into the details, the guts of the solution, the spec, colour, size, weight, dimensions, timing, guarantees etc. These are all plebian features, dross, mere detail compared to what we should be presenting in its entirety.

Firstly, we need to have our capability statement ready to go. In this statement we clearly explain that we have exactly what the client needs and we have the capacity to deliver it. Now if we don’t, then we should state that plainly, drink our green tea and get out of there pronto. Trying to slam the square peg into the round hole simply because you have invested all this time with this client and you need an outcome to meet your quota is stupid. This is not a match, they are not a client and this effort to force it is wasted. Get off to the next client who will be a match and spend your time there instead.

If they are in fact a match, we bring forward our capability statement to communicate we can in fact help them. We do match our spec with what they need and we do go through the key features. But we don’t just stop there, like the vast majority of amateur salespeople. We take each of those key features and we illustrate how these features bring benefits to the client. We don’t just stop there either, we keep going, we keep climbing higher up the value chain.

We take that benefit and then we explain how that benefit when applied in their business will help them to succeed. Now clients are always doubtful about what they hear from salespeople, so there is always going to be some residual skepticism. They have been burnt in the past by idiots, so we have to deal with that negative legacy. After extolling the virtues of the application of the benefits of the features of our solution, we bring forth evidence of where this has worked elsewhere.

This is the package we need to be delivering at solution presentation time. Then to test the waters to see if we have left anything out, not explained everything fully, we ask a trial close question. This might be something as gentle as “how does that sound so far?” This is low pressure and designed to draw out doubts, problems, additional information they may not have shared as yet. We want to hunt down any possible objections to buying from us at this stage, so that we can get a deal done now.

When we are talking about all of these features, benefits and applications we should be weaving these together in a story. Storytelling is easy for the client to remember and fleshes out the key points in a way that is most readily accessible. Talk about a particular client in a similar situation and describe the who, what, where, when and how of that case. The more vivid we can make the word pictures in the telling, the more compelling is the story we are sharing.

When we put all of this together, the client’s “yes” decision is made that much easier for them. That must be our object and we use our sale’s skills to ensure we create the best possible outcome for the client. This is not about getting a single sale, this effort is totally aimed at getting the reorders. The pro understands the difference and wants to build a lifetime partnership with the buyer. This is what we must be thinking when we get to the solution presentation stage.

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", 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.