The Japan Business Mastery Show

The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don't believe in yourself.  The acid test is would you sell this "whatever" to your grandmother?  If the answer is no, then get out of there right now!  It is rarely that clear cut though.  The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client's problem or not.  Selling clients on things that are not in their best inte...

Getting the team motivated is hard enough without us screwing it up.  Here are seven things we should eliminate: Showing a lack of common courtesy You are a super busy boss.  Are you barking out commands like a tyrant, with no thought to say "please" when requesting action or adding a "thank you" when it is completed?  Do you come to work full of worries, with a cartoon rain cloud above your head...

  Why are so few business leaders good communicators, given all the education they have received, starting at varsity and then later, through their workplace organisations? Leaders are often told they need to be "authentic".  That means to some, that it is fine to be dull, obtuse, monotone and forgettable.  While dramatic oratorical flourishes are not required, congruency is a must.  For leaders t...

Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust.  The first three to thirty seconds is vital, so what do we need to do?  Here are three things we need to get right: Pay attention to our dress and our posture! Looking sharp and stand straight – this communicates confidence. Walk in standing straight and tall, stop and...

There is a lot to do and once you get to a certain scale you realise you can't do it all by yourself.  This is when you need your staff.  That is fine, but they didn't start the business or if it is an established business, they are not the boss on much better money.  How do you get your people to actually really care about the business?   There are four things to focus on.  This research was comp...

Cold calling is dead!  No cold calling is not dead!  Lots of debate and advice on this subject and many a fortune funded as a result no doubt.  For Japan it is not dead but it is diabolically hard.  We need to select ideal prospects who are not presently clients.  We need to list companies up who are look-a-likes for current clients or fit into our sweet spot.  We have what they need, they just do...

There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing.  We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure.  Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only have a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look fo...

Sales cannot run like a manufacturing production line.  We are not making industrial cheese here.  This is more like an artisanal pursuit, closer to art than science.  Yet, every sales force on the planet has targets which are usually uniform.  Each month, the sales team has to deliver a specified amount of revenue, rolling up into a pre-determined annual target.  The construct may be logical, but...

As professionals how do we grow in our business careers?  Academic studies usually form the platform to which are added: on the job experience; books, articles, blogs and websites; mentors showing us the short cuts; cleverer colleagues providing insights and continuing professional development through training are the usual solutions.  One of the issues with the training component is the effective...

All of our problems walk on two legs and talk back". I can't recall when I first came across this expression , but it is true isn't it. Most business problems can be fixed with more capital, technological breakthroughs, greater efficiencies, patience and time. People problems though are much trickier.  An after work drinks session erupts into an alcohol fueled shouting match between two colleagues...

How much is enough data in a presentation?  How much is too much?  Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information.  Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness.  And you just can't bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena.  You have sp...

Finding clients is an art and so is building trust and credibility that you can  actually help them solve their business problems. We might be very charming when we first meet the client, sending out a competency vibe that the client relates to. They are open to our inquiries into the current state of their business, where the gaps are located and the urgency of filling those gaps. So far so good....

There is a great Simon Sinek video floating around about how companies say employees are important, but don't really act like it.  He lines up the typical CEO hit list of growth, shareholder value, customers and in fourth place, employees.  Richard Branson is also a powerful advocate for putting employees first before all else.  It makes sense.  We want motivated, enthusiastic staff engaging with...

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks.  Uh oh.  No preparation, no warning and no escape.  What do you do?  Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter.    Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds.  By the time you have heaved y...

Pushy salespeople are very, very annoying.  They try to bug you into buying and none of us 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? Having made the presentation, listened carefully t...

No one wants to be sold, but we love to buy.  The difference between these two approaches comes down to the mindset of the salesperson and their sales abilities.    The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don't believe in yourself.  The acid test is would you sell this "whatever" to your grandmother?  If the answer is no, then get out of there right now!  It is rarely that clea...

Trying to explain Japan to your boss back at HQ is a real pain.  HQ ideas on solutions for Japan rarely hit the mark.   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 tr...

Doing more, better, faster with less, screams out for innovation.  This could be a kaizen approach of continuous improvement or it could be breakthrough leaps.  .  How much scope can we allow in the creative process?  At the practical level, this is really asking how many and how huge are the mistakes you will tolerate to achieve good ideas?   Leader have an important role to build people with ide...

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 have a lot of energy, are excited about our topic and eager to share the goodies with our audience, then we can easily find oursel...

Speaking in front of others makes many people tongue tied and nervous.  They struggle to get through a simple presentation, internally, in front of their colleagues.  A public audience is something they would flee from, screaming and waving their hands in the air.  Why is that?  We all learn how to talk.  The presentation is just a talk, so what is the big deal?  Yet, it is a barrier to many peopl...

Most talks and presentations we hear, we cannot recall.  Why is that?  We were there presumably because we had an interest. Part of the problem is the way people present their information in the first place.  The slides are too dense and confusing.  The delivery is done in a lethargic manner, devoid of passion, with zero body language backing up the key points.  The speaker may also be speaking to...

The vast majority of us are amateurs, when it comes to negotiating. Even in business, we would only be involved a few times a year perhaps in a major negotiation.  Rather than trying to work it out by ourselves let's take a look at some guidelines to make the whole process easier.   Sadly, not everyone is like us – wonderful, charming, amusing, attractive.  Despite our best efforts to be a role mo...

The content was really great and the way the words were put together was quite clever.  The speech was a dud.  It failed miserably because it was a written speech, read to us.  He could have emailed it to all of us and we could have read it for ourselves.    The next speaker just spoke.  He wasn't such a fluent talker, sometimes stumbling over some of his words, occasionally stuttering, but he had...

I was amazed to see one of the captains of industry, a hostage to his adrenaline release. His curriculum vitae was perfect. A Prince of the First Water, yet he would explode with instant white hot rage, when he didn't get the results he wanted, and would viciously tear strips of the offending patsy. We learned to sit on his right or left at the end of a long meeting room table where it was hard to...

Questions in general are powerful tools for speakers. They bring focus to key points we want to get across. They are particularly useful in getting our audience engaged. They also have a danger within them. Knowing when to use questions and what types of questions to use, are things which must be worked out in the planning of the presentation and shouldn't be done on the fly. If you want to get yo...