The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

By: Dr. Greg Story
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  • Summary

  • For succeeding in business in Japan you need to know how to lead, sell and persuade. This is what we cover in the show. No matter what the issue you will get hints, information, experience and insights into securing the necessary solutions required. Everything in the show is based on real world perspectives, with a strong emphasis on offering practical steps you can take to succeed.
    copyright 2022
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Economics Management
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Episodes
  • You Can’t Do It All By Yourself

    You Can’t Do It All By Yourself
    Nov 3 2024
    The hero’s journey is for the very, very few. I did it my way, I slaved away in a garret and got to the top, I realised the American dream – all good stuff, but an illusion for most. The reality is there are more of us who need the cooperation of others, than those who can succeed despite others. The age of the “one” has been taken over by the age of the “many”. Hero teams are more powerful than individual heroes. The problem is although we may need the cooperation of others, we are not that good at getting it. We limit our scope through two key areas – how we communicate and how we react. We like what we like and we find affinity with those who like similar things. We like to speak in a certain way and we click with others who speak the same way. It might be a shared accent, denoting a similar background, and we are all pretty good at spotting the subtleties of dialect. That is okay, but it still doesn’t help us to go far enough. You might share a common accent, but that doesn't mean you get on with everyone from back home\ Reflecting the preferences of others is a much more effective way of building trust and cooperation. Does this mean being two faced and manipulative? No, it means being flexible and other focused rather than me, me, me focused. When we are speaking with others we notice the way they prefer to communicate. It will vary from very low energy to high output - softly spoken to plain loud. Neither side likes the other much. The loud person can’t hear the softly spoken person and feels annoyed, because they have to struggle to hear what they are saying. The softly spoken person is quietly upset, because they don’t like people who are loud and aggressive. The key here is to adjust ourselves to suit the situation and the other person, if we want to gain their cooperation. If you say, “well I am me, I have my rights and they should adjust themselves to how I like it”, then let me know how that is working out for you? We will need to increase our energy and volume when we speak with high output people. We may feel like we are screaming, but on their scale all we are doing is communicating normally. The opposite applies, when we have to drop the volume and the strength. We may feel like we are whispering and it is killing us, but the counterparty feels very comfortable chatting with you. Some individuals are really detail oriented, they are constantly seeking data, proof, evidence about what they are being told. When we interact with this group, we notice the micro focus immediately and so we need to start adding a lot more detail to our explanations or recommendations. We may feel this is too nitty gritty and frankly, massive overkill, but that is not how they see it. For them this is absolutely normal and unremarkable. The opposite preference is for big picture discussions. Don’t worry about the details, the practicality, the roll out - we will get to that later. They want to plot the future direction in broad brush terms. For detail orientated people this is painful, because everything seems fluffy and unrealistic. Don’t fight it – encourage them to go big and go with them. Put up some crazy ideas (judged crazy from your evidence based thinking point of view) of your own and don’t feel guilty. They will welcome all crazy ideas, including yours. When we hear something we don’t like, we often react first and think later. Bad approach! Instead, bite your tongue and hear them out – don’t jump in over the top of them with your counter idea, critique or cutting comment. Try ear, brain, mouth rather than ear, mouth, brain as an order of approach. Use a “cushion”, a sentence that is neither for nor against what they are saying. It is a neutral statement, used to simply break our usual pattern of too rapid intervention. It gives us crucial time to think about what we want to say and how we are going to say it. Before we comment or attempt to criticise them, we instead ask them why they think that or why they say that. While they are providing some background and context around their position, we are able to bypass our immediate chemical reaction and reach deeper down to our calmer second or even third, considered response. When we do speak we may even accept their position because the context made sense or be able to suggest a counter position. We can do this in a calm way, that doesn’t lead to an argument and bad feelings. These two actions on our part will build the trust and establish the lines of communication required to convince other to help us on our own hero team journey. Speak in a reflective manner and don’t react immediately to what you are hearing. You may think this is killing you, because it is so different to how you normally operate, but if you want to be effective with all types of people, this is the secret – adjust yourself first. Newtonian physics...
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    13 mins
  • 326 When To Say "No" To The Buyer In Japan

    326 When To Say "No" To The Buyer In Japan
    Oct 27 2024

    Normally, as the seller, we are getting told “no” in sales, rather than the other way around. When salespeople become desperate to hit their numbers, they start to do crazy things. They start telling lies to the buyer, they exaggerate the scope of the solution, they savagely discount the price, they overpromise on the follow-up, they agree to horrendous delivery dates, they become visibly agitated during the sales call. All bad.

    When we meet the client, our brain has to get into a specific gear. That means we are focused on how can we contribute to build the client’s business? What can we do that will grow the buyer’s revenues, cut costs or expand market share? That mental gear is entirely different to questions such as “how will I make my monthly sales quota?”, “how will I stop being fired?”, etc. The latter are solely focused on you and not the buyer and this impacts what comes out of your mouth.

    If we are doing a proper job of prospecting we will always have alternatives. When the pipeline is too thin, desperation sets in. The existing clients get worked over, to try and squeeze blood from a stone, because there are no other options. It is easy to talk to an existing client than go and find a new one, which is so why salespeople hate prospecting – it is hard and tough work. Nevertheless, prospecting and building pipeline are the keys to positioning ourselves as sellers.

    When we have a strong pipeline, we are not dependent on any one sale. When we are doing the questioning phase of the sale’s call we start to understand what the client needs. We may realise that what we have isn’t really a fit. When we don’t have pipeline, we start to think how we can make it fit anyway. This is desperate thinking and ultimately very damaging to our trust, brand and reorder possibilities. We are thinking single order, rather than the start of many orders.

    We may know that to take on this project is going to put a lot of pressure on the back office or the supply chain within our organisation. We have to keep in mind the opportunity cost that this deal represents, not just the income it will generate. We are impinging on other better quality work to do this deal. If the pricing for doing it was at a premium, it might be justifiable but that is usually quite rare. Or if the scale of the work is considerable and sustained over a long period of time, it might be viable. In fact, usually, a bad deal more often than not comes with other ugly lumpy bits attached to it that are not very attractive.

    We are better to say “no”. When deals come that are outside of our usual scope and therefore require a lot of work, the price needs to be high, to warrant doing it. If it is not, then get back to being busy building pipeline and let that deal flow to a competitor, who is either better suited to handle it or more stupid than we are. It hurts to give business away to a competitor, but that is the better choice than damaging your own operation.

    A deal came to me though LinkedIn and the buyer was a substantial company in Singapore, with a strong brand name. The details of what they wanted to do in Japan though, had potential grief written all over it for me. It was somewhat related to what we do, but just that bit off to the side, where we would have to do a lot of work to make the project work. The money mentioned was so, so and really didn’t cover the extra work that would be needed. I introduced the deal to a “frenemy” rival company and asked if they were interested. They said yes and so I connected them with the seller.

    I heard later, that they got hammered on the pricing, when they came to deal with the lower level operations people inside the company. A typical Singaporean business play where they are very tough on pricing, often known as the “squeeze all the juice out of the deal for the buyer” play. The “frenemy” took the pricing offered, rather than saying no or demanding more money and got smashed. It turned out to be a huge amount of work, sucked up a lot of their time and burned some of their contacts. This is exactly what I thought it would do to me too. I was glad I missed that bullet. Saying “no” was a very, very good choice on my part. It was also a one off deal, so there was no hope of repeat business. This made it less attractive, because I couldn’t see any return on the investment of time and effort.

    I didn't take it because I had pipeline, alternatives, other potential business. Say “no” to a bad or marginal deal and keep working on building pipeline to find better deals. You will spend the same amount of time, but the rewards are vastly different.
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    10 mins
  • 325 Your Good Old Days Stuff Is Dull

    325 Your Good Old Days Stuff Is Dull
    Oct 20 2024
    Gaining credibility as a speaker is obviously important. We often do this by telling our own experiences. However, having too much focus on us and away from the interests of the audience is a fine line we must tread carefully. When we get this wrong, a lot of valuable speaking time gets taken up and we face the danger of losing our audience. They are like lightening when it comes to escaping to the internet, to go find things they feel are more relevant. We must always keep in the front of our mind that whenever we face an audience, we are facing a room packed with critics and skeptics. We definitely have to establish our credibility or they will simply disregard what we are saying. The usual way to gain credibility is to draw on our experiences. A great way to do this is telling our war stories. The focus is usually on things that are important to us, so we certainly enjoy reliving the past. In fact, we can enjoy it a bit too much. We begin telling our life story because we are such an interesting person. We are certain everyone will want to hear it, won’t they. Actually, their own life story is much more fascinating for them. So, we should be trying to relate what we are talking about to their own experiences and their realities. When we want to tell our stories, we have to be committed to keeping them short and to the point. As soon as an audience gets the sense the speaker is rambling down memory lane, they get distracted, bored and mentally depart from the proceedings. I was listening to a senior company leader giving a talk and he went on and on about how he started in sales and all his adventures. He was obviously enjoying it, but what did something that happened forty years ago in America have to do with the rest of us here in Tokyo? A good way to keep the audience engaged and focused on themselves is by asking rhetorical questions. These are questions for which we don’t require an actual answer, but the audience don’t know that. This creates a bit of tension and they have to focus on the issue we have raised. The focus is now on the same points the speaker wants to emphasise. Because of the question, they have to mentally go there themselves. It is much more effective than having the speaker try and drag them there. Rather than just telling war stories, we can ask them to compare the story we are going to tell with their own experiences. In this case, the speaker’s example is just a prompt for them to identify with the situation being unveiled. This is better because they are relating the issue to their own reality. They can take the speaker’s example and either agree with it or disagree with it. Even if they disagree with it, their different stance will be based on their own facts rather than opinion. We might say, “I am going to relate an incident which happened to me in a client meeting. Have any of you had this experience and if so what did you do? Listen to what I did and see if you think I made the best choice or not”. We have now set up the comparison with their own world. This gets their attention in a natural way, rather than me banging on about what a legend I was in the meeting with the client. Talking about ourselves is fun but it is dangerous. How should we incorporate it? As we plan our talk, we have to work out the cadence of the delivery to includE our war stories. If we are talking too much about ourselves the audience may lose interest and mentally escape from us. If we have designed in content which will involve them, we can keep them with us all the way to the end. This doesn’t happen by itself. We have to carefully implant it when designing the talk. It is also very important to test this design during the rehearsal. Better to discover any issues in rehearsal rather than testing the content on a live audience. Sounds simple enough, but remarkably, 99% of speakers do no rehearsal at all. Doubt that statistic? How many speakers have you heard where you got the sense they had carefully rehearsed their talk? Case closed! In developing our attention grabbing cadence during the talk, rather than waiting to Q&A to deal with any pushback on our opinions, we can go early. We can anticipate what those objections might be and handle them during the main body of our speech. We pose them as rhetorical questions. Some people in the audience when they hear these objections will be thinking “yeah, that’s right”. We then use our evidence drawn from our experiences, our war stories, to demolish that potential objection and ensure we maintain control of the issue. This technique also engages the audience more deeply in our presentation, as they start to add perspectives they may not have thought of before. There is also a strong feeling of comprehensiveness about our talk too. It shows we are aware of different views, are not afraid of them and have an answer to remove them as a consideration.
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    11 mins

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