Nobody in sales likes it when buyers pushback and don’t make a purchase decision. There are varying degrees of pushback though. Sometimes it might be the buyer being the Devil’s advocate trying to better assure themselves that buying would be the right decision. Other times it is just the buyer being a pain and exerting their power and authority over the sales person. Most buyers have never been salespeople, so they are coming into decision-making positions through general management or technical areas like being an engineer, HR or through the CFO route. In some cases, they don’t respect the profession of sales and look down on salespeople, even including those in their own firm. They are seeing the profession as a bunch of shiftless liars and dodgy magicians trying to con the punters.
Salespeople, at least the professional salespeople, see themselves as playing a vital role in making the wheels of commerce turn. They connect buyer and seller to the mutual benefit of both parties. “Nothing happens in business until a sale is made” is an old saw and still true today. Japan is a tough place in many regards in business but at least salespeople are not looked down upon here. My Carnegie colleagues in Taiwan have their salespeople double hat as the training instructors. They do this because in Chinese culture, the salesperson isn’t respected but the teacher gets respect, so combining the two roles together makes it easier to sell in their culture. Japan doesn’t have that bias.
Buyers in Japan though are consumed with doubt and fear. There is no upside in Japan for doing a good job and a huge downside if something goes wrong and your name is attached to it. In most cases though in sales, the buying decision is spread broadly across many sections within the company. Everyone who will be impacted by the buying decision is included in the final decision and in a way this is a great mechanism for making sure that no individual gets the blame, if it turns out badly.
It also diffuses the pushback. There may be individuals in sections within the firm, who we will never meet, who are pushing back on the offer. That makes the sales process here extremely hard, as we will never get to meet with them and allay their fears and concerns. This is why our contact point person is so important to navigate the deal through the labyrinth.
The problem is the reward for being brave and doing the hard yards is zero. They don’t get any appreciation if it goes well, no bonus, no promotion – nothing because this is just seen as part of the job. However, the penalty for pushing this deal internally and then it doesn't work is very scary. This could impact their career progression within the firm and affect them later when decisions are being made about who to promote. That means that our person has to be made to become a believer. We have a huge task ahead of us to overcome their fear of failure, their terror of errors and their pain associated with past mistakes.
Free trials and small sample testing are good antidotes to overcoming fear of failure. In this way, the product or service can be experienced. All of those people behind the scenes who are involved in the final decision can get some concrete feedback on the value of the proposition. Seeing is believing and this helps our champion to push the decision forward. The testing phase can also yield valuable information on any modifications which may be needed before they adopt the whole shooting match. The fit for the company is highly important and can be of more concern than price. If they don’t believe the fit is there, then price doesn’t matter, because the deal will not progress.
Another good idea is guarantees and warranties if the purchase doesn’t live up to expectations. In our case, we deal a lot with HR people and they are terrified that the training they choose will get complaints later and they will be held accountable. In order to overcome those fears, we use sample training and also will give a 100% guarantee that the training will cost nothing, if they are not satisfied. It is possible that some evil person will decide to use this clause to their benefit and get the training for nothing. In the thirteen years we have been offering this clause, we have never had a case where we have had to do the training for nothing.
This is Japan and generally people here are honest and their main concern is that the purchase will perform as advertised and benefit the company. I am sure there are other markets where this clause will be an invitation to misuse and ripping you off, so you have to know the mentality of the buyers before making this offer.
If we have done a professional job in selling we will have understood what the buyer is attempting to achieve and we will have concluded if we have a solution that matchs or not. Following that we need to explain the solution to the buyer and convince them that this is what they need. Japan presents a danger at this point. There is a ravenous hunger in Japan for data and detail. Buyers are super risk averse in this country so the antidote for risk is information and the more the better. They will suck us dry of the detail at every opportunity.
If we the seller are not in control of the sales conversation, the solution presentation component of the sale cycle will descend into a very long winded expose on all the nitty gritty details about the product or service. What is wrong with that you might be asking? Doesn’t the buyer need all of that information so that they can make an informed decision? Yes and no. They need a certain amount of information, but they need other things as well.
They need to know what is the benefit related to the nitty gritty detail. The deep dive into the detail is the buyer’s attempt to short circuit the risk component, but that in itself won’t get the deal done. The most effective risk reduction strategy is to do nothing and that doesn’t help us. We need to balance out the risk reduction with the upside of purchasing our solution so the balance of the presentation has to include these aspects. What can easily happen though is the buyer keeps trying to extract more and more information out of us and there is no time left in the meeting to talk about the benefits of the solution. The buyer is happy because they dealt with the risk reduction part of the meeting. The seller is not happy because they never got to the why they should buy component of the talk.
There will be key components of the solution which will have the highest priority for the buyer and if we did a good job in the discovery phase, we are aware of what these are. The detail we bring up should be aligned to these high priority items. After we explain each element, we need to immediately bridge across to the benefit for the buyer. We don't know how much we can get through in the time for the sales call and so we want to start with the highest value parts of the solution and the highest value benefits to match the priority. Then we move on to the next highest priority and the benefits attached to that item and so on, as we go through the list.
We should only entertain the highest priority items because if we are not careful, we will miss the application of the benefit part of the sales call. In this part, we talk about how they can translate this solution benefit into their company’s operation. If we only talk about the benefit, then we are stuck at the theoretical stage of the discussion. We need to paint word pictures so that they can visualise how the solution will fit into their current situation and bring additional value.
Without this bridge from theory to reality, they will not be empowered enough to make a buying decision. This requires that we have enough knowledge of how their business works and that we can paint those word pictures such that they resonate with the buyer. The quality of our questioning skills in the early part of the discussion is vital. We need to be thinking about and planning for where the application of the benefit will come when we are asking our original questions. The visualisation part is key for the client, because seeing it in their mind’s eye is so powerful and positive to help them make a buying decision.
After explaining how the solution will make a high value impact on their business, we need to find time in the talk to reference evidence that what we are saying is true. Buyers have been trained to discount what salespeople tell them, so they are always putting up walls around what we say. By being able to talk about a similar buyer in the same industry sector we can talk about what happened when they introduced the solution and what were the outcomes they enjoyed. Now this has to be real and just making up a fairy story is a fatal idea. If they want to contact that other buyer to get more insight and you hesitate or the other buyer doesn’t confirm what you are saying, you lose the deal. You also lose all credibility in the market and your name is mud forever. This type of personal and professional brand suicide is permanent and there is no recovery in Japan. Never forget that bad news like this travels fast, especially in the internet age.
Finally we add in a trial close question. This can be as simple as “How does that sound so far?”. All we are doing here is smoking out any objections, hesitations, confusion, errors in understanding and anything which will get in the way of a “yes” decision. This simple question will bring any and all of these barriers to the fore and then we can deal with them using our objection handling techniques.
We cannot allow the buyer to control the sales call or we will never sell anything. There is an art and science to sales and there are also structures and gates we must pass through the get the outcome we want. Spending all of our time talking about the detail won’t get the sale done, regardless of how driven the buyer may be to demand that detail. Yes, give them the key detail, but do not miss the chance to talk about the benefits, the application of the benefits and the evidence from another buyer, before going into the trial close.
For most places in the world, and Japan in particular, when you find a good salesperson, you tend to stick with them. Why is that? There is a huge trust component to the idea that this person is someone you can rely on and who isn’t going to rob you blind, so that they get rich at your expense. There are so many unprofessional salespeople floating around on every continent and this is just base incompetence in action. Then there are evil salespeople who scam buyers, but this is a very small number of crooks and dirty dealers. The problem is that buyers are always thinking of the scammers in any sales transaction. They may not have personally suffered at the hands of these scoundrels, but the urban legends are powerful and the warning signals are always being scanned in the sales talk.
How do we build trust? The most basic requirement is to not lie to clients. Anotherbasic requirement is to have the buyer’s interests at the forefront of your mind rather than your interests. There are different profit margins for products and services. Sales Managers have opinions on what you should be selling, there are sale’s contests to push products etc., which can confuse salespeople as to what they are there for. Any time the equation surfaces that the sale should be more for the benefit of the firm, rather than the buyer, then we are destroying the basis for trust building with buyers.
Buyers follow salespeople they trust around and if your current firm is evil, then keep your customers and move somewhere else. What do the new firms look for in you – how many buyers have you got to bring to the company? Don’t put up with anyone in the company trying to get you to compromise your relationship with your buyers, for some short-term goal like a sale’s contest or a manufacturer bonus for sales over a certain number. These ideas are fine, as long as the filter of fit for the client is applied and you can honestly say that this is a good deal for the buyer, because it will deliver what they are seeking. That is the key consideration – will it give the buyer the outcomes they need or not?
When you operate like this you build up that key trust and your buyers recommend you to other buyers and your good name is out there in the marketplace as someone you can work with and who you can trust. What is the value of that reputation? It is gold! The issue though is you don’t get that prominence after one deal. It takes thousands of deals and many years to build up a following of current buyers and potential buyers, who will look at using you based on what they have heard about you.
From time-to-time things will go pear shaped and you have to do your best to repair the relationship, and that might have some financial elements attached to it, like giving them back their money. Often though, the firm hierarchy will not support you and this is where you can be compromised. That is why leaving for a more stable company who can see the long-term relationship as an asset, is a much better idea. Telling the buyer that you are unable to give them their money back, because of the firm’s policy and that as a direct consequence of their decision toward this client, you are leaving that company, leaves your trust element intact. Clients won’t be happy to not get their money back but you taking the high moral ground will be noted and appreciated. They won’t deal with your company again, but they will continue to deal with you and will speak highly of you to others.
We all know that gaining trust in sales is so difficult and that it takes a lot of time but that is how it is and we have to work within those boundaries. Walking away from a deal that isn’t in the best interests of the client, hurts at that moment, because the revenues associated with that deal won’t be arriving when you need them to get there. That is painful and financially can make things hard. Giving in to temptation to do the deal anyway is a sugar hit and you will suffer massive depression later, when the market hears you can’t be trusted, you are too expensive and because what you offer doesn’t work. Maybe you think you can skid from one client to another before the bad news catches up with you, but that is very optimistic in this internet world, where bad news travels at lightspeed.
The one-to-one personal recommendation from one buyer to a potential buyer is a much slower transition, but the value component of the stacked trust factor is enormous. We will question what we read in our social media feeds, but we will believe what our trusted friend or associate tells us about you. What would you pay to get that outcome? You would pay the price of doing the right deals that are in the buyer’s interests and sustaining that approach over many, many years. That is how you build a following – one trusting buyer at a time.
In Japan, we meet the client, build the rapport, seek permission to ask questions, ask the questions and then we set the date and time for the next meeting. Usually, in the first meeting this is where we expect to get to and we know we have to come back with a lot more detail for the second meeting. What level of detail do we need to go into in the proposal? Decision-making is done differently in Japan, so the proposal carries a lot of weight here, because so many eyes need to check it.
Consensus decision-making is favoured here in Japan, because if something goes wrong, no one gets landed with the blame. We are all responsible, so actually no one individual is responsible. This has proven to be a winner for Japanese companies, when it comes to decision-making. The due diligence on a purchase decision means that many different sections and divisions will need to take a look at it. The idea is that section by section, the approval document proceeds upwards, toward executive sanction.
The individuals meeting with the salesperson won’t be the only decision-makers. The proposal document has to take into consideration that most of the people making the decision will never meet the salesperson. The proposal document has to mend it way through the buyer organisation on its own. The level of detail needs to be appropriate to the task. Generally speaking Japanese buyers are information vultures and have an insatiable appetite for data. They are all operating on the basis that risk reduction is the key thing to be considered and the antidote to risk is data and information. So for a Japanese proposal we should go in much heavier than we may do normally.
One of the dangers though is that the key points get swamped by the detail and it becomes less clear what needs to happen. Having a lot of supporting information in the appendices is a good idea, as it allows the data vultures to feast. It frees the rest of the narrative up to be more readily absorbed by the readers.
The key to the document is that it answers all of the questions being asked by those different section representatives who are charged with doing the due diligence. This is where the people we as salespeople are speaking to become very important. They will know better than we will what are potential sticking points for the other sections or areas of the most intense interest. It is difficult for us to second guess what all of those areas will be. We should ask for their help when preparing the proposal, so that we can capture everything needed. This takes longer at the beginning, but is quicker in the end, because the answers are there. The readers will move straight through the content, without us having to make too many revisions.
The proposal section on the solution will need to be the most detailed. How will it work and more importantly, how will it work inside their organisation? If we have a similar firm in a similar sub-section of the industry, we can reference, that is ideal. Japan loves precedent and they love having someone else’s example to peruse, rather than being the guineapig themselves. We have to anticipate what some of the concerns will be and address these in the proposal before they are brought up from their side. This way the various section readers can move more quickly through the document and speed up its internal elevation toward the C-Suite.
There will be some detail which is more important than other content and these sections should be kept in the main body. The appendices are where we can layer more complexity into the argument. If there is a need for those doing the due diligence to cover this off, they will seek it out for themselves. For everyone else, the detail provided will be sufficient for them to move the approval process forward. We don’t want to dilute the key advantages of our solution by drowning in too much detail. This is a tricky line to navigate and we have to make some decisions about where to hold certain data. We should err on the side of more data than not enough though. The data vultures need to be fed.
Proposals are great communication vehicles for attacking the doubters sitting behind the wall of the client’s office, who we will never meet. We have to anticipate their requirements and produce a document which covers off their concerns and which can be easily absorbed by everyone else. If we can strike that balance, then the chances of us getting the deal done go up dramatically.