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.
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.
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
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.
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”.
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.