There is a process to sales.  Amazingly, most salespeople don’t know what it is.  They are either ignorant, because they haven’t been trained or arrogant, arguing they won’t be entangled by any formulistic wrangling.  They say they follow their muse and let the sales conversation go where it may, because they are “spontaneous” creatures, residing in the “here and now”.  Both answers are rubbish.  There are professional salespeople and there are dilettantes. Let’s be professionals and master the sales process.  We are going to go deeper into the sales process and look at some of the inner workings. Gluing the whole process together are seven bridges to move us through the sales continuum.

Bridge number one is the move from casual chit chat at the beginning of the sales meeting to a business discussion with the buyer.  When is the best time to make that move and what do you say?  The opening conversation will flow to and fro, as various small talk questions are answered and everyone becomes comfortable with each other.  Let the buyer finish their point.  Pause to make sure they have actually finished and are not about to expand their point.  Then we simply say, “thank you for your time today”.  This signals, now is the time to get into the sales conversation proper.

Bridge number two comes after we have explained our agenda and after checking if they have any extra points, we start to move through the points we have chosen.  The agenda gives the sales call structure and helps to control where the conversation will go.  We must ask the buyer if they have any points of their own. This is important because it gives them control over what we will discuss and that makes them feel better about owning our agenda.

Bridge number three is when we ask for permission to ask questions.  We have outlined the agenda and now it is time to get down into the murky depths of their business.  Never forget we are “blowins” off the street, the great unwashed. They are about to be asked to open up the kimono and share all of their mysteries and secrets with a total stranger.  We need to point to some evidence showing where we have been able to help a similar company, in the same industry.  We then proffer, “maybe we could do the same for you.  In order to understand if that is possible or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”.

Bridge number four is what we say after hearing all of the answers to our questions.  We are now in a position called the “moment of truth”.  We have to make the decision for them concerning if they can buy and what they should buy.  We know our line-up of solutions in depth, to a degree they never will.  If we decide we don’t have the proper solution for them, we should fess up now and then hightail it out there, to find the next prospect.  If we can help them, then we need to announce it clearly and loudly. We need to reference some of the things they told us in the questioning phase.  They mentioned to us the key thing they are looking for and also why achieving that is important to them personally.  We now wrap our “yes we can do it” answer around those two key motivators for the sale.

Bridge number five comes after we have gone through (a) the facts, (b) the benefits, (c) the evidence and then (d) the application of the benefit.  This will be news to a lot of salespeople in Japan, because they have never gotten beyond (a), the detail, the spec, the nitty gritty of their widget.  After we have told the story of how wondrous things will be for them after purchasing our widget, we then ask the trial close question.  It is not complicated and anyone can memorise it.  Here it is, “how does that sound so far?”.

Bridge number six comes after the  buyer answers our trial close with an objection.  There has been a gap in our process located in the questioning component. We have not flushed out their concern and dealt with it already, so that is why it pops up here at this point.  We ask why it is an issue for them and we keep asking if there are any other issues.  We need to do this in order to know which key concern we need to answer.  Once we have prioritised their concerns, we then give our answer to the major objection.  We then ask, “does that deal with the issue for you?”.  We do this to check we don’t have any residual resistance preventing them from giving us a “yes” answer when we ask again for the order.  We just say, “shall we go ahead then?”, or “do you want to start this month or next month?” or “do you want the invoice sent to you by post or can we send it by email?”.

Bridge number seven comes after they say, “yes” they will buy.  We must be very careful what we say next. We must bridge across to the delivery discussion of how and when they will receive their purchase.  Under no circumstances keep selling at his point.  Random things blurted out after receiving their “yes” may sidetrack them to a concern they hadn’t thought about. Or it may get them confused about whether now is the time to buy or should they wait until a bit later?  Rather, get deep into the detail of the next steps immediately and stop selling.

Salespeople need to know the sales process and the glue that holds it all together.  That is the mark of the professional and the path to sales success.

A stranger contacts you out of the blue or you meet them fleetingly at an event and they call you afterwards.  They are a salesperson and they want to sell you something.  Our typical reaction is one of caution.  Why is that?  We have all become addicted to technology which has sped everything in business up to warp speed, but somehow we are all perennially time poor.  We don’t want to be distracted from our tasks or waste our time listening to what someone else wants.  We are also not sure if we can trust this salesperson.  Why would that be?  Maybe we were duped or heard of someone we know being duped by a “salesperson” in the past, so we are permanently suspicious of anyone we meet in sales.

This is not a great start is it.  We have to deal with all the baggage that our buyers have accumulated over the years.  Japan is a brutally vicious sales environment.  We are all in a street fight with our competitors and like in a physical street fight, there are no rules and little mercy shown.  Rivals will lie, disparage, spread false rumours, make nasty insinuations about us and our company.  “They are having financial trouble and won’t be around much longer”, “all I ever hear are complaints about their bad after sales service”, “their representative keeps getting fired from companies, so he won’t be around for long”, etc.  “But Greg, Japan is such an honest country, would rivals lie so brazenly?”, you might be thinking.  Yes, some of them will do so without any shame or guilt.  I have heard these wild stories myself, shared by buyers, so from my own experiencE I know this happens.

How do we start the sales call in Japan?  We chit chat a little, then we get into the sales discussion.  If we don’t know what we are doing, we are launching straight into our pitch about our wonderful widget.  If this is you, please stop doing that.  Rather we should be asking questions to completely understand the needs of the client.  We can do this through just asking for permission to ask questions and then going for it.  Another way we can do it is to propose an agenda for the meeting.  This provides the same content, but it is a more structured approach.  Japanese buyers love to be given the agenda to look at, because they love data and the more the merrier.

The questions we are going to ask about needs are all there of course, but we add one more.  We ask, “what are your impressions of our company?”.  Why would we do that, why not just blast off into the nitty gritty detail of the wonders of the widget?  Remember we are either a total stranger coming in off the street or a fleeting acquaintance from an event.  If I visited your home and sat down and said, “tell me all about the problems inside your family?”, I don’t think you would want to share your dirty laundry with someone you hardly know.  Company representatives feel the same about sharing the dirty laundry of their firm.

If our rivals have been stabbing us in the back or if the client has some incorrect information about our company, we need to get that out early and deal with it.  In our case, as an expert soft skills training company, our history of over 108 years can be a double edged sword.  It means we have stood the test of time and yet, for some buyers they may think we are old fashioned and not current enough for the modern market.  Chit chat is pretty thin gruel to establish trust with, so we need to work on establishing the credibility of our company.  Rather than random selection in the chit chat content about what trust buttons to push, we ask this impressions question.  This allows us to zoom right into the core concerns and deal with them. 

Now when they give me their concern, I don’t immediately answer it.  I cushion it instead.  That is, I put up a neutral statement, that neither inflames nor tries to argue with their comment.  This neutral cushion buys my brain some thinking time about what I am going to say and how I am going to say it.  Rather than giving the first answer that suddenly pops into my head, I can give a more considered answer.  I could say, “It is important to consider perspectives on the brand”.  Those three or four seconds are enough to drill down to a more polished answer.  I would then say, “The balance to our longevity is that we are a global organisation.  That means that every second of the day clients, somewhere around the world, are asking us to address their most pressing problems.  In this way, dealing with client demands always keeps us fresh and current in the market”.

Are you ready with your answers for some curly questions your client may have for you?  More importantly, are you trying to flush out these secret resisters, before you try to introduce your solution?  Let’s not assume we are on a level playing field here. Accept that for whatever reason, there may be some hidden obstacles to trusting us and so let’s get those out of the way early, so that we can properly serve the client.

“I like talking with people, so I want to be in sales” is a terrifying conversation to have with one of your staff.  They are not doing so well in their current role, so they imagine they will just glide across to sales to have an easier time of it.  They may try and do it internally as a switch of roles or they may quit their current job and go and try to get a sales job somewhere else.  Given the shortage of salespeople in Japan at the moment and from now on ad nauseum, there is a strong chance they will be picked up by a competitor or another company quite easily.

They are partially correct.  Yes, it helps if you like people as a salesperson.  Also, having good communication skill is a definite requirement.  Talking to someone and persuading them to hand over their hard earned cash is a different equation.  What do we talk about, how do we talk about it, when should we be silent, when should we speak up?  These are important questions about which they are ignorant.

When I hear people say they like “talking to people” that sets off an alarm in my head.  One of the biggest issues with salespeople is that they talk too much.  I am guilty of it too.  I am passionate about helping people to grow their businesses and their careers, so I bring a lot of belief and energy to the conversation.  That is all good, but it is also dangerous.  If I am doing all the talking, I maintain possession of what I already know but I don’t gain any additional knowledge of the client and their problem.

Sometimes, I catch myself and realise the only noise in the room is me talking, so I should ask the client a question, shut up and get them talking instead.  I want them to tell me about their current situation and where they want to be.  In Japan, you can’t do that.  Clients are passively expecting your pitch, so they can destroy it and assure themselves this is a low risk transaction they are considering entering into.  So, the first thing out of our mouths here has to be a question seeking permission to ask questions.  People who like talking will have no problem with this traditional pitch approach. In fact they will probably be happy, to get straight into the pitch.

Fine all around except for one small thing.  What are you pitching to the client?  How do you know what solutions from your line-up will best match the client’s need?  What normally happens is the salesperson blunders on, talking about things which are irrelevant to the client. They completely squander their client facing time and leave the meeting with nothing.  This is not good.

Get permission first, then ask those first two questions – where are you now and where do you want to be?  We are trying to gauge urgency on the buyer’s part.  If they think they can bridge this gap, then they will try and do it themselves and not involve any external parties.  That means no business for us and we are wasting our time to continue sitting there chatting with them, no matter how much we enjoy a good chat.

If they can’t do it by themselves, then we want to know why?  There is no point going straight into solution mode at this point, talking, talking, talking.  We should ask that exact question: “if you know where you want to be, why aren’t you there now?”.  What a pearler of a question.  In this answer lies our raison d’etre.  Maybe we can’t do it for them.  That is good to know, because we have to high tail it out of there and go and find someone we can help.  No point hanging round for more chatting with a business dead end in front of you. Another other issue is talking past the deal. When the buyer agrees, only talk about the follow up and stop selling.  People who like talking get themselves into trouble by saying too much and opening up a Pandora’s box of deal breakers.

If we are doing our job, we are hardly talking at all during the meeting, except to ask a few clarifying questions.  “Liking to talk with people” is a mirage, would-be salespeople see about what is involved in a professional sales life.  This is their uniformed illusion about the job. Instead, I want to hear, “I like asking people questions”.  In all my years in business though, I have never heard that lucid comment emerge as a precursor to a life in sales.  If you want a career in sales, now you know what to say to a prospective boss to get them interested in hiring you.

“I like talking with people, so I want to be in sales” is a terrifying conversation to have with one of your staff.  They are not doing so well in their current role, so they imagine they will just glide across to sales to have an easier time of it.  They may try and do it internally as a switch of roles or they may quit their current job and go and try to get a sales job somewhere else.  Given the shortage of salespeople in Japan at the moment and from now on ad nauseum, there is a strong chance they will be picked up by a competitor or another company quite easily.

They are partially correct.  Yes, it helps if you like people as a salesperson.  Also, having good communication skill is a definite requirement.  Talking to someone and persuading them to hand over their hard earned cash is a different equation.  What do we talk about, how do we talk about it, when should we be silent, when should we speak up?  These are important questions about which they are ignorant.

When I hear people say they like “talking to people” that sets off an alarm in my head.  One of the biggest issues with salespeople is that they talk too much.  I am guilty of it too.  I am passionate about helping people to grow their businesses and their careers, so I bring a lot of belief and energy to the conversation.  That is all good, but it is also dangerous.  If I am doing all the talking, I maintain possession of what I already know but I don’t gain any additional knowledge of the client and their problem.

Sometimes, I catch myself and realise the only noise in the room is me talking, so I should ask the client a question, shut up and get them talking instead.  I want them to tell me about their current situation and where they want to be.  In Japan, you can’t do that.  Clients are passively expecting your pitch, so they can destroy it and assure themselves this is a low risk transaction they are considering entering into.  So, the first thing out of our mouths here has to be a question seeking permission to ask questions.  People who like talking will have no problem with this traditional pitch approach. In fact they will probably be happy, to get straight into the pitch.

Fine all around except for one small thing.  What are you pitching to the client?  How do you know what solutions from your line-up will best match the client’s need?  What normally happens is the salesperson blunders on, talking about things which are irrelevant to the client. They completely squander their client facing time and leave the meeting with nothing.  This is not good.

Get permission first, then ask those first two questions – where are you now and where do you want to be?  We are trying to gauge urgency on the buyer’s part.  If they think they can bridge this gap, then they will try and do it themselves and not involve any external parties.  That means no business for us and we are wasting our time to continue sitting there chatting with them, no matter how much we enjoy a good chat.

If they can’t do it by themselves, then we want to know why?  There is no point going straight into solution mode at this point, talking, talking, talking.  We should ask that exact question: “if you know where you want to be, why aren’t you there now?”.  What a pearler of a question.  In this answer lies our raison d’etre.  Maybe we can’t do it for them.  That is good to know, because we have to high tail it out of there and go and find someone we can help.  No point hanging round for more chatting with a business dead end in front of you. Another other issue is talking past the deal. When the buyer agrees, only talk about the follow up and stop selling.  People who like talking get themselves into trouble by saying too much and opening up a Pandora’s box of deal breakers.

If we are doing our job, we are hardly talking at all during the meeting, except to ask a few clarifying questions.  “Liking to talk with people” is a mirage, would-be salespeople see about what is involved in a professional sales life.  This is their uniformed illusion about the job. Instead, I want to hear, “I like asking people questions”.  In all my years in business though, I have never heard that lucid comment emerge as a precursor to a life in sales.  If you want a career in sales, now you know what to say to a prospective boss to get them interested in hiring you.

Most of the time in Japan, I attend client meetings alone.  This is not how the Japanese do it.  The President going to a meeting alone, without some staff in attendance is rather rare.  Presidents have degrees of prestige and one of the indicators is how many flunkies they have in attendance.  My ego is big enough already to have to worry about people carrying my bag around for me.  The Japanese client meeting can often be quite an affair though with many people seated around the room, waiting to hear what you have to say.  Invariably, you have no idea who is turning up on their side, who they are or what they do.

The key word there is “waiting”.  They expect this to be a presentation from me to them, with zero interaction, no questions and then they go away and thrash it out internally on what they want to do next.  The punters in the room are the earpieces of their respective sections, there to record and then report what was said and who said it.  There will usually be one or two designated interlocuters on their side who will engage with the seller to facilitate the meeting.  That facilitation is usually to insist we give them a presentation on our offer, done passively, without any insight into what they need.

You can see the problem immediately.  We have many solutions, so which one is the best for them?  To know this we need to be asking questions.  The buyer side don’t quite see it that way and we can have a tense standoff.  We ask seller style consultative questions. No one answers them from the buyer side and the silence hangs heavy in the air, trying to strangle the seller.  If we hang tough and let that silence hang around for a long time, eventually someone on the buyer side will say “give us your pitch”.  When we hear this we know things are not going well.

Being on our own is not a big deal, because usually we can make decisions on our own. We don’t need to work the idea through the system to get some type of convocation to agree to it. What is not good though, is to squander our time before the meeting.  We should be pumping whoever is organising the meeting logistics, for information ahead of time on who will be attending.  Who are they, what do they do, what rank are they, etc., are key things we want to know before we turn up.  We shouldn’t presume there will only be a couple of people we already know in the meeting, if it is an important stage or the first meeting.

If this doesn’t happen, then after the initial exchange of business cards with the big boss, quickly dart around the room and exchange cards with everyone else there.  This way you can arrange the cards on the table in front of you, according to where they are sitting, to see who is who and you can check their rank and area of responsibility.  These are generalisations, but the CEO will be thinking strategy going forward, the CFO will be thinking protecting cash flow, the technical people will be thinking fit for purpose and the users will be thinking ease of application of the solution.

Knowing roughly what the audience interests are is only a start.  To avoid giving a pitch into the void of not knowing what they want, you need to set up permission to ask questions.  They are expecting you to tell them about what your company does and what you can do for them.  Here is an example of how this could go.  “Dale Carnegie Training has been around for 109 years world wide and nearly 60 years here in Japan.  We are soft skills training experts covering sales, leadership, communication and presenting.  We have had a lot of success in Japan helping our clients to improve their effectiveness and grow their market share.  Maybe we could do the same for you, I am not sure.  In order for me to know if that is possible or not and to know which part of our line up best suits your internal needs, would you mind if I asked a few simple questions.  The answers will guide me on what I should present to you regarding which parts of our line-up will be the best match for your business?”.

Once you have permission to ask questions, start with the people tasked with facilitating the meeting.  If they need more detail to answer your questions, they will involve some of the other experts in the room.  We won’t get a lot of time to do this, as everyone is sitting there expecting a pitch which they can then flagellate within an inch of its life, by asking mean and nasty questions.  They won’t be denied their Colosseum moment of throwing you to the lions for too long. 

You will at least get enough information to know what to present and how to present it.  You won’t get an answer at that meeting on whether there is any interest or not so don’t push it.  They need to harmonise opinions on their approach and they will do this after the meeting.  Someone will be tasked with getting all of the feedback and bringing this to the most senior person. 

Japan teaches you many things, especially patience!

We often hear that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  The strange thing is where is this emotion coming from?  Most Japanese salespeople speak in a very dry, grey, logical fashion expecting to convince the buyer to hand over their dough.  I am a salesperson but as the President of my company, also a buyer of goods and services.  I have been living in Japan this third time, continuously since 1992.  In all of that time I am struggling to recall any Japanese salesperson who spoke with emotion about their offer.  It is always low energy, low impact talking, talking, talking all the time.  There are no questions and just a massive download of information delivered in a monotone delivery.

As salespeople, our job is to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer.  But it is also more than that.  The buyer’s mental meandering won’t necessarily have the degree of passion we need for them to make a purchasing decision.  So we have to influence the course of that internal conversation they are having.  This is where our own passion comes in.

I always thought Japanese people were unemotional before I moved to Japan the first time in 1979.  The ones I had met in business in Australia were very reserved and quite self contained.  They seemed very logical and detail oriented.  After I moved here I realised I had the wrong information.  Japanese people are very emotional in business. This is related closely to trust.  Once they trust you, they have made an emotional investment to keep using you.  No one likes to make a mistake or fail and the best way to avoid that is to deal with people you can trust.  How do you know you can trust them?  There is some track record of reliability there, that tells you the person or company you are dealing with is a known quantity that will act predictably and correctly every time.

The problem with this approach though is that you will only ever be able to sell to existing accounts.  What about gaining new customers?  You have no track record and no predictability as yet.  When you meet a new customer they are mentally sizing you up, asking themselves “can I trust you?”.  Naturally a good way to overcome the lack of track record is to create one.  Offer a sample order or something for free.  This takes the risk out of the equation for the person you are dealing with.  To get involved with a new supplier means they have to sell the idea to their boss, who has to sell it to their boss, on up the line.  No one wants to take the blame if it all goes south.  A free or small trial order is a great risk containment tactic and makes it easy for all the parties concerned to participate in the experiment.

The other success ingredient is passion for your product or service.  When the buyer feels that passion, it is contagious and they are more likely to give you a try to at least see if there is some value to continue working with you.  When he was in his mid-twenties, my Japanese father-in-law started a business in Nagoya and needed to get clients.  He targeted a particular company and every morning he would stand in front of the President’s house and bow as he was leaving by car for the office.  After two weeks of this, the President sent one of his people to talk to him to see why he was there every day bowing when the President left for work.  When he heard that my father-in-law wanted to supply his company with curtain products, he told him to see one of his subordinates in his office to discuss it.  That company eventually became a huge buyer and established my father-in-law’s business.

Was that a logical decision, just because some unknown character is hanging around your house everyday like a stalker? No it was an emotional decision. What my father-in-law was showing the President was his passion, belief, commitment, discipline, patience, seriousness, earnestness and guts.  That is a pretty good line-up for a new supplier in order to be given a chance.  We need to remember that buyers are wanting to know our level of belief in what we are selling.  The way we express that is through our passion and commitment to the relationship and the product or service we supply.  Is our demeanour showing enough passion, without it seeming fake or contrived?  Do we have enough faith in what we are selling, that it naturally pours out of the pores of our skin?  Are we painting strong enough word pictures to get the buyer emotionally involved in a future involving what we sell?

Audit your own levels of passion when you are in front of the buyer.  Do you sound sold on your own offer?  Do you sound committed to go the extra mile?  Do you sound confident and assured, showing no hesitation?  Are you honest about what is possible and what is not possible?  Always understand that buyers, whether for themselves or for the company, buy on emotion and justify it with logic. Make sure you can supply that emotional requirement as well as the strong rationale for them to buy your offer.

Ninja are masters of illusion, invisibility and subterfuge.  All of these traits have pretty much died out in modern times, except for a small bastion of steadfast office workers.  Some Japanese commentators have tried to imply that the salaryman is the modern day samurai.  Loyal to their modern Han, the firm, giving up their lives for the greater good, sacrificing family for their corporate captains of industry.  This sounds pretty good until you meet some of them.  Unremarkable, grey, uninspiring, they are more often like the army of the walking dead.  The system has drained all the life out of them, as they trudge forward in lockstep toward retirement.  Japanese “office ladies” however are the true warriors in the modern day firm.  They are the kunoichi (くノ一) or female ninja of modern times.

They are always poised ready to strike.  They are tasked by the older males of the firm to answer the incoming phone calls.  They relish this opportunity to slay salespeople making cold calls.  They have subterfuges aplenty at their ready to get rid of us when we call their firm.  We boldly make the call, identify ourselves and our company.  They immediately recognise we are cold calling salespeople, because they have been doing this for years. They have picked up that tell tale hesitation, that lack of sureness in our voice, that warbling reluctance to engage with such a formidable enemy.

Their first weapon employed is a thick, grinding silence.  You speak and they say nothing. There is no acknowledgement of your very existence.  It is as if we are an illusion, a figment of our own imagination.  We are unseated immediately and now feel firmly in retreat, pushed on to the backfoot, by this vicious employ of the void.  Suddenly ums and ahs are tumbling forth from our mouths, as we try to regather our fragile senses and press on.

If we don’t know the person’s actual name and most often this is the case, we ask to speak with the person holding a certain position within the company, such as the line manager or the head of HR etc.  The kunoichi has been clever to not reveal her own name.  They state the company name when we call and then they go dark.  We don’t even know who we are talking to, even if we wanted to complain about this brutal treatment.  No Japanese salesperson would ever dream of complaining, but as foreigners, it may be worth a try. A common kunoichi ploy is to simply say “they are not here”.  We don't know if they are there or not, but I would guess in 99% of cases they are there and this is a tactic to deny us access to the decision maker.

The voice telling us this information is icy, unfriendly, bored, impatient and disengaged.  The whole ninja approach here is to hide people and information from us.  This works like a charm in Japan.  The average weak kneed, untrained, no guts salesperson collapses at this point under the weight of this ninja tactical pressure and blurts out “I will call again later”.  This is a bald faced lie.  They didn't have the guts to engage with the kunoichi this time around and mentally, they have given up immediately on the possibility of a reengagement.  They are broken into small pieces and their tender egos have been crushed by her towering strength.

Even if we know the name of the person, we will get the same stall line anyway.  If we are not put off so easily, we may ask when they will be back.  We say this although we know the game is in play and this will register the next pushback of “I don’t know” followed by more deathly silence.  They are so expert at using screaming silence, it is actually impressive.  If we keep pushing and ask for them to take a message, they are not so easily willing to cooperate and will just calmly and methodically say, “call back later”.  What would you say to that little hand grenade blowing up in your face?  We have to realise we are dealing with cold calling salespeople killers here, who will show no mercy nor margin.  Remember in the Japanese sword dramas, the hero drives the sword into the back of the bad guy and then twists the hilt slowly.  And that is the good guy!

We should never invite obliteration, so we don’t ask for permission to leave our contact details.  We just don’t want to invite that brush off.  Instead we just say, “okay, I understand, please write this down” and then go straight into spelling out our name and phone number really, really slowly.  Then we repeat it all again to make sure they got it.  Tell them if we don’t hear back, we will call again the day after tomorrow.  We need to strongly imply we know their kunoichi game, we are not falling for it and we will keep calling back until hell freezes over.

Don’t talk to me about how tough cold calling is in New York folks.  When you have to deal with the kunoichi of Japan, you are elevated to a different dimension of pain and despair.

Sales is always a tough job, but not being able to get any new clients during Covid-19 just takes the degree of difficulty right to the top of the scale.  Every company I speak with says the same thing – they cannot get any new clients at the moment, so they are stuck.  Even when the target decision-maker is in the office, it is diabolically difficult to get through the steel wall erected to keep out salespeople.  Today many buyers are safely tucked up at home, just placing them at that even more distant point away from us.  The person who answers the phone when we call, has not the slightest interest in connecting us, in fact, they are hell bent on getting rid of us altogether.  We know they will get scolded by the boss, if they put through a pesky salesperson.  So we have to make sure that we are bringing so much value, that the boss won’t get upset. Here is a Four Step approach to deal with this conundrum.

Step One is give your company name, your own name and who your company is.  The who you are part must be brief and overflowing with credibility at the same time.  For example, “Hello, my name if Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan.  We are experts in soft skills training, globally for the last 108 years and here in Japan for nearly 60 years”.  Key words are “soft skills training”, “global”, “108 years” and “nearly 60 years”.  In one short sentence the key unique selling points have been highlighted.

Step Two is why we are calling.  We need to go straight to the pain point facing similar competitors in their industry.  “Recently, we have had many of your competitors calling us asking about leadership training for leaders dealing with remote teams.  The new Covid-19 situation has made leading teams much harder and companies are noticing the substantial drop in productivity. Despite their best efforts they have not been able to find any answers internally.”  Japanese companies are often paranoid about what their competitors are up to, so it is always good practice to frame things such that this company is missing out on what their rivals all know. Now we explain that we have been able to fix that problem.  “We have been able to provide on-line training for leaders on how to lead effectively in this new environment and these companies have seen immediate improvements in productivity across the board”.

Step Three is where we go for connecting with the decision-maker.  We suggest that this company can also enjoy all the advantages of other companies we have helped.  We approach this is a humble way, by saying, “Maybe we can do the same for your company, so please transfer me through to the person in charge of this area of the business. I am sure that they are really frustrated by now with being unable to improve the leaders’ ability to lead remote teams”.  We need to reiterate that they have a major problem, they are not fixing it themselves and the decision-maker will be really glad to hear from us.

Step Four is for the 99.9999% of cases when they won’t transfer us to the decision-maker.  They give us the brush off by saying, “They are not available at the moment” and expect us to crawl away, slip under a rock and disappear out of their lives forever.  We again repeat the key pain point with a sense of urgency.  “Thank you, I understand. In your industry, your competitors had initially suffered from reduced performance outcomes until we gave them the training to totally fix those issues.  Now they are doing really well. I am sure the person in charge of these results will really want to know how we fixed that issue for your rivals. Please write down my name and number and pass that information to them, so that I can explain how we fixed the issue for your competitors.  My name is Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan and my number is 080-1106-2328.  If I don’t hear from them, I will call back again the day after tomorrow.  I know you are busy, so thank you for passing on the message.”

We have done a couple of things here.  Importantly, we don’t ask them for permission to leave a message.  We are instead instructing them to write down our name and number and pass it on to the boss.  We also mention we will be calling back in two days if we don’t hear from them.  It signals they cannot get rid of us so easily and that we are going to keep calling back, until we get to speak to the person we need to help.

So altogether, it sounds like this:

“Hello my name if Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan.  We are experts in soft skills training, globally for the last 108 years and here in Japan for nearly 60 years. Recently, we have had many of your competitors calling us asking about leadership training for leaders dealing with remote teams.  The new Covid-19 situation has made leading teams much harder and companies are noticing the substantial drop in productivity. Despite their best efforts they have not been able to find any answers internally. We have been able to provide on-line training for leaders on how to lead effectively in this new environment and these companies have seen immediate improvements in productivity across the board. Maybe we can do the same for your company, so please transfer me through to the person in charge of this area of the business. I am sure that they are really frustrated by now with being unable trying to improve the leaders’ ability to lead remote teams” .

“They are not available at the moment”.

“Thank you, I understand. In your industry, your competitors had initially suffered from reduced performance outcomes until we gave them the training to totally fix those issues.  Now they are doing really well. I am sure the person in charge of these results will really want to know how we fixed that issue for your rivals. Please write down my name and number and pass that information to them, so that I can explain how we fixed the issue for your competitors.  My name is Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan and my number is 080-1106-2328.  If I don’t hear from them, I will call back again the day after tomorrow.  I know you are busy, so thank you for passing on the message”.

We all know that cold calling has a low success rate, but it is part of the tool box and this is the moment when we need to be wielding every tool at our disposal.  If we are going to get anywhere, then we have to doing cold calling at the highest level of skill.  Your competitors will either not be doing it at all or will be making a mess of it.  This is the chance to go for it, because you have nothing to lose and all to gain.

Generally speaking, we mainly have failures of follow up in B2B sales.  The conduct of the sale’s meeting is normally done professionally.  Perhaps the salesperson could have asked better questions or presented the application of the benefits of the solution better. Maybe they could have dealt more professionally with objections or closed the deal more effectively.  In B2C though, the troubles start from the point of contact.  Getting this wrong means no meeting, let alone no sale.

I blame the managers for these issues.  If they were doing their job properly, then there wouldn’t be these customer facing problems.  We are salespeople and we are also buyers.  We go shopping, we eat out, we buy lots of stuff in the face to face environment.  Maybe not as much as before, because of Covid-19, but we still we do engage in some B2C activities.  When the whole hospitality industry is on its knees, you expect that those survivors still operating, are really maximising their opportunities to build their clientele.

Imagine my surprise when I called a restaurant in Midtown for a lunchtime booking and bumped into some idiocy that flies in the face of the current reality.  It was around 11.31am and I was calling to make a booking for a 12.00 luncheon.  The staff member who answered the phone told me that all bookings for lunch close at 11.30am.  I could just show up at 12.00 and take my chances with the rest of the punters. It is 11.31am when we are having this conversation.  I asked him does that mean I should book at another restaurant instead of his.  There are tons of restaurants in Midtown by the way. Irony and sarcasm aren’t really features of the Japanese language, so my obtuse point went straight over his head.

He had been told that bookings for lunch close at 11.30am and that was that.  The idea that we are in the middle of a pandemic and that many enterprises in his industry are closing for lack of business, would warrant additional flexibility wasn’t one that had ever crossed his mind.  He couldn’t connect the dots and realise that what his job depends on are customers.  It was not clear to him that every restaurant wants to build new clients and to boost the spending of their regular clients.  He is just an employee, so building the business isn’t part of his work remit.

Well it should be.  He could have been focused on grabbing my booking, guaranteeing two covers at lunch, rather than relying on providence to supply walk-ins off the street.  He could have made me feel special by telling me that although 11.30am is the cut off point, he would take the booking anyway and really looked forward to meeting me at 12.00, “Ask for Taro and I will take care of you”, he could have said.  How would I have felt?  Would I have become more likely to go back again in the future?  Could I become a valued customer?  The answers are obvious to me but the concept was not in his mind.

By way of contrast, I like Elios in Hanzomon, which is across town for me.  I have been going there with clients and with my family, since 2001 when I came back to Tokyo from Osaka.  What is my lifetime value as a customer?  Elio certainly knows this equation and so do his staff.  That is one of the reasons why I keep coming back.

So I was wondering what is the difference and the reasons are obvious.  The leadership outlook and work culture of the restaurants are different.  The bosses determine the way the staff think about the business and the customers.  So, the natural extension of this reflection is to move to self reflection.  Are my staff flexible when dealing with our clients?  Are they just following the rule book and not using their brains?  Do they feel trusted enough to take responsibility to fix an issue for a client or are they ninjas, hiding behind the rules.  As the boss, you cannot be in every client conversation, so you have to delegate client care to your team.  Let’s all take another look at the culture we have created.  Are we allowing individual decision making based around a common understanding of how we think about our clients?

One of the things we quickly learn as leaders is that telling people something once, almost guarantees no one will remember it.  It becomes annoying to have to keep repeating the same things over and over, but you find you have to do it.  So, it always a good practice to remind everyone about how we think about serving the client.  Explain where this aligns with the value system, the vision and the mission of the enterprise.  There has to be a symbiotic relationship between our teams and the clients. The boss determines how that plays out at every micro-interaction, every day.

Closing the deal is almost a non-existent art in Japan.  Salespeople here are particularly terrified of rejection.  The best way they have found to avoid that unfortunate result is to not ask for the business at all.  At the end of the sales presentation, after going through the details, dealing with any hesitations or concerns and qualifying the issues, the conversation just fades out.  The client finally says “we will think about it”.  Now the cat and mouse game starts of following up, to find out if there is in fact any interest or not.  No one is embarrassed with a public loss of face from a “no” answer. Delicate salespeople egos are preserved and everyone joins in this farce.  Why is it like this?

There are many books published in English from America, about how to close the sale.  None of the ones I have read will ever work here in Japan.  American salespeople are often on pure commission or the commissions are a big portion of their income, so the desperation to force a sale is high.  Sell or starve.  When the client says, “we will think about it” in Japan, they are telling the truth.  The people we face are rarely the final decision maker.  There is a check and balance mechanism here called the ringi seido.  Each buying decision has to be signed off by those effected by the result, by placing their hanko or personal seal on the discussion document. 

This forces collaboration based on a frank exchange of opinions and cooperation between departments.  The typical western scenario of the salesperson overselling the delivery capability and blowing up the back office or the plant doesn’t occur here.  Yes, it takes longer, but Japan is slow to agree and fast to act.  So which is better?  The western system of big talk and then slow action or even defective flawed action or the slow and steady wins the race Japanese approach?

We still need to get to the point of having the Japanese side come to a conclusion about what happens next.  We can do that using several non-confrontational methods that will work like a charm in Japan.

1. Direct Question

In a gentle, curious way, we softly ask, “shall we go ahead?”.  We make eye contact, but we do not speak after that sentence. We just sit there, until hell freezes over, if we have to.  Do not dilute the power of the question by adding anything to that one simple straight forward sentence.

2. Alternate Choice

This is another very soft ball question.  We ask them choose to between two buying alternatives.  A yes to either means the buyer agrees to buy without having to state it explicitly.  “Would you like to start in this month or is next month more preferable?”.  We are avoiding a yes or no alternative here, making it as easy as possible for them to say yes

3. Minor Point

We select some post sales decision they have to make to test their interest in buying.  We might segue during the discussion and ask, “By the way, are you okay if our invoice comes to you electronically or does your accounting department require hard copy?”.  If there is no deal, then the finer points of interest around the accounting department’s ridiculous preferences become redundant.

4. Next Step

Again, we take the buyer mentally into the future and have them make a determination about how they will use the solution. We can say, “Do you have a preferred contract format you want to use or are you happy to use ours? Our version is very straightforward”.

5. Opportunity

This is the last one in stock close.  The buying opportunity at this price or availability or with all these various goodies attached, will go away at a certain point in time, unless they act now.  Don’t snow the buyer with some made up deadline, because we are building a trusted partner relationship here, not indulging in some smash and grab hijinks.  This close has to be delivered in a very matter of fact manner, with zero pressure to do anything.  Tell them the real situation and leave it up to them to go for it or not.

If there are any hidden doubts, hesitations or objections, these five little darlings will flush them out and then we can keep selling.  There must be clarity about how we are going to end this sales call. Is it a yes, a no or a definite maybe.  We cannot be afraid of the no or the maybe. That is just part of the process.  Each answer triggers the specific next steps to deal with these responses.  We want to know their answer, so that we will know what to do next.  Asking for the order in these non-threatening “soft” ways, suits a Japanese buyer audience and they work. So ask for the order.

Most buyers are hurting at the moment, as entire industries are under assault and many of the remainder are in a perilous state. The common American style of aggressive salesperson reaction to pushback from buyers just doesn’t work in Japan in normal times, let alone now.  We need to recognise this when we are sitting in front of the buyer, when we are both online and we need to change our mindset.  We hopefully will have thought about the possible objections from the buyer ahead of time and will have dealt with these already in the solution provision stage.  There may still be concerns and we will have flushed these out with our trial close.

We have to see objections are good to have.  The worst thing is to have no objections and no sale.  There is nothing to work with in this situation.  The buyer is hiding their objections because they have decided not to buy, but don’t want the aggravation of the seller arguing with them up about it or being annoying.  Getting an objection then is good news, not as good as getting a ”yes”, but still giving us something to apply our sales skill to.

We know there is never a “no” answer.  It is just a “no” at this time in the market, in this budget cycle, for this offer, in this current context.  We have to see the objection as a signal that we didn’t do a good enough job educating the buyer about the value our solution will bring.  Remember, we made the decision for them to buy.  We looked through our solution line up and selected a solution to match their issue.  If we didn’t have the right match we would have moved on to find a buyer we could serve.

There is a structure we can follow to make sure we are going to be able to help the buyer who is in doubt still. In this order we need to listen, cushion, question, provide evidence of value and then evaluate their reaction.  Listening sounds easy except that most salespeople are not skilled at really listening.  They jump around between pretending to listen and selective listening.  Pretend listening is going on because their brains are on fire with what they will say next. They have stopped listening to the client, because they believe they know what the buyer is thinking.  The selective listening is where they pick up on key words, which then drives them down a road to a solution. Their seller brain switches over to how they are going to explain that to the buyer.  Again, they have stopped listening to the client.  We have to suspend these two proclivities and go up the scale to attentive and proactive listening, especially for what is not being said.

If we hear a “no” we tend to get more energetic and forceful with the buyer.  This then makes them dig in more and they tend to stop listening to us as well.  What we need is the chance to be heard, so we use a cushion.  A cushion is a mental breaker switch between the “no” and what we are going to say.  The cushion’s job is to open up the buyer’s brain to hear our ideas.

Positive cushions are great because they help the buyer to relax because they think they are not going to get into an argument with us.  For example, if they say our price is too high we can say “Yes, you are right.  It is very important to consider the financial health of the business when making new decisions”.  Saying “yes, you are right” is always a recommended start to the conversation, because we are agreeing with them and their resistance is removed.

Now we have their mental guard lowered, we sweetly and softly ask for clarification. “May I ask why you say our price is too high?”.  We are seeking more than the headline they have given us about pricing.  We want the full accompanying article, supporting this frosty headline.  This will release more information about their issue.  A client told me our price was too high.  When more information was released on why he thought that, it turned out the issue wasn’t the number, it was the timing of the payment that was the issue.  If I had tried to argue with him, I would have never come up with a plan to split the payments to make it work for both of us.

When we were presenting our solution, we were guessing what they will value in our proposition.  When we get to the objections stage, we now have a much better idea of the issue for them and whether we in fact do have a workable solution, which will be a win-win for both of us.  This is massive progress. If we do have a solution, this is the point where we focus our evidence right on this point of importance to them. 

To check if we are on the right track, we need to ask them to evaluate what they have just heard and give us some feedback.  We can say, “How does that sound?”, and then shut up.  We must not speak.  Don’t elongate the point or add or adjust or get mealy mouthed about the wording.  Just sit there in stone cold silence but smile.  Let them speak, because we will learn more of value now than in the whole conversation to this point.  This is the finish line of the marathon and we are centimetres from the result.  Don’t blow it.

We all know that buyers remember stories more easily than facts and data points.  In fact, the ratio is twenty two times more likely than being able to remember simple detail.  Data is like swimming in six foot surf.  Each data point is overwhelmed and replaced by the next towering wave of data points.  It just keeps coming, so that we are being bashed by the constant data waves hitting us.  Stories on the other hand envelop us in a way where we are drawn into the detail. Because it is arranged in context, we can recall the details. Given this sale’s truth, you would expect salespeople would be storytellers extraordinaire.

Actually, they used to be!  The sales rep would turn up with new funny jokes every meeting.  They would tell stories about their product or service to the client, such that buyers looked forward to meeting them.  Their only competition was newspapers, magazines and the radio. Then television appeared and buyers had other means of being entertained and what once worked in sales was lost. 

Storytelling works and science can now tell us why.  Listening to stories releases a chemical called Oxytocin into our system, which makes people feel more trusting, charitable, bonded and less anxious about trusting strangers.  That sounds like the type of buyer I would want to be selling to, especially if they are a new client.

Stories are good but like everything, there is a degree of best practice required.  Jokes are similar.  Not everyone can tell a funny joke, which is why so few comedians make it.   Unlike the good olde days, where we were competing for buyer attention against very few distractions, today we are being walloped by constant buyer preoccupation and sensory stimulation. This is the Age of Distraction and getting the attention of the buyer is not a given.

Authors of fiction, only have text to work with and so they make sure the first lines of their novel grabs us and persuades us to keep reading.  Our sales story has to be the same.  We have to break through all the clutter inside the buyer’s brain and pry open a space to pour our sale’s stuff in there somewhere.  The first words out of our mouth, as we begin to tell that story, had better be very well constructed to monopolise buyer attention.  The story needs to have a personal element to it.  We can invoke the greats of the past to our cause, but we have to fit ourselves in there somewhere too.  We can’t just relate a third party incident and leave ourselves out of the relevance of the story.

It also has to have an emotional element.  This shouldn’t be hard, because most of us in business feel like crying most of the time, thanks to the economic disruptions of Covid-19 and how it is hammering our cash flows.  Include a personal story about another client and the problem they had and how we fixed it. There has to be an emotional element to it, so that the listener can relate to the sale’s story more easily.  Drama in narratives comes from conflict and challenge.  These are in ample abundance at the moment too, so plenty of scope to get these elements into our story.  We need to transport the buyer into the world of the sale’s story and give them a front row seat to the action.

The fact that we are meeting with the buyer online makes it more important to get this right.  We are not able to bring all of our body language to the story telling and we can’t read the reaction to our words as easily as when we are in-person together. We need to draw mental pictures the buyer can see for themselves.  We want characters in that story, some of whom they will know, to make it more relevant.  We have to set the scene.  We should be specific about where and when it occurred, who was involved, what happened etc.

This storytelling gig is not a reading from War and Peace.  The story can be just a few minutes long, yet can trigger such a crystal clear image of our offering in application, that the buyer becomes convinced they need to have it.  The secret is in the practice.  Most salespeople love to practice on the client and then wonder why the result is a mess.  A storytelling exercise is an art form.  Where to put the emphasis with certain words, where to drive up or down the energy, where to pause, where to bring in the gestures, etc.  How to speak every sentence with no ums and ahs, so we sound fully convinced and confident of what we are saying.  We work all this out before we get in front of the client on screen.

Recording yourself is a good practice in rehearsal and do it while you are onscreen so that you get a sense of how you are coming across to the buyer.  If you have slides for the meeting and you are relinquished to that small box in the corner of the screen, then practice that way.  If you are half screen or full screen with the buyer, then record that version and see how you are coming across. Remember, the audio on many of these platforms is poor, so we have to pay special attention to our pacing to get the clarity we need.

Storytelling works, there is no debate about that.  Do you work as a master storyteller?  If not then time to get busy practicing.  We have reached a point in time, where online meetings will become more common even after Covid-19 has been brought to heel.  We need to adjust to this online medium as professionals and the time to start this process was yesterday.

We receive permission first, then we proceed to ask questions of the buyer.  We want to gain a sense of whether what we have said makes sense for them to use us or not. If there is not a match, then we should hightail it out of there and go find a buyer who is a match.  Having understood that we have a solution for their problem, we now need to present that solution.  In the face to face world, this is much easier, because we are sitting a mere meter away from the buyer and we have 100% access to their total body language.  Every “tell” gives us information about their degree of interest or hesitancy.  Online, this is more opaque and so more difficult to digest.  As a consequence, we need a higher level of engagement with the online buyer.

Most salespeople in Japan just skip the needs analysis part and go straight into their solution pitch.  Because we are not doing that, we are better armed to have a relevant conversation that interests the buyer.  Consequently, we will have a better access to their concentration.  We finish asking and receiving answers to need questions and then we tell them if we have a solution that is a fit. 

If we do, we proceed to the next stage. Once we start rolling out the facts and nuts and bolts of both what our solution is and how it works, we have to be very careful to control the conversation.  Too much time spent on the finer points, sacrifices time for expounding the benefits of the product or service.  Many Japanese buyers are very detail oriented, so they will just keep going with the detail of the detail of the detail.  Their risk averse natures drives them for the nitty gritty, so they can ascertain the degree of risk attached to this deal.  We have to remember, they have all been trained by dud salespeople to get the pitch and then spend the rest of the meeting time, tearing it to shreds to check for any danger flags about this purchase.

We don’t need to go into super detail and instead we should segue into what this data point does for their company.  The solution must meet their needs and we now draw on our memory of what they told us was their company’s need and what was their personal need.  We wrap the detail inside the relevant benefits now.  For example, “the software allows the buyer to agree electronically in the document and the result is stored in a blockchain file”.  This is the fact, now we bring forth the benefit, “this action can be taken anywhere, there is no need for someone be in the office”. 

The next stage is to attach some evidence to the benefit.  Before we do that, we have to reflect on just who is sitting in front of us.  Are they the CEO looking at longer term strategic issues, the CFO worrying about cash flow, the technical buyer concerned about the spec match or the user buyer worried about post purchase service guarantees, if something goes wrong?  Based on their interest we choose the “evidence buyer story” to suit. 

An example of the benefit and the evidence would sound like this: “XYZ company had a very analogue system of paper files, which all needed to be maintained and stored somewhere taking up a lot of physical space. Only one person could work on a file, at a time, because it was a linear work flow”.  We now elevate the benefit through the client example to show how this benefit worked in application inside the firm.  We highlight what was the difference that it made.  “They noticed a couple of things immediately.  Because it was an electronic document, multiple people could work on it at once, which substantially saved a lot of time and freed many people up for other more urgent work.  Productivity was substantially increased.

They could have the document approved online, so there was no need to travel on crowded trains risking infection with Covid-19, just to attach an old style hanko to the document.  Staff were very relieved about that and very thankful for the innovation.  This improved the engagement and morale of the team, making for a happier, more productive working environment.

The proof of the agreement was stored in the blockchain, so it could not be tampered with nor forged and was kept secure”.

In a face to face meeting, where we can read copious amounts of body language, we would move straight into a trial close, such as “how does that sound so far?”.  At this point, we are looking for some feedback to gauge interest. 

In the online world, we need to keep engaging the client as much as possible.  As the seller, we have been speaking for quite a while, with the buyer just sitting there silent onscreen. We need to get them engaged and talking.

We can say, “You mentioned working from home was popular with many staff who were worried about mixing with strangers on trains.  You also mentioned that productivity had suffered at the same time with people working from home, so solutions which would improve that situation would be helpful.  How would improving productivity and staff engagement impact your business?”.  This is a very low key approach, highly suitable for Japan. We are asking for an opinion, not a decision at this point.  We are collaborating with the buyer, to mentally place them in the position of seeing this operating in their company.  Their reaction will tell us if they are rejecting or supporting this solution.  If there was interest we would move straight into a close, “shall we go ahead and get this started?”.

The key point is to wrap the benefit into a bundle, that captures the needs they mentioned and the evidence of where that same situation worked somewhere else already.  Japanese buyers don’t like being guinea pigs, they like others to do the experimenting and therefore they love precedent.

Finally, remember that what we say needs to be supported by how we say it, so we need BIGLUC.  B, for body movement, showing energy during the call. I, for increased energy. The video decreases our voice strength by 20%, so we have to ramp up our voice tone. G, for gestures.  Even when seated, we should be using gestures, when making our points. If using a green screen background, use the gestures in front of you own body, rather than to the sides, where your hand will suddenly disappear.  L, for leaning forward.  Get on the edge of your seat and lean into the camera.  U, for using facial expressions to back up your arguments.  Lastly, C, for camera.  It is diabolically difficult to do, but when you speak, talk to the buyer directly, by looking at the camera lens, rather than at their face on the screen.

So BIGLUC will bring you better luck with your online sales efforts.

In a virtual call, what is the maximum number of people who should be joining on the buyer side, to make the meeting effective?  There is a correlation between the number in the group and the number who will contribute during the meeting.  The more people on the call, the greater tendency for people to become less engaged.  Research by the Rain Group says that with up to four people on the call, the level of engagement can be quite good.  Once we get over five buyers, it becomes much more difficult. 

The virtual world revolves around both camera and audio based communication.  If there are multiple attendees on the buyer side, there is also a strong chance that not all will turn their cameras on.  This is a downer because you now have no chance of reading their body language, fraught as that might have been anyway. 

This is not so different to the face to face world though, when there are many on the Japanese buying side in the room.  The most senior people are either actually sleeping or are sitting there with their eyes closed, doing a spectacular job of pretending to be sleeping.  Usually, there will only be around three people who will even speak up.  Everyone is there because they have to protect their turf and want to influence the outcome of the meeting.  They are expecting you to make your pitch. Their shotgun breeches are duly snapped shut and then they drill your pitch full of holes, exposing what a travesty it is.

The online world will be the same and with the exposure to all of the multi-tasking going on in the background, because their cameras are turned off.  Normally, it is extremely hard to get Japanese buyers to do anything for you in a sales meeting.  They think they are there to listen, then critique everything you just said.  Online it is even worse. We have to go beyond using the communication platform as a tool to speak to each other and must use it to facilitate an experience.  If we were having a face to face meeting and the buyer was highly engaged, asking questions, seeking more detail, then there would be a pretty good chance they would buy.  We need that same level of engagement in the online world.

How do we get them to participate online?  Remember, the buyers all see themselves as God and we are just pesky, unwashed salespeople.  We need to direct the buyers and guide them to take certain actions, which will allow us to engage with them.  We need to tell them what we want them to do and then tell them how to do it.  We next ask for a response, using a follow up question.

This is where the preparation is critical.  For example, if with a flourish, we magically pull up a whiteboard on screen and expect a bunch of Japanese buyers to grab the text tool or the arrow tool and start interacting with us, their complete lack of response will be debilitating.  If it was just a one to one online meeting, they might feel some pressure to take some action, but as a collective, they will just sit there and completely and shamelessly ignore us.  They are totally happy to let hell freeze over, before they make a move for any tool.  They will blank you and force you back to giving your pitch. If you have already given it, they will rip into your pitch, telling you why it is crap.

We need to be super well organised and anticipate their resistance.  For example, we have slides that have options numbered on screen. We need to set up the participation.  “There are many of us on the call today, so we really appreciate everyone joining us.  To make this meeting as effective as possible would you please give me some feedback on these four options.  The best way to do that is go to the chat box, under the participant panel and write in the number of the option you think would generate the most value for your part of the business?”.  Their names will appear in the chat showing the number chosen. We just refer to them by name and thank them for selecting their option.  This is a way of encouraging the remainder to follow suit.  For those who don’t participate, the “I am not here to do anything” brigade, we need to draw them out by name.  “Tanaka san, would you mind sharing your selection with everyone please, because we really value your insights?.  I would really appreciate it”. 

We can then ask individuals to share their thinking behind their selection.  “Murayama san, I see you chose option three.  Thank you for doing that. Would you please come off mute and help me to understand why this is important to you. That will really help me to better understand how we can serve you best, so please share your thoughts with us.  Thank you Maruyama san”.  We try and do this with a number of the participants on the call, but it must be done in a deferential, “we are really trying to help you” way or resistance will be major and unmerciful.

Following this we might ask a further expansion question to the group.  “Could I ask everyone else to give me a green check please if they think we have sufficiently understood your situation. If you think we have missed something important, please choose the red cross.  The green check and the red cross are located in the little panel, just below the participant list in the right hand panel on your screen.  Please choose green check or red cross”.

Don’t expect to get everyone involved.  You wouldn’t get that in a face to meeting either, so it is an even more outlandish idea for the virtual world. But you will get engagement if you are properly prepared.  Anticipate you will draw God’s wrath and prepare accordingly. Make it super easy to get engagement with you in the sales call.  If you can do that, then your chances of making a sale go up dramatically.  Your rivals won’t have a clue about any of this and will be drowning in their own blood as the buyers cut their pitch to ribbons, as usual.

One of the sad things about salespeople is they mostly have no idea what they are doing.  So we transfer that poor understanding of the basics to the online world and then wonder why they are not succeeding.  Kata is a Japanese word to describe a set way of doing things.  In Karate we learn kata and they must be done in the exact same way, every time.  These are best practice modes and the idea is to perfect them.  Sales also has kata, but few salespeople learn them, let alone try to perfect them.  The online world requires new kata built on top of the old kata. You can’t move to the second level, until you have mastered the first level.

For those in the minority in sales, who actually enquired about what the client needs, this is only the start.  Again, sadly for many, this is the end of their approach and they don’t know how to go further.  They enquire about what the client needs and then they spend the rest of the meeting time with the buyer, trying to convince them to buy their solution.  They hammer the buyer with slides brimming with information.  The problem with this approach, although much better than the pitchfest quicksand most other salespeople wallow in, is that you become a transactional element in the buyer’s world.

Farming should be 80% of the effort and the other 20% spent on hunting for new clients.  Let’s be clear, we are not looking for a sale.  This is a critical point that many salespeople miss.  We are not looking for a sale, because we are looking for a resale. As much as we love our clients and take super good care of them, there will be reasons why they drop out and so must be replaced.  This is why we need to hunt.  In Japan, there are few salespeople who can be successful hunters.  In the online world this problem is really exacerbated. The upshot is you don’t have a big supply of talent to do hunting and this will make it difficult to grow your business. Better to have lots of farmers, who are in good supply and only depend on hunters for 20% of your revenue.  Talking to existing clients online is relatively comfortable for most salespeople.

Sounds great but how do you get to 80% of your business coming from existing customers who are repeat buyers?  Running around trying to fill needs will not get your there.  It is a bit like today’s cars.  When there is a problem the mechanic doesn’t even bother fixing the part.  They just get a new one and replace the whole unit.  Look under the hood sometime and what you see is a bewildering array of units, which are switched in and out.  Forget trying your luck fixing it by yourself.  When we are only satisfying needs, we become one of those replaceable units. The buyer switches us out and replaces us with a competitor.

The way to stay in the game is to become a trusted advisor.  Sounds easier than it is.  To achieve that aim we need to elevate the dialogue with the buyer. At the bottom of the ladder are wants and needs.  Fulfilling those can become a commoditised effort.  We don’t want to be a commodity because then we are chosen on the basis of price.  We want to be chosen on the basis of value instead.

We need to engage the buyer beyond wants and needs to have a discussion about their challenges and goals.  We are now entering the strategic partner zone, where we don’t just fix immediate needs, we start to get to the “design in” stage.  In manufacturing certain products, the way to make the sale is to be involved in the design stage and get your widget “in” to the specifications. When we are clear about their goals and their barriers to achieving those goals, we are having a much richer conversation than our pitchfest or tactical needs fulfilment only competitors.

Asking about their strategy, their positioning in the market and where they want to be in the industry is where the trusted advisor magic starts to happen.  This requires a lot more intelligent digging in the questioning stage and the development of quite different questions for the buyer.  For example, “If we can supply the solution to this issue, how will this accelerate your strategy?”.  If we want to go up the scale we can ask, “You have spent a lot of time, effort and money on brand building and marketing, so if we can  solve this issue, how will it reinforce or improve the positioning you have desired in the market?”.  At the top of the ladder we ask, “If we can solve this issue, how will this ensure you continue to be a leader in this industry?”.

This is a long way from just asking, “If we can supply it in blue, would you be able to make a decision today?”.  This is the transactional kata.  Rather, we want the trusted advisor kata using more sophisticated questioning and focusing on conversations about bigger picture issues than things like the colour range.

When you understand their problem, start digging in for the more strategic ramifications of solving their issue.  To become a trusted advisor, you have to be able to solver bigger problems for the client.  Elevate the dialogue and the zeros on your invoice will start to increase.

In Part One, we looked at the difficulties the modern communication platforms throw up because of the limitations of the technology, in particular, the poor audio quality.  Now we move forward to how we ask the questions and what we should ask.  Our client has various needs and we have to uncover them and the way to do that is ask questions.  This would seem the most obvious thing in the world. Yet there are legions of the great unwashed, hapless salespeople wandering around, spending all of their time pitching to clients.  There are in tell mode to sell, as opposed to using questions to sell.

The client has some top of mind needs that revolve around them achieving the outcomes they desire.  We need to understand what results the client is looking for.  In the classic example, clients don’t buy drills.  They buy results - holes.  They want to hit targets, gain market share, increase revenues, manage costs, improve their systems, etc.

There will be some buying criteria involved.  Budget is often what we think of here.  We want to know how much budget they have and then we can cut our cloth to match.  We should never forget that time and quality are also going to be key components here as well.  We need to find out more on these fronts.  A client assured me they had no budget for our training.  Digging in, I found they did have budget if we spread the payment over two financial years.  It wasn’t money, it was time, in this case.

Practical details need to be found.  These are often the spec components of design, shape, colour, size, weight, durability, etc.  Do we actually have what they need or not?  If we don’t, then stop trying to slam the square peg into the round hole baby and move on. Find that client whose needs profile better matches what we do best.

Although we are dealing with company representatives, they also have personal needs.  What is their WHY?  It could be to keep their boss happy, to rise through  the ranks, to get a big bonus, to snag a promotion, to be appreciated, etc.  We need to know that, because if we can frame our solution in terms of their WHY, then that is a very powerful differentiator from our rivals.

We go through question phases to uncover these pieces of information.  We can start by getting them focused on the gap between where they are now and where they need to be.  We can ask, “where would you like to be in six to twelve months from now?”.  The focus here is on outcomes.  To gauge the gap, our next question will be, “given those goals, where are you today?”.  Now we can find out if there is an opening here for us or not.

I had been chasing a buyer for seven straight years with no results.  It was a highly profitable business.  The President wouldn’t even agree to meet with me and then he suddenly retired. I thought “bingo” – time to try again with the new guy.  While I was sitting there in the meeting going through this discovery process, the most unpleasant idea occurred to me.  “He thinks they can close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be by themselves through their internal resources”.  I call that an extremely bad meeting. There was no way into that company for me, because I didn’t have a solution they needed. 

Trust me, I tried to make that gap between where they are now and where they want be seem like the Grand Canyon.  Ultimately I failed to do that and so no deal and sayonara.  What we are trying to do in this step is flesh out the negative implications for the company, if they don’t buy our solution.  Company representatives often mistakenly think that taking no action has no cost.  That is not true.  There are the opportunity costs associated with no action.  Markets move, business is fluid, nothing stays the same. They are also not operating in a vacuum, where their competitors are in some form of cryogenic suspended animation.

Once we know where they are today and where they want to be, we need to understand what is the change they need to make to close the gap.  If they think they can make that change by themselves, it is curtains for us.  If we are able to find a reason to supply the change methodology they need, then we need to go for gold.  We need to find out that invididual’s personal WHY. 

This is very difficult with Japanese buyers.  Even at the conceptual level, this is not something they easily grasp.  When your career progression is based on age and stage, unrelated to the outcomes you produce and you get a set bonus the same as everyone else, the personal payoff is bit opaque.  In Japan it will usually be personal recognition by their team or their peers, as someone doing their job well.  So we need to ask things like, “If we can achieve the outcomes you have mentioned, how will that make your team members feel?”, “If this works, will your team appreciate the results it brings, making their job easier?”, “If this is a success, will your colleagues be appreciative?”.

In Part Three, we will explore how to engage decision makers with more interactive selling techniques.  We will look at how to engage buyers when they are trapped in a little screen online, in a way that builds trust and breaks through the barriers the client and the technology have put in place.

Salespeople’s bad habits just migrate right across to the online world.  If you were just pitching your product before, hoping to snag a deal, you will be doing the same thing when staring at the client on screen.  It didn't work well then and it doesn’t improve in the new environment.  For the more professional salespeople, who actually understand sales and the key role that questioning skills play, the game has changed.  We have to change the way we do things too.

One of the biggest problems associated with asking questions is getting the answer.  In the meeting room location, we have perfect audio quality.  Okay, we will get clients who are hard to follow, because their own communication skills are so poor, but at least we can hear them.   All of these modern virtual meeting platforms have poor audio, so just catching the answer can be a struggle.  This is particularly so, if you are dealing in foreign languages.  When they speak English or when I speak Japanese, we have to both expect that there is another level of complexity associated with actually hearing what is being said.

The virtual world is nirvana for multi-taskers.  Don’t become one of them when speaking with the client.  Watch the buyer like a hawk, wear a head set, remove all distractions, shift forward in your seat, lean in toward the client on screen. 

It is tough to discern it on screen, but check their body language for incongruent messages.  This is when they are saying one thing, but doing another thing that negates what they are saying.  Tatemae statements or superficial truths are a classic example of this incongruency.

The other tricky part with the audio is if two people speak at the same time, no one can hear clearly what is being said.  Salespeople are rabid interrupters and jumper-inners. They talk over the top of the client when something the buyer said, sparks a thought in their minds. The Japanese language has the verb at the end, so we have to wait until the speaker tells us whether this is present, past or future tense, positive or negative.  That helps when speaking in Japanese, because it forces us to refrain for jumping in.  In English though, the gloves are off and it becomes a shambles, when we speak over the top of the buyer.

The other salesperson bad habit is leaping ahead of the buyer, anticipating what they are going to say, formulating a response while they are still speaking and then jumping in with your two bits worth.  The issue here is that the formulation process tends to be internal and we cease listening to what the buyer is actually saying in detail.  By that, I mean not just hearing the words in the background, but really studying their choice of words, the tone of voice, the emphasis points, noticing what they are not saying, etc.

Because of the difficulty of the audio on these platforms, we really have to spend a lot more time clarifying what the buyer is saying.  Normally, if we do this once or twice, no one gets upset.  However, with a heavy repetition, we may find the buyer gets annoyed.  Instead we need to tell them that, because of the importance of what they are saying and the fact there are audio issues around clarity, you will be asking them for clarification a lot more than normal.  You will also note that you will be doing a lot more paraphrasing of what they have said, to make sure we have a perfect understanding of what their needs are.  Do this up front and therefore head off client irritation with your attempts to make sure of the messages.

Also, if dealing with Japanese buyers, absolutely ask for permission to ask questions.  Getting questioned by a salesperson is a first for most buyers, trained over many years by dud salespeople who just gave their pitch.  Expect resistance, unless you get their permission first.  This is how hard it is, say: “Maybe we can help you, I am not sure, but in order for me to understand if that is possible, would you mind if I asked a few questions?”.  Doing this will save a lot of unnecessary cultural faux pas with buyers.

Work on the assumption the audio is going to be a big problem and then prepare countermeasures to eliminate that issue.   Your competitors will just be blundering away making it hard for themselves.  Here is a chance to steal a march on your rivals.

We now sell in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism.  When the client is talking to us online, they can be so easily distracted and can be secretly multi-tasking in the background, not paying any great attention to what we are saying.  There has always been a lot of client scepticism about salespeople claims, but with the “fake news” catch phrase being tossed around with wild abandon, buyer cynicism is being added to, rather than diminished.  So for our first impression, when we come online to meet the client for the first time, it is critical to grab, keep and deepen their attention.  How do we do that?

When the meeting starts, I will assume you have the proper logistics in place. The camera lens on your laptop is slightly above eye line height, that the lighting is such that you are easy to see and that you are wearing a headset, with a microphone attachment, to compensate for the poor quality audio these online platforms provide.  Naturally you are sitting up straight, leaning in about 15 degrees, rather than slumped back in your chair.

Please, please, please do not open with “how are you today”.  This type of fake interest in the buyer’s well being has zero impact and makes you sound like those sleazy telephone sales dogs calling buyers at weird hours, trying to sell them weird stuff. Start with some appreciation instead and say something intelligent and meaningful like, “Covid-19 has really added a lot of stress to everyone’s workloads, so let me begin by thanking you for making time to speak with me today”.  That is a highly credible opening statement that shows we are all in this together, you understand their world and you are appreciative of them.  You continue by adding value, “The object of my call today is to understand whether the results we have been able to achieve for other clients are also possible for your firm.  I have no idea if that will be the case or not, but I am very keen to see if we can be of some meaningful assistance to you”.  We are telling them that we have a track record of getting results, we are not going to a pushy, pushy salesperson and we are focused on helping them, rather than ourselves.

We then bridge into the agenda for the call.  Depending on the situation we may have sent the agenda ahead of the meeting or we may be pulling it up on screen at the start of the meeting.  You don’t ask for a “yes” or a “no” and as you are doing it, you just say “please allow me to bring up the agenda for our call today so that we can make the most efficient use of our time together”.  We are being assumptive about using an agenda and we are telling them we are not here to waste their valuable time.

The first item on the agenda should crystalise the strategic value of the meeting, establishing why this call is going to helpful and not a waste of their time.  “The purpose of our meeting is to discuss your goal for building revenues as quickly as possible, given the disruptions to the market because of Covid-19”.  We next go into an overview of the agenda.  “Things are changing fast, so let’s start with a review of the current situation, then discuss your goals and how this fits into your overall strategy and then together look at some next steps, if that in fact makes sense”.  We are referencing change is taking place, hinting that whatever they were doing before may not be what they need to be doing now and here we are to help them make that adjustment.  We want to understand their needs in the context of the direction for the firm, so that we can tailor what we have in our solution to match that direction. 

Finally, we mention the solution creation will be a joint effort , where they will have some ownership of the crafting. Again we underline we are not going to be pushing any square pegs into round holes here.  To show this is a joint effort we then ask, “What else would you like to add to the agenda?”.  This is a very critical step, because they will probably have something very specific in mind, which will take us quickly beyond the generalities we have been mentioning.

Once they have added to or accepted the existing agenda, we have tacit approval to dive into asking them about their current situation. “Thank you, so let me begin by asking you for an update on where are the problem areas and barriers you are facing at the moment?”.   We are now off to the races with our questions. 

If we have a Japanese buyer in front of us, we should add an extra step and get permission to ask questions. “Thank you for helping with the agenda.  I am not sure if we have what you need, but in order for me to understand if that is the case or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”.  In Japan, this is important because every buyer has been trained to receive a pitch from the salesperson, so being asked questions by lowly salespeople, can seem a bit uppity and rude to buyers.

How we start has a huge impact on how we finish, so mastering the first impression in the online sale, is a make it or break it deciding point.  We have to handle this initial part of the meeting smoothly and professionally.  Remember, we have never met and they are scanning the screen constantly trying to understand if they can trust us or not.  That answer has to be a “yes” and that is only the case because we made it happen that way, through a properly planed first engagement with the buyer.

When we meet people for the first time, we put them through a number of filters.  The easiest one is visual. How do they dress? What hairstyle do they have? Are they tall or short, fat or slim, beautiful, average looking or plain ugly?  The next filter is voice.  Where are they between having a deep baritone or a lilting soprano voice?  How fluently do they speak?  Do they have an accent?  Accents are interesting, because they indicate where they grew up. We can then fit them into our preconceived notions about what people are like from that place.  In some cultures, we can also work out their education level from their accent and then transpose our presumptions about how intelligent they are.  If you ever want a demonstration of this, just search for audio of Donald Trump having been over dubbed with a pseudo Oxbridge accent.  He often claims he is a stable genius, but he actually sounds much more intelligent when you hear him with that dubbed posh accent.  The remaining filter is the content of what they are saying and this comes last, after all of these other biases and prejudices have had a field day.

When we are online we have to pay attention to a lot of factors which determine our first impression.  This is tricky, because the quality of the audio on most of these online platforms is very poor.  Additionally, we can be trapped in a little box on screen, which negates a lot of our body language and appearance.  You may have heard that body language is the biggest proportion of our first impression with others.  Fake news!  The original study in the 1960s by Professor Albert Mehrabian split the first impression into this breakdown:  55% appearance and body language, 33% tone of voice and 7% your words.

While a lot of self-proclaimed “experts” quote these statistics, they neglect to include Mehrabian’s important caveat.  He said these splits only apply when we are not congruent.  By this he meant, when the words coming out of our mouth, don’t match up with the expression on our face, our body language and the tone of our voice. 

The tricky thing today is that the way we look is impinged by the video online technology and the way we sound by the lousy audio.  On top of these issues, we live in the Age of Distraction where everyone is multitasking, when they are online and the Era of Cynicism, where everyone is worried that what you are telling them is fake.

If we wanted to get across that we are reliable and credible, then we need to make sure we look into the camera lens on our computer, set at eyeline height or slightly higher, rather than looking at them on the screen.  If we look at the screen in front of us, it looks to the buyer like we are looking down on them. Sit up straight and slightly forward, by about ten to fifteen degrees.  This is the online equivalent of leaning into the buyer, when they are speaking, just as we would were we face to face.

Obviously dress the part, because so many visual clues are captured there.  Get into your business battle armour for the meeting and look and feel the part of a professional.  Have additional lighting set up so that you are very clear on screen to the buyer.  We don’t buy things from people lurking around in the dark, so get those lights organised.

Speak a little more slowly than usual, because of the poor audio quality and the audio time lag.  This sounds easy to do, until you get excited about your product and start gushing about what a wonder it is and about the copious benefits for the buyer.  You may find you really start ramping up your speaking speed.  Also wear a headset with a microphone.  This is very important for you to be able to hear the buyer as clearly as possible.

Don’t speak in a monotone, where every word is given equal attention and strength in some lunatic verbal democracy.  Hit key words harder than the others to highlight these words are very important for the listener to take special note of.  If we were in person, we could drop the strength out of these keys words, as another means of bringing contrast to what we are saying.  Unfortunately, in the online world, we have a hard enough time being heard even at a strong volume, so forget whispering for effect.

Speak with enthusiasm.  In fact, raise your energy about 20% above normal to account for the draining effects of the camera and audio.  People who regularly appear on television know this. They compensate for the camera diminishing their presence, by ramping up their energy output.  You will find that increasing your gesture frequency helps with raising your energy levels.

We must also project total authority, belief and sincerity. Eliminate all hesitation in your sale’s talk.  No ums and ahs are allowed.  These indicate you are uncertain about the thing you sell.  We don’t buy from people who don’t sound like they are 100% sold on their own product. Instead replace these ums and ahs with pauses.  The pause is a genius idea, because it allows the buyer to catch up the audio lag, gives them the opportunity to digest what you just said and clears the decks for the next chapter of what you are explaining.

In the online world, forging excellent first impressions is full of booby traps.  These are unforced errors and we need to account for them, avoid them and convince the buyer to purchase from us.

Online meetings with existing clients are a breeze.  The connection is there, the history, the trust has been built and the rapport building was done a long time ago. Basically this is a walk in the park.  Now the brand new client is a different matter.  You have never met, let alone even seen each other before and now you meet online for the first time.  This can be a daunting prospect.

There is going to be a heightened sense of stress for this first meeting.  “Will I be able to build trust online?”, “Can I establish some rapport, when we are separated physically and I am only seeing them on this little screen?”, “Will I be able to hear them clearly, given how poorly the audio performs in these online meetings?”.  If we prepare well, we can reduce some of these anxieties.

Review your industry knowledge.  What is their situation today given Covid-19 is disrupting so many sectors of industry?  Is the market declining, rising, how fast, at what volume?  What do I know about their company.  How is their current revenue situation?  What is the situation with their rivals – what would be some common issues they would be facing too?  What about this individual I am meeting?  What is their title, what information about them can I pick up through a Google search, looking at Linkedin, Facebook, my own contacts, their vendors, my colleagues, etc.

Before we speak with them, we have to review the value we bring to our clients.  We are not focused on the spec details of the product, but on the benefits we deliver.  If they decide to adopt us as a supplier, then how have other clients applied the benefits of our value inside their own companies.  This could be a very useful insight to introduce when talking to this new customer. 

What is likely to be their perspective?  Buyers are generally interested in where they can place your solution in the triangle of tension, between time, quality and cost.  Are we talking to the CEO, who will have a strategic viewpoint on where the company needs to go?  Is it the CFO who is razor sharp focused on the cash flow burn and preserving the available cash inside the organisation?  Is the client a technical buyer, who is going to be concerned about the spec, the gritty detail, the product guarantees available?  Is the buyer a user buyer who is worried about ease of adaption inside the company, the after sales service help available, the delivery times involved?

Before we even make the appointment for the meeting, we need to sit down and draw a vertical dividing line on a sheet of paper.  On one side we scope up what are the likely key issues facing this company right now.  On the other side we align our solutions for their possible issues.  There may be things we can't help them with and that is okay.  We just need to understand where we can help them, depending on the priorities they attach, to the issues they currently face. 

When we make the call to see about a business meeting, we try and understand if there is in fact a point to us meeting at all. We start by thanking them for their time on the phone and tell them “in order to properly prepare for our meeting, may I ask a few quick questions?”.  We then check on possible needs they may have.  We have already done some research and have come up with some hypotheses on what they might need.  We are still in the dark at this point though, so we need to try a few possibilities and see if they correspond to the needs they have. “Many companies in your industry are currently facing an issue about XYZ.  Is that also a concern for you?”.  We are only looking for indications of what actually are their key pain points at this time. 

Depending on their business, we may ask them about their current usage.  Due to Covid-19, are they using more or less of the thing we supply?  We also check on if they have budget to do business with us.  “I know that companies are looking carefully at where they invest their funds at the moment and I am sure your company is the same.  What kind of budget have they given you to work with at the moment?

At this point we may have sufficient information to conclude there is no actually point in meeting with them.  We should say so, in a polite way, framed around not wishing to waste their time.  If we think there is value, then we should make that point and confidently ask for the appointment to meet online.

Meeting a potential new customer online is a daunting prospect for salespeople.  All of the skills we have built up have been tailored and refined for the face to face environment.  Being in the same room with someone allows us to really get their vibe, microscopically analyse their body language, clearly hear what they have to say and in turn, be heard by the customer.  The online world negates almost all of those finely honed skills.  In particular, given our usual tried, true and tested modus operandi has been vanquished, how do we build trust with people who don’t know us and can barely even see or hear us?

When we go to the reception area of a client’s office, the person we are meeting will come out and collect us and then we move to the meeting room or we may have already been shown into the meeting room by the reception staff.  In both cases the first impression will be vital.  If we are sitting nicely, behaving ourselves in reception and the client approaches us, we are very conscious that this first interaction has a strong bearing on how things will go.  Producing a brilliant first impression is what separate the great salespeople from the rest of the punters. 

The same applies when they enter the meeting room, where we have been sitting waiting for them to arrive.  We look them in the eye and smile before we stand.  When we do get up, we stand up straight and greet them.  Things are a bit different today. Wearing a face mask puts all of the weight on your eyes, to convey that smile.  When we are online we can dispense with the face mask, but we have another mask controlling us and that is the screen.  The size of our face in a little box will vary depending on how many others are in the meeting and who is talking.  There is also the issue of their face on screen is at least ten centimetres below our camera lens, so if we are looking at their face, it appears we are talking down to them the whole time.  Also, how can we gauge their reaction to what we are saying, if we are looking at the camera lens, so that we appear to be talking directly to them?

Well we can’t see two things at once in this case, so we have to smile, talk to them through the medium of our camera lens, give up on absorbing their immediate reaction to our words and concentrate on what they say in reply and how they say it.  If possible, we want a neutral background which is absolutely not fascinating at all and so won’t compete with us.  The green screen backgrounds available today are pretty wonky, but may be better than the catastrophe of your home environment.  We also need to make sure our face is well lit.  Often, I see people attending webinars, looking like they are broadcasting from a dank dungeon, because they are hiding in the dark.  Naturally we are dressed in our business battle dress, including trousers by the way, in case we have to get up.  We have all seen hilarious clips of the casual bottom half, being revealed when people walked away from the camera.

Interaction online is tough.  The audio systems seem designed to ensure we are often talking over each, other effectively cancelling out completely what was just offered up.  Getting excited and jumping in while the client is talking, during a face to face meeting, is not the best either but in an online meeting, it is a very bad decision.  We need to allow the client to finish what they are saying.  We need to exhibit good listening skills. We have to make an extra effort to feed back what we heard because the audio is usually unreliable.  We obviously have to be on time and we need to keep to time.  Clients can still be living that meeting hell, which has now shifted online rather than when they were those meeting room nomads, wandering around the corridors from one meeting to the next.  If we say we are going to do something, then we need to be delivering immediately, in order to establish that feeling of reliability and therefore trust.

If we are doing a good job, the buyer will be seeking our advice on what is possible.  We are seen as potential business partners.  We have to reinforce that idea by providing useful insights about the industry, the market and the competition.  These pieces of analysis have to reflect a correct understanding of the client’s current situation, where they want to be and what is holding them back at the moment.  This is crunch time, because this reveals whether you have been spending your Covid-19 time at home fruitfully or just watching Netflix.  Normally we are pretty busy, so our study time is limited but this has been the opportunity to really gather data and information to help clients with their business.  How have you been spending your time?

The ultimate objective is to become part of the client’s brain trust.  We bring value to the relationship that they cannot generate from within.  “Design in” in manufacturing is the sweet spot.  You are incorporated into the product, before it is even launched.  We want to be there at the strategy development stage, adding intelligence gained from the market, ideas gained from our broader exposure to hundreds of companies we service and some over the horizon radar style predictions on where things are going.  If you can’t provide this type of partner level assistance, then just what is the value your bring to the table?  If we want be trusted, then this is where we need to elevate ourselves to and where we need to refine what we do.

I love dark chocolate.  One of the downsides of my chocolate proclivity is that the lift from the sugar is followed by a deep drop in energy. One answer would be to keep eating chocolate all day, so that there is no drop, but the dropping dead of a heart attack opportunity probably makes that an unwise choice.  Sales is similar.  We totally rev the buyer up.  We skilfully word picture them into a sugary world of good fortune about to arrive and then we depart.  We take off with the sales order joyously grasped in our sweaty palm.  Did we allow for the depression that follows the deal sugar hit?

It doesn’t matter if we are dealing with an individual buyer of a high ticket item or a corporate functionary, the same sugar hit can apply.  We have taken them along the railway lines of building trust, determining needs through questioning, matching our solution, handling any pushback or hesitation and gaining agreement.  All good textbook stuff and we now switch to fulfillment mode.  We get on to the logistics, as this often requires the assistance of other departments.  We are deep, deep in the detail and busily arranging for things to happen for the buyer.  We have their best interests at heart, but we have completely taken our eye off the sugar hit. 

What happens to the buyer after the sugar hit evaporates?  What are they thinking?  What things might be worrying them about this big commitment they have made for themselves or on behalf of the firm?  Have we factored this in at all?  We have severely raised their hopes, but we have left them in a state of “ungratified stasis”.

In B2B sales, we can easily forget we are dealing with human beings, racked with worries and fears.  Japan is a country of “no mistakes allowed” and so people are scared to make a commitment, take responsibility or be accountable.  They need strong reassurance they have made the right decision, that they won’t get into trouble, that everything will be fine and not to worry.  Ah, but we don’t do it though.  We just glide off into the sunset and start working on the next sale.

We have been working on their buyer emotions, because we know people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  This “justify with logic” bit is often not given enough attention.  The sugar hit of the emotional rollercoaster wears off and the doubts begin to crowd in.  Giving them more rah rah, about how great this will be for the company, is just trying to extend the sugar hit.  We cannot keep this up indefinitely. 

We have their agreement, now we need to get to work to calm them down and enmesh them in the logical reasons this purchase is the right decision.  We summarise what we just discussed, why the deal is important to helping their business and what will happen next.  This is even down to the detail of when we will send the invoice, the date of payment clarification and the next steps they can expect from our side.  It is all delivered in a friendly but calm tone of deep, studied religiosity about how much we believe this is the best thing for them. 

We certainly ask them if they have any questions about anything to do with the deal and the delivery arrangements.  We ask the question and then we shut up. We absolutely must not speak again until they answer. We are trying to flush out any basis for buyer’s remorse, that nagging doubt of “have I done the right thing or not?”. 

Following this we ask for a referral. They are hot but calmer now and are likely to be open to introducing us to one of their circle.  Please, please do not ask dumb things like, “do you know of anyone who…?”.  That question confuses them. We are unnaturally requesting them to take in their whole world in one gulp, rather than just a key piece of it.  Instead we try and narrow the focus down to people they can see in their mind’s eye. “Amongst your current business contacts in Tokyo, have you met anyone who may also benefit their business by applying this type of solution?”.

We say goodbye and then as soon as we get a chance, we send a follow up email.  In that email we list up the 5 most important logical reasons that this deal with make a difference to their business.  We should be sending another email the next morning attaching data, white papers, references, anything that smacks of concrete evidence and not just salesperson blather.  By this time, things will begin to roll out and the solution will start to be applied.  We make sure there is no opening for triggering overwhelming doubt and hesitations about their decision.

Enjoy your dark chocolate, seal the deal, but account for the sugar hit that will come, by being fully ready for it.

We have come to the final stage of the sales process, getting people to agree to move forward and place their order.  We have built the trust, understood the buyer’s needs, matched our solution to those needs, cleared up any hesitations, so now we can ask for their business.  What could be easier than this after all that preparatory work?  In Japan, as with many things, it is not that simple.

Salespeople here fear the buyer.  They believe their job is to always say “Yes” to whatever the buyer wants.  Buyers in Japan have been trained by errant salespeople, to expect a pitch.  The idea is you turn up deliver your pitch and then the buyer will dissect it and tell you all the things wrong with it.  They then expect you to deal with those issues, so that they can be assured this is a safe buying decision.  Online or in person, the same expectation rules.

This sounds reasonable, except it is folly for salespeople to do things this way.  I can never understand how a pitch could possibly be considered a good idea for the opening of your sales presentation?  How do you know what to pitch?  Most of us have multiple solutions, so which one should we start off with?  When pitching, we can begin talking about something which is not central to their interests, thus wasting their time or something completely irrelevant and so totally waste their time.

This fear of the buyer spills over into not saying “No” to the buyer.  Sometimes, it makes no sense to agree to the buyer’s requests or demands.  Japanese salespeople will just take the command as an order and then twist the organisation up into knots to deliver the demand.  Over the years, whenever I question my sales teams about these client demands, they reply that they agreed because that is what the buyer wanted. “Why didn’t you say no”?, is met with blank looks, staring at their shoes or puzzlement.  The “say yes to everything” mentality is drilled into salespeople here, so that they cannot imagine a parallel universe, where you don’t agree to everything the buyer wants.

This fear is part of the reason most Japanese salespeople leave the order request in a vague state of greyness.  It is actually a black or white decision – you either agree to buy or you don’t. How can there be any grey? 

Japan loves living in the grey, that never never land where vagueness, circuitousness, indirectness and obfuscation rule supreme.    A rejection in Japan represents an assault on the Wa (和), that societal harmony that has been built up over centuries, to allow Japanese people to live cheek by jowl, without killing each other.  It is also an assault on one‘s own Kao (顔) or face, a humiliation best avoided at all costs,  including the cost to the business of not asking for the  sale.

Deal closing fear exists amongst salespeople everywhere, but Japan takes it to Olympic Games gold medal winning levels.  It doesn’t have to be like this. Of course, closing the deal doesn't have to only reflect the typical American way of doing things.  That style is very aggressive and pushy. There are books aplenty published on how to push and manipulate the client to do the deal.  All of them totally worthless in this environment. 

We need a softer approach in Japan, but still we must have an approach. We can’t dwell in the grey.  Here are five “soft” closes entirely suitable for Japan:

1. “Would you like to go ahead?” is hardly hard sell, but it is a direct approach.
2. “Would you like to start in August or would September be better”, is less direct, but in a subtle way still suggests that they have agreed and will go ahead.
3. “The free delivery will cease after November, so shall we get things started now, so that you can enjoy that free service”, is putting some soft time pressure for a decision on the client.
4. “Would you require a hard copy of the invoice or can we send it electronically?”, is an over the horizon choice they will have to make and we bring that forward now, to get confirmation that “yes”, they are going to buy.
5. “This is the last one in stock, so shall we grab it for you now, so that you don’t miss out”, is the scarcity with time pressure soft close, to get some clarity from the client about their intentions.

None of these closes are difficult or divisive and won’t offend the buyer.  We may get a rejection to our offer, but at least we have their decision.  It is better to get a “no” than a “definite maybe” and spend excess time and energy imagining the deal is still alive. 

In Japan rather than “no”, we are more likely to be told it will be muzukashii (難しい), which is often mistranslated as “difficult”.  You tell some thrusting foreign salesperson it is “difficult” and they go straight into problem solving mode, as to why the difficulty can be overcome.  The more accurate translation for businesspeople is “impossible”.  Hearing that answer will sit you back down and get you thinking differently about where we have come to in this sales conversation.

We have moved along the continuum of the sales process, from making the cold call, getting the appointment, building trust, asking insightful questions to presenting our solution.  This is when the wheels can fall off and the sale gets lost.  Up until this point of the presentation we have been in control.  We have imagined we understand what the client wants, have amassed the materials to explain what we can do and how it will work, but we may have been delusional.

One of the disappointing parts of being in sales is dealing with clients.  If we didn’t have to deal with people everything would go so much smoother.  We wouldn’t make any sales either so that isn't going to work.  Some clients are a bit crafty.  They sit there answering our questions – remember we asked their permission for us to ask questions – and yet they have been fooling us.  They have been telling us about the tip of the iceberg of their problems, but hiding the real issues under the waterline.  Why would they do that?

Trust is the answer. There isn’t sufficient trust yet for them to share with us all their dirty laundry, all the fail points inside their company, all the horrendous problems they are facing.  Remember, we just walked in off the street or came down the line to their Zoom screen and they don’t know us from Adam.  Why would they be inclined to share the gruesome details of their disaster, their living nightmare, with a complete stranger?  Now we don't know that.  We have imagined we have built up enough trust for them to tell us what they need.

When we get to the solution explanation point, they start to reveal their true colours.  They start to point out all the shortcomings of this solution.  The failing salespeople start to argue, begin to defend, to justify and to explain why the client is wrong.  I hope this isn't you!  If it is, salvation is at hand, so listen up.  When we get this type of pushback, we must realise we haven't identified their true problem and our solution is perfectly designed to fix a non problem or a minor problem.  There is no point trying to ram that inadequate solution down the client’s throat, through force of will.

We need to stop defending the solution provided and sweetly ask, “Thank you for your feedback.  I feel that I have misunderstood what would help you the most.  What would be something that would be the highest priority for you and your company?” And then we sit there and say absolutely nothing, until they speak.  If time has to freeze over, then so be it.  Do not elaborate or qualify or add – just sit there patiently.  While this is going on, the client is having an internal struggle with themselves, to decide whether they want to share the real problems with you.  Let them struggle and just wait.

If they won’t tell you, then thank them for their time and move on.  There is no point wasting time on time wasters.  Call someone else you can help and who is prepared to share their issues with you.  If they do tell you the real issue, then you repeat the questioning formula again and really try to understand if you can help them or not.  Thank them, make an appointment for the next meeting to present the solution and your proposal and away you go again.

If they play straight with you and just say something simple like “your price is too high”, then we use the objection handling process.  Your brain at this point has to have the word “CUSHION” blinking on and off like a warning beacon.  You need to train your brain to do this, so that you don’t jump in and start to argue, begin to defend, to justify and to explain why the client is wrong.  Instead you say something to give you thinking time, like, “Well it is very important to consider the financial position of the company”.  This is a neutral statement that will buy you four seconds of thinking time and you immediately recall, “that’s right, don’t argue, begin to defend, to justify and to explain why the client is wrong”.  Instead you angelically ask, “May I ask you why you say that?”.  Again you shut up and do not speak until they answer you.

Now you just listen to their reasoning. “Your price is too high” is like a five word headline in a newspaper.  A few centimetres down there will be the accompanying article, which will go to great lengths to explain what that headline was referring to.  So we need the article too, the reason why they say that, before we know how to answer it.  They have to justify their position and in the process they will give us a better insight into the issue.  Have they misunderstood us, is there some value perception we have not sufficiently met, is there a budget timing problem, etc?

So we either satisfy their price point or we walk away or we come up with another arrangement, that provides a volume purchase balance against a price discount, a quid pro quo, that works for both of us.   Walking away is often the best option because you have spent a lot of effort positioning yourself in the market.  Other clients will pay your price point so there is acceptance.  This might be a try on or a genuine need to for lower price.  Either way, we shouldn’t be in a hurry to allow them to reposition us in the market.  This is especially the case in Japan, because as soon as you make the price cut, that now becomes your base price and clients will try to push you even further down from here.

In Part Six, we will look at getting the order and closing the sale.  Should be simple right?  Yet, so many salespeople in Japan never ask for the order.  They are afraid of rejection, so they have learnt the best way to avoid that is to leave things incredibly vague.  Well let’s not do that.

So far, we have dealt with making the cold call to get a meeting, building trust, getting permission to ask questions, using a four step structure to get information about what the client needs.  Now we deal with how to present our solution.

In the face to face world, after asking all of these questions and deciding we can actually help this client, we would go back to the office and put together our proposal, outlining our solution for them and the price.  Given how hard people are to catch these days, if we were well organised and smart, we will have already locked down the date and time for our next call, during this meeting.

In the next meeting, we can share our screen with the client.  The client may want the proposal before hand.  Do not do that.  When they get it, what do they do?  They go straight to the last page, idly skipping over all the bits where you have laboriously explained the value of your solution.  They are now solely focused on price to the exclusion of the value you will bring to their business.  No, no, no.  We don’t want that, so resist sending it until after your online meeting.  In a face to face meeting, we would be nuts to hand over the proposal document at the start, because they will go straight to the last page.

In person or online, we need to walk them through the document, so that we keep control of the navigation, the pace and the build of our argument, as to why they need our help.

If we were sitting in front of them, we would swivel the document around, so that we are holding it on the table facing them, so that they can easily read it.  We take our expensive pen and we point to the bits where we want them to look, when we want them to look at them.  This is vitally important, because we are doing a number of critical steps at this moment.  If we are online, then we are showing our page and we have the onscreen pointer to show where they should be looking, as we control the page advancement.

We take them through the context.  We check for understanding around whether we have fully grasped their situation and their needs.  If we have this wrong, then we need a new proposal and we need to know that, before we proceed any further.  Presuming we have understood them correctly, we now move on to explaining our solution. 

Before we do that, we give them our capability statement, summarising that we have the capacity to meet their needs. This lets the buyer know that we have understood what they want and that we have the means and the capacity to meet their requirements.  If that wasn’t the case, well we wouldn’t be holding this meeting in the first place. So at this point before we go into the detail of the solution, we need to make it explicit that we are confident in our ability to help them.

They told us where the gap was between where they are now and where they need to be and what is holding them back from bridging that gap by themselves. We explain in detail how we can bridge that gap for them.

When we do this, we start with the details of the solution – the data, the facts, etc.  But clients don’t buy facts. They buy the application of the benefits of our solution.  So before we get to that part of the explanation, we start going through the detail of the benefits and how these align with their needs.  In particular, we connect back that question about what is in it for them personally.  We might say, “you mentioned that the team will feel good if the outcome is achieved.  With this solution, they will be able to hit their targets more quickly and easily. They will really appreciate that you helped them to do that”.  We then go into the full detail on how the benefit will work inside their company when applied. 

This explanation of the applied nature of the broad benefit is what they want to hear about.  This is very, very important, because a benefit by itself, can seem rather abstract.  We need to anchor it to the concrete actions to be taken and the specific outcomes to be achieved inside their workplace, so that they can mentally visualise the results.  Having piled on the concrete benefits to their business, we now scroll down the screen to the pricing attached to enjoying these benefits. Which, by the way, is always referred to as the “investment” and never as the “price”, when we are talking with buyers.  Because we have been controlling the flow of information, by the time they get to this page, they are fully aware of the value we will bring. The cost is now in context for them, rather than being a set of isolated figures on a page, cast off from the value we bring.

Now it is the time to go for the trial close.  We want to flush out resistance, hesitations, further questions and objections at this point.  It is always amazing that even after carefully walking buyers through this process, they sometimes ask questions that tell you, they haven’t properly grasped what you have been telling them. You could say to yourself, “boy, this buyer is really dumb”. However, you are better to question your own ability to clearly articulate the proposal to the client and whether it is you who is “dumb”?.

In the next instalment, we deal with objections and how to close the sale, while we have the client online with us.