Sales Poor Performers

Are you failing in sales or do you have sales staff who are not making their numbers?  Sales is a brutal, metrics based activity where there are no hiding places or at least none that can be sustained.  Eventually, the numbers show if you are making it or you are not.  What happens then?  In the West the usual next step is you are fired and a replacement is found.  Japan is a bit different.  The social and legal bias is against firing people for poor performance.  In the case of large companies, the management is expected to move that failing salesperson into another job, where they can do better.

Smaller companies don't have that same pressure, because the courts know that survival can be impaired by underperformers.  The herd must unite together to survive, even if it means releasing one of the number. Nevertheless, internally, the other members of the team expect that the failing salesperson be given some sort of vague chance to right their ship of sales.  They don’t like seeing heads lopped off, because they always feel that “but for the grace of God there go I”.

Whether it is you who are failing or one of your staff, then what should you do?  The issue usually lies with the work style of that person. What they are doing today is the product of what they have been doing for a long time and so they expect that to work. The issue often arises that when you shift companies or even industries, what worked before is no longer working.  As human beings we are sometimes so programed to keep repeating what we know and what we think will work, that we become blind to the reality.

In smaller companies and in gaishikei(foreign multinationals) the whole age and stage hierarchy gets mixed up as well. Suddenly you find your boss is younger than you or oiks, a woman or both!  For older men, this requires a level of flexibility that they have never had to find in their previous work life.  If the old dog can’t learn some new tricks the gaishikei bosses will be quick to disappear them.

We have to develop higher levels of self awareness and understand that what we think is correct may not fit this situation and therefore need to find a new truth that works for us.  Smaller companies don’t have other spots to move failing salespeople around to, so usually it is one last chance or imminent departure.

In the current market, where it is very hard to hire salespeople, especially English speaking salespeople, then a degree of patience is required on the boss’s part.  Even if this person is not performing well enough, they are knowledgeable about the products and the clients and so have a base from which to improve.  Once the sale’s problem child is fired, then we have the difficulty of finding a replacement at all or finding one who is actually better than the last.  In a tight market you tend to take what you can get and hope you can train them to be better.  Do you actually have the means of doing that though?  Who will train them?  What amount of onboard training will they get.  In small firms everything is lean so the training component tends to be Spartan.

If there are age and gender issues then the salesperson has to realise they have to suck it up and get used to this brave new world of work, which is not how it was back in the day of their long departed youth.  So what. Either learn to fit it or it will be out on your ear.  From the boss’s side, at least giving people a chance to come back from the precipice fits in well with social values in Japan and the rest of the team will prefer that to casting them into oblivion.  The retention of your other performing team members is a key job of the boss in this 1.68 jobs for everyone looking world, in Japan.  People observe how you handle poor performance very minutely and forensically.

No easy answers anymore, to the poor performance conundrum in Japan.  The bad news is that is isn’t going to ever improve, so we all have to navigate our way around these issues in more creative ways than before.  The failing salesperson has to reinvent themselves and we bosses have to do the same.  The market punishes those who are not able to move with the times and find the flexibility needed to thrive and survive.

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

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.

We Give Added Value. No You Don’t!

The chocolate on the pillow, the fruit bowl or the wine bottle and glasses in your hotel room are often cited as examples of good service, adding extra value to the client. We may be doing something similar in our business, from our side for free, that we imagine is adding extra value to the buyer.  The idea is cute but the thinking is a bit fuzzy.  I am on a diet, so I don’t appreciate the chocolate. I don’t drink, so I can’t enjoy the wine. Perhaps I have an allergy to certain fruit, so I can’t eat the fruit provided.

Value is perceived value and also is only value when it corresponds with the interests and desires of the buyer.  There is the rub.  We need to know more about our buyer rather than just shotgun the possibilities.  We need to laser beam around their interests. In the hotel example, we have to book and often we do this on-line.  Our preferences could be plumbed right then.  Or we have to turn up and go through a check-in process. Our desires could be plumbed then and there.  Yes, it takes away the surprise factor, but an unhelpful surprise isn’t adding very much value is it?

The secret is how can we know our buyers better, so that we can surprise them or at least delight them? Today, there is so much information floating around about us on the internet.  I have a Facebook account (in fact I have two), a LinkedIn account, an Instagram account and a Twitter account.  If you take a look at my Instagram account, I often post photos of empty wine bottle’s labels and few short comments about what I thought of that particular wine.  So you could not only anticipate that I like wine, you could even provide me with one of my favourites. 

My LinkedIn account has my profile and also over 1460 blogs, each with a Bio that talks about what I have done in my career and a bit about my background.  You would know that I do traditional Shitoryu Karate, so I have an interest in martial arts.  The hotel may have some martial arts themed movies in their line up.  A small note in my room pointing this out would be a simple, but nice touch and may get me to buy the movie.  “Welcome Greg, there is a great Jackie Chan movie playing in our movie lineup, which you may enjoy to watch while you stay here with us.  If there is anything else we can do to make your stay a truly great one, please let me know.  Jan (ext. 4077)”.  Now that is not hard to do, but it only works if you bother to know something about me.

Now to be fair, it is always easier to point out the shortcomings of other suppliers than our own. Hotels do their thing and we have our own clients and customers to serve.  What can we do for them?  The great book “Moments Of Truth” by Jan Carlzon, describes how he went through all the touch point that SAS Airlines had with their customers.  He and his team looked for ways to make sure at each touch point the experience was excellent.  We all need to be doing the same.  

I have an open office plan layout, so I sit amongst the troops.  My desk is easy to find, it is the one with all the papers piled high upon it! Anyway, I can hear my team on the phone. Sometimes I can hear that the quality of the staff’s voice toward the client isn’t friendly enough.  They sound very “business like” but I want them to do better than that.  I want them to sound happy, upbeat and friendly, even if none of those things apply in reality on that day.  It doesn’t matter if you kicked your toe this morning, you have to come across to the client as a positive, helpful friendly person.  This is especially so if the client is not sounding like any of those things themselves.

Another pet peeve of mine is when I call companies.  The style in Japan is to only say the company name and not your own name. So I call the number, ask for Suzuki san and get “This is Suzuki”.  How do I feel?  Am I really happy I got Suzuki san on the first go?  No. I feel guilty and bad because I didn't recognize Suzuki san’s voice. I teach my staff to always answer the phone by stating the company name and then their own name and do it in a friendly voice.  This eliminates any potential embarrassment to the client of not remembering our voice when they call us and starts the conversation off on a positive note.  What is the cost of this?  Nothing. However, we have to be thinking about these things in the first place and in a busy life we can get stuck in doing things in a certain way without any time taken for reflection.

In a few days we will be having an internal systems audit.  We have many, many  systems in our company, but we have not really looked at them altogether in total, with a mind to making them more efficient or more client friendly.  I am sure when you look at your own business, you will realise “wow, we have a lot of procedures around here”.  Are they the best procedures, does technology now allow some of these to be automated, how is the client’s impression of your company as a result of being on the receiving end of these procedures?

So break down the touch points with your buyers and look at where can you make this interaction more efficient and more friendly.  We accumulate systems without thinking about them as a whole.  By the way, as the boss, it is always a good practice to call yourself and see how it feels to a client when they call.  How do your staff stack up on making that great first impression. By exploring the details, we can come up with improvements for certain.  Once we get to that point then we can start brainstorming how we can add additional value to the buyer and exceed their expectations.

“We Don’t Have Any Budget”. Yes You Do!

In the profession of sales, this is one of the most widespread pushbacks on our sterling offer. It also a false flag as well.  We should never believe it when we hear this, because they certainly have budget.  What they really mean is they are not prepared to allocate any of their budget for this product or service.  Why would they be that crazy and not make the allocation?

The issue is with us, we salespeople.  We have not provided enough value to warrant any change in the current allocations. This is me too, when I am the buyer. If I get hit up for some expenditure and I am not convinced that at that price point I am getting sufficient value, then I reject the offer.  I don’t say it directly though.  I try to be gentle and nice and just say “it is not in my budget”.  

Well that is crap actually. My budget, like everybody else’s budget is a set of random numbers in cells in spreadsheets.  On the left side is written some words describing the topic. Things like salary, rent, marketing. On the right side on that line, under the column for the current month there sits a figure attached to that topic. 

Where did that figure come from?  It was an assumption at the start of the year of where the money would be likely be spent in the next twelve months.  In reality, though we overspend in some areas and underspend in others.  If we are motivated enough, we can find the money. We just take it out of one cell and transfer to another.  So “I don’t have any budget for this” is simply buyer BS.

Fine, but what can we do about it?  The value failure is due to a number of factors.  We may not have fully understood their business or their needs, so we have been suggesting the wrong or a weak solution.  They don’t find this convincing enough.  Maybe our questioning component of the sales interview was insufficient in scope or maybe they didn’t open up to us and tell all. 

Remember that often this is the first or second meeting with a client and the first full sales call. We are a relative stranger to them. Yet here we are as bold as brass, interrogating them within an inch of their life, like one of those a hardened detectives on a rough beat, that you see in movies.  If the trust hasn’t been established then they may not want to expose all their firm’s dirty laundry to a new face.

Or maybe we did understand but the solution we presented didn’t grab them.  This can be the issue of the gap between where they are now and where they want to be, being too small.  I had this recently.  I went through the solution in detail but I could sense this wasn’t pushing any excitement buttons.  I failed to explain well enough how the solution I was proposing for the money sought, was going to improve their business results. 

Reflecting on that meeting later, I realised I hadn’t done a good enough job of drawing out word pictures of how things would be different inside the company once they had our solition. I didn’t describe in enough detail how the people would be changed and really firing.  I was operating at 30,000 feet and needed to get down on the deck more about the positive differences we would bring.  They felt they could get where they wanted to go under their own steam, without my invaluable help and assistance.  That failure to make the sale was on me.

In other cases, it might be a timing issue on budgets.  The person we are talking to has to justify the number to someone in the windowless basement room downstairs, who are wearing green eye shades, shirt arm bands and counting the money.  The sacred budget created at the start of the year doesn’t include this allocation and now we want to make a change.  This is where we have to get creative.  We need to look for payment timings that won’t trigger alarm bells in the accounting section.  Maybe we split the payments across months or financial years, to make it easier to get through the bean counters.  Maybe we deliver the service or product now and get paid later?  In many countries you wouldn’t dream of doing that but Japan is different in that regard because you are unlikely to get ripped off.

This timing issue came up recently.  I had made a full solution proposal and the local team liked it.  Headquarters in Europe however had a meltdown.  Well they would wouldn’t they!  Anytime you take that miserable EU peso and put it into yen, the currency calculations boggle their old world imaginations.  Never mind that this is a totally different economy. Or that their own local staff salary bill here in Japan is totally vast, compared to what they are facing in Europe for the same level positions.  They conveniently overlook these realities and can’t get their head around spending such a huge sum of money.

Fortunately, we were able to come up with some solutions that enabled the local Country Head to move one set of numbers from one cell to another and do the business.  This was worked into this year’s and next year’s budgets.  They had the money all along.  It was just a question of being able to pony up the value component sufficiently to get them to make the switch.  So sometimes “it is not in my budget” can be rejigged, so it is.

Regional Differences When Selling In Japan

Japan is a big small place. It is about the same size as the UK, but is covered in mountains, the latter making up 70% of the land area. We have very few of those horizon stretching field vistas like they have in England.  This mountainous aspect has led to quite strong sub-regional differences here, especially reflected in language, customs and cuisine.  England has these too, but I think Japan is more pronounced in this regard.  These differences pop up when you are selling here as well.  The following are my experiences having sold in all of these cites and having lived in Kobe/Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo and having made sale’s calls in other provincial centers.

If we go from south to north and start in Kyushu in Fukuoka, there is a local dialect and basically everyone went to school there and graduated from the local colleges and universities.  Foreigners are not calling on companies all that often down there, so there is something of a rarity factor at play here.  Back in the good old days, when companies had generous entertainment budgets, the local staff were really glad to meet you.  This was a grand occasion to use you as the excuse to have a big night out on the town on the firm’s dime.  My ego took a bruising when I finally worked out it wasn’t the Story charm, that was generating this great enthusiasm for a night out on the town. That big spending night out culture has gone by the wayside, but the rarity interest factor is still at play. Language is an issue though, because the English speaking capability is still underdeveloped in most of Japan. The local burghers are quite cautious and conservative too.  It will take a lot of patience to do business here, but it can be done.  It just normally requires a lot more time than your company’s leaders or shareholders are prepared to give you.

Kobe was opened as an international port in 1868, so it is one of the most open minded towns in Japan. They have had foreigners living in their midst for a very long time, so there is nothing special about us from a uniqueness point of view.  Trade has meant dealing with the outside world and being flexible about it in the process.  The denizens of Kobe often have a better level of English than other parts of Japan and they enjoy being seen as the most international.  I always found people there open to discussing business.

Osaka is an ancient merchant town with a merchant mentality.  It was the center of the great commodity markets in Japan for salt, rice and soy beans.  One of the great things I like about this city is they will give you a “yes” or a “no”. Often, the reluctance to tell you “no” in Japan, leaves the whole decision piece dangling, without any clear idea of where we are going with this.  Not in Osaka.  If they like it, they will explore if there is a deal to be done and some money to be made. They are proud of their local dialect and this is a big divider between insiders and outsiders.  As a foreigner, we are so completely outside of all consideration, that in a way, we are probably better accepted than their despised rivals from Tokyo.

Kyoto I always found very closed.  The aristocratic capital of Japan for centuries, it features a defined smallish city area hemmed in by mountains.  The interconnectivity of the local people is pronounced.  Their families have lived here for centuries, they know each other and they know who is a “blow in” and who isn’t.   Even for other Japanese salespeople from out of town, Kyoto is a hard market.  If you are from the outside, you are “out” for the most part.

The area around Nagoya has produced the three most famous warrior leaders in Japanese history, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. The Tokugawa family Shoguns, closed the country off from the rest of the world. When I say “closed”, this was upon pain of death for entry or exit.  This went on for hundreds of years.  Nagoya is still back there in a time warp – still closed off.  The local mentality is not open to foreign business and there isn’t much English going on around there either.  I said that in Osaka you get a “yes” or a “no” and that this knowing where you stood was attractive.  In Nagoya they do the same thing and the answer is always “no".  The pride of businesspeople in Nagoya is to have an exceptionally humble looking headquarters, with lousy office furniture, stained, aging carpets and everything very much down market, but to also have a huge pile of cash sitting in the bank.  They are extremely tight with their money too. 

It is the only place I have seen, where when a new shop opens and they put those decorative flower arrangements out front on the street, that passersby will shamelessly take handfuls of the flowers away with them.  They justify this on the basis that it is a waste to see them die and it is much better to have them home at their place.  It is a rough and tough market.  In a word to the wise, they have one little commercial idiosyncrasy that will kill you.  You meet, negotiate, agree the price and some time later the agreed goods turn up at the seaport or the airport.  This is when they like to renegotiate the price with you!! 

“Character building” is how I would describe doing business in Nagoya.  The locals are very aware of who they are and don’t open up to “foreign” Japanese from distant places like Tokyo.  So in one sense, they are very fair and they are closed minded to everyone, not just foreigners from overseas.

Tokyo is a really a first class international city and so different to when I got here forty years ago. The tallest structure here when I arrived was Tokyo Tower, which seems incredible today, when you take in the ever accumulating city skyline.  English is widespread, people are sophisticated, very international and everything works well.  Getting a decision though can be seriously painful. Because Tokyo is often the headquarters for companies, the scale of businesses being here is large.  As a consequence, there are many, many people who have to be consulted. Getting them to agree can take an age.

Sendai and Sapporo are a bit like Fukuoka to me, in the sense that they are not often visited by foreigners, seeking to do international business.  The capacity to speak English is sparse and the local businesspeople are rather conservative.  Sapporo at least, is an international destination during the ski season, so there are pockets of more international business there.  Expect to have to keep coming back many times to build the trust. Things will move slowly and in small test increments.

When I lived here in the suburbs in Kunitachi, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I always imagined that the rest of Japan was like Tokyo. It was only when I travelled around Japan selling in the late 1980s and then later lived in Nagoya in 1992 and in Kobe in 1996, that I realised that Tokyo was not Japan.  The regional differences are so important.  Of course, we can do business anywhere in Japan, and ultimately I did have success in regional centers.  The key success factor though is to know what is different locally and to have a defined, different strategy for each major center.

What Is Kokorogamae And Why Does It Matter In Sales In Japan?

Intention in life is key. Are we living an intentional life or are we a buffeted bystander of what is happening around us?  We have our personal vision, aspirations, goals, targets or maybe not.  Sales is one area of professional pursuit where intention is everything.  Assertion is key in sales, but it is assertion with a Smiley Face not a grimace.  Of course, salespeople need to have superb people and communication skills.  The point though is toward what end?  What is the intention behind everything that is being done?  Is it to make a lot of money, to be the big dog in the sales team, to own lots of luxury goods?

This is what kokorogamae is all about.  This is a compound word.  Kokoro itself has a number of meanings, one is heart, another is spirit.  Kamae undergoes a phonetic change when joined together and becomes Gamae in the compound word.  It means to take your stance and we use it in karate, when we talk about the different opening postures we use.  In the Dojo, when you hear the command kamae everyone knows to go into their fighting stance.

So all very interesting Greg, but what has any of this got to do with sales?  If I translate kokorogamae as true intention, then perhaps it makes more sense than “spirit stance”.  We have a starting point with our intention in sales.  The infamous Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort’s kokorogamae was to rip off as many people as possible and make himself super rich in the process.  Wikipedia lists him as “an American author, motivational speaker, and former stockbroker”.  They left out the “heinous criminal” descriptor.  After coming to an agreement with the prosecutors to rat out his partners, he spent only 22 months in prison for his fraud scheme.  He now does speeches and runs training clinics on sales. 

As an Aussie, I say to myself, “that is America isn’t it”, where the notorious can still make money regardless of how many people they cheated out of their life savings and how many families they destroyed.   But this is not what I am talking about.  Dale Carnegie talks about not being a good salesperson, but being a good person in sales.  There is a tremendous difference between the two. I hate people like Jordan Belfort, because they pollute and poison our sales profession with their toxic mentality. They should have left him in jail forever, rather than let him run around giving public talks on how to do sales. 

We all have an obligation in sales and that is to win the trust of the buyer and then honour that trust. These criminals like Belfort or Bernie Madoff, who ran a huge Ponzi investment scheme for years until he went to jail, where unlike Belfort he is serving a life sentence, make the skepticism nerve in buyers run on a ragged, raw edge.

The kokorogamae question is which one are you?  Are you in sales to serve the client and make the client successful or to make yourself successful at the client’s expense.  There is nothing in the middle.  There is no grey area involved here.  One of my sale’s heroes is Zig Ziglar.  He was a door to door pots and pans salesman, who became a highly successful trainer of salespeople.  He is also a Dale Carnegie graduate by the way.  One of his great quotes is, “you can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.  This is the correct kokorogamae in my book.

We have a job to do in sales and how we approach it makes all the difference.  If we want to have a long and successful career in sales, our kokorogamae will determine the degree of success and longevity.  There is a Japanese four character saying that I like, “shin shi kei shuu” which means to have integrity from start to finish.  If this is your north star, guiding light, beacon on the hill in sales then you are on the correct path.

Well, this all sounds good in theory.  The problems arise when salespeople become desperate and start ramping up the buyer, to get more revenue to make their targets and keep their jobs.  They are making decisions based on their own interests and not the interests of the client.  They recommend solutions that pay a higher commission or yield a bigger profit, regardless of whether that is the best solution for the client.  I was speaking with an American sales guy once who related how he could never make sales calls for his product in the same town twice in his territory.  This was because the consumers would have discovered after the purchase, just how poor the quality was of what he was selling them. 

Another example was from a friend of mine who was being interviewed for a job as a recruiter. The scenario was that your candidate had been offered another job which was perfect for them, but from a rival recruiting firm  What do you do?  My friend said she would advise the candidate to take the other firms job and not hers, because the other job was the perfect job. The interviewers replied, “No, your job is to make the candidate take the job you are offering”.  Where are the best interests of the client or the candidate in this little episode – both missing in action.

The antidote for this short-termism is study, effort, training, practice, self-awareness and reflection on what are your core values.  Become highly skilled and highly trustworthy.  Make a decision about what you as a human being actually stand for?  If it isn’t being honest, having integrity and doing the right thing by the client every time, then please get out of sales right now.

Sales is a process that requires an understanding of the sales cycle.  Plan the sales call and do prior research, build trust at the initial meeting, ask really well designed questions to understand the buyer’s needs, present the solution stressing the benefits to the buyer, deal with any push back, ask for the order and then do the follow-up perfectly.  Excellent communication skills, especially drawing out emotive word pictures, makes the end result become real for the buyer.

At the heart of all this though is our true intention.  We can use our sale’s cycle and communication skills for evil, like these low life, pond scum criminals in sales I have mentioned or we can vow to serve the client’s interests.  Make your mantra that “in the client’s success, I sow the seeds of my own success”.  Kokorogamae is a term that captures that idea of our true intention - our starting point.