Price conversations are a bad thing. Invariably, you are dragged into the mud and blood of comparisons with someone ridiculously cheaper. We get these requests – “send me your price sheet”. My ears prick up like a Dobermann when I hear those words, because I am mentally getting ready for trouble. I know a couple of things are happening here, none of which are good for me to make this sale happen.
The buyer is possibly shopping the deal to get three quotes to keep the compliance department happy, so that they can award the deal to their already selected and much preferred, favourite provider. My job is to be used by the buyer, to pony up the necessary paperwork, so my rival can get all of the money. Another reason may be so that they can play all of the providers off against each other and fill in the matrix. Along the top they place the names of the suppliers and down the left hand column, they put in the names of the solutions they need. They populate the corresponding cells with the numbers of the respective pricings. The cheapest alternatives are quickly identified, you are too high and then are tossed on the scrap heap.
Sometimes, the buyer will say “just send me the pricing” and you will try to resist. You want to meet with them online or in person, to fully understand what they need. You are doing what you should be doing, but they are not playing ball. They say, “send it”. My advice – send it and then completely forget about it. The chances of this going anywhere are almost zero, not fully zero, but pretty much indistinguishable from zero.
Instead, spend your time finding people who want to share their issues with you, so that you can understand if you have a solution for them or not. They will be price focused and that is natural, because they have a spreadsheet somewhere for the P&L. This document has a set of numbers therein, which specifies how much they have allotted for the solution. Now here is the wonderful thing about the P&L – the whole thing is a fiction. Those numbers in those cells can be moved around with the clicking of a mouse and the pressing of a keyboard button.
Rather than offer a price, offer a packaged solution. Let me give an example. You notice your competitors are getting revenues from an accommodation business. The target client is advertising the business, but you have no action with them. You have tried contacting someone down the food chain. All they said was “send me the pricing” and they didn’t want to meet with you. You have found the boss’s name but no email address. Being creative, you guess that the person at the bottom of the decision-making hierarchy has an email address which may be standard. What if you insert the boss’s name? It might work and get you access to the real decision-maker, the maestro of the P&L spreadsheet, who has the authority and means to move those numbers around.
Great, but what are you going to offer them? You have a very desirable audience for their product, so that is a key prerequisite covered off. Rather than offering exposure with a hope of some take up and some minor sales, you do better than that. Your package is to create a contest, where the winners are able to stay in the accommodation as the prize. To enter the contest, the target audience have to give up their contact details. With their receipt, now there are concrete opportunities for the client to directly market to these highly valuable potential customers, who have raised their hand.
To make the offer attractive, you give away five to ten accommodation prizes, so that target individuals do the mental math and work out they have a pretty good shot of winning and are activated to hand over their contact information. Being the accommodation business, there are always cases of product which is vacant, so there is only the cost of administration and cleaning to worry about, so a relatively low cost prize can be secured.
The point is the package is the offer, rather than a single solution. We come to the big boss with a well thought out strategy for getting more business. The means to get that new business is through the tools you have on offer in the package. The decision to move some numbers around that P&L spreadsheet just got a whole lot easier for the big boss.
“Send me the prices” is a losing proposition. We have to do better than that by responding by navigating our way further up the food chain, to the more savvy decision-makers who can recognise a great package when they see one. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck with people who can only say “no” and who can’t re-arrange the P&L expenditures. If this is where you are now, either get to the boss or find another potential client company, where you can get in front of the boss.
“Greg, you are everywhere!”. I am often told this by business people here in Tokyo. What they mean is that I am prolific on social media, video and audio. Well, if you are in sales today and you are not prolific in promoting yourself, then what are you doing with your time? It is an old saw in sales that “it doesn’t matter how many people you know, it is more important how many people want to know you”. Fine, but how do you get that to work? Afterall, there are only so many people we can meet in a month and naturally, we want all of them to want to know us. The democratisation of social media and the free nature of the medium has changed many things in getting our reputation in front of many more people than we could ever physically meet in a month.
I was always wary of social media. I didn’t trust the platforms, so I avoided them until December 2011. That year I made my first visit to San Diego in California to attend the Dale Carnegie International Convention. One of the speakers was Jeffrey Gitomer, published author and sales training guru. He was quite a character. He was wearing a bright red shirt that from memory had his name” Jeffrey” and “Sales Dept” embroidered on it. He was dressed like some guy who would be working at a gas stand pumping petrol. Dale Carnegie is a pretty conservative organisation, so he had been told to tone down the profanity, but what he said was shocking to me.
He asked the one thousand plus attendees “how many twitter followers do you have?”. At that point he had over 30,000 and I had none. On the plane back to Tokyo, I was thinking about what he said, so I made my first sceptical foray into the social media platforms. I found Twitter didn’t suit me as much as Facebook and Linkedin, so I tended to concentrate there. I don’t post any personal stuff on these platforms. It is all business and I make sure none of it is controversial or embarrassing.
Around 2012 I started publishing blogs on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and I am still doing that. I was also publishing articles in the American Chamber Journal and the Acumen magazine every month. The American Chamber Journal editor Roberto de Vido suggested to me that I should do a podcast. I asked him “what is a podcast? I can’t remember how, but I discovered this other American guy, Gary Vaynerchuk, popularly known as Gary Vee. Another character and this time plenty of profanity from Gary. He was interesting because he was combining reality TV, education and motivation together and was pumping out massive amounts of content. He taught me to multi-purpose my content. I could use the content for my blogs for the magazines to become the content for my podcasts.
The first blog was published as a podcast called The Japan Leadership Series on August 2nd, 2014 on the topic “Flexible Japan-Stop Dreaming”. I was covering leadership, sales and presentations content in that one podcast. I started hearing that going deeper into niches was important, so I created two more podcasts called The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan Series and started publishing podcasts on those specialities from November 3, 2016.
In mid-2018 I read that Google would start using audio for search in addition to text. In the text world I was competing with millions, maybe billions of blogs. The audio podcast world was a bit less competitive. I already had three podcasts by that time, but I decided to strip out the audio from two of my YouTube TVs shows, The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show and the Japan Business Mastery Show and create podcasts. The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show first episode was on “Not Meeting the Leadership Challenge Is Quietly Killing Us” on August 18, 2019. The Japan Business Mastery Show came out on October 4th, 2019 on “Five Deadly and Dastardly Leader Misperceptions”. The next year I launched a new show called Japan’s Top Business Interviews where I interview CEOs and we talk about one topic – leading in Japan. The first episode was on June 6th, 2020 with Yasuaki Mori then CEO of Infinion Technologies Japan.
What has been the upshot of all this effort and time? My personal branding has skyrocketed and I have a core of true fans who regularly follow the content. Because I am posting fresh and different content Monday to Saturday on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook I get people contacting me about training in Japan. I don’t do any paid promotion and just rely on organic search to find me. Yes, I get a lot of people trying to sell me sex, dodgy investments, various products and services too, but I just ignore those. For those who are genuinely interested in business in Japan, then they can judge the quality of what I offer by accessing my oeuvre. They can try before they buy.
So are you having a Jeffrey Gitomer moment like I had in 2011? By the way, Jeffrey has 67,000 followers on LinkedIn and I have 26,000, so I am only 40% as good as he is, but for my niche, how many people have more than I do? How many people are accessing audio search on Google as well as I am? I have no idea, but what I do know is if you are in sales, your biggest problem is getting found. The text blog world is competitive and that means you are competing with seven million blogs a day. Podcasts are said to be over two million in number. I publish my podcasts using LibSyn and their numbers show the biggest group of podcasts are published on Apple Podcasts and that Japan originated podcasts are only about 1% of their total. If you broke that down to English language podcasts, the numbers could get very interesting. My point is I am punching way above my weight here and it is working. If you are in sales, what are you doing about being found?
Even the best laid plans go astray. The sale has been completed, the funds have been paid and we get busy in our sales job moving on to help other clients. Another department may be tasked with handling the next steps with the client. It doesn’t matter who is doing the delivery of the solution, because if something goes wrong, the buyer expects us to fix it and to take accountability. In Japan we are their tanto, the designated person to handle this account and there are strong expectations about how we play that role. Being busy with other clients is of no interest to this client, because they expect us to be at their beck and call 24 by 7. If there has been some problems, minor or catastrophic, we have to get busy fixing them. So what should we do? Here are seven steps to handling post purchase problems for the buyer.
We have to shut down all the noise going on in our brain and just concentrate on listening to them, when they tell us what they are unhappy about. Don’t react, argue, justify or cut the buyer off when they are talking. Just shut up and listen to what they are telling us, watch their body language and think about what they are not telling us.
Don’t try and escape responsibility. Nothing annoys buyers more than when sellers try to avoid responsibility by shifting the blame to someone else. The buyer doesn’t care about that. As far as they are concerned “you are the firm”.
Expect that the buyer can become quite emotional and upset. We can never know what is going on in the buyer’s firm. We may have done something which is burning their precious clients. We can’t be sure of what financial and political pressures they are under, how safe is their job, what grief they are getting from their boss, what is driving their emotional reaction. What we can do is stay calm in the full frontal gale of invective that is coming our way.
We should try and clarify exactly what is the problem? They may be spitting out every problem under the sun, but there will be some higher echelon issues which need to be worked on immediately and we need to know what they are, rather than trying to sift through every problem they are raising with us. We need to set this up, otherwise it may come across the wrong way. We say, “Thank you, just so I can make sure of what I need to do to fix this for you, can I just clarify the precise most immediate issue you are facing, to make sure I fully understand it?”. This may not be greeted with joy when they hear it, but stay calm and don’t say a word until they give you the answer.
After they have told you their hierarchy of issues, express your empathy for their problem.
We are not agreeing or disagreeing with them at this point, but we are recognising how frustrating this is for them. They want to know we understand the ramifications of our errors and mistakes for their business. We need to assure them that we have a clear picture of the problem in its entirety. This cushion is just one sentence, as it is a bridge to our answer about what we are going to do. We have to be careful that we don’t jump in and start speaking before we are fully engaging our brain about what is the best reply, given the situation. The cushion buys us valuable thinking time.
Make a point of telling them that you are taking personal responsibility to fix this. They expect that, but it is good to state that you understand you are 100% accountable for the next steps. Do everything you can to resolve the issue. This may mean having to get the cooperation of other divisions, it may upset other people internally, it may mean you going to your boss to get help. Regardless of all of that, do whatever it takes fix it. Remember we are always thinking of the lifetime value of the buyer. You assure the buyer again and again, that you will make sure it gets fixed for them, as fast as possible.
After the issue has been fixed, you check in again to see if they are happy with your response. We may think we have done a sterling job, but what we think doesn’t matter because the buyer is the final arbiter of a successful solution, not us.
You ask if there are any remaining problems or any remaining issues which need further work from your side? There also may have been hidden areas of unhappiness that still have not been directly addressed and we need to flush them out, so that we can deal with them.
If the solution takes some time, we must keep in contact with the buyer and give them frequent updates on progress. After a little time has passed, we reach out to the client to check if the previous resolution had proven satisfactory or not and see if there are any residual problems. This demonstrates our sincerity and customer care and because we are aiming for a lifetime partnership between our firms this is a key step to make sure that becomes a reality.
Western CFOs do a mathematical calculation and work out that the most profitable way forward is to live with a defect rate of a certain percentage and just fix the problems when they arise. No Japanese buyer is going to put up with that, because they are operating on the basis of zero defects. The attitudes towards mistakes are a universe apart, so when problems do come up, we have to be ready to fix them in a way which satisfies the buyer because our brand is at risk here. In Japan having a bad reputation for quality control is the last thing you want.
The word “closing” itself can be controversial in sales. It implies we are ending the process rather than starting the partner relationship with the buyer. In modern times the word “commitment” from the buyer is often preferred. I am okay with both and I have chosen the word “closing”, simply because this is what most people can easily understand about this latter stage of the sales cycle. Closing doesn’t have to be something scary or any big deal. In fact, the less complicated we make it the better. There is a big difference between closing in Japan and in the US. When I listen to American sales trainers, I find their closing techniques are very forceful and direct. Well that just won’t work here in Japan, so we need a different approach. Let’s look at some non-aggressive closes, which are easy for clients to accept.
We softly ask, “Shall we go ahead?’. This sounds natural after we have gone through the questioning process, the solution presentation process and the objection handling process.
This is what the client would be expecting and if the trust and professionalism have been built, they will be happy to proceed. We ask in a gentle, non-threatening manner and in a collegiate way, because we are trying to become their partner to help them solve their problems.
We give the buyer a choice of two options and either way, if they answer in the affirmative, it signals they are buying. This is a very indirect way of asking for the order. This works well because it moves the sales conversation along and provides the buyer with different options, which doesn’t feel pushy. We might ask, “Would you want the delivery in this month or is next month preferable?”. No matter which option they choose, we know it means they are happy to move forward.
We direct the buyer’s attention to a minor decision they will have to make which is tied to the purchase. The big decision is to buy or not and we don’t have to go there. We can slip off to the side and ask for the business in a tangential, low friction way. For example, we can ask, “Will you require a hard copy of the receipt?”. This is a small thing, but it is only relevant if you intend to buy and that is what we are trying to work out – are they ready to buy or is there some obstacle remaining which we have to clear.
In this method we project past the sale and seek a decision from the buyer. This is a future decision they have to take after the purchase, which they probably haven’t even thought about yet. By flagging this decision now, we are projecting into the post purchase phase of the buying cycle. We could ask, “Shall we schedule the first follow-up post-installment inspection for next quarter or for the quarter after that?”. Again, if they are not interested in buying, then they will tell us because this post-purchase decision is pointless, if they are not actually going to buy.
This is presenting the client with the opportunity to gain a benefit which has a time limit attached to it. They can only gain that benefit if they can move fast enough. This is the last “little black dress” close we often run into as consumers when we are out shopping for ourselves. “This is the last tie in that pattern, so you should buy it” now psychology.
In business we may say something like, “Shipping costs have gone up and they will be reflected in our pricing from the end of the following month. If you can make the purchase now, you will avoid those extra charges. Are you able to make that schedule?”. We are bringing some subtle pressure on the buyer to make a decision whether they will buy or not.
This is a visual method of helping clients to make a decision if they are stuck and can’t move. We take a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line right down the middle. On the right, we list up all of the reasons to make the purchase. We help the buyer with our suggestions.
On the left, we let them list up all the reasons not to make the purchase. We leave it to them to come up with the reasons. At the end of the exercise the list on the right is much more substantial than the one on the left. So we say, “it seems obvious which is the best decision, don’t you think”, and we lead them to agree to buy from us.
Some people think we shouldn’t just support the positives of the decision and that we should help with the negatives as well, in order to be perceived as objective. I get enough negativity already from buyers, so I probably wouldn’t go that route, but I mention it here as it may suit your style.
So here we have six very soft techniques for finding out if we are getting anywhere with this sales conversation or not. If we get push back we should welcome it. The danger is no feedback and no agreement, because mentally they have put a line through us as a supplier and they are just waiting for the meeting to end. We need to know where we stand with this purchase and these questions will certainly get us there and do it in a context which Japanese buyers will be happy with.
The sales cycle is a simple progression to get the client to the point of purchase. We have established rapport and trust. We have asked intelligent questions to understand how we can help them. We have come up with a great solution to solve their issues. We may have pre-empted all of their objections, but that doesn’t mean they are going to give us a “yes”. Before we get to the point of asking for their agreement for the deal to go ahead, we need to set up the request.
We have to remember that while the sales cycle may be important to us, as sales professionals, they are not focused on the process. They are concentrated solely on the outcomes. We can tell them the solution in very simple terms. This may satisfy some degree of their logical mind requirements, but it may not be enough. We need to be moving up into high persuasion mode and this is where word pictures can play a powerful role. We can outline a future state of supreme satisfaction, a bright future which resonates with the buyer.
We want to have them see in their mind’s eye, the future situation in the company, as they begin to enjoy our solution. That word picture has to engage the emotions. Previously they had told us the main reason why they needed a solution in the first place. We need to wrap our solution up in those same terms. They also told us what it means to them personally.
We have to loop back and create word picture about how happy they will be personally when the deal delivers the solution outcomes which they told us were important to them. The word picture is to paint the scene of all the benefits the solution brings. It also has to describe the emotional engagement of everyone who is going to be touched by the solution. Especially the person we are talking to.
For example, “Imagine this scene. You are in the office and your boss is smiling at you and shaking your hand and your colleagues are all surrounding you patting you on the back. Everyone is smiling and they are really appreciating your contribution to securing the team goals. Times have been tough and everyone has been suffering. However, your decision to ramp up the marketing effort by using more video and in the process creating a video hit, has exploded the lead flow for the team. The product has now become top of mind for the buyers and the sales team are witnessing their job become so much easier. The offers are flowing in, the phones are ringing and the whole operation is buzzing with activity. Your boss is able to report stellar results to the senior directors in the company and she is appreciating your marketing efforts which made that possible. You mentioned to me your hope for a big bonus and now that is becoming a reality, as the company rewards your efforts to grow revenues. A promotion is in the offing”.
This is not the type of construction you want to be engineering on the spot. This word picture needs to be built piece by piece, based on what you have been told to date. Before you get to the point of making the solution explanation, you need to have this whole scene in your mind. Usually, in Japan, there is a break between hearing the needs of the buyer and then coming back with your solution proposal. This gives you the time to work on crafting this word picture for when you offer the solution part of the sales cycle.
The word picture explanation needs to be practiced, so that is comes it as smooth as silk with no mumbling, hesitations or stumbling over the words. That requires rehearsal and repetition. It will seem effortless to the buyer but it takes a lot of effort to polish the word picture to a point of perfection ready for the delivery.
The impact of the word picture will be in direct correlation to the strength of the questioning component of the sales cycle. If you didn’t dig deep enough on what success means for the buyer, especially personally, then the word picture can fall a bit flat. We don’t want to be talking at a high level here. We want to be as granular as possible based on what we have previously heard from the buyer. If we can feed back some of their own words and means of expression, all the better. It will make it that much easier for them to relate to what they are hearing.
We want them to take action and that means either stopping what they are doing now or doing something new. Neither of these items are easy to get a buyer to embrace. The better composed our word picture of their future satisfaction with our solution, the easier it is for them to say “yes” and to say “yes” right now.