The most common complaint we get from clients about their sales team is that they are too passive. They are great at farming, but not great at hunting, growing the size of the existing business and finding new buyers. “It is as if they were working for the buyer and not for our company, because they bend over backwards to keep the client happy. Maybe too happy”, is not an unusual comment. On the other end of the scale is the American style hard sell effort which takes no prisoners, brooks no hesitation and keeps pushing until a deal gets done. For Japan, that will never fly, so we need something in the middle.
Where is the line though? When is too much, too much? Some schools of thought are that you need to push until you get regular resistance, because that is the point where you realise you have taken it to the limit for Japan. This whole equation is complex. Ultimately, I believe we need to become the trusted partner of the buyer. When they feel we are working to help them succeed, we are on the right track, without forgetting who we are working for and who pays our salary and commissions.
In my view, weak salespeople just fold in the face of every client demand, no matter the consequences for their own firm. This is especially painful when it comes to revenues. Many times, these salespeople are earning commissions on what they sell, so you would expect that their own self-interest would dictate that they do not discount too heavily to win the business. Unfortunately, because they don’t have skills around explaining the value, they cave and drop the price every time, even though it hurts them financially. Their view is that they would rather have a client gained at a big discount, because finding new clients is so much harder.
Generally speaking, in Japan starting low and then trying to elevate the buyer’s appetite to pay more for the existing solution doesn’t work all that well. Once they get you down to a low price that then becomes the ceiling, not even the floor, for them no matter how hard you explain this is a once in a lifetime case, a rarity, an exception, an instance of the planets in the Milky Way aligning once every thousand years. They just see that as the ceiling and then try to work you lower. When I was selling solutions from Australia, I had to tell the Aussie suppliers not to go in with their “best price” in Japan, because they would then be on the back foot trying to defend it, as they came under assault for more discounts.
I used to do a lot of networking at events in the good old days before the pandemic. We might finally be getting back to some of that in Japan, wearing masks and trying to avoid super spreader events. You need a thick skin to use networking as a tool for gaining clients. Foreigners can be brutal. We have a 50/50 split between multi-national and domestic clients, so I attend a lot of foreign chamber sponsored events. I was walking into an event and this guy refused my business card when I offered it, because he said he was only there for the information and didn’t want to meet anyone. Ouch! At another Chamber event, a businessman saw me heading his way and started complaining “You are always spamming me!!”. Ouch! At another event when I caught the attention of a potential client, to engage him, the guy he had been talking to, snidely noted “Here you are Greg, always stealing people’s attention”. Ouch!
What is too much? Whenever people complain that I am doing too much networking, or networking too hard, internally, I have a little smile to myself. Usually, the people making these comments are not in sales and have no idea how hard it is to land a new client. I had one of my staff come back from a Chamber networking event very upset. They were telling me that someone there was badmouthing me. What do you do about this type of thing?
My answer to these few critics is simple. I try to explain that as a sales leader, I don’t ask my team to do prospecting that I won’t do myself. I try to lead from the front, as a role model and example. I continue to explain to them, “that is why I am working hard to find new people we can help, because we know what we do can make a difference in improving their businesses”. Then I lower the boom, I hit them with the big one, I smash them when I say, “Wouldn’t you want your sales leaders and sales teams making the maximum effort to find new buyers, to expand the range of companies you can serve?”.
There is really nowhere to go in response to that argument. If they still say “it is too much”, then you can respond with, “does that mean your competitors are inactive and you have the market to yourself and you don’t have to constantly keep pushing for new business?”. Very few people can withstand this line of reasoning. Secretly, they are flooded with shame, shortcomings and guilt because they know their sales teams are passive, maybe great farmers but timid hunters and they wish their people had more of our grit and determination.
What about the damage to the brand? This is a concern. In business, getting a bad reputation is bad anywhere, but in Japan bad news travels at hyper speed. Even worse, amongst the multi-national company leaders, we foreigners are living in a small village here in Tokyo and again you don’t want mud being attached to your name. I recall one prominent person here posting a note on LinkedIn, asking about the whereabouts of another well known personality, because they owed them money. That kind of stuff takes your breath away and sends a cold shiver up your spine.
The reality is the worst that critics, rivals and the jealous can say about you is that you were aggressive or pushy or unreasonable or annoying. One person saying that is just that one voice. If multiples of people are going around condemning you, then you have a major problem. Frankly, if you operate with integrity and have a passion for helping other’s businesses succeed, then these outrageous slings and arrows will bounce off you.
I would rather be pushing, striving, working hard than worrying about what nobodies have to say. The people we serve well will know our value and values and they are the people to refer us and to keep using us. This is the key audience for us and we shouldn’t be shy about trying to grow their number. For salespeople this Winston Churchill quote is apt, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life”. Also, remember Thomas J. Watson of IBM fame noted, “nothing happens until something gets sold”. That is our job – to keep the wheels of industry turning by selling solutions which transform people’s careers and businesses.
Useless salespeople who cannot sell get fired. But are they really useless or are their sales managers useless or their companies useless? There are some industries which are notorious for the up or out mentality and recruiting certainly comes to mind. There is a lot of rhetoric floating around about saving mankind, through matching the buyer and seller of services, but the reality inside these companies is brutal. These are corporate meat grinders, who have massive churn because the targets are high, the profitability enormous and the degree of patience miniscule. This modality worked when there were sufficient people to throw into the metal teeth of the machine, but we are running out of bodies here.
The number of young Japanese going overseas to study in the US for example, dropped off from roughly 80,000 per year to 50,000. It crawled back to 60,000 a year when Covid stopped that flow for the last couple of years. The types of stay have also changed away from four year, full immersion studies to shorter less comprehensive experiences. For the last seven years or so, Japanese domestic companies have become competitors to hire these English speaking, western culture exposed young people, where once the multi-nationals had the field to themselves. So if you want to hire an English speaking salesperson in Japan, brace for impact!
The salesperson training system inside Japanese companies is also broken. The OJT or On The Job Training regime still exists in name, but the actual content and quantity of the coaching has diminished. Bosses are doing their own email these days, often have their own player/manager targets and generally are busy, busy, busy. Having the time to coach new salespeople, isn’t as available as it used to be.
Are these companies doing anything about training these salespeople, given their bosses are too preoccupied? Basically “no”. The penny hasn’t dropped yet, that there is a big gap between what the company thinks is happening with salesperson development and what is actually the reality. No boss is going to admit to their own bosses, that they are not doing a proper job training the young salespeople. It is a tatemae or superficial reality festival.
Once we realise this is the case, then we need a different thought process about hiring and training salespeople. The good news is that while most companies are in denial, there exists a window of opportunity to pick up their people and hire and train them. Often, young salespeople will wilt under the pressure of numbers expected every month and just leave. If we take in these rejects, then we can give them the tools and skills they need to be successful.
When targets are being set for salespeople, the numbers are often pulled straight out of the ether, with no relationship to reality. I have a spreadsheet called Ground Zero, which I consult when setting targets. People join companies at different times, but they all have a Day One. I keep their sales records each month since they started and can compare this against their colleagues at the same stage and can see how they are faring. I used to use the wet finger in the air technique to gauge the necessary targets for the salespeople, but this new system is a lot more based on science than intuition.
When you set realistic targets, the pressure on the salespeople becomes lessened, because you are not expecting miracles from them. Combining this target setting truth with training and we can start to get somewhere. When they feel they can succeed, they are more positive about the profession and the company. Regular training is the key though, because even the most grizzled veteran will be accumulating bad habits like barnacles on an oil tanker. We all do it. We take liberties with our clients, we shave processes to save time and we forget key parts of the sales regimen.
Now if it is just a matter of training, why aren’t companies seeking competitive advantage against their rivals and training their people to get the deals, thus reducing the market share of their competitors? After all, sales training is the one form of training where the results immediately improve the revenue results and the pay back is super fast. Part of it is the sales managers are worried about their own reputation and position in the company. After all, they are supposed to be training these people, even though they are not, but no one wants to fess up. Sometimes the Learning and Development people want to do the training themselves, to justify their own position and to supposedly save money. Bad training or useless training or mediocre training is the most expensive training on the planet.
There is a big opportunity here to rescue salespeople, who have been failed by their bosses or companies and turn them into capable staff, who can get results. Yes, we are a sale training company, so of course we would say that, you might be thinking. Well it is true and just take a close look at your own sales managers and how much coaching they are giving their people. While you are at it, look at the costs to the firm from salespeople departing or salespeople not producing. Also count the recruitment costs of trying to get new salespeople into the mix in the first place. It is horrifying. The answer isn’t rocket science – train them.
Japan just devours data, statistics and information. When you visit some scenic spot, there will be an amazing level of data available about that venue. The announcement on the subway train when you arrive at your stop will warn you that there is a specific gap in so many centimeters between the platform and the train, so be careful. I first discovered this data addiction when I was here as a student, some forty years ago. I attended a scholarly conference on Sino-Japanese Relations, as that was my area of specialty, trying to combine my Chinese and Japanese skills to access original source documents for my research. A Japanese Professor was making a point in his lecture about the differences between China and Japan and he used a story about the introduction of Zen into Japan. Zen originated in India and came to Japan via China, so various Japanese Zen monks would make the perilous journey to China, to study there.
There was a Zen story involving a well and a bucket to make some esoteric point about the condition of humanity. In the Chinese version, the concentration was on the broader allegorical point. The Japanese version had that too, but went into supreme, finite detail about the dimension of the well, its construction, how the rope and bucket were made, etc.
This love of detail and data still permeates in business today as well. Because there is that distinct fear of making a mistake, one of the clear antidotes in Japan, is to amass masses of data, so that you can analyse everything before you take any decisions. We have the same thing in the West and we characterise it as “paralysis by analysis”. When we turn up to sell our widget, we had better come packing data, lots of data. This is a slippery slope though.
The temptation is to wade straight into the detail, the facts, the stats, the data. This is certainly what the buyer wants, but we have to temper that data obsession. The data doesn’t sell anything. We know we buy benefits, we buy the application of the benefits, we buy results and the data is just the detail to explain how we can provide the required benefits. We should certainly lug around a lot of information to the sales meetings, but we shouldn’t show it.
My recommendation is to have the product catalogue, the flyers etc., at the ready but either leave them in your bag or place them on the seat next to you, well out of sight. If you put them on the table, the magnetic attraction will be too great and the buyer will want you to start wading through the minutiae.
The point is to know which part of that thick, bulging catalogue you should go to or which Flyer you need to bring forth. We need to find out what they need first, before we have any idea if we actually have what they need. If we do, then we need to dole out the information sparingly in the meeting. We only have limited buyer time, so that part should be concentrated on digging deep into how we can add value for them, such that they don’t do it themselves or do it with our competitor.
The other part of this equation is do we have the information needed at two levels – very high level and the into the morass level. Our Flyers should have a structural split between the key points and the nitty gritty details. We should avoid the deep detail dive at this point, but assure the buyer we have it and they can parse the entrails later by themselves. If we don’t get to the benefits part, then this won’t become a purchase decision. It may not happen in the one meeting. Often, we will go away and put together a proposal. One key thing is to get the appointment for that discussion during that first meeting. Everyone is so busy and you don’t want to be ghosted, when you are trying to get things moving to the concrete stage. Set the day and time right there and lock them in.
When we are going through the Flyer or the catalogue, don’t just hand over the details and let them read it by themselves. We must control what they are looking at and we decide what that will be. Turn the document around to face them. Using your pen, draw their attention to the parts of the catalogue or the Flyer which you want then to look at. If it is an online meeting then share the screen. Use the annotation tool to draw lines on the document on screen, directing their attention to the key bits you need them to know.
There is an ocean of information in our materials and we need to be very time efficient as to which parts we highlight. Naturally, the materials must be set out professionally and must be clear in the presentation of data and information, such that it is easy for you to find and also easy to show to the buyer. If we need to leave supplementary materials with them then certainly do that, but don’t concentrate there, rather focus on the areas where the sales decision is most likely to be made. Your supporting materials should be just that – supports – not the dominant element in the sale. You are the key part of the sale and let’s make sure we keep the attention there.
Tension is a good thing in business, because this is how we get things done. There is an issue which needs solving and either we fix it ourselves or we outsource the specifics to someone else. There is a tension between scaling up and preserving oxygen, otherwise known as, “cash flow”. I have this issue all of the time. I want to grow my company, but I don’t want outside investors, so bootstrapping is required. That means the process is going to be slower than getting the cash in the door and diluting the ownership. There is tension between time, cost and quality. These three inputs cannibalise each other constantly. If we go for the higher quality, there will be cost and time to market considerations. If we reduce the cost, then the quality threshold may not satisfy our buyers. If we go for speed, we may need to pay more for production machinery or overtime and that impacts the cost equation. Given tension is a constant in business, you would think we would all be masters of dealing with it.
This element of tension though, when it arises when dealing with Japan, can seem a mystery. Western culture favours the quick, the agile business “backflip with pike” manoeuvre to maximise the market opportunity. We like the snappy rejoinder, the quick wit, the sharp off the cuff comment. We view these attributes as indicators of intelligence and articulation. We are constantly hustling, making things happen, pushing the envelope, forcing the issue. Japan is not particularly keen on any of these things.
While we in the West are fixated on the correct answers, Japan is considering what is the right question? Being the market follower is preferred here because that is the safer option, that is why precedent and track record are so highly valued. You might get fired for being too slow in your decision-making in the West, but the chances of that happening in Japan would be rare.
You really notice the temporal dynamic in meetings between foreigners and Japanese. The visiting businessperson feels pressure to come back with a deal and the Japanese feel this first meeting is the start of many needed before an agreement is possible. This is a basic negotiating mistake when trying to do deals in Japan. Instead of thinking about the sale, switch gears and start thinking about re-orders. How can we form a trusted partnership with this Japanese company and benefit from the lifetime value of the customer? If we think about it his way, then getting on a plane and coming here numerous times, is an acceptable commitment of time and money, because the time frame is now “forever”.
Speed decision-making is the hallmark of the competent Western leader. Seizing the moment, grasping the opportunity, “building the biggest ships, getting there first, sinking everything” bygone British Navy style strategy, still lingers long in corporate life. What about Japan? Have a long term plan, enrich it with kaizen style micro-improvements, build for the future, are all more appealing ideas than bustling around.
Sales is a noble profession, although often misrepresented by the unethical, unskilled and undereducated. The fast talking, hard driving successful salesperson is sent to Japan to ink the deal, to get the business. With no investment made in learning how to do business here, bluster and supreme confidence are brought to bear on the problem. The meeting room often has the sole Western businessperson seated across from a phalanx of buyers, a seeming rent-a-crowd of hangers on, from the other side. “Why are so many of them in this meeting, who is the decision-maker” and other similar irrelevant thoughts are racing through the foreigner’s mind. Actually, unless it is a founder led company, there is usually no one decision-maker and there will be a collective decision made somewhat later.
In the depths of the discussion, the foreigner asks a question. Silence. Not your average garden variety silence, but profound silence. With so many of them in the room you would think one of them could answer this question? The rapid pace of commerce in the West cannot tolerate this breakdown in communication. So more words are added to the question and to no avail, because the silence continues.
The bluster and confidence are rapidly withering and confusion sets in. The internal conversation is now, “What is going on here, I asked a simple question but I am not getting any answers?”. What is going on is that the other side of the table are deferring to each other, as to who should answer the question. There will be hierarchies in play, as the more senior people are the ones who should be speaking. Divisional responsibilities may be confused and as yet not clarified, so it is not clear who should speak. A lot of effort will be going in to consider what to say. A quick answer may be seen as flippant and not well considered. Concern about face will be on edge, in case the answer doesn’t sufficiently measure up or is deemed incorrect or trespasses on another division’s range of responsibilities and blurted out with no prior consultation.
We should just say nothing and wait. How long should we wait? The answer is for as long as it takes. I once visited a branch of the organisation, having heard that one of the female staff was having trouble with her much older male boss. I asked her how I could help. She didn't answer immediately and so I sat there waiting. Five minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour went by with me just sitting there, silent, patiently waiting for her answer. In the end, she told me she couldn’t share her problem with me and that was that. I didn’t feel any time pressure though and that is how we should approach meetings with Japanese buyers. Silence is golden here, because everyone takes partnering very seriously. Don’t be in a rush.