Customer Service When Doing Business In Japan

Japan is probably the leading country in the world for customer service.  These are seriously picky, picky consumers here.  If you are dealing with consumers then you had better have your quality act together.  They will not tolerate poor quality.   Their expectations are extremely high and they will complain vigorously if those standards are not being met. 

It is often hard to understand.  I grew up in Queensland in Australia and it is famous as a production center for tropical fruit, like mangoes.  I planted and grew a mango tree in my yard and it produced beautiful mangoes.  What you would pay for an entire box of mangoes is what you will pay here for one Miyazaki mango.  But that Miyazaki mango will be perfect, absolutely perfect.  No blemishes, no marks, perfect symmetry and the taste is sublime.  That coming from a proud native Queenslander is high praise, I can assure you.

Now in Japan they will pay for quality and this is the difference.  In the rest of the world people are more concerned with volume. In Australia, they would rather have the box at that price point, than the single perfect mango.  So our concepts about what constitutes quality are fundamentally different. 

Remember that most Japanese rent or own their very small apartment, so they can't actually acquire lots of stuff, because there is no place to put it.  So you want to have the best of what you can afford, given the space limitations.  And there are few parks or sporting facilities, so they have selected two major leisure activities - eating and shopping.  They are well prepared to spend money on both.  They are quality conscious and demanding as a result.  So the consumer quality expectation transfers across to service provision as well.  Service in hotels and restaurants must be conducted at a high level. 

If you are in the B2B area, then there are so many layers of distribution that the relationship between the layers become very important.  They don't hold a lot of stock each so the replenish part must be working well.  Everything is “just in time”, like the Toyota system of car production.  If you delay delivery then you are disrupting the whole system and everyone will complain vigorously up the food chain until it gets to you.  You don't want that.  The mutual dependencies here work because everyone understands the importance of quality and timeliness.

The level of quality provision is so high that the buyer expects to receive more than they are paying for.  They expect to be getting advice, very fast follow-up, that you be available all the time to answer their questions, etc.  So speed of reply to emails and phone calls become more important.  In many countries if you send an email and you don't get answer until the next day or the one after, most people are okay with that.  In Japan if they send an email to me in the morning and there is no reply, they are ringing me to find out the information.  This is again that interconnectivity phenomenon.  Everyone has promised something to someone else down the food chain. They have to keep reporting that everything is on track.  In this regard Japanese buyers have an insatiable appetite for information and reporting. 

Ironically when they come to make a decision, they take an age to get there.  Things drag out interminably, nothing seems to be happening, time passes, we grow old and then suddenly the decision is reached and all hell breaks loose. Now everyone wants everything yesterday and they expect you to provide that level of service.  We tend to be "less is more" in the West and Japan is "more is better".

They like to keep in touch to a degree we can’t imagine.  For example, we get gifts for Oseibo at the end of the year, gifts for Ochugen during the middle of the year. They send me X'mas cards, new year cards, start of summer cards.  They do this to keep in touch and remind you that they are there to serve you.  I am expected to be doing the same to my buyers as well. 

People will drop in unannounced without an appointment.  One of my staff will come to me and say so and so is here to see you.  I think to myself “did I forget an appointment”, so I check my diary and there is no appointment.  They are just dropping by to say high and remind me that they are here to serve me.  They expect this as well from me with my buyers. This is not how we do business in the West, so it is quite a different expectation here about what it means to have a business relationship.  Japan sees Western business as "dry" and they prefer "wet".  This is the contrast between efficiency and empathy in business.  They are higher on the importance of EQ than they are on the IQ. 

This is all very time demanding in a time poor world.  But that is the expectation and you have to understand the point.  You cannot over communicate with Japanese companies. Their tolerance for communication is very much higher than ours. 

If you create a problem for the buyer you better get down there with a gift and a deep bow of apology. When you are trying to break into the market it is tough because you are fighting against all of these established relationships which have stood the test of time and which have demonstrated their reliability and trustworthiness.  You turn up with your airy charm and a bunch of promises.  If you screw it up, you are out sunshine. There are very few second chances in Japan for anyone - domestic or international.  On the other hand once you get in and demonstrate you are reliable then, they tend to keep using you going forward.

How To Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan

How much is enough data in a presentation?  How much is too much?  Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information.  Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness.  And you just can’t bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena.  You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process.  You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.

Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them.  They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another.  The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks.  Are we self aware about what we are doing?  No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better.  We can’t thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation. 

We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want.  There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade.  The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button.  This is because the presenter hasn’t realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive.  Data, data, data just doesn’t work though

At the end of the session the audience is shredded.  They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much.  They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages.  They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”.  Was this a success?  Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking?  Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?

So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out.  We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench.  We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message.  We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it. 

We need a good structure to carry the presentation.  A blockbuster opening to grab attention.  A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted.  Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.

We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious.  We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.

We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it.  That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore.  But this is often what we do, when we lead with data.  Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby!  You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic.  We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail.  Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good.  Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join!

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 dalecarnegie.comand 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

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

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.

Networks For Doing Business In Japan

In business the ability to develop a strong network is critical.  There is nothing better than getting to know buyers through these networks and establish a personal connection. Japan is the premier nation on the planet for networks.  When I first came here in 1979, I was taken to a ryokan- a traditional inn with a hot spring bath.  That evening we could hear this raucous party going on next door in one of the restaurants. It turned out to be the annual reunion for the graduates of their local elementary school.  I was thinking I hadn't seen anyone from my elementary school in decades and had lost touch with them.  Not here in Japan though, they are much better organised.  The Middle Schools, the High Schools, The Universities have excellent capability for getting everyone together for reunions.  Probably unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. 

There are also so many formal business organisations.  The Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation or the Keizai Doyukai, the Association of Business Executives are big and powerful bodies.  However, you won't even get a look in to joining those, unless you are a major company.  The Keieisha Kyokai or the Employers Association may be a better possibility, as we have been able to join it. There is also the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, which will be easy to join. 

Rotary clubs in Japan are also very business oriented in the sense that Japanese business people comprise the membership and there are lots of clubs.  You can also visit other clubs, so you are not restricted to just the one group.  My own club the Tokyo Rotary Club, has 330 members and is full of big hitters. 

There are a number of private business clubs like the Tokyo American Club and the Tokyo Club where I am a member, and the Kojun Club, the Kobe club, International House of Japan, Roppongi Hills Club, Ark Hills Club, Tokyo Lawn Tennis Club, the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club, For Empowering Women Japan (FEW), College Women’s Association of Japan (CWAJ) etc., which are sometimes hard to get into, but have lots of influential members. 

There are also many, many friendship associations like the Japan-British Society, the Japanisch-Deutsche Gesellschaft, the Australia Society, the Tokyo Canadian Club, etc. These tend not be business oriented, but you can still meet business people socially.

If you have children here in Japan and are sending them to International Schools, then the PTA is a great place to meet people.  You will find that the captains of industry are sending their children to these schools and you can meet them through that avenue.  I am the President of the Parent Faculty Advisory Board at my son's school and I meet many leading business people through that connection.

Then there are all the various Chambers of Commerce - we are or have been, members of the American Chamber, the British Chamber, the French Chamber, the German Chamber, The Australia New Zealand Chamber (of which I am Emeritus President), the Italian Chamber, etc etc.  All of these chambers are full of people you would want to meet to expand your network here in Tokyo. 

Every major country has a chamber and like us, you can join multiple chambers.  These chambers are holding regular meetings and events, especially the American Chamber, so there is no shortage of things to attend.  By way of example the American Chamber is probably holding two to three events every week, with speakers talking on different topics of interest.  Actually forget the topic, if you want to meet people, then pick a popular subject regardless of your personal interest and go.  You will find 150 business people in the room ready to meet you.

Some of the international chambers also have regional equivalents as well and there will be local Japanese Chambers of Commerce for that region.  Obviously the greatest concentration is in Tokyo, but if you are outside of Tokyo, you can still find plenty of existing networks you can join.

There are also benkyokai or study groups. I belong to a CEO Insights group, an Entrepreneur group and the Foreign Corporate Communications (FCC) group.  There are many, many more that I don’t belong to, like the infamous Beef and Burgundy Club (The B&B), the Carbine Club, the Good Grub Club, the Chicken and Chablis Club, the Tokyo Women’s Club, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ), etc.  And there are probably many others I have never heard of or have forgotten about. These are great opportunities to build your connections and networks of people across a broad spectrum of industries and sectors.  They usually meet regularly have guest speakers and allow you to mix with other leaders in town.

So there are lots of networks already well established and all we have to do is join them and become active.  The foreign and local chambers have the largest companies active here as members and this is a great way to meet the leadership.

If you can speak Japanese then there are mind boggling number of benkyokai available to join and connect with other businesspeople who may become your clients.  Remember in Japan, each person you meet is a connector to a large number of other people because they have such strong networks of their own. I know that through my networks, I can get to just about anybody in Japan I want to meet.  That is a tremendous advantage in business anywhere but especially here, where things are more formal and more closed.

Getting Paid In Business In Japan

Nothing happens in commerce without a sale being made. Great to know that, but what about being paid for the sale? Now, in some countries this can be an issue.  We find ourselves swimming with sharks who are transactional in their thinking and have no hesitation in ripping us off.  Fortunately, Japan isn’t in that category.  

We have rule of law here in Japan, plus a very healthy moral code.  Japanese people abide by the law, they line up nicely for trains and buses, there is hardly any road rage, they consider others and they don’t take other people’s belongings.  You are not going to get your bag or phone stolen by some expert Japanese gang who have the lift sequence down pat.  

You see those videos from foreign countries, where they work as team, one distracts you, one lifts the bag off your shoulder, one then receives the bag and makes off with it, one scouts for the constabulary. This isn’t a fear here in Japan.

If you drop your wallet, the chances are the wallet, cash and credit cards etc., are all intact at a police box because it has been handed in.  I have had that experience.  Or you might find it sitting on a ledge, in a prominent position so you can easily find it when you go looking, after discovering you have misplaced it. I dropped some a key holder near my house and sure enough, even a few days later it was still sitting there for me to find.

Now this is not a nation of 127 million saints.  Yes there are yakuza, petty criminals, housebreakers, con men and other assorted scoundrels operating here.  However, it is a lot better than most other places and this spills over into the way business is conducted. We have been operating our business now for ten years and have never had a bad debt.  You will get paid in Japan, unless you are particularly unlucky.

The issue here isn’t so much about getting paid, as it is about when you get paid.  Cash flow is always of strong interest to small and medium sized companies and the timing can be crucial at different times.  If sales haven’t been all that great and the expenses are as high as ever, not getting the payment when you expect it, can put pressure on the cash flow.  Run out of cash and you are out of business pretty promptly.  Reputation for reliability in business is very important here. Lose that and people won’t work with you ever again.  You are toast.

Counter intuitively, the worst payers in Japan are the biggest players.  The giant multi-nationals have clever CFOs who have worked out they can screw the small guys and make them wait for 60 days or more before they have to pay them.  This is might against right and you have to take it, if your want to do business with them.  We take it.

Japanese major corporates pay you in thirty days for the most part.  Japanese domestic companies sometimes have tricky conditions though.  If your invoice isn’t received by the 12thor the 15th of the month, then it won’t get paid until the end of the next month.  Or they will not accept an invoice, until the goods or services have been received, so no payment in advance possibility.  Or they find a minor mistake in the way you have captured the company name or the name of the person on the invoice is wrong and the accounting department won’t accept the invoice.  You have to re-issue it and the whole payment process timings starts from that date.  Very picky at times, but all of this adds up to delays around when you get the money.

So when starting a business relationship with a buyer you have to ask the key questions: do you have any protocols about advance versus subsequent payment; do you have any specifications about by which date in the month the invoice has to be lodged; how long are your payment terms?  You need to know these things for your own cash flow planning.

The good news is you will get paid in Japan and the bad new is you may not get paid as fast as you need it.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand 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

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Salespeople, Money and Motivation In Japan

Salespeople are motivated by money and the more money they can make the more motivated they become. Except in Japan. Here salespeople are looking for stability, regular income, without the trials and tribulations of a commission sales life. Actually, what they really want is a steady salary regardless of how much they sell. The next preference is for a regular salary and some bonuses if they do well. The less palatable constructs involve commission sales. Total 100% commission remunerated salespeople are very rare in Japan and usually doing something nefarious.

When sales are not going well, the management thinking  is to increase the incentives to get people motivated.  Obviously, if we make it more attractive to produce then people will get behind this direction and support the effort to grow market share.  Nothing happens and the leaders are perplexed. When you dig down to the root cause, you often find that the base salaries are too high. The at risk part is not significant and so people stay in their lane. By law you can't suddenly force people to take a massive salary drop and be switched over to a high commission structure. This limits the levers to pull, to get greater production.

In the current competitive climate, there is increasing pressure to raise base salaries in order to recruit new salespeople.  Putting increased pressure on salespeople to sell, sees them heading for the door and being welcomed in by their new employer, because having a salesperson on staff is better than not having one.  When hiring salespeople is hard to pull off, it becomes a retention game.

Money, money, money sounds good but it doesn't motivate in Japan as much as elsewhere. This is why most incentive schemes don't work well. The base salaries are usually too high, so everyone is in cruise mode. You notice it when you up the ante on the commissions, thinking that this will stir up some action. What happens instead is they slacken off, because now they are earning what they want, without getting out of first gear. The pressure on recruiting new salespeople means we are all going to be forced to pay our salespeople more just to keep them, so money isn't going to trigger a massive effort in the sales team. There are other ways we have to think of to get people more focused on results.

One of those ways is to get more self-awareness going. We see very few salespeople with a written down vision statement. This is a handy document to have because it captures a future success state. We write it in the present not future tense. “I am…” not “I will be….” It will include revenue targets but will also have other aspirations. We don’t care what they are as long as they are motivational for the salesperson.  Getting people to step up starts with getting them to think differently about what they are doing everyday and how they do it. 

Once we set the vision, then we can help the salespeople to back fill with how they can realise that vision, that they have nominated is important to them. We help them setting goals and establishing milestones. In Japan this would probably be a first for 99.99% of salespeople. They will have had quotas, sale’s targets etc., but a vision for themselves and their families is an entirely different beast. It is an important process though if we want to generate internal self directed motivation.

Pushing people to realize the company’s goals doesn’t have quite the appeal of realising your own tightly held goals.  Usually companies only think about the firm’s goals and don’t do anything to integrate the salesperson’s goals with the company goals. This is where taking time away from selling, to go through a visions statement crafting exercise is so important.  The key is to put it into a future frame, as if it were already achieved. 

Secondly, it is important to revisit the vision after a few weeks, because people’s thinking about what they want starts to become clearer.  It would be a rare individual, who never having set a vision, completely nails it perfectly for themselves in their first iteration.  So we get one away and then we get them to come back and revise it.  The second revision is powerful, because it will be more specific than the first one, because they have had time to think about it further in the intervening period.

So money is important.  However, it is not the only lever that can work in Japan, to improve the motivation and commitment of the team to hit the sales targets.  We need to be looking for multiple touch points to gain the engagement of the team.  Their own vision statement is one of those key touch points.

Educate Yourself In Sales

There are almost no sales courses at Universities.  Maybe, in the USA somewhere, a University is offering something on selling, but it would be a rare bird amongst the academic ivory towers.  By the way, who would be teaching this course and what do they know about the real world of sales? We can graduate with a bachelor degree, a masters degree or a Ph.D. in a wide range of business related subjects and never do one course on how to sell.  Why is that? Selling is a process enveloped in a philosophy. You can teach that.  We know, because as a training company, we do just that.

Okay, so you didn’t get any courses at varsity on selling.  What about inside your company?  Nothing happening there either?  Are you in a Darwinian survival of the fittest environment, where it is up or out?  The company won’t invest in you and you won’t invest in you either?  The key path for being excellent in the professions is study. Doctors, engineers, architects, dentists etc., all have to keep brushing up their knowledge, even though they spent many long hard years at university to become qualified.  “Nothing happens in business until a sale is made” underlines the importance of the profession of selling in society.  Just like there are charlatans in any profession, there are fakers in selling as well.  They won’t be around long, so let’s concentrate on the honest salespeople who are just not as skilled as they need to be

There is no excuse for we salespeople not to be on top of our game. The first thing to do is to take responsibility for ourselves. The onus for professional development is placed squarely with us and we are not beholden to some outside force, like the company we happen to work for.  Today we have access to the greatest collection of readily available knowledge on sales in the history of the planet. Tremendous books, magazine articles, blogs, videos, podcasts - the list goes on and on. Yet so few access this cornucopia of wisdom and experience.

Up until 1939, if you were in sales, you could only get sales training from within your company. Dale Carnegie launched the first public classes for salespeople in that year and now there are thousands of providers all around the world offering help.  We have no shortage of gurus touring the globe holding sales rallies to pep up the troops and get them fired up to do better.

We don’t lack for information.  The problem is you need to have the smarts and the desire to want to access the information and then more importantly, to want to apply it and adapt it to your own situation.  We can read the books and watch the videos etc., but we need practice to make it part of us.  We have colleagues in the sales team we can be practicing with, doing role plays in the morning before seeing clients. Yet so many don't take the chance to do that.  Knowing a questioning structure is great, but mastering the semantics and cadence of how to ask those questions are quite another thing.

Every major sports star warms up before the match. Ikebana masters strip the flower stems themselves to get their mind into the right frame. Shodo masters grind their own ink for the same reason, rather than delegating the task to their underlings. The karate master meditates before starting training. This is part of their mental preparation. Salespeople also need good mental preparation, but they are not taking advantage of all that is available to them. If we want to be great then we need to polish our craft. We also need to be searching through newspapers, magazines, web sites, social media for relevant information that a client would value and we should be offering this as part of our service as a partner in seeing the buyer's business succeed.

What surprises me are salespeople who are failing to meet their targets who won’t come to the office early to study sales together with their colleagues.  They turn up at work at the appointed time as usual and then flounder through the day, making no or few sales.  They repeat this process year after year, always hoping to land a whale, that they hope will solve all of their sales quota issues.  Whale obsession has been a sickness amongst some salespeople, who haven’t worked it out yet that skill acquisition and luck are polar opposites.  One you can control and the other you can’t.  They prefer the one they cannot control and then whine about the lack of results.  When your whale is not landed you are left with nothing.

Building skills builds the lead pipeline, which in turn leads to better conversations with buyers. The solutions presented are better, the client hesitations are handled more smoothly and the order is always asked for. None of this is rocket science but it is difficult and it needs practice to make it work.  We need to commit to make the time to study, to do the role plays, to keep pushing ourselves to become better at serving our clients.  That is what it means to be a professional in sales. The path to professionalism starts from within.  When we watch that video, read that article or book, listen to that podcast we have gained some momentum.  Let’s begin.

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 dalecarnegie.comand 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

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

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.