The Sales Japan Series

By: Dr. Greg Story
  • Summary

  • The vast majority of salespeople are just pitching the features of their solutions and doing it the hard way. They are throwing mud up against the wall and hoping it will stick. Hope by the way is not much of a strategy. They do it this way because they are untrained. Even if their company won't invest in training for them, this podcast provides hundreds of episodes with information, insights and techniques all based on solid real world experience selling in Japan. Trying to work it out by yourself is possible but why take the slow and difficult route to sales success? Tap into the structure, methodologies, tips and techniques needed to be successful in sales in Japan. In addition to the podcast the best selling book Japan Sales Mastery and its Japanese translation Za Eigyo are also available as well.
    Copyright 2022
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Episodes
  • 410 Why Sending Your Sales Proposal in Japan Is the Worst Mistake You Can Make
    Nov 5 2024

    One of the worst combos in sales is a virtual meeting online and the buyer says, “send me your proposal” or even more insane, you volunteer to send it. Even if you managed to sit down face-to-face with a buyer, do not under any circumstances finish up the meeting with this sentence, “I will send you my proposal”. Sale is hard enough as it is, so why do salespeople decide they are not living on the edge enough and make these types of ludicrous statements?

    We usually get one hour in the first meeting to go through the first part of the sales cycle: build rapport with small talk, get permission to ask questions, ask questions to understand 1. where they are now, 2. where they need to be, 3. why they aren’t there already and 4. what will it mean for this individual if it all goes swimmingly?

    This requires that as the salesperson, we shut up and let the buyer do most of the talking and that we take very good notes. One handy note taking technique is to divide the note page into four quarters representing these four questions and then write the answers in the corresponding quarter of the page. If you have missed something, it becomes immediately obvious, because there are few or no notes in that quarter.

    In our proposal, we will outline what we have understood is their need. We will then outline what we suggest is the best solution to deliver on this need and then explain what it will cost. Of course we never ever use words like “price”, “cost”, etc and instead we only refer to the “investment”.

    This sounds infinitely simple, but have we understood their need? Have they actually been totally forthcoming about the full gamut of their need? Are they holding back key information we need to know in order to provide the best solution for them? Why would they not share that critical information with us? We assume they want to buy something. Maybe they have a vague interest. We have managed to blag our way into a meeting with the buyer, but their motivation isn’t high. They may have a mild dose of curiosity or they may be a psychopath who loves to torture poor, unsuspecting salespeople.

    Salespeople generally have poor listening skills. They are often not really listening completely, because they hear one piece of the puzzle and their brain inflames with an internal conversation about the clever next thing they are going to say. At this point, they actually stop listening to the buyer. Or they may hear an objection and the brain goes into overdrive with what they are going to say to destroy that objection. They stop listening to all the other vitals hints from the buyer about what they need, in order to concentrate on their sparkling riposte.

    Consequently, what they regurgitate in the proposal may have missed the mark or more likely, missed key bits which the buyer needs to hear about in order to organise the Purchase Order. Given this likelihood, imagine what a disaster it is to send the document off and allow the buyer to sit there and silently think, “I am dealing with an idiot who has not understood fully what we need”.

    Here is Dr. Story’s iron discipline sales requirement. When wrapping up the meeting, grab your schedule and make them open theirs and find a date and time for the next meeting. In that meeting, you will bring the proposal and go through it with them to make sure you have correctly and fully understood their needs. Get into their diary right there and then, because trying to do it later can be difficult and sometimes it never happens at all.

    If they say, ‘just send it to me”, under no circumstances accept that statement. Instead, say “I will need to show you something, so let’s find a time for me to do that”. Do not dilute the power of what you have just said by adding to it with more justifications. Keep the strength of that bold statement intact, break eye contact, hold your pen at the ready, look down at your diary, and suggest dates and times.

    We want to be sitting right across from them when we go through the details to read their body language reaction to what we are outlining. We want to make sure we have properly understood their needs and that our solution is attractive to them. We want to tease out any doubts so that we can deal with these spiky porcupines on the spot.

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    10 mins
  • 409 Caring For Your Sales Orphans In Japan
    Oct 29 2024

    Hunting for new clients is difficult and expensive. Marketing tries to drive people who are seeking our solution to our door through the website, advertising, search words and SEO. That all costs a lot of money and the success ratio can be quite low. We attend networking events and these usually cost money too. Now our most fundamental sales goal is not a sale. We are desperately looking for the reorder. If we can get that, it means we don’t have to spend any more money on getting this client on board. We can amortise the acquisition costs across a stream of orders which brings our per buyer acquisition costs down substantially.

    Another source of clients are clients. These people have bought from us in the past, but the trail has gone cold. Maybe they stopped and never resumed because of an internal crisis around money and they had to cut costs. Perhaps our champion got moved and their replacement has their preferred list of suppliers and we are not on their list. Maybe we screwed up an order and got cut. There are so many reasons to have lost touch with a buyer in Japan. It is made more difficult here because of the rotation of staff through different sections of the company, as they try to create an army of generalists.

    Trying to get back on the bronco after having been bucked off is extremely tough. The people there now may not remember us at all. In effect, this becomes a cold call and we have to start again. We need some powerful tools to get back on their buying list.

    Hopefully, we have a good record keeping system and we can pull up what we supplied previously, how long they were our client, who we were dealing with on their side etc. We will need to reference all of these details to gain credibility as a supplier. If they have never done any business with us, then there are many hoops to jump through, whereas being a previous supplier clears a lot of those hurdles.

    We may have introduced a new product or solution since we last communicated. Often, we may have numerous solutions and they only selected one, when in fact we can solve a broad range of issues for them. This is the time to introduce any new products and also the range of existing products to them. What wasn’t required before may now be of interest. Perhaps a rival supplier isn’t doing a great job and we turn up as an alternative.

    If we have something we can demonstrate or show as a solution that is helpful. In our case, as a training company, we can offer free refresher classes for their staff who are our graduates. The price is right, they know who did the training previously and in most cases those same people will still be working there. As we rerun what we previously supplied the people involved recall how good our solution was. They are possibly in more senior roles now and they may want this solution for their team. They may also be stimulated to look for what else we can do for them, as they recall their satisfaction with us a supplier.

    If it happened that we screwed up previously, there may be a chance that the people who recall those details are no longer there and we can start with a clean slate. Japan, however, is pretty good at record keeping and our beautiful name may be mud and still listed on their blacklist of people to never use again and the conversation will go nowhere. I called on the same company after a couple of years break. The people I met were new, but I was amazed when they consulted their records and perfectly quoted what had been discussed in the previous meeting. Don’t underestimate Japanese record keeping prowess.

    If they have a good memory of us and we have developed something new, then that can often be the hook to get us the meeting. They may be curious about what we have come up with and be prepared to hear us out. It is not easy, but it is easier than trying to blag our way into a meeting with total strangers, who have no knowledge of us and what we do.

    We all have buyers who have fallen by the wayside and it is worth the effort to rekindle those relationships and try and restart the business. We could be leaving a lot of money on the table by not trying to reconnect. Chasing new buyers is expensive and hard so let’s get out our records and go back and touch base again and try and get some deals going.

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    10 mins
  • 408 Balancing Questions With Suggestions In Sales In Japan
    Oct 22 2024
    We know that there are a lot of salespeople who are totally untrained. They have cobbled together bits and pieces of the sales process but they don’t have the whole picture in their brains. I remember when Dave Stearns, a Carnegie Master Trainer came to Tokyo to certify us a Sales Trainers. He started with the top right hand corner of the whiteboard and then he slowly outlined every single aspect of the sales process and the flow filled the whiteboard from top to bottom, from left to right. It was an amazing tour de force from someone who is a real master. At the time, was sitting there thinking that I could never do that. Well today I am using our sales process and doing the exact same thing in my head when I sit across from the client. The only difference is that in Japan it is rare to get through the whole process in one sitting. Here it is more likely we get up to the point of the questioning model and the explanation of the solution comes in the next meeting as we present our proposal. At this point we go into handling any objections and then closing the sale. Again in Japan, that closing of the sale part of the process may not trigger an agreement, but it will set off an internal process to look at what we are suggesting. The decision-making process here is complex and glacial with many actors involved. Most of the key decision makers we will never meet, and it is up to the people sitting in front of us to become our champions and push the deal though. This internal harmonisation process though takes a lot of time and we have almost no leverage. Telling our champions to “speed it up” is a like a sick joke, because they don't have any capacity to do that as they seek internal agreement to move forward. In the Ringi Seido decision-making system, the Section Leaders and Division Heads who will be impacted by the deal though the changes it will trigger attach their hanko or seal on the proposal document to signal agreement. When there are enough of these achieved the document gets elevated to the Directors level and usually they rubber stamp approve it because they know all the due diligence has been completed down below. To bridge between the questioning component and to be invited to propose our solution, we have to move into the suggestion phase. There is no great detail required at this point. What we are doing here is to try and make sure that what we are thinking will be a good fit for what they are after. We have heard their story, we know what they want to achieve and mentally we are rummaging around our magic solutions box to see if we have what they need. We explain in rough terms what would be involved and check to see if that sounds directionally correct. If we do get it right, then we talk in general terms about the outline of the possible solution and see if they think that is a match for what they want. If it is and they think that will work then we are invited to submit our proposal along with the other potential rival suppliers they are talking to. The Proposal will go into much greater depth and detail about what is involved and how it will work in practice. It may not be precise enough, but if we are most of the way there, we can still refine it further according to their feedback and we are not out of the running yet. Naturally pricing has to be attached and it we are higher than our rivals, which hopefully we are, because our quality is better, then we submit and see if they go for our ideas. This is important because at this point they are just ideas and until we get the business and can execute, the buyer has to take our word for it that we can do what we say we can do and at the quality level we say we can provide. There is a lot of trust included at this point. This is why the way we present has to be very well executed. We have to be making suggestions and constantly checking back to see if there is a match. If it isn’t we need to know that information early and redirect to something else we think may. The level of confidence we have and the degree of detail we can provide off the top of our head, without referring to any materials is important. It sends a message to the buyers that we know what we are doing, we have done this before and we know they results we can deliver. Mentioning previous projects for other clients is important because it means we are not using them as the test bed. Japanese firms don’t want to be the guinea pigs for anything. They want to know that it works already. We may not be able to drop the names but when we describe what we did and what happened they are relieved to hear there is a track record of successful implementation already. The way we describe it is so key. We have to do it with supreme confidence, belief and knowledge to demonstrate we know our stuff.
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    11 mins

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