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 )

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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.