The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Don't think of a pink elephant.  Did you think of one when you read that sentence?  It shows how easily we can we swayed by images.  If I had said don't think of the letters p-i-n-k-e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, you would have been fabulously successful.  What is the difference – both refer to the same prohibition?  We are very much susceptible to images, yet we rarely use this facility when we are trying to h...

We find it frustrating when we have good ideas or suggestions but all we receive is rejection or even worse criticism of our ideas.  Part of it can be the culture of the organization.  I was listening to some friend's episodes about working life at a major global cosmetics brand, where the culture was purposely made combative.  I laughed when I was told the Meeting Room was called the "Confrontati...

Pushy salespeople are very, very annoying.  They try to bug you into buying and we really don't like it.  We may actually buy, but we don't like them anymore and probably won't become a repeat buyer. Fair enough, but what about when you are the salesperson?  At what point should we give up on convincing the buyer that our solution is the best for them?   It often happens that we meet a potential b...

Know Your Target I was at a speech recently, given by a very prominent  person, an extremely experienced speaker, to a very prestigious audience.  It should have been a triumph, but it was a fizzer. There were two particular problems with the speech.  One was it was set for 25 minutes but the speaker finished in 8 minutes.  The second problem was that the most interesting part of the speech was no...

The disappearance of Executive Assistants and Secretaries reflects the dominance of the keyboard and a DIY approach to work content creation by leaders.  Once upon a time, the majority of boss content output was produced by others, a magical time of delegation ruling the world.  The secretarial pool only lives in the memory of the few or has been briefly glimpsed in black and white movies.  We rep...

A LinkedIn post I read recorded how an American sales guy got off the booze and the client entertainment rat race.  It got a lot of coverage and comment because it obviously struck a chord with many fellow salespeople.  It got me thinking about the same conundrum for those of us selling in Japan.    This is a tricky issue here because, traditionally, so much client entertainment was involved.  "I...

Most talks and presentations we hear, we cannot recall.  Why is that?  We were there presumably because we had an interest. The presenter no doubt made an effort to share something of value with us.  They probably spent hours on their presentation slides and were perhaps somewhat anxious about giving the presentation.  So a lot of nervous energy was expended in the exercise, but with a zero result...

Switching Your Mindset About Putting Things Off We know we should do that project or piece of work but we resist.  We may even be bold and get it into our To Do list, maybe even attach a high priority number to it, but still fail to start.  Why?  We are all pretty clever about avoiding pain and some projects have pain written all over them.  Maybe we may have to think – gasp!  Or maybe, it is goin...

Salespeople don't set the price of what they sell.  This is usually an obscure outcome decided by someone else inside the machine.  It might actually be an elaborate process, where multiple variables are carefully calibrated, mathematical formulae are applied and a price is arrived at.  Or, it might be a slightly moist index finger boldly thrust skyward to come up with a number.  The latter is oft...

Getting up in front of people is confronting for a lot of speakers.  Beady eyes are boring into you, a sea of serious faces is scary, the lights are painfully bright and the pressure feels intense.  You start to doubt your preparation was sufficient for the occasion.  You throw up the laptop lid and then try to mount the podium such that it provides a safety barrier between you and the great unwas...

Beginnings are important in business.  It might be the start of a new calendar year, a new financial year or the launch of a new project or initiative.  Often we get straight into the launch and problems arise.  Those we didn't anticipate are particularly annoying.  We may not be able to eliminate all the issues associated with initiatives, but we can always do a better job in the pre-launch phase...

Three woeful contributions from salespeople include "we have this widget", "you should have it?" and "we can discount the price".  What a mess right there.  Yet, left to their own devices, this is the type of nonsense salespeople say to clients.  Serving the client's best interests is job one for salespeople, so why aren't they having a proper conversation with the buyer?     They are untrained, u...

Every performance is better when practiced beforehand and presenting is no different.  We don't do it for a multitude of "good" reasons, none of which abrogate the need to make the time and put in the effort.  We have the time, we just need to allocate it.  We are putting ourselves out there when we present, so don't miss it, there is a lot on the line.  We need to ensure we are a triumph rather t...

"The Devil Is In The Detail" saying, reflects ancient wisdom about taking careful notice of small things.  The semi-amusing reflection on this saying is that it was created centuries ago, when we can imagine life was substantially less complex than it is today.  E-mail surges, flat surfaces groaning under the weight of paper, meetings back to back from dawn to dusk, ring tones, beeps and assorted...

Cold calling is an unheralded intervention into someone's already packed schedule.  They are distracted by the phone from what they were concentrating on, so they are automatically annoyed.  They are time conscious because this call was not in their plan.  The person calling them is an unknown quantity, so the trust factor is zero or less than that.  They have been cold called by idiots in the pas...

Hard and Soft When Presenting   It is so easy to become "Johnny One Note" when presenting.  We get locked into a modality of voice and body language power. We just keep hammering away with that mode throughout the whole talk.  That might be fine for us, but for our audience it is killing them.  If we are all massive power and bravado, after about five minutes, people want a break.  If your "aura"...

Smart people in sales are a problem.  They have expansive brains, intellectual curiousity and strategic depth.  They are quick to spot the big picture solutions for clients.  Internally they are a system police, fantastic on urging the fixing of the sales structures and suggesting necessary improvements.  With Excel macro skills to burn, they can transform a simple spreadsheet information capture...

It always astonishes me that many salespeople have very little sense of proper timing to start selling their product or service.  In the sales call, they are in a rush to get down to business.  Japan has mastered the idea of building some rapport before starting the sales conversation.  Small talk predominates at the commencement of the meeting and then smoothly glides into the main discussion.  W...

118 Three Absolute Fundamentals for Success Highly knowledgeable people are often at a big disadvantage in business.  They have expertise and experience.  Their opinion is sought after, they have high personal levels of credibility.  They often went to prestigious schools, elite universities, completing challenging degrees.  They have paid their dues and have worked they way up the greasy pole to...

How to best tap into the idea potential of our work teams?  We know that the success of the organisation will be determined by the quality of the ideas we generate and the capacity to execute those excellent insights. Gathering folk around the white board and having a free form pitchfest of ideas is more often destructive than creative.  Dominant personalities always hog the white board content. T...

Lawyers have spent a lot of time studying to pass their bar exams.  When they graduate, they are the white collar galley slaves, shackled to legal partner's teams, doing the grunt work for years, until they can be allowed on deck.  As they move up the ranks they begin to interact with clients.  After a few more years they actually have to go out and get clients.  The big dog in the law firm is the...

Japan is an interesting place.  So many things here are ultra modern, high tech, totally nuanced and sophisticated.  You take it for granted that your refrigerator door opens from either side and is deathly quiet, that your vacuum cleaner is very light weight and efficient, that your toilet has more control options than most aircraft.  So when you hit something out of character you really notice t...

HQ Never  Understands Japan   One of the dubious delights of running an international business in Japan is dealing with the Mother Ship or it's Regional Hub spin off.  Trying to explain Japan to those who don't know Japan, has always proven tremendously character building for me.  Having left the corporate treadmill to work for myself, I mistakenly thought I had kissed goodbye to all that pathetic...

Consistency In Sales Is Critical   We all know that consistency is a fundamental requirement if we are going to establish trust with others.  We ask buyers to purchase from us on the basis that we will be delivering what we say we will deliver, on time, at the agreed price point and quality.  Now no salespeople go around promising anything less so there is no differentiation at this stage of the s...

112 Why Lawyers Are So Bad At Presenting Lawyers are smart people, but sometimes do self-defeating things.  They are discovering that unlike the "good old days", there are many service alternatives today facing prospective clients.  Business development is a common term in most industries, but it has a certain unpleasant cache in the legal fraternity.  They are only slowly coming to grips with thi...