We are slowly emerging from Covid, yet a few leftovers are still hanging around, making our sales life complicated.  One of those is the sales call conducted on the small screen using Teams or Zoom or whatever.  These meetings are certainly efficient for the buyers, because they can get a lot of calls done more easily and for salespeople, it cuts out a lot of travel.

Efficient isn’t always effective though. In my view, we should always try to be in person with the buyer.  Some may say I am “old school” and that is quite true.  Old school though has a lot of advantages when selling.  Being there with them, we can take the client through the materials much more easily and we can read their body language in depth and minutely.  Buyers are always sceptical about salespeople, because everyone is risk averse and concerned about getting conned or taken for a ride.  When we are in the room together, they can get a better sense of who we are. They can read our body language to make sure our words match up with the intentions we are spruking.

I had a sales call with a new client and, being in the room together, I could hand over the training manual and take him through it page by page, explaining the content of what he would be buying.  I could easily control what page he was on so that we were in synch.  We have to be careful when handing materials over that we are on page five and so are they, rather than they are racing ahead of us to page twenty.  The commentary coming out of our mouth has to line up with what they are looking at in the materials. It happens that they race ahead of us, so we have to be aware of that danger and control what the buyer is looking at very carefully.

I had another new client sales meeting, this time online and with three people on their side. They degenerate into three tiny little boxes on screen and it gets worse once you start sharing documents online. It is very hard to read three people’s reaction when you are in the room with them let alone trying to do it remotely. 

As we know the current systems aren’t as good as teleprompter technology.  You can look into a camera lens on a teleprompter and read the text appearing on screen at the same time.  With these various virtual platforms, the camera is located on one part of the computer screen, usually at the top and the people you are talking to are located way down below.  You have to make a choice – look at the camera and not at your audience or look at your audience and not at the camera.  The teleprompter technology eliminates that choice, but it hasn’t been applied to the virtual world as yet.

In this situation, I look at my camera and give up trying to read the reaction of the buyers online.  This is a big give up, by the way, and most unsatisfactory.  I do it this way, because what they see is me speaking directly to them, making eye contact all the time.  From their screen angle, they see me staring straight at them.  This creates the sense of trustworthiness.  On screen, I can keep staring at them intensely, without it creating any tension, as would happen in Japan if we were in person.  Japanese culture avoids too much direct eye contact.  This is why people look at our chin or throat or forehead.  On screen, though, we are safely removed and so if we look down the barrel of that lens, we can keep applying the eye contact without it becoming intrusive.  It allows us to connect with the viewers.

Yes, we cut out the travel time and the costs to get to the client, but we are giving up a lot more in return.  Being there is so much better and more valuable.  Yes, it may take three hours there and back to hold the meeting and only one hour to do it online. But that one hour in person enables us to be so much more persuasive. We are also better able to recognise pushback or reluctance.  It is almost impossible to read the vibe going on between the attendees on their side.  When you are together in the room, you can see if there is any difference of opinion amongst the buyer group or cases where one person is not onboard with the idea. Onscreen, that is much more disguised. These various elements are hard to gauge on the small screen.

We often find ourselves doing too much talking to compensate for the restricted nature of the small screen interaction.  We feel we have to add energy and vitality to the sale process in a way we don’t feel such a strong need when we are in person.  The communication distance gets us ramping up our side of the conversation to try to inject some enthusiasm into the buyer group.  We are trying to will them to buy because we feel the remoteness of the situation.

Buyers are often working from home these days and so they insist on online meetings.  Remember, for them, not buying is the safest and preferred option.  We, on the other hand, have a duty to help supply solutions to buyers and for us we should always choose the best medium for that purpose.  That superior medium is definitely face to face, so let’s try to make sure the vast majority of client meetings are held in person.

Getting a deal done in a single meeting is an extremely rare event in Japan.  Usually, the people we are talking to are not the final decision-makers and so they cannot give us a definite promise to buy our solution.  The exception would be firms run by the dictator owner/leader who controls everything and can make a decision on the spot.  Even in these cases, they usually want to get their people involved to some extent, so there is always going to be some due diligence required.  In most cases, the actual sale may come on the second or even third meeting.  Risk aversion is a big thing is Japan, so everyone is very careful to make sure their decision is the right one and that there will be no blow back on them, if things go bad.

I met the owner of a very successful accounting business at a networking event.  It was a very crowded affair and as is my want, I will just shanghai strangers and introduce myself. “Hi, my name is Greg” as I extend my hand to shake theirs, followed in short order by my reaching for my business card. 

I followed up to set up a meeting, which we had, and it went quite well.  He invited me back to meet his team.  The people I met were quite well established in the company and focused on the administrative side of things.  He was obviously thinking about the training arrangements and logistics and that is why he wanted me to explain what we will do to these two staff members.  He was the decision maker, but we still had to involve other members of the team to get the internal buy-in.  We had a third meeting with just him and I, to sort out the final arrangement and set dates, etc.

In another case, I met an insurance company representative at an event and followed up for a meeting.  He directed me to one of the staff who takes care of HR and I had an initial meeting to uncover their needs.  Following that discovery meeting, we had a second meeting where I presented our options to solve their issue.  There was a competition with other suppliers of training to see who they would choose.  We then had a third meeting, and he brought a colleague from their department and I explained what we do and what we do for them in that meeting.  Again, the decision had been taken as we had won the competition and now he was harmonising the next stages internally, to get it to become a reality.

Because the steps are elongated, I often don’t even bother to bring any Flyers with me to the first meeting and spend the whole time trying to best understand their needs and wants.  This way, the full hour of time usually allocated can help me clearly ascertain if we have what they need or not.  It is always a good idea to set up the next meeting at the end of the first meeting, because everyone in Tokyo is so busy you need to get into their schedules fast. Once I have done that, I bring the materials to the second meeting to support my recommendation and we go through them together.  It is not uncommon to have to come back a third time and go through specific elements once more, to help them gain a clearer understanding of the contents and its suitability for their situation.

Once you understand the cadence of doing business here, you are not getting exercised by how slow the process is or by trying to cram everything into one meeting and driving for a “yes” decision.  That is very unlikely, and we need to be thinking in terms of three meetings rather than one.  If we can get it done in two, then magic, but don’t expect that to happen.

Risk aversion and team decision-making ensure that things will move slowly.  No one is in a hurry to buy anything we have to offer and we have to keep that thought firmly in the front of our minds.  No one gets fired for being overly cautious in Japan and risk taking is not well regarded as a concept.  Patience and a full pipeline are the requirements for doing business here.  If you are desperate, then you will have a rocky time because no one is on your timeline and frankly, they don’t care.  We have to adjust ourselves to the way they do business, and trying to reverse the natural order of things here is a fool’s mission.  “Ride the wave in Japan” is always the best advice.

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.

I recently launched a new project called Fare Bella Figura – Make a Good Impression.  Every day I take a photograph of what I am wearing and then I go into detail about why I am wearing it and put it up on social media.  To my astonishment, these posts get very high impressions and a strong following.  It is ironic for me. I have written over 3000 articles on hard core subjects like sales, leadership and presentations, but these don’t get the same level of engagement. Like this article, I craft it for my audience and work hard on the content and yet articles about my suit choices get a lot more traction.  What I take away from this is people are interested in how we present ourselves in business.

The thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that first impressions are so important.  In sales, people judge us hard based on how we look, before we even have a chance to open our mouths.  If we don’t get that initial visual interaction correct, then we can be playing catchup to correct an unhelpful first take on us.  “Clothes maketh the man” is an old idea and is related to this first impressions equation. 

The other thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that I dress for the meetings I am going to have that day, rather than some random selection of what is back from the dry cleaners. We are going to make an impression with the buyer one way or another, so I want to be in control of that impression as much as is humanly possible. 

I believe there is a direct link between how we present ourselves and the degree of credibility we can instil in the client.  If we make a mess of the fabric and colour combinations, we are screaming “unsophisticated”.  I do not recommend for men to ask their wives for advice.  Study this “dress for success” topic for yourself and become the master of your own universe.

If we are turning up with ancient stains on our tie, or our suit, it is interpreted as sloppy and there is now a strong doubt about our quality consciousness. If our shoes are scuffed or not displaying a high shine finish, it says we are lazy, not detail oriented and unreliable.  The term “down at heel” means “poor” and it comes from the fact that the back of the heel of the shoe has worn down and has not been repaired.  Either we are too poor and obviously not a success in the sales profession to be able to repair it, or too indifferent and either way, it is a bad sign for the buyer.

If we are wearing a brown or tan belt with black shoes or vice versa, it says “hick” and someone who lacks common sense.  The exact matching tie and pocket square colour combination is another faux pas these days.  Would we want to accept these types of salesperson as our “trusted advisor”?  I doubt it.  I certainly wouldn’t take their advice on anything if they can’t even dress themselves correctly.

Suits too large or too small are another bad indicator.  They have either lost a lot of weight, but haven’t bothered to get their suit taken in, or they are getting chubbier and haven’t had the suit taken out, because they won’t spend the money.  It isn’t that expensive to alter an existing suit, and the difference is total. If the suit trousers are too long or too short, it looks off – go and get them altered or replace them.

Style and fashion are difficult to navigate.  Suit jacket lapels get skinnier, ties get wider and then get narrower, trousers get slimmer and then get fuller, socks get discarded when wearing shoes – all sorts of temporary fashion trends take over the dictates of what is appropriate.  Suits can last more than one fashion trend and you have to debate with yourself whether that wide lapel is still going to present the right image with the client when everyone else is wearing a narrower lapel these days. 

I struggle with this.  I have a favourite double breasted Versace suit from years ago and because the style is dated; I don’t get to wear it much or at all and that seems a waste.  However, if I am dressing for my client, then the answer is simple – leave it in the wardrobe for a day in the future when that trend makes a comeback.

My mantra when I leave the house every day is to check my look in the mirror and ask myself, “do I look like one of the most professional people in my industry?”.  If I don’t, then I go and make a few changes, until I am satisfied I can pass that test.  Here is a caveat. For a lot of men in Europe, they will be wearing a jacket and trouser combination, rather than a suit and the American trend is to much more casual clothing.  In certain industries, like IT, you will hardly see anyone wearing a suit.  Now I sell in Tokyo and everyone here wears a suit.  I remember I was so surprised when met the President of a gas stand and he was wearing a suit, so men’s suits are predominant here. Therefore, I dress for this business environment and you should do the same for your reality.

There is a correlation between the quality of our clothing and our personal financial success.  Buyers judge us based on what they see.  If we look cheap and nasty, they won’t want to trust us with their business because we don’t look successful.  On the other hand, if we are overdressed, it can have a negative consequence.  It can make them feel inferior, so the balance is important. 

If we roll up in our expensive Brioni or Kiton suits and Rolex watches, and they are just a salaryman tasked with purchasing goods and services for the company, they can feel inferior and experience some discomfort.  We look a bit too sharp to them and they don’t want to get cut.  As I say, getting the balance right is the key.

We will make an impression on the buyer based on what we wear, so we need to determine what that impression will be. We don’t leave it to luck or chance. We make sure it is the right choice – the one that leads to the deal getting done.

Do you need to sell more?  Is your sales manager stressing you about making your monthly sales quota? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43kQpsN )

To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj )

To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK)

If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training

greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま

Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki.

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan.

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Public speaking spots are a great way to get attention for ourselves and what we sell.  This is mass prospecting on steroids.  The key notion here is we are selling ourselves rather than our solution in detail.  This is an important delineation.  We want to outline the issue and tell the audience what can be done, but we hold back on the “how” piece.  This is a bit tricky, because the attendees are looking for the how bit, so that they can apply it to fix their issues by themselves.  We don’t want that because we don’t get paid.  We are here to fix their problem, not for them to DIY (Do It Yourself) their way to a solution.

All selling is public speaking and presentations skills.  However, very few salespeople are trained as speakers or presenters.  This is incongruous, isn’t it?  We need to be able to present to the one person in front of us or to hundreds of prospects all gathered together at an event.

First of all, we are selling our personal brand and then by extension the solution we are representing.  That is the correct order and just jumping to the solution won’t work.  Buyers buy us first and then what we sell.  We all know we can’t do good business with a bad guy or gal and our talk is a due diligence process to see if we can be trusted.

The dumb way to sell from stage is to provide all of the content up front and then come in at the end with the shiny sales pitch.  There is a discernable break in the flow and the audience braces themselves for the pitch.  This isn’t the way to do it.  We need to be interspersing our pitch throughout the talk, so there is no discernable shifting of gears by the speaker.  This way, there is nothing to brace against or push back on.

The way to do this is to determine what are the key problems and fears confronting the audience.  We have the fix for these and can be a trusted partner for them.  Once we have determined what are the key problems, we construct our talk to address all the most high priority needs in the time allotted.

The talk is broken up into specific chapters, rotating around the key issues.  We need to create hooks, which will grab the attention of the listeners. In each chapter, we outline the downside of not doing anything about fixing the problem we have raised.  We also talk about what needs to be done to fix it, but we don’t reveal how to fix it.  To get the point to register with the buyers, we pose rhetorical questions about what will happen if they don’t take action to deal with it.  We are painting a dismal picture for them of the future ramifications of leaving the mess as it is.

The fact that we understand the problem in detail tells the audience we are an expert in this area.  If we have some visible proof of our expertise, all the better.  We might point them to our books, blogs, podcasts or our video shows.  Today, all of these things are much easier to pull off than ten years ago.  For example, Amazon prints my books one at a time if I request it and so no garage is full of unsold books, which used to be the reality for most authors.

Today, creating blogs and pushing them out through social media gives us credibility at almost no cost.  The same with podcasts and videos.  There might be some small cost to recording the shows and hosting podcasts on a platform like I use with LibSyn, but really the cost is marginal.  YouTube hosts my videos and it is free.  Our mobile phones provide amazing quality for recording video and video editing software is not prohibitively expensive. Editing things yourself is possible in a way it wasn’t before.

This means we can project our expertise beyond the physical limits of the stage.  Let me give you a case study. Please go to LinkedIn and find my page.  You will see I am posting all the time on three subjects – leadership, sales and presentations.  If you scroll down through the feed, you will just see over three thousand posts.  My prospective buyers don’t need to read them all, but they can see there is a substantial collection of my expertise there. They can read what I publish and check it for themselves, whether it is good enough or not. This substantially bolsters my personal brand.  It also allows the buyers to follow up after the talk, to check me out further before they buy what I am selling.  For risk averse buyers, this is very important.

By incorporating the key hooks into the talk itself, using well-crafted questions to create fear that they may have trouble if they don’t fix a problem we have flagged, we eliminate any resistance against what we are selling.  When there is an obvious transition from sharing information to now selling, there is a large barrier created between the speaker and the audience.  They are thinking, “I love to buy, but I hate being sold. Now I am getting the hard sell by this speaker”. Doing it the way I have outlined, we never have any barrier, because we have been working the crowd all the way through the talk. 

If our questions hit the mark, they will want to know the “how” from us, after we have sold them the “why” and the “what”. We are aiming to create two concerns: 1. We haven’t considered that possibility and 2.  We have not prepared for that possibility.  If we are successful in doing this, then we will get sales. We have caused them to self-discover their own needs without us forcing it down their throats. This is ideal in sales.

Would the people who know you or meet you describe you as persuasive? Do you think you are persuasive enough? Persuasion power is the most important, but the most commonly lacking skill in the business world. Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. It is time to change things up and get that key skill.  There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/3VhvR2B )

To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj )

To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK)

If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training

Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま

Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki.

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan.

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Finding clients is expensive.  We pay Google a lot of money to buy search words. We pay them each time someone clicks on the link on the page we turn up on in their search algorithm.  We monitor the pay per click cost, naturally always striving the drive down the cost of client acquisition.  If we have the right type of product, we may be paying for sponsored posts to appear in targeted individuals’ social media feeds.  This is never an exact science, so there is still a fair bit of shotgun targeting going on, rather than sniper focus on buyers.  If we go to networking events, we may have to pay the organisation membership fee to be able to access the event and the fee for attending that meeting.  Or we may pay a usually very expensive amount to attend as a guest. If we do old style advertising, then we pay for the ad and it has a very brief shelf-life before it is discarded, usually unseen and unread, despite our best wordsmithing efforts with the copy.

Given how difficult and expensive it is to get a client, you wonder how we could be so crazy as to lose a client we have already spent time and treasure on acquiring?  It usually happens for a number of reasons.  Our solution fulfilled a need they had at that time, but that need is a one off or not a consistent feature of their spending.  It might be a seasonal spend, so there are limited time during the year to interact with the buyer and the connection isn’t as strong as it needs to be.  The company may have run out of dough because of the market, currency exchange rates, wars disrupting supply chains or a pandemic killing millions of people and disrupting the entire global economy.

Maybe our quality slipped up or our consistency of delivery wasn’t where it needed to be and the buyer punished us by going to another supplier.  Perhaps the buyer got moved around inside the client firm or quit and a new person has appeared.  The new broom has their own ideas and wants to mark out their territory by bringing in their own preferred suppliers and we are now out in the cold.  Or we have had a change of personnel. The person responsible for that firm has left the organisation and a new salesperson has to take over the account.  The chemistry is not there and the buyer moves their business to a rival firm.

Client bonds are very fragile and so many things can destroy the continuity of the business.  Even if you get on well with the buyer, they have bosses and maybe they have a different idea about how to move forward.  This travels all the way to the top of the organisation back in headquarters.  So many times the boss of the global business changes and a few months later you find yourself out on the street, because the purchasing has been centralised or rationalised or right sized or whatever and you are out.  I have seen so many deals fall over because someone up the decision-making tree has decided to override the decision of the buyer I am dealing with.  There is a policy change and now hiring is frozen, expenditures are reeled in and suppliers are cut loose.

A lot of this is beyond our control and we just have to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in business.  When we make the change, we can do a better job of controlling the transition from one salesperson to the next.  Unless we have fired the individual and they are out the door quick smart, there is usually a month period of notice that gives us the time to glue in the new person to the buyer.  Japan as a formalised cyclical redistribution of jobs every few years, so firms here are used to people moving. 

This should give us time for the existing client salesperson to take their replacement for them to meet the buyer and do the handover. What happens after that is the critical piece.  If the new representative doesn’t work on creating their own connections with the buyer, then the business continuity can be at risk.  This requires time together and busy salespeople may feel they are already maxed out taking care of their own existing clients.  That is a big mistake and this is where some strong guidance is required to make sure they make the time and build up a relationship with the buyer.  Just going once with your predecessor and then not making subsequent contact is a formula for losing the business. 

Yes it takes time to go visit these individuals, but so does finding new clients to replace the ones you lost.  We know that existing clients are like gold. We need to keep them close to us, but not everyone lives that truth and problems arise. Building chemistry between two strangers doesn’t happen overnight and it requires great skill in communication and time management to get all the right synchronisation to occur.  We need to take this transition process very seriously and make sure everyone knows their role and responsibilities. 

Despite our best efforts, it does happen that the change in staff leads to a loss of the business.  Obviously, we need to make sure that is a rarity.  We should assume the business will continue and then work backwards and decide what has to happen to make sure that becomes the reality.  Strong boss leadership is needed here, because busy salespeople can justify just about anything to themselves.  They need to be set the task and then we monitor what they are doing to safeguard that client relationship.  Don’t leave anything to chance or good luck.  Let’s make our own luck.

Salespeople are good talkers.  In fact, they are often so good, they decide to do all the talking.  They try to browbeat the buyer into submission. Endless details are shared with the client about the intricacies of the widget, expecting that the features will sell the product or service.  Do we buy features though? 

Actually, we buy evidence that this has worked for another buyer very similar to us, in a very similar current situation in their business.  We are looking for proof to reduce our risk.  To get us to the proof point, we make a big deal about how the buyer can apply the benefits of our solution inside their company.  Is that what happens in reality though? 

In Japan, judging by what our clients tell us and by the raw material we find attending our training classes, it would be a miracle if the salesperson went through these critical five phases of the explanation of the solution: 1. feature 2. benefit 3. application of the benefit  4. evidence and 5. trial close.  Most Japanese salespeople are absolute experts on the most intimate details to do with the features. However, they completely forget to expand that information to elucidate the benefits and beyond that, they have no clue what is supposed to come next.

In fact, finding a similar client in a similar situation in the current market is usually a stretch for us in sales.  Even if we had such a rare case, often we are precluded from talking about it because of certain clauses in the contract or by a Non-Disclosure Agreement we signed.

How do we prove what we are saying then?  This is where a trial session or a demonstration comes in handy.  We can talk as much as we like about how great we are and our solution, but seeing is believing.  If it is equipment, then running the machine can show whether the output will satisfy the demands of the buyer.  If it is a service, we may have to recreate the situation and show how we do things.

Recently we did both.  We had a request from one of Japan’s biggest financial institutions to run a sales training session, to see if we have what they want for their 3000 person sales team.  In any trial, we have to make a decision on what we will choose for the content? 

My advice would always be to choose the most difficult content.  Isolate out the areas where everyone really struggles.  This is usually the most relevant content and also the content which they currently have the most trouble with too.  If the content is too easy, then they will think they can do it themselves and therefore they don’t need us. 

In the services sector, this also raises the bar on the delivery side of things.  Complex content needs a lot of expertise to deliver it professionally.  If they are thinking to bring it in-house, they may watch the session and decide that they do not have the right resources to pull that off by themselves.  Ergo, they have to buy from us to eliminate the gap they are facing between where they are and where they want to be.

In a demonstration, similar to a trial session, getting the participants to get their hands dirty is critical.  Theory is fine, but doing it for real is a totally different thing.  I was teaching a module on “How To Disagree Agreeably” to the leadership team of one of the 5 star hotels here in Tokyo.  We went through the theory and then we had the role play practice.  It was revealing how much they struggled to replace their old habits with what they had just learnt.  It really brought home the importance of not just understanding things intellectually, but the importance of getting it to gel inside yourself and make it your own.

When we run a session or a demonstration, the client can see the content relevancy for their need and our expertise to deliver it to the team.  We can usually customise the content further, if it is not quite where they need it.  The delivery part shows our professional standards, our ability to relate to the team and whether we can be trusted. We have talked up a big game in the first few meetings about how great we are and now it is “game time” to show what we have.  These impressions have to match up or there is no trust.  No trust means no sale and we can’t have that outcome, can we!

I am very active networking here in Tokyo, scouring high and low for likely buyers of our training solutions.  I attend with one purpose – “work the room” and as a Grant Cardone likes to say, find out “who’s got my money”.  I have compressed my pitch down to ten seconds when I meet a possible buyer at an event. My meishi business card is the tool of choice in this regard.  Most people here have English on one side and Japanese on the other.  I was like that too until I got smarter about selling our services.

Typically, I would hand over my business card - Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training.  The recipient would then ask me “what do you do?”. I realised I needed to have a better organised approach to that frequent question.  Knowing that we do better remembering things we hear and see at the same time, I created two cards – one for English and one for Japanese. 

On the front of my card is all the logistical information – title, location and contact details.  On the rear of the card is the pitch deck. On that side, I note we are experts in “soft skills”  training, we have been here in Japan for 61 years and around the world for 112 years and that we cover five main areas – communication, sales, leadership, presentations and diversity, equity and inclusion.  At this point I ask them which one of these they need the most at their firm and then I shut up.  In ten seconds, I have them telling me their needs. This opens up the opportunity to visit them after the event and go through what we might be able to do for them. It is not the right occasion to attempt to have that conversation in a busy networking event. By the way, if they say, “all of them”, I still ask them which one is of the most interest. I need to get them to prioritise otherwise, it is left too vague and the conversation cannot advance.

Naturally, I write to them immediately and try to set up the appointment.  Most people ghost me and don’t reply.  I know everyone is busy, so I also know I have to keep following up until they consent or tell me to buzz off.  Those who agree to meet will answer my questions and listen to what we have.  At this point, things slow down as they work their way through the labyrinth behind the meeting room wall, where their decision-making colleagues sit – out of my sight and touch.  They need to reach a consensus internally, to do the training and pay the dough.

The problem is they are never on my timetable with their decision-making.  Don’t they know I have a monthly target to hit?  Don’t they know we need money now, not later?  Aren’t they aware we don’t like 60 and 90 day payment terms, because that is grossly unfair to the little guy? 

So often when we complete a deal and I look back at the spark of that deal, going from the initial ten second pitch deck networking event chance encounter, to the time of payment, it can be six months or more.  If you have a cash flow issue in your firm, that is a big problem.  Yes, you can discount fees to speed up payment and you get less, but you get it faster. The better approach is to keep stacking your funnel with deals, so that if one is slow to fruition or falls over, you are not wiped out. 

Deals falling over is super painful.  You have spent a ton of time marshaling this payday through their elaborate and baroque system. Everyone is ready to go, the contract is agreed by their legal beagles and then “someone” intervenes and scuppers the entire enterprise.  That payday may happen or it may not happen, but if that is all you have on the go, then you are naked and alone in a harsh world of pain.

I am reminded of watching a show on television when I was a kid.  A performer was keeping plates spinning on top of cane sticks.  As one would falter, they would leap in and wobble the cane stick to get the plate back to maximum speed.  It was always fast-paced and frantic. I am sure it must have been incredibly stressful for the artist.  That is the sales life to me.  We are busily spinning the plates to make sure none fall and we get a deal done and get paid.

Too many plates and the things start to go awry or too few plates and you don’t get fed.  Finding the balance is difficult, but I reckon we should always err on the side of too many deals rather that not enough.  We can always work harder to make the deals happen. 

There is a contradiction between being so busy we can’t prospect and being able to spend a lot of time prospecting, but not getting paid yet. This is the plague of coaches and consultants.  If they are in the act of coaching or consulting, they are getting paid but are not prospecting.  You don’t get paid for prospecting. So no earner there while you search for the next client.

There is never a balance and we have to live with that inequity, because that is the sales life. The key is to keep in mind the buyer is never on your timetable. You need to stack the funnel all the time, no matter how busy you become.  If you don’t, you enter the Valley Of Sales Death as the deal flow evaporates and you have no clients in the funnel and therefore no money coming in for months.

To keep those plates spinning, we need to be out there finding new clients, prospecting, following up, being ghosted with monotonous regularity, but never giving up is the answer.  Ryan Serhant says he keeps following up with potential clients until they die and he never gives up.  Let’s be like Grant and find out who has our money and be like Ryan and never give up chasing them down.

Access to social media has really democratised salespeople’s ability to sell themselves to a broader audience.  Once upon a time, we were reliant on the efforts of the marketing team to get the message out and, in rare cases, the PR team to promote us.  Neither group saw it as their job to help us as a salesperson, and they were more concentrated on the brand.  Today we have the world at our beck and call through social media.

We can promote ourselves through our intellectual property.  We can post blogs on areas of our expertise.  We can do video and upload that to YouTube, one of the biggest and most powerful search engines.  There are so many paths to the mountaintop, and they are all free.  Of course, the platforms are looking for money and so they shaft us and only show our stuff to a minute section of our followers, but the price is right.

I was making this point in a recent speech to the American Chamber here in Tokyo, which you can see on YouTube.  One question following my recommendation to salespeople to get out there and promote theirexpertise and experience, was “what about the haters?”.  It is a good point and if you are delicate and sensitive, then social media could be a bruising encounter for you and your content.  Or like me, you can just ignore it and work on the basis that people who get it know you are an expert, because they consume your content and they will ignore the haters as well.

Let me provide a real life case study for you. I was recently involved in a thread on LinkedIn responding to a post by the author about promoting your credentials when speaking in Japan, otherwise the audience won’t trust what you say.  I didn’t agree with the way this was characterised by the author and so added my “expert” comment.  Most people just ignored what I was saying, because they had what they wanted to say as their main interest and fair enough.  One person though said, “master trainer and executive coach coming in to bash an entire 125 million people country as non-professional in a single comment and blatantly disregard any suggestion on how to customize the message to appeal to a specific audience. Excellent communication strategy! 笑”.

So what would you do with this type of criticism? 

We can ignore it, as I suggested during my AmCham speech, or we can choose to expose it.  On this occasion, I decided to expose it.  This was my reply, “tell us your experience and share your insights. I am relating mine based on my experience here since 1979 and over 550 public speeches in Japan. Your comment doesn’t match with what I am suggesting from what I can see. What do you suggest that is diametrically opposed to what I am saying? I have published 373 blogs on LinkedIn on presenting in Japan and the same number of recordings for my podcast The Japan Presentations Series and published my book Japan Presentations Mastery as well as teaching the High Impact Presentations course. How about you - tell us what you have done?”.

As you see, I am heaping on my own credibility in my reply and asking the critic to pony up and tell us their credentials.  I chose this route for a simple reason. I have a very high profile here because I have published 7 books, including three best sellers, and release six audio podcasts and three video podcasts a week. I also pump out four additional videos a day through LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram and Threads.  You may not have this type of onslaught happening and can simply ignore the irritation.  I didn’t plan it this way, but I also drown out any critics, because of the constant flow of content I keep posting every day.  Their previous negative posting gets pushed down the fold in the screen and just disappears.  It remains high in their postings on their page, but is crushed by my new posts on my page and is soon forgotten.

In my reply, I made a special point of not criticising the person making the negative comment, but challenged them to put up and tell us what they would recommend.  This reply comes across as reasonable and not getting bogged down in the mud and the blood of personal recriminations. Never go there, because this is our public profile and we have to maintain our professional decorum.

Will I keep going in my responses, if they keep adding criticisms?  Probably not.  They have been challenged to show what they know. If they go the personal attack route, it is better to stand above the riffraff and ignore their salvos.  People reading the thread will see they have got no experience or expertise and will discount what they say as mere opinion.

As salespeople, we should use social media etc., to get our expertise out there for potential buyers to find us and to assure potential buyers we meet, that we are the real deal.  Today, buyers will search us out before they meet us to better understand who they are dealing with. 

Now, if they searched on you, what will they find?  In my case, everything is business.  I chose to not to mix business with personal on social media. I want to present myself as an expert in leadership, sales, communications and presentations because as a training company, that is what we provide to our clients.  It is always congruent. I don’t stray from those areas because I am conscious I have a limit to my time and my expertise.  I try to control what the potential buyer sees from me.  In this way, I can control my personal and professional brand.

Japan is facing a serious shortage of staff in many industries.  The job-to-applicant ratio rose to 1.28, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced recently. The ratio means there were 128 job openings for every 100 job seekers.The figure has not yet reached the pre-pandemic level of 1.6 in 2019. The hospitality sector in particular, lost a lot of part-time staff during Covid and they haven’t returned in numbers sufficient to match the needs of employers.  Hotels are getting back to pre-Covid occupancy rates, but they worry they don’t have enough staff to clean rooms and run the Hotel at the standards they adhere to.  In July, the Japan Times noted 75.5% of surveyed hotel operators said they face shortages of regular employees while 78% said they lack part-time and other nonregular workers.

The Immigration Services Agency recently announced the total number of foreigners in Japan has topped 3 million for the first time. The Japanese government has created a new skilled workers No. 2 visa category, just for the construction and shipbuilding industries. The Nikkei Asia in April quoted the Japan International Cooperation Agency estimates that, given Japan’s labor shortage, reaching the government’s economic growth target for 2040 would require nearly quadrupling the number of foreign workers to 6.74 million.

This is a profound change for Japan, which as a society highly values conformity and harmony.  No “melting pot” for Japan. Foreigners in large numbers may threaten that harmony, because they don’t appreciate how things work here.  The Government is facing that labor shortage head on though and creating more visa availability for foreign labourers to enter Japan and do the jobs locals don’t want to do. 

In the white collar world, the language barrier and the weak yen, both guarantee that there won’t be a rush of foreigners coming here to take up jobs.  That means that for most multi-national companies, there will continue to be a war for talent for Japanese staff.  If you require English as well, the pool of talent available becomes tiny.  If you are a large corporation, you will have deep pockets and can offer large base salaries to attract people to join you.  If you are a small to medium size business, then the nightmare has already started and will only get worse.

The Council for the Creation of Future Education, chaired by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, has the goal for Japanese students studying abroad to reach 150,000 students seeking to earn degrees by 2033. The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō) conducted a survey in 2022 which showed 30% of new employees quit their jobs in the first three years. This more mobile younger group, called the Dai Ni Shinsotsu (second stage fresh graduates) will be attractive to target, especially those with international exposure, better English and a few years of work experience.  They will still need extensive training, though.

In the world of sales in Japan, the picture is very grim.  If you need English speaking capability, the pool of talent available is very shallow and we are all competing fiercely for a limited resource. In my hiring experience, I have noticed over the last seven years that salespeople are becoming more expensive and certainly very expensive relative to their ability. The vast majority of salespeople everywhere are untrained and they are working it out by trial and error.  Japan is just the same.  Assuming that someone knows what they are doing after working for a number of years in sales is too optimistic in my experience.  Bosses need to accept that they will need to give these salespeople training to get their skills to the levels required.  We teach a lot of salespeople here and we notice some common trends. They need particular work on asking questions to fully understand the buyer’s needs rather than just delivering their pitch. Also, they need help on handling pushback from the client on pricing in Japan. The typical response here to drop the price by 20%, when confronted with the buyer’s “your price is too high” statement, isn’t the best choice. They need to be taught how to handle objections properly.

The sales staff supply shortage moves the locus of power to Japanese salespeople.  They know they are in strong demand and they can be very picky about who they join.  The resume flow is also very brittle and thin.  The range of choices is not there and if you get to interview someone, you are thinking this is a good day at work.  Like me, if you have been hiring people on and off over many years, the first thing you notice is the quality is going south at a rapid clip. 

Facing sub-standard talent, we have to make some serious adjustments.  We have to totally rework our on-boarding process and make it much longer, more comprehensive and intensive.  We need to really train people hard during the Probation period, so we need a longer period of six months. The quality of people we will meet will likely stay low and more often than not, they are the dregs of this Japan sales life. 

We have to get someone, so we will hire the upper echelons of these dregs of the sales world here in Japan. They are going to need serious, professional sales training and considerable constant coaching to get them up to speed.  This is going to be resource heavy. The improvement process won’t be fast either, so we have to accept that additional burden on our small businesses.  Our old idea that we can just hire them in and then fire them when they don’t perform is well out of date.  Current entry funnels are too shallow and so we will have few choices.

Our future Japan sales staffing prospects look bleak, choices are few and we must make legendary compromises. The answer is to invest in training our salespeople in order for us to survive.

Sales people are in massive competition today, with all the distractions that are out there for the client’s attention.

We want to get our message across about how we can help build the client’s business, but it is a tough row to hoe because of all the competition we face from meetings, emails and social media. There are so many things that are occupying the minds of our clients and our buyers before we get to talk to them. We have the appointment, we have their time; we turn up on the day. But inside their minds, there’s a lot going on about what has already happened in the day and what is going to happen in the day. They are thinking about many things, but not about us.

There’s a great little acronym, C A R E S  cares, which will help us break through some of that competition we have for their attention.

C stands for compliment. When you go to someone’s office, there might be something there that’s really spectacular or something that’s very impressive, so pay them a compliment. But don’t pay them the sort of compliment that every other salesperson coming through the door is giving them.

There’s a company here who have a very beautiful foyer entrance wall.  It is a very spectacular wall feature. Now, I know every single salesperson who goes there will say, “Oh, what a spectacular wall feature”. We have to do better than that. We can go in say, “You have a beautiful office.  Have you found that it has really impacted the motivation of the team since you moved here?” We have to say something a bit more intelligent. We are now asking about the impact of the feature on their business. Importantly, we are now on a business topic.

A is for Ask.  We ask a question. It might be something like, “how have you found things going with the prospect of a rise in taxes. Is your company confident that this is not going to have a big impact on your business?” So we get them into a business discussion straight away about where their business is going, getting them to talk about how they see the future. This is good for us, because we get an idea, a glimpse, into where they’re going.

R is for referral. Now a referral could be someone who’s introduced us to them or someone that maybe we know mutually. “I was talking to Takeshi the other day and he said you guys are doing a great job over here. He suggested, maybe I should come and talk to you, and so here I am today. I’d like to really find out a bit more about your business. Let’s see if there is any possibility where we we can help you take your business even further”. We can say something like that to get into a business discussion.  We break into what they have been thinking, to move them to where we can go with our conversation today.

E is for educate. Now as salespeople, we often turn up, and we have this great questioning model. We want to ask a lot of questions. We want to find out about their business, where they want to go with it, what is stopping them, what is it going to mean for them if we can see some success, etc. The problem is, this is all very much one way traffic in our favour.

It is more important that we can come in and talk about something which is really valuable to them. We can share some information we’ve picked up in the market, something we have seen in the media or something we have seen that is relevant to their industry or their sector of the industry. We can talk intelligently about these topics because when we are in sales, often we are dealing with a very broad range of industries and companies. We will see something working in another industry which might have some good benefit to them in their industry. When we connect the ideas together, they see a benefit in talking to us because they are being provided with some information they didn’t have to help grow their business.

Lastly S is for startle.

Now this is a technique where you can break through all the competition going on in their minds, which is conflicting with our delivery of the message. We need something which is really going to make them sit up and take notice. For example, “The youth population in Japan has halved in the last twenty years. It is going halve again in the next thirty years.  We are going to run out of people for staffing our companies. We will run out of clients. What do you think about this for your company? What are your specific market demographic prospects? How are you going to deal with this major change?”.

From the very start of the conversation, we get them on to a business topic.  We get them thinking about business with us. From this point, we are going to move along the sales cycle and go into the sales questioning phase. The bridge to our solutions explanation will be our credibility statement.

 This CARE formula is useful to get a little bit of conversation going, so they start to feel comfortable with us. They will like us, and trust us, so we that can ask for permission to ask questions to really dig in and fully understand them. CARES is a great way to break into a very packed day for a very busy buyer and get them to concentrate on our conversation. We slay all distractions.  If we can do that, then we will have a much better sales conversation. This is how we can get great outcomes, which will work for everybody.

Our circle of friends will usually be people with whom we share a lot of commonalities.  Our viewpoints merge, our interests are similar, we like the same types of things.  We get on easily.  Life however throws us many curved balls, as meet new people who are not like us. Often we struggle when dealing with them.  There are nine tried and true human relations principles we can use to improve our ability to get on with everyone, rather than just a select few who are more like us.  I am going to analyse some different types of people we are likely to run into and align the principles with each type.  This will create a handy guide on how to do better with people – all sorts of different people. 

Some of these principles in the wrong hands can stray into manipulation, but that is not the goal here.  We want to be able to form a good relationship with people who are different to us, so that means we have to make some changes to how we communicate with different types of individuals.  You can have one mode of communication and be great with people like you, but you lose all of the others and we don’t want that.

The easiest type for me to deal with is the “time is money” type because that is how I am wired.  This type is busy, businesslike, interested in outcomes, results, revenues, tolerates no excuses and is driven hard by their own standards and self-expectations.  Don’t ever whine to them about anything, because they don’t care and they hate negativity.  Don’t bother giving them appreciation because they sense flattery and doubt it. They don’t care what you think.  They are driven by their running theirown race and your opinion is irrelevant.   

They are perpetually interested in doing better, so we can arouse in them an interest in doing new things which will get them to their goals.  You can try and become genuinely interested in them, but actually, they don’t care because they are totally self-contained.

Smiling is good, but they don’t tend to do a lot themselves because they are serious people, focused on winning.  Using their name is good because they like to hear that magical sound, but don’t overdo it or they will think you are conning them.  

Be prepared to listen to them pontificate and tell you what they think.  Don’t interrupt them, cut them off or finish their sentences – they hate that when they are talking. Your role is to sit there quietly and listen.  They have a lot to say so get them talking, especially about themselves.   

Talk about the things they are interested in and despite how busy they are they will make time for you.  You are warned beforehand that you only have fifteen minutes, because they are so busy.  In fact, you spend ninety minutes talking with them because you found a topic which excites them. You don’t have to say anything to make them feel important – they already know they are and don’t care what you think.

The opposite type is the most difficult for me to deal with and these are the quiet, thoughtful, reserved people who border on timidity.  They like to have a cup of tea to get to know you before they can open up to you. My energy overwhelms them, so I have to really tone it down when dealing with them. 

They like people so don’t criticise others to them because they want to see the best in everyone.  They do enjoy honest appreciation, so share that with them.  They are interested in people, so if you have something in mind which benefits others, they will become interested in learning more. Smiling is good because they like to smile too. Using their name is good but again don’t overdo it.

Be a good listener and get them talking about themselves. They enjoy sharing their experiences and insights. Let them to do most of the talking because they feel comfortable when they are in control. Talk about the things they are interested in and they will grow close to you, because they feel the simpatico. 

Make them feel important but do it sincerely, honestly.  Everyone is an expert with flattery so don’t go there.  Find things you admire about them and express your feelings to them openly, genuinely.

Another personality type I struggle with is the person who likes data, proof, evidence, testimonials and numbers to three decimal places.  Don’t bother criticising anyone to them because unless you bring overwhelming evidence, they don’t believe it and basically they don’t care anyway. 

Don’t bother giving them sincere appreciation, because words don’t count with them. You need to stump up the evidence before they are going to take any notice. You can get them interested in topics as long as you are supplying the proof and data. They will want a lot of it, because they have an insatiable appetite for information. They are not interested in you becoming interested in them.  That is a diversion away from the numbers and they are not excited by what you may think about them. 

Smiling is not a bad thing, but they don’t do much of it themselves, because they are serious people. Using their name isn’t important to them, so don’t bother. You will have a lot of difficulty getting them talking about themselves, because that has nothing to do with the business at hand. It feels invasive for them.

The topics you should address should only be those of interest to them. Find out what they are interested in or concerned about and go deep there. Don’t bother trying to make them feel important – your opinion is worthless.

The opposite type is the big picture, don’t drag me into the weeds, very outgoing person who enjoys people and parties. Don’t criticise anyone to them because they are doers and love positivity. They enjoy sincere, honest appreciation because they have a high self-image.

If you find out what they want and what they are interested in, they will enjoy talking about those items until the cows come home. They want people to be interested in them so they are happy to share a lot about themselves to everyone.

Smiling is easy for them and they like it when you do the same. They love the sound of their own name but again don’t overdo it. Be a good listener because they have a lot to say and will willing share a lot of information with you about them. Find the topics they are interested in and talk about those and they will be very happy. Make them feel important in an honest, sincere way that doesn’t smack of flattery or sycophancy. 

As I mentioned, some of these principles in the hands of evil people can be used for manipulation.  Our goals is to get on well with all types of people. With that goal in mind, we switch our communication style from what we like to what they like.   We stay the same personality style but we speak different languages, depending on who we are speaking with. 

Of course you can say, “I am me. Take it or leave it”.  That is fine and you will get on with all of the people who are similar to you. If you want to get on with people unlike you, then try these principles with the various types you meet and see the results.

In the first two parts of this three part series we have gone deep on how to become known and liked by buyers.  That is all very well, but if they don’t trust us, they won’t buy our solutions if they can avoid it.  If you are in an industry where the supply side is totally restricted and the buyers have to compete for supply, then lucky you. I have never had that luxury and I would guess 99.9% of salespeople are in my boat. 

How do we get buyers to trust us?  The answer is in our kokorogamae.  This is our true intention.  What is in our hearts as salespeople?  Are we focused on what we get, our commissions, our new car, our benefit, making our targets to get the Sales Director’s jackboot off our neck?  Or are we focused on the buyer’s interests.  Is our success wrapped up inside the buyer’s success?  One of my favourite sales trainers is Zig Ziglar, whose famous insight is: “you can get everything you want in this life, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.  Zig has passed away already, but he hit on a profound building block of gaining buyer trust with his philosophy. 

Speaking of which, do you have a sales philosophy?  Have you set out your approach to sales, to establish the guardrails and boundaries of your actions and behaviours.  Of course, a wonderful sales philosophy is easy to embrace.  Remember though that everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth.  In sales, that means not selling and if you are on 100% commission that means not eating.  Even if you are not on 100% commission, it means getting fired and having to find another job.

Are you pushing certain solutions to buyers because they are the group with the highest commissions for you?  Are you putting your personal interests ahead of those of the buyer?  When things are going well, then all of these issues can be eliminated, but when you are hungry and can’t support your family, then your own rules get thrown out the window and you become desperate.

There is nothing worse in the business world than a desperate salesperson.  They will damage two brands in perpetuity.  One will be the company brand. They will create distrust of their company because why would an honest, reputable, reliable company tolerate dodgy salespeople?  The other brand is their personal brand as a businessperson.  I remember a salesperson relating to me how he had to keep going to new towns in the US to find new clients, because the quality of his solution was bad and once the buyers discovered that fact, he couldn’t show his face in that town again.  That was a companywide issue, but I silently asked myself why did he keep working for that dodgy company?  What was his kokorogamae as a salesperson?

In another case, we were talking with a well-known businessperson here in Tokyo, about a possible collaboration, when up popped this note in my social media feed;  “Has anyone seem Mr. X, because he owes me money?”.  Wow!  I knew the author of this social media post, so I went online and checked Mr. X out a bit more thoroughly and what a tangled mess I found. So many accusations of no trust and broken trust that it was scary.  Needless to say, we stopped the talks with him immediately.  What was his kokorogamae?  His reputation never recovered from this incident.

My point of view is that if you are not making it in sales, then get out and leave the profession to the rest of us, who know what we are doing and who have the correct kokorogamae.  All that bad actors do is pollute our profession and make it that much harder for the vast majority of us to win the trust of our buyers.

When you have the interest of the buyer at the forefront of your approach to the deal, then you will always make the right decisions.  Your will take the long term view and try and build up a reputation of being trusted and always dealing fairly with everyone.  That personal brand is worth a fortune and only an idiot would do anything to destroy it. 

It takes a lot of consistency to build it and this is where having a correct kokorogamae comes in to guide us, when we have to make tough decisions.  If we are in a transactional business model then maybe none of this matters.  But seriously, is that the type of sales life we want? Don’t we want to have a solid book of repeat business, with buyers who trust us and who appreciate our kokorgamae? 

We all know what is the right thing to do. We have to make a choice about whether we are going to defend that approach, against all of the pressure and temptations which will arise or not. Yes, sometimes we will make less money on a sale.  Yes, sometimes we will leave money on the table in a sale.  But if our mindset is long-term, then we can amortise these occasions against a long successful career in sales. We will benefit a lot more from being the choice of partner by our buyers, because they know we are honest, can be trusted and we always have their interests as our first priority.

Where do you locate your kokorogamae – your true intention?

 In Part One, we went deep on the KNOW Factor in sales and today we turn to why we need to be likeable.  Actually, do we need buyers to like us? Maybe not in every case, but it doesn’t hurt does it?  As a buyer yourself, would you rather deal with someone you like, rather than a person you didn’t like?  We will all prefer to work with people we like, but what makes us likeable?

Some clients we get on with like a house on fire and others not so much.  In my case, I want to turn all of my clients into my friends, and I want a lifetime relationship with all of them.  Does it always work out that way? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I should stop trying for that outcome.

We tend to be most comfortable with people who are like us, who have similar interests and who are easy to talk to.  To get on well with others we need to know how they work.  None of this is an accident, by the way. We are constantly sorting through the people we meet to find those who are the most similar to us. This is the easiest group for us to deal with.  

The problem comes from dealing with the rest of the population, who are not like us. There are four basic personality styles we need to be aware of, to help us understand how we should communicate and work with different types of clients.  We want to capture all of the business available and not just a share based around our comfort.  What if we can make buyers who are nothing like us feel quite comfortable in dealing with us?  Won’t that open the door to doing more business and isn’t that what we want?   

To do all of this we have to make two decisions when we meet buyers.  The first decision is to place them on a horizontal scale of whether they are highly assertive or not.  If they are assertive we place them on the right of that scale. If they are not assertive, we locate them on the left side.  How do we tell?  If they have strong views on a subject and readily state their opinion, they are assertive.  If they rarely venture their opinion and seem passive, then they are less assertive. 

The other decision is on a vertical scale, regarding whether they are outcome driven on the bottom of the scale or more interested in people on the top of the scale.  How do we tell which one they are?  If they talk about KPIs, ROI, targets, goals, etc., then they are going to be results oriented.  If they talk about how to get the team to work well together and how to build a strong culture etc., then they will be people oriented.  This locates them on the top of the scale.

This gives us a four-quadrant frame to understand better who we are talking to.  Amiables are top left. They are less assertive and very people oriented.  When we meet them, we should be talking about how the solution we are offering will positively impact their people.  We should take our time, have a cup of tea and reduce our voice strength and body energy when we are with them.   

I was supposed to give the new guy a brief about my Division, when he joined the firm.  I started out explaining the detail and he immediately diverted me to talk about people we both knew.  I never did brief him on what my division did, because he spent the whole time talking about people – definitely an Amiable.

Smile when you talk to them and be friendly. Give them honest, sincere appreciation. Make it real and not flattery. If you mention some positive attribute back it up with proof, so that they know it is real and not some dodgy salesperson snake oil. We should not cut them off or finish their sentences when they are talking and we should encourage them to do as much talking as possible.  Try to be genuinely interested in them. We should use their name when we are talking to them - just don’t overdo it.

The direct opposite type is bottom right in the frame - the Driver, with which I am very familiar!  They don’t care about your smiles, because they are results and outcome oriented and have little time for small talk. They want to get down to business and hear about the outcomes they can expect.  “Time is money” is their mantra, so don’t waste their time wanting to have a cup of tea together and get to know each other.  Be high energy, strong in voice and body language.

If that is not your natural play, then you have to switch it up when you are with them or you will just irritate them. Now that is not the position a seller wants to find themselves in. Be strong and get straight into the three reasons why they should buy your solution, the concrete measurable results this will bring and then get the hell out of their office.  They like that.

I was in a sales meeting with a foreign executive, newly arrived in Japan, talking to him for the first time.  As he joined me while I was waiting in the meeting room, I began to engage him in some typical small talk.  After five seconds of this, he cut me off very abruptly and said , “let’s get down to business”.  That told me straight away he was a Driver and I knew I had to be quick, concise, confident and assertive with him.  We did the deal for training for his leaders in fifteen minutes in that meeting, because he was a busy man and had other things to do.  A classic Driver.

Never criticise the competition, the government or the weather to them. Instead, always be positive and upbeat.  Use their name, because that is music to their ears. Make them feel important, but do it sincerely.  They are usually powerful people with a lot of confidence and often big egos.  Get them to talk about themselves, because that is a favourite subject. Talk in terms of their interests and cut everything else out of your conversation. 

Work on supplying what they want and keep that conversation tight.  Don’t keep adding details, because they are interested in outcomes not getting bogged down in the weeds.   Superfluous details just dilute your key messages.  Don’t bother complementing them to get into their good books. They don’t need you approbation or any one else’s for that matter. They just dismiss it as propaganda and pap. They are inwardly directed and emotionally independent. 

Bottom left is the Analytical. They are not demonstrative and can be rather quiet. Your dynamic salesperson energy needs to be toned right down and you should mirror their body language as much as possible. Speak quietly and be circumspect in what you say. They love numbers to three decimal places, want proof, testimonials, evidence and lots and lots of data. They don’t care much about people, but they do care about numbers, so come bearing lots of numbers for them.  Try to get them talking, but don’t expect them to share much about themselves.  Don’t bother flattering them, they are not interested in what you think.  Bring proof to back up what you are saying.

Top right are the Expressives.  They are big picture people, who don’t like masses of detail.  They are usually high energy and we have to match that energy. They like people and enjoy talking, so smile and get them talking about themselves – a favourite subject.  They appreciate honest, sincere appreciation, because it agrees with their own positive, confident self-image.  Use their name, because that is a sound they like.  Make them feel important, but avoid anything which smacks of flattery, because that insults their intelligence.

We are simultaneously more than one of these styles. I am a Driver, but when I am selling, leading or training, I move up to the Expressive personality type.  When I am looking at the results forecast and the P&L, I move across to the Analytical.  In my case, I rarely wander into Amiable territory though. 

We cannot just work well with people who are the same personality style as us, because that means we are missing out on three quarters of our buyers.  We have to migrate our communication delivery to other styles’ preferences, depending on who we are dealing with.  Does that mean we will suffer severe psychological problems and become schizophrenic?  No! We keep our own individual style within ourselves, but we learn to speak the languages preferred by the other styles. We stay the same, but we change the language we use, depending on who we are talking to. 

As human beings, we all like people who are more like us, those who have similar ideas and interests.  As salespeople, we have to be flexible and quickly understand who is in front of us and then change our communication and behaviour to suit.  Is this deceitful?  No, we are just adapting how we do things, to how they like things done. We still offer the same wonderful solutions, but we change the way we explain the solutions to a format that they can easily accept.

To be liked by buyers, we need to understand where they are coming from and meet them there.

In Part Three we will look at how to be trusted by your buyers.

We have all heard this bromide about Know, Like and Trust in sales, but have we really deeply explored what it means in today’s post-Covid business climate?  Over the next three contributions, I am going to go deep on these three aspects of sales.  

The Marketing Department will work on promoting the brand, but it very rare that they ever promote individual salespeople.  Let’s assume they won’t be spending any money on us and so we are on our own. Grant Cardone is a really hard driving, hard core American sales trainer who I like, but who I know would be a disaster in Japan. Nevertheless, he makes a very good point when he says in sales we are all invisible.  This is the “know” problem. How can people buy from us, if they have never heard of us.  

During Covid, the entire networking apparatus just broke down.  Participating in online events, we could see people trapped in their tiny little boxes on screen, but we couldn’t connect with them.  What a frustrating time that was in the sales profession.  Fortunately, networking at live events is now back in fashion. Are you making the most of this opportunity?  This is such a great chance to meet people and make a personal connection directly with buyers and allow us to set up a sales call with them.  Within ten seconds you should be able to tell if this person is a prospect or not. If they are not, then go find someone who is.  It is time to get back out there and “work the room”.

Cold calling was a nightmare too.  The decision-makers were camped out at home and we didn’t have the foresight to collect their mobile numbers prior to the pandemic.  That meant a call to the general number was the only alternative.  Astonishingly, many firms I called hadn’t mastered the logistics of remote work. They had a central phone number, but no one was picking up the phone.  What a mess.  Even if you rang the central number and managed to speak with a human being, they were savage beasts, hell bent on getting rid of salespeople. 

They are still savage beasts post-Covid and getting through to buyers is still tough, tough, tough. Target the person you want to connect with and send them a package by mail and that same junior person who was blocking your call from getting through will diligently place that parcel on their desk for you.  Existing clients are always the backbone of most sales efforts, because finding new clients is so difficult.  That doesn’t mean we should give up on cold calling though.  As I said, we should carefully target who we think we can help and sniper-like, focus on connecting with them.

Social media is another dimension where we can become known.  Where is the attention focus in Japan for your buyers?  Finding out this type of general information would be straightforward you would think, but across the various sources, the discrepancies in reported numbers are just astonishing. I honestly don’t know who to believe, but according to humblebunny February 2023’s 8^th edition, the order of ranking of monthly users in Japan is YouTube (102m), Line (92m), Twitter (59m), Instagram (49m), Facebook (26m), TikTok (18m), Pinterest (9m), and LinkedIn (3m).

This is where your clients potentially have their attention, but do you know which platforms they visit? Also, what about you - where can you be found?  Are you using the same platforms as your buyers? Think about who is your target market, which platforms are they using and most importantly, what is your presence on those platforms?  Are you just a consumer of other people’s content and not a creator for these platforms? Does that demarcation make any sense, if you want people to know who you are? 

As a creator, which mediums are going to get you in front of your potential clients.  Can you produce text content which marks you out as an expert in your field?  Can you get your text content on to platforms to distinguish yourself from your competitors? Even if you cannot do this easily, AI has the capacity to assist and it is very fast.  The danger is that at this stage in AI’s development, the content can easily become rather generic. That is why if you can add your secret sauce, your special spice, to help you to stand out in your fellow AI dependent crowd. 

Can you produce video?  Absolutely. Everyone has a high-quality camera in their mobile phone today, so the barriers to video production have really come down.  Video is good, because we can see you and we can more easily connect with you. We feel like we can know you.  What about audio?  The soundtrack can be easily stripped out of video and bingo, you now have an audio version of the same content.  Or you could create a podcast and have your guests provide the majority of the IP and you just add your two cents worth.

Do you have to be handsome and beautiful and sound fantastic for these mediums?  Many people won’t do video or audio, because they lack confidence in how they look and sound. Is that you? Think about rock musicians?  Are they all gorgeous and good looking with great voices?  Mostly no, but they still sell millions of albums.  I like Sting, John Lennon and Bob Dylan and do they all have great voices?  Handsome? Not really. So we don’t have to be self-conscious about how we look and sound thus limiting ourselves in terms of becoming creators for our audience of buyers.  If the content is compelling, people will ignore how you look and sound. 

It is time to network, cold calling and maximise the use of social media.  How else are you going to get known?

In the next edition we are going to look at how to be LIKED in sales.

AI has opened the floodgates to allow any idiot to create content. If content marketing is an important vehicle for promoting your credibility in business, then be concerned.  Most content is currently created by people who are literate, that is, they can write the pieces themselves. 

One notable exception is Gary Vaynerchuk and I am a big fan. He is a prolific creator of content, including best-selling books and readily admits he cannot read or write well.  However, he is really able to talk and as we say in Australia, “he can talk under wet concrete with a mouth full of roofing nails”. He has others transcribe his comments and clean up what he says. This then becomes his output in text format. 

A funny irony is that he doesn’t read his own text when he records the audio versions for his books. He basically speaks the book again, so that the two versions are never the same. Anyway, his “speaking” idea to create content is not a bad one, if writing is not your forte.

There are no longer barriers to entry for text content because of AI.  At the moment, anyone can command the machine to produce content for them and they can upload this as their own work.  Well, we had this before didn’t we, when people were using ghost writers.  I remember reading a really good article by an Aussie guy I knew here in Tokyo. Let’s call him Mr. X.  I was surprised by the quality.  Frankly, I didn’t think he was that smart or that articulate. In fact, he wasn’t. He paid a professional to write the piece for him and then he put his own name on it.  The difference with AI is it is cheap, fast, prolific and good enough to pump out standard content.  

Now, if you are trying to show potential buyers that you are an expert in your field, by uploading relevant text content to social media, expect that all of your rivals will be able to do exactly the same thing using AI.  In fact, expect a flood of new content into social media by your rivals.  How can we differentiate ourselves in this frothy “red ocean”?

The bad news is that AI can produce generic content at scale and speed.  The good news is that your rivals are all tapping into exactly the same sources for their content, so they cannot easily differentiate themselves as a consequence.  It is going to be mass plagiarism on a grand scale.

To stand out from the crowd, the missing secret sauce here is “you”.  When creating content, you must inject your ideas, experiences, insights, feelings, observations and examples into the text.  AI cannot do this.  It cannot be you at the creation point.  Yes, it can write content in your style, but it still isn’t you. It didn’t see what you saw today or experience what happened to you today.

Basically, it comes down to not just our writing ability, but more importantly our storytelling craft.  The stories we can tell will be what will differentiate what we are saying from the grey blob mass of AI generated sameness polluting our creator world.  Perhaps you are not used to sharing things about yourself publicly.  Get over that idea.  We all need to personalise our content much more and that means injecting ourselves into the picture.  It is easy to pontificate. I know, I do a lot of that on the subjects of leadership, sales, presentations, communication and DEI. Apart from preaching what we believe, we need to insert our stories into the content to ward off AI derived competitor pontificating.

They may be our own stories or stories from other people’s experiences.  It doesn’t matter, as long as the content reflects a personal approach, something which is not generic in the slightest.  This requires us to start working on collecting our stories, rather than just moving forward in an orderly manner every day.  Things are happening around us all day long and we need to spend some time to capture them for use in our creative work.

Gary Vaynerchuk was very clever.  He realised he was a not going to sit down and write stuff out, so he decided to capture what he was doing every day and turn this into his content, called “The Daily Vee”. He has Daniel Rock, AKA “D-Rock” follow him around all day videoing his activities. He always had D-Rock video his keynote speeches for the same reason. Behind him, there is a 30 person “Team Gary” crew who work on this content and slice and dice it to feed Gary’s social media machine.  Genius.

I don’t have “Team Greggy” of thirty people to do that for me and you are probably in the same boat, but what we can do is start collecting what happens in real life.  We can generate stories to add to the point of view pieces we publish.  These events happen everyday, but we don’t record them and allow ourselves to access them, to add as a special spice into our content creation.  These stories are items that AI cannot create, because they are your stories and you are the only one who knows about them.

To deflect the tsunami of AI generated content, which is about to consume the entire world, we need to work on how we can stand apart for the dross.  Maybe in the future AI will also start generating stories based on what it sweeps up from the internet, but it still won’t have your stories from today.  Maybe it can eventually capture and use your stories from the past, but we can always be one jump ahead of the machine.

Think storytelling when you are observing the world around you and make some notes as prompts to tell those stories.  Start collecting them now and look for other people’s stories to tell, to make your point, like I did with Gary Vaynerchuk and Mr. X for this particular content creation.  AI will homogenise everything in this field and we cannot stop it.  Instead, we have to be clever and find ways of differentiating our content and keep ourselves at the forefront, so that AI and our rivals are always in our creative wake.