Selling Through Others In Japan
We may think we are selling directly to the buyer in japan but often we are not actually dong that. Selling through distributors is obviously a case where we sell through others. However when the buyers are sitting in front of you, you can easily delude yourself that you are going direct. No true in most cases. Yes, if you are dealing with a “one man shacho”, the founder/owner dictator, all powerful President, then it may be true. They make the decisions and everyone snaps into line and carries out the boss’s wishes. In reality, these types of cases are very few and far between. In our case, as a training company, we still find that the HR department sabotages the Presidents wishes and despite the orders from above, they never proceed with the training.
Sitting in the meeting room with the buyers gets us excited because we think we have the chance of getting an agreement to buy. We go through the sales cycle of building rapport, gaining trust, getting permission to ask question, asking about their needs, presenting the solution, dealing with hesitations and objections and then closing the deal. They tell us they will think about it and get back to us.
The reason they say this in the West is to get rid of you. American sales trainers have a whole suite of aggressive tactics for dealing with this push back. When I listen to their stuff I am always thinking “there is no way that will fly in Japan”. In Japan, yes, sometimes it will be a no loss of face mechanism to get rid of you, but more often the case is, that they can’t make the decision by themselves. There are people sitting unseen a few meters from you on the other side of that meeting room, who are division or section heads, who need to be consulted. The job of the people sitting in front of you is to collect information. They then share that with other people important to the decision making process, who we salespeople will never meet.
When they say “we will think about it”, we should never go into arm wrestle overdrive to force them to buy, like a lot of American sales trainers teach. As an Aussie, I find America an interesting place. The Wolf Of Wall Street is out of jail and teaching salespeople how to con buyers, using the same techniques he used. Bernie Madoff conned buyers too, but he is still in jail. How does that work? What amazes me is that there is a market for learning sales from someone who was rotten to the core and ripped off thousands of people. I absolutely detest this sales culture of win/lose in favour of the seller. The Wolf should still be in jail, as far as I am concerned and I one hundred percent reject everything he stands for and everything he teaches. Pond scum should never be our model in sales.
“I will think about it” should have us understanding we now need to sell through those people who are in the room with us. We should ask them, “I am sure there will be other sections and divisions who will be involved with this buying decision. Thinking about this opportunity from their point of view and given their individual personalities, are there any people you think might need a little more information to help them make the decision to buy?”.
What we are searching for here are the possible objections other people will have with the new buying decision. Once we draw out as many of the key hesitations as possible, then we need to arm our interlocutors with the answers that they can use in their subsequent conversations with the supreme sceptics on the other side of the wall. We will never get a chance to present our solution to these hidden decision makers, so it is critical we do a good job with our buyers in the room.
We usually only get one chance to do this and we have to calculate this into the time we are given for the meeting. In Japan, this is usually only one hour. In big companies, there will be a knock on the door at the hour mark and a horde of people will be standing around outside, with their half open laptops at the ready, waiting to start streaming into the room for their own meeting.
This part of the conversation must be planned at the start and cannot unfold under its own momentum. Consensus reigns supreme in Japan, so we can anticipate there will be a need to brief others on what came up in the meeting. Better to head off trouble at the pass, so we need to find out who else has a voice in the decision and what is likely to bother them about buying our solution. The better we prepare our hosts for that conversation, the more likely we will make a sale.
Dealing With Buyers Who Won’t Reveal Their Problem
The basics of professional selling requires good questioning skills on the part of the salesperson. We understand the buyer need and then we match that need with our solution. Pretty straight forward stuff really. What do we do though when the buyer won’t reveal their real issues or are hiding the problem from us? This is a deal killer right there because you have no where to go. In desperation you start pitching your solution in the faint hope lightening strikes and you chance upon exactly what they need.
When we analyse the reasons for this buyer smoke and mirrors we can see a couple of factors at work. In the initial rapport building phase of the sales call, we failed to establish sufficient trust for the buyer to impart their woes to us. We may have assumed too much about their level of interest and just started banging away, interrogating them about all the dirty laundry of their company. Japan is pretty good at small talk in the early minutes of the meeting. This is not going to help us much though, because it doesn’t address the trust issue to any great extent.
We need to be looking for connections with the buyer such as shared experiences or people we know in common. Maybe we have the same alma mater or have lived in the same city or travelled to the same places or share the same hobby. We should use the start of the meeting to try and ascertain if we have anything in common. Familiarity breeds comfort in this case.
We also need to establish our credibility from the get go. Our Credibility Statement has some layers. We explain our company’s business in very broad terms. Next we provide an example of where we have helped another similar company, quoting some verifiable data points around results as evidence. We make the suggestion that “maybe” we could do the same for them. It is important that we say “maybe”, because the client doesn’t want to be given any hard sell. Finally, we ask their permission to ask questions in a way which makes it hard to refuse. How do we do that?
For example, “Buyer san, I have a bit of a dilemma facing me. As you know we have been delivering training around the world for the last 108 years and 58 years here in Japan. As you might expect we have developed a huge curriculum as a result. If I can get a hint of what would be of help to you, mentally, I will pinpoint only those parts of our curriculum which are the most relevant and of the highest value for you. I know your time is very valuable, so I don’t want to waste it. In order for me to do that, would you mind if I asked a few questions to see if we have something which may be of use to you?”.
Having established our credibility, we now begin structuring our questions in such a way that the buyer is inclined to give us an honest answer, rather than trying to hide from our enquiry. We project the buyer into the future, say three to five years ahead, about what would success look like for the firm at that time. This makes it easy for the client to answer because it is all aspiration, rather than any hard facts about the company. Now we ask them, “Given these are the goals for the company, can I get some idea of how you see the current market, particularly in relation to your competitors. How do you think you are doing against them?”. The focus is not on company secrets, but a comparison with their rivals and how they are doing. This is easy to answer. Once we have the “As Is” and their “Should Be” information, we ask a simple question. “I understand where you want the firm to go and where you are now, so may I ask you what has been slowing you down to bridge that gap?”. This will bring out some of the hurdles using this Barrier Question.
Finally we ask about what is in it for them if they are successful in reaching those goals. “I read recently that even the Keidanren, the Japan Business Federation, is advocating that companies get rid of the old system of everyone getting the exact same annual wage increases and instead start basing the rewards and promotions on performance. It sounds like leaders are going to be held more accountable for results than in the past. If you were able to make your targets, given this new environment, what would success mean for you personally?”
By asking these pointed questions in this way we make them disarming and easier to answer. The key is to build trust at the start, establish our credibility and get permission to ask questions. Once we have that we draw the answers out of the buyer in a very indirect way, which is hard to resist. The other component is that this whole communication piece must be practiced and polished, so that we can deliver it is a very mild non-threatening manner to relax the buyer. If we do that, our opportunities to cement a relationship with this firm increase dramatically.
Expectations Of Newly Hired Salespeople
Be they people new to sales or new to that company, there is always a delay in new salespeople producing results. Sales leaders often have unrealistic expectations around how much a new person to the business can produce. If they are already selling in that industry, product or service area and have an existing client base, then it is reasonable to expect them to get results pretty promptly. In this day and age in Japan though where hiring new salespeople is like finding a lucky clover, we are often making compromises over who we hire. Recruiting companies are charging us 40% fees of the first year base salary, so the cost element of the new person drives up the pressure to have them perform. The money is going out like a flood with the new hire and their revenues are coming in like a trickle. The issue is further compounded if you need English speaking sales staff, because they cost more in terms of base salary in the initial costs.
Companies set themselves up for failure as well by giving the new salespeople superficial training. The expectation is they already know how to sell, so all they need is product knowledge training. There are usually two or three client visits with the sales manager, to show the newcomer how we do it around here. There are problems aplenty with this way of doing things.
Very few Japanese salespeople have ever been trained in how to sell. They join companies, get a microscopic amount of OJT – On The Job Training – and then have to work it out for themselves. This is who you are hiring. Sending them off to get proper sales training is by far the best way to get them up to speed quickly. They will learn how to get permission to ask questions, how to design the best questions, skills on how to offer the solution, techniques for dealing with objections and direction on how to close the sale.
Given the absolute vast majority of Japanese salespeople ask no qualifying questions of the buyer, the newbie will be miles ahead from the outset. Instead of going into a pitch like everyone else and playing hit and miss with the product catalogue or the flyers, they will be zeroing in on what the client needs and only discussing that in the time allotted to them.
Setting targets for new people is also often a ridiculous exercise in fantasies. The sales leader makes up a number, based on who actually knows what and then pushes the new person to make that number. This is very disheartening for the new person, because often that number is way too large for a first year target.
In our case, we try to add a little more science to the affair. We have this big spread sheet, that lists all the salespeople down the left side and across the top list each quarter since they started. Everyone has a day one and that is the equal starting point for comparison. By doing this you can work up averages of revenue production quarter by quarter. This then translates into what would be an average for year one, year two etc.
Knowing what is realistic to expect for a year one performance allows us to take some pressure off the new person and instead work on encouraging them. This becomes important when the other side of the coin to recruit and the difficulties therein is the retain side. If we pile on too much pressure in the early stages the salesperson comes to believe they can’t succeed where they are and they quit. By this time, they have some degree of product knowledge, hopefully some substantial sales training and a connection with some clients. We don’t want that package walking out the door. We lose time and money when that happens and it makes our operation look unstable and unreliable to clients.
A bit more science behind expectations, solid training to ensure more success and a lot of positive encouragement are the factors needed for onboarding new salespeople. All terribly obvious and unremarkable stuff – but are you doing it?
Just In Time Is Bad In Sales
Toyota is famous for its JIT or Just In Time system of logistics when building cars. Parts arrive exactly when needed, so have vast space for item storage isn’t necessary, saving time and money. When we are selling we sometimes stray into this territory too, but this is a bad move. In the case of salespeople they are doing their background research into the company in the taxi or on the subway, as they head to the client’s site. They begin thinking about the buyer needs only once they get into the meeting. The come with nothing for the buyer because they haven’t prepared anything.
In a perfect world, the salesperson will bring some information or insight for the buyer that they will value. This enables them to differentiate themselves from all of the other salespeople out there selling the exact same thing. This is the beauty of sales, if you spend the time to research what is happening in the industry, to make the effort to collect data that is relevant, to showcase likely trends for the buyer, to bring forth some best practise they may not be aware of, then you can stand far above the crowd,
If the aim is to partner with buyer then this is what a good partner will do. If you are looking beyond the initial sale to the reorder and to a lifetime relationship with the buyer, then these pieces of the puzzle become worth investing in. You cannot do this in the subway car On the way there, trying to be JIT efficient with your time. In fact this is totally inefficient and counter productive.
In the sales meeting we don’t want to be cutting corners. The typical Japanese salesperson will leap straight into the product catalogue or the product flyers and start expounding on the virtues of the company’s line up. They are waxing lyrical over their pink range not knowing that the buyer wants blue. This is totally inefficient and ineffective, yet this is what 99% of Japanese salespeople are doing everyday – running around giving their pitch before they know what the buyer needs.
Does the buyer believe what the salesperson is telling them in a first meeting, where there has been no precedent of supply and no track record of reliability? Of course the answer in Japan is a big fat “no”. There is no trust, so no matter how glorious the photos in the catalogue and how flashy the flyers, they won’t go for it. Out first job is to build trust. Part of that process is to break the ice wall with the suspicious buyer, to find out what they need by asking questions. It sounds the simplest thing in the world but buyers in Japan have been trained by lousy salespeople to expect a pitch and not to have answer questions. After all, the buyer is God and God shouldn’t have to do anything for the seller.
This is how hard getting permission to ask questions is in Japan: “We have a very big line up of solutions, so it makes it very hard for me to know what will serve you best. In order for me to really pinpoint only the best solutions for you, from this big line-up, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”. This process can’t be short-circuited in Japan, if you want to make sales.
When we are asking our questions we are searching for the size of the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. I was meeting the new President of this firm after having failed for eight years to interest his predecessor in our training solutions. During the course of the questioning I realised that the gap between their current position and where they wanted to be, was small enough that they felt they could bridge it themselves without outside help. That meant we had no hope of making a sale. Unless there is a big enough gap, our ability to get involved in providing solutions is removed.
Trying to cut corners and save time, by going straight into solutions is a waste of time, because we just don’t know enough about what the buyer actually needs and whether we are the ones to provide that solution. So we should research well beforehand, come armed with insights, get permission to ask questions upfront and try and widen the buyer’s perception of where they are now and where they want to be.