The Japan Business Mastery Show

Memorizing speeches and reading them are both bad ideas.  Okay.  Then what are we supposed to do?  Find out in this weeks show.   The content was really great and the way the words were put together was quite clever.  Obviously a tremendous amount of work had gone into this piece.  The speaker had a previous professional journalistic background and the careful selection of just the right vocabular...

People enter sales with no thought.  They find it is tough and leave or are fired.  How about basing your sales career on having your own point of view, your own philosophy about what you are doing?  Today we look at precisely how to do that.   Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc.  The following morsel popped into my inbox, "Peo...

Bad habits feed off laziness and inflexibility.  Good habits need discipline, work, consistency.  Which is precisely why we prefer to stick with our bad habits.  Find out how to turn that around this week.   We are all the product of our habits.  What we do regularly defines our level of success.  Bad habits, good habits are all the same, in terms of the production of results, so the input point n...

Idiots believe content quality and value trumps delivery.  Limited concentration spans in this Age of distraction have made presenting harder than any time in history.  If you are not on top of your game, no one will be listening to your genius high value content.   Can we be successful as a presenter if we don't connect with our audience?  Many presenters believe this simply is not needed.  This...

We think sales is tough and we are sick of clients saying no.  We want to quit. When you consider this story of Toshiya Kakiuchi, you will realise you have nothing to complain about.   Salespeople are world class whiners and whingers. They are the most creative group amongst all professions for coming up with excuses about why they can't meet their targets.    Salespeople everywhere are delicate b...

Being too clever by half is never a good idea for a presenter.  We are here to make our points crystal clear to our audience, not to impress them with our own brilliance.  Personal and professional brands get torn asunder when we get this wrong.  Find out how to avoid that fate in today's show.   We are all assembled in a luxury hotel's gorgeous function room. The big brand name, the resplendent s...

Being influential and persuasive are professional skills.  Salespeople need both but often are not trained in either.  Let's look at some new habits which will make all the difference.   Being persuasive is a must when convincing buyers to give up their security (money) in exchange for the promise of higher value.  Surprisingly, very few salespeople have ever had any presentation training whatsoev...

First impressions are vital in business and in life, yet so many companies get this simple thing wrong.  How about your company?  Let's look at what people are getting wrong and see how to fix it.   You appreciate Japan when you leave it and meet grumpy, angry looking, unfriendly customer facing staff overseas.  Dale Carnegie's Human Relation's Principle Number Five is "SMILE".  It may sound a bit...

Breathing is such a natural act and normally, we don't pay it much attention.  Somehow though, when we are giving a presentation, our breath control becomes a factor of success.  One component is our nerves, which are driving the chemical surge through the body, making our heart rate skyrocket, which speeds up our breathing pattern.    If we are not breathing properly, we can have mental white out...

If we are presenting a brochure, flyer, price list, hard copy slide deck or any other typical collateral item, then we should adopt best practice for greatest success.  Have two copies always, one for you to read and one for the client, unless you are a genius of reading upside down (which by the way seems to include all Japanese!).    At the start, put your copy to the side for later if you need...

Kids today! Each generation struggles to understand why their successors are so different (and usually, by definition, "useless").  The Millennial cohort are those born between 1982 and 2000.  This is a key group, especially in Japan, because they are not making enough of them any more.    Over the last 20 years, the population of 15-24 years olds has halved.   Recruiting and retaining young staff...

Usually this isn't even a question for most presenters, because the organisers have already set up the room when you arrive. Our speaking spot has been designated for us.  But have we been designated a spot by experts in public speaking or by the venue crew who usually just haul chairs, lug tables around and set up the stage?  Sadly the coalescence between expertise in public speaking and membersh...

Price is always a big issue for salespeople.  Sales Managers know that sales people are very happy to drop the price, because they see this as the easy route forward with the client.  Whenever there is a price increase, sales people immediately whine about it, because they see this as making their task more difficult.  They are permanently happy to discount, in order to win the business, even when...

Sakaiya Taichi, a well known author and futurist, made some interesting observations about trends in Japanese youth society.  He referred to young Japan's current lack of yoku (desire), yume (dreams) and yaruki (guts).  What does this mean for business and for our companies if we are staffed by young people without these three Ys?    The triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdo...

Designing our presentation well is critical.  We have identified our target audience for our key messages.  We have selected the title to really engage our audience.  We know the purpose of the exercise - inform, persuade, entertain or motivate to action.   Designing the conclusion is always a good place to start.  The conclusion is really the summary of the key message we want to get across.  The...

Sisyphus was banished to Hades for misdeeds in life and spent eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, to just watch it descend again.  This is the sales life.  Every end of financial year, we are back down at the bottom of the hill. Here we go again, having to push that big rock all the way to the top.   "You are only good as your last deal" is a common refrain in sales.  We struggle...

We are in a temporary lull in the war for talent, thanks to Covid -19. In short order, things will be back to normal though with all of us facing a shortage of suitable young people to hire. Are we ready to the resumption of hostilities?   They are just not making enough future workers here in Japan. The required birthrate for stopping population decline is 2.1 but currently Japan is only at 1.36...

What Do I Do With My Hands When Presenting   One of our problem areas is what to do with our hands when we speak.  Judging by most of the presentations I see in Japan, few speakers have worked this out yet.  Here are some common habits we can improve upon to make ourselves much more persuasive and professional.   Hands in front of the body. The arms and hands when held in front of the body create...

Japan is a huge market. Yet, the results are often flat lining or disappointing.  Excuses abound – the yen is too strong, the yen is too weak, competitors are discounting, new competitors are taking market share, etc. Finding new clients is the perpetual Holy Grail of the sales world. How well do the marketing and sales teams work together?  Often, not well.  The marketers complain the salespeople...

Is speed expensive?  Constant hustling can lead to large and small errors of judgment.  We get so caught up in living 24/7 lifestyles that we start missing big pieces of the success puzzle.  People are the key to most businesses, but look at how we treat them.  We hit the panic button on a piece of work and make everyone jump through hoops to make sure the deadline is met.  We either end the sente...

A demagogue is a politician who appeals to popular desires and prejudices to garner support.  Donald Trump is a modern American demagogue, who breaks many of the rules of presenting but he gets the key stuff right.  Love him or loath him, he must be doing something right, as he is proving to be very persuasive with the audiences who flock to hear him speak.  Are there any lessons here for us, when...

Smoothly memorised shtick, elaborate glossy materials, sharp suits, large expensive watches, bleached teeth, the perfect coiffure are not important in sales.  Hollywood pumps out Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room, The Wolf of Wall Street and we get sold an image of what high pressure salespeople look like.   What we buyers really want is someone on our side.  We want help to solve issu...

Harvard Professor Joseph Nye coined the term "soft power" to describe how nations can achieve their aims through persuasion and the ability to attract.  Can soft power in our businesses achieve persuasion and attract cooperation?  Here are four soft power plays that persuade and attract the team to outperform the competition.   Play One:   work on our communication.  The WHY of the vision as well...

Final impressions at the end of a speech are what determine our memory of the person.  Life is throwing so much information at us and at such a manic pace we are easily overwhelmed.  We will retain an overall impression of the speaker, for good or otherwise, forever.  We can let that be a random selection event or we can plan to have the final impression the one we have chosen in advance.   It is...

Price is always a big issue.  We salespeople are very happy to drop the price, because we see this as the easy route forward with the client.  Whenever there is a price increase, we immediately whine about it, because we see this as making our revenue task more difficult.  We are permanently happy to discount, to win the business, even when our commissions are tied to the size of the sale.  The pr...