If we try to hide the bad news for the buyer will that work?  How long with it work for?  Bernie Madoff died in prison, his wife left in a perilous state, one son dead from suicide and the other from cancer.  I call that family devastation.  He got away with his lies and cheating for quite a while.  He offered modest, but steady returns.  He told people he had no capacity to take their money, then rang them back at a later stage to say there was an opening.  They were grateful for the chance to give him their money.  The 2008 recession showed who was “skinny dipping” in the markets, as Warren Buffet termed it and Bernie could no longer sustain the fraud.

If we are loose with the facts and the truth with our buyers, how will that go toward fostering the re-order culture we want to create?  The usual ploy is to downplay the costs by offering the best case example and not offering the most realistic case.  I was reminded of this the other day, while watching a video from the President of this particular organisation.  He wanted more money, a lot more money for this project.  Let’s park the fact he was a hopeless advocate for his case, bumbling his way through his pitch.  The examples he offered were very carefully culled to make the pain look miniscule.  The obvious problem with that though was the vast majority of the stakeholders did not fit into that minimum damage category.

He was trying to avoid the pain, but that came across as dodgy and duplicitous.  We have to reach for our financial calculators and work out the damage for ourselves and we are left to our own conclusions.  It would have been much better to meet the elephant in the room head on and explain why the bigger number was a good decision.  That way the seller controls the narrative, not the buyer.  Call out the number, then justify the living daylights out of it.  Talk about the long term benefits and the opportunity costs if we take no action now.  Pile on the value of the proposition in the context of the number. 

Trying to talk about the value proposition unrelated to the number doesn't fly.  We need to connect them together as we explain the value.  We unveil the ugly number but wrap the pain up in the value to come, to the glorious future, to the sunny uplands, the better days herafter.  Context is everything here.  Our hero didn't do that and I believe he missed a great opportunity to get people to back his proposal.

When we are selling there is a number attached to the service or good.  Actual tangible objects are easier to understand from a pricing point of view.  Services though are nebulous.  I was selling some training to a major corporation and the people I was dealing with were HR folk located outside Japan.  If you live here, you understand the cost of living and all the relativities which apply around pricing. If you are in Hong Kong or Singapore you don’t.  Living in these low tax, low cost environments makes Japan’s numbers look stratospheric. 

They told me our pricing was much higher than this Hong Kong located from who delivered for them in English speaking countries in Asia.  I asked them why they didn’t use them for Japan.  Of course, they didn't know Japan, had no capacity to deliver here in cultural and linguistic contexts, so that is why they were talking to me.  Yet the expectation was my pricing would fit in with this other vendor, based in Hong Kong.  Who were these people?  I checked them out and they are nobodies.  They are not global, they don’t have 109 years of credibility or 60 years on the ground in Japan.

In the end, I had to do a demonstration of what we would deliver. It blew them away because the value proposition was so much greater than the other firm.  Now the cost, the higher price, the bigger ask, that larger number made sense.  I didn't fold on the price for two simple reasons.  I know our value and I know what companies here will pay for the value we generate.  Yes, it is Covid and yes it is perilous for training companies at the moment, but you have to believe in your value based pricing and you have to be prepared to fire the client.

Don’t run away from the hard conversations.  Instead find ways to demonstrate and show your value.  Keep honing your persuasion skills to sustain the narrative about why they should buy from you and buy from you now and keep buying from you.

The buyer is King.  This is a very common concept in modern Western economies.  We construct our service approach around this idea and try to keep elevating our engagement with royalty. After living in Japan for 36 years and selling to a broad range of industries, I have found in Japan, the buyer is not King. In Nippon the buyer is God. This difference unleashes a whole raft of difficulties and problems. My perspective is based on an amalgam of experiences over many decades and I am generalising of course. Not every buyer in Japan is the same, but those foreigners who know Japan will be nodding their heads in agreement.

The most intelligent sales approach the West has come up with is “consultative sales”.  This basic term gets bandied about, in different ways and at different times, but the fundamental concept is to uncover the buyer’s needs through asking insightful questions and then determine if you can satisfy that need or not. 

By definition, if you use this methodology, you are intelligent.  If you were going to sell to buyers from the world’s third largest economy, where 50% of young people are University educated and is known for its advanced technology, then intelligent consultative selling is bound to be your “go to” model.  You will fail because GOD doesn’t approve of your funky Western ways.

Pitch Momentum Predominates In Japan

In Japan, GOD expects a pitchfest.  GOD does not brook questions from low life salespeople.  Instead give your pitch, put it up, so that the buyer can slam closed the two barrels on the shotgun and then blast your pitch to pieces.  Japan is a very conservative business climate where failure is not accepted and mistakes are not allowed.  The Western CFO sharpening the pencil and working out that a 5% defect rate is the most profitable construct, will get a big bonus and a promotion.  Going to a zero defect rate is deemed too expensive and unnecessary.  GOD doesn’t accept any defects or mistakes in Japan and to achieve that the science of risk aversion has been taken to the ultimate heights of human possibility.

The Japanese buyer wants to hear your pitch, then viciously attack it to satisfy themselves that they are eliminating any possibility of future problems from this supplier.  I was working with a company exporting bark to Japan as part of the gardening boom.  It had to be clean - no pebbles, sand or twigs, just pure bark.  The foreign supplier breezily rang to tell me the shipment had missed the boat, but “no problems, it will be on the next one”. 

GOD was apoplectic.  Storage costs in Japan are expensive, so the “just in time” idea of holding little in the way of stock and delivering at the right moment, is well accepted.  Our buyer had just burned all of his buyers down the food chain, because the foreign supplier had missed the boat.  The Japanese buyer’s trust, built up over many years with his client base, had been broken. In Japan that trust is almost impossible to rebuild.

You Need A GOD Approving Credibility Statement

Pitching is a daft idea.  How on earth do you know what to pitch?  Imagine your favourite colour was blue and I turn up to sell you my awesome range of pink.  I am warbling away like a morning lark about the wonder of my pink and you haven’t the slightest interest, because you want blue.  If I had asked you a question about your colour preferences, then knowing you wanted blue, I would have only spoken about our range in blue.

This is pretty simple.  So, why don’t Japanese salespeople ask GOD some questions about what is needed?  Well GOD is a deity too high for that type of inappropriate familiarity and base rudeness.  Consequently, everyone is pitching into the void.  The cunning antidote to this GOD induced pitch problem is to have a well crafted credibility statement.  For example, “We are experts in soft skills training for adult learners.  We recently helped a client’s Tokyo leadership team raise their Japanese staff engagement scores by 30% and their New York headquarters was very happy to see that rapid improvement.  Maybe we could do the same thing for you.  I have no idea if that is possible or not, but if you would allow me to ask a few questions, I will soon know if it is a viable option or not”.

Switch From The Pitch To Consultative Sales

Once GOD acquiesces and allows us to ask questions, then we are out of the pitch business and now immersed in the consultative sales flow.  When asked this way GOD does allow questions in most cases.  Sometimes we will get a stern GOD who says “just give me your pitch”.  We comply because you cannot deny GOD, but mentally we know we should down the lukewarm, cheap, bitter green tea and head for the door, because there won’t be any sale here today.

Knowing what a client needs is the key enabler to craft a sales presentation tailored to that particular buyer which resonates, excites and satisfies.  GOD just needs some nudging to get religion about consultative sales.  When you have your next sales meeting with a Japanese buyer, mentally picture you are sitting down with GOD and act accordingly.  Be comfortable with formality, silence, hierarchy and sit up straight. 

Politely pull the velvet curtain back on your beautifully polished and well practiced credibility statement and wait for “yes, you may ask me some questions”.  Don’t say one word after you ask your question, even if it is killing you.  Sit there in silence until you get an answer.  GOD likes to think about it and is in no hurry.

Confidence sells.  We all know this instinctively.  If we meet a salesperson who seems doubtful about their solution or unconvinced it is the right thing for us, then we won’t buy from them.  The flip side is the con man.  They are brimming with brio, oozing charm and pouring on the surety.  They are crooks and we can fall for their shtick, because we buy their confidence.  They are usually highly skilled communicators as well, so the combo of massive confidence paired with fluency overwhelms us and we buy.  We soon regret being conned but we are more cautious thereafter every time we meet a salesperson.  By the way, there is a good chance we are that next salesperson.

So how do we navigate the rapids and the rocks here of coming across as confident and being skillful in describing our solution, without tripping the client’s internal con man alarm system”?  Ultimately it comes down to your kokorogamae. This Japanese compound word can be translated as our “true intention”.  What are we on about with this sales lark?  Who are we showing up for – ourselves or the client’s best interests?

With con men it is always their self interest. They keep moving like a shark, swimming around constantly in motion, always looking for something to devour.  If we sit down and examine ourselves we can make a decision.  Are we in sales as a profession – yes or no?  If the answer is no, then please get out of sales immediately. Go. Do something else, because the rest of us, who want to be professional, don’t want you polluting our waters.  If the answer is “yes”, then examine what does “professional” actually mean to you?

We can get caught up in the finer points of sales technique, but what I am asking is please look at sales and ask what is my true intention here?  If it is to serve the best interests of the buyer then we are getting on the right track.  If the answer included to serve the buyer forever and to be aiming for the reorder, rather than the sale, then go to the top of the class.  That mentality is the antithesis of the con man who knows they have to leave town after the sale, because they have cheated the buyer and can’t expect any further business – ever.

There is a successful businessman I know, who told me a story about his early days in sales.  He sold an inferior product and the client would only come to realise that reality following the purchase, when the product itself was consumed.  He had to have a big territory from his company, because he could never go back to a town he had sold into.  I had liked him but after hearing that story I liked him a lot less.  He knew the product was inferior and was not matching the claims he was making.  He was confident and fluent. In other words, he was a con man.  His kokorogamae was incorrect and I am wary of him because I am not sure about his mentality in business today.  Maybe he has reformed, but I am in no hurry to find out at the cost of my own personal business. 

If our true intention is correct, then being confident and fluent come into their own.  The way we think about the business changes.  We see the lifetime value of the business rather than a transaction.  That means the effort we make to serve the client changes.  The follow up is done in a different and superior way.  The client feels our commitment to their success.  We obviously ask particular questions which would only be of interest to someone who was committed to serving the buyer.  We are thinking as if this was our business and we are looking for ways to build it higher.  The questions around that aim are a lot different to discussions of the features of the widget and the needed logistics to supply it.  We are thinking and talking beyond the initial sale.

So ask yourself – what is my kokorogamae?  What types of questions am I asking – are they transactional or long term oriented?  Am I communicating well enough my commitment to help this buyer succeed or am I only operating at a very superficial, order taker level?  Am I thinking about potential buyer problems down the track and how to fix them? Have I wrapped my confidence up in truth?  Record your presentation and have a good listen to it.  Are you coming across as (A) a very basic provider of transactional solutions (B) a con man or (C) a true sales professional who has sorted out their kokorogamae?  If the answer wasn’t (C) then there is a lot of work to be done on you by you!

Buying from people we like and trust makes a lot of sense.  Sometimes we have no choice and will hold our nose and buy from people we don’t like.  Buying anything from people we don’t trust is truly desperate.  So when we flip the switch and we become the seller to the buyer, how can we pass the smell and desperation tests?  How do you establish trust and likeability when you are on a virtual call with a new potential client?  What do you do about those new buyers who won’t even turn on their camera during the call?

The best defense against buyer scepticism is to be professional.  You will be well presented whether face to face or online.  In the latter case, you will have a background that advertises your firm and hides the background of your home, because this reduces the distraction factor.  You will use gestures which are in front of your body, so that your arms are not suddenly cut off by the fake background.  You will be sitting up straight in your chair and looking straight at the lens on the computer camera, which you have cleverly arranged to be at eye level.

In a face to face meeting, we are communicating quite a lot through our body language, so we are going to be sending out messages of confidence, credibility and trustworthiness.  We are going to be well dressed for all meetings regardless of the medium.  That means put on your business battle dress, which means a jacket and tie for men in the online meeting as well, so that we are not looking too casual.

We are going to be precise and clear in our language, with no filler words like ums and ahs diluting the message and annoying the buyer.  Online, the body language factor can be tricky, especially if we are showing any documents or slides on screen. In these cases, we are reduced to a tiny box on screen and so is the client.  The lesson here is to not show too much information on screen such that the size of the faces is maximized, so that we can each read as much body language information as possible. 

What about those Japanese clients who only turn on the sound?  We are now at the equivalent of a phone call, except that they can see you and you cannot see them.  We have a couple of choices.  I don’t match them with turning my camera off to even out the stakes.  I still want to exude credibility and the camera gives me more scope to do that, than the audio only. 

We have to grab the opportunity of the sales call and we, not the buyer, have to run the meeting. Right from the start, I ask them to turn their camera on.  This is difficult for our Japanese staff to do, because for them the buyer is God. If the omnipresent deity doesn’t want to reveal themselves to mere mortals, then what right has the lowly supplicant salesperson to demand that of God? 

Nevertheless, we have to train them on how to do that.  We need to say to the buyer, “Thank you for your time today for this meeting, I appreciate it given I am sure you are very busy.  Over the last year, I have done a lot of these meetings online and they always seem to be more productive for both sides, when we both turn the cameras on, so let’s both turn our cameras on today for this brief meeting”.  Now what comes next is the key component.  Shut up and do not say one word, no matter how much awkward painful silence ensues.  Sit there and wait for them.

Isn’t this risky?  IN my view, if they won’t even come on camera, how successful do you imagine you are going to be selling them something?  By definition they are not a buyer and you are better to go find someone who can turn their camera on and can buy.  What happens if they say they prefer not to turn their camera on?  Mentally reduce the prospects of a subsequent positive outcome to a substantial negative integer and carry on as best you can.  A non-buyer is a non-buyer, online or in person but in sales you often have to grit your teeth and just plough on. 

All very depressing isn’t it. To just to end on a real downer, let me relate a recent story from the sales trenches here in Tokyo.  My salesguy cold calls a company here.  The person answering the phone says, “we do not deal with people we are not already dealing with”.  Being the supreme optimist from sunny Australia, I encourage him to go once more into the breach and call again at a different time.  Potentially he might encounter a different person and hopefully receive a better reception.  He did just that and he got exactly the same response from another member of staff, “we do not deal with people we are not already dealing with”.  As we say here, “welcome to Japan!”.

˜We Buy From People We Like And Trust

Buying from people we like and trust makes a lot of sense.  Sometimes we have no choice and will hold our nose and buy from people we don’t like.  Buying anything from people we don’t trust is truly desperate.  So when we flip the switch and we become the seller to the buyer, how can we pass the smell and desperation tests?  How do you establish trust and likeability when you are on a virtual call with a new potential client?  What do you do about those new buyers who won’t even turn on their camera during the call?

The best defense against buyer scepticism is to be professional.  You will be well presented whether face to face or online.  In the latter case, you will have a background that advertises your firm and hides the background of your home, because this reduces the distraction factor.  You will use gestures which are in front of your body, so that your arms are not suddenly cut off by the fake background.  You will be sitting up straight in your chair and looking straight at the lens on the computer camera, which you have cleverly arranged to be at eye level.

In a face to face meeting, we are communicating quite a lot through our body language, so we are going to be sending out messages of confidence, credibility and trustworthiness.  We are going to be well dressed for all meetings regardless of the medium.  That means put on your business battle dress, which means a jacket and tie for men in the online meeting as well, so that we are not looking too casual.

We are going to be precise and clear in our language, with no filler words like ums and ahs diluting the message and annoying the buyer.  Online, the body language factor can be tricky, especially if we are showing any documents or slides on screen. In these cases, we are reduced to a tiny box on screen and so is the client.  The lesson here is to not show too much information on screen such that the size of the faces is maximized, so that we can each read as much body language information as possible. 

What about those Japanese clients who only turn on the sound?  We are now at the equivalent of a phone call, except that they can see you and you cannot see them.  We have a couple of choices.  I don’t match them with turning my camera off to even out the stakes.  I still want to exude credibility and the camera gives me more scope to do that, than the audio only. 

We have to grab the opportunity of the sales call and we, not the buyer, have to run the meeting. Right from the start, I ask them to turn their camera on.  This is difficult for our Japanese staff to do, because for them the buyer is God. If the omnipresent deity doesn’t want to reveal themselves to mere mortals, then what right has the lowly supplicant salesperson to demand that of God? 

Nevertheless, we have to train them on how to do that.  We need to say to the buyer, “Thank you for your time today for this meeting, I appreciate it given I am sure you are very busy.  Over the last year, I have done a lot of these meetings online and they always seem to be more productive for both sides, when we both turn the cameras on, so let’s both turn our cameras on today for this brief meeting”.  Now what comes next is the key component.  Shut up and do not say one word, no matter how much awkward painful silence ensues.  Sit there and wait for them.

Isn’t this risky?  IN my view, if they won’t even come on camera, how successful do you imagine you are going to be selling them something?  By definition they are not a buyer and you are better to go find someone who can turn their camera on and can buy.  What happens if they say they prefer not to turn their camera on?  Mentally reduce the prospects of a subsequent positive outcome to a substantial negative integer and carry on as best you can.  A non-buyer is a non-buyer, online or in person but in sales you often have to grit your teeth and just plough on. 

All very depressing isn’t it. To just to end on a real downer, let me relate a recent story from the sales trenches here in Tokyo.  My salesguy cold calls a company here.  The person answering the phone says, “we do not deal with people we are not already dealing with”.  Being the supreme optimist from sunny Australia, I encourage him to go once more into the breach and call again at a different time.  Potentially he might encounter a different person and hopefully receive a better reception.  He did just that and he got exactly the same response from another member of staff, “we do not deal with people we are not already dealing with”.  As we say here, “welcome to Japan!”.