The Japan Business Mastery Show

Dealing W ith R ejection I n S ales. Everyone hates to be rejected,   but not many people have this as a fundamental aspect of their work. We ask colleagues for help, and they assist. We ask our bosses for advice, and they provide it. Buyers though are a different case. They can easily find a million reasons not to buy and unashamedly tell us " no " . Rejection itself is not so much the problem ,...

Running the Japan Operation. Running your own business is challenging anywhere, but Japan adds a bit of a spice to the broth. Unlike Western countries where salespeople are prepared to work on a one hundred percent commission basis v ery few Japanese staff are attracted by that option. Again, this opportunity to move wage costs away from fixed to variable is less available here. This means there m...

Zen study is a way to strip out all of the non-essentials in life.  As presenters, this is a good metaphor for when we are in front of people speaking. You would think with all those thousands of years of Zen in Japan, the Japanese people would be legends of simplicity and clarity when presenting.  Not true!  Presenting as an idea only came to Japan around 160 years ago.  Fukuzawa Yukichi who foun...

Sales is one of the few things in business you can measure accurately and immediately.  Are you getting greater efficiencies from your internal systems?  Is the marketing working?  Are our team becoming more skillful?  These are topics which are super important but also devilish to measure.  Sales however is straightforward – how much did you sell?  The pressure on salespeople is enormous.  There...

Often we will hear a presentation and receive a lot of information from the presenter, but we are not really clear on what is their point of view on this subject.  Technically oriented people are particularly prone to understatement.  They believe that the data sells itself.  This is because often they are very logical types.  They didn't get the email which explained that we all buy on emotion an...

There is an abundance of definitions on what is charismatic leadership? The definition proffered during a recent webinar was uncontroversial and acceptable: emotional and intellectual engagement, inspiration to go the extra mile – all quite reasonable elements. Somehow that left me feeling vaguely unfulfilled.  Reflecting on charismatic leaders, what was it about them that made them so attractive?...

Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets.  In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in the client's best interests.  We know we should listen carefully to what the client wants, before we attempt to suggest any solution for the buyer's needs.  We know that by asking well designed questions, we can possibly come up with an insight that triggers a...

Basically your job is toast.  There is a machine or there will soon be a machine that can do it faster, better and cheaper than you.  Our skill set didn't change much from the start of agriculture 12,000 years ago until the industrial revolution in the mid-18 th century.  This last 150 years has been busy.  We have created a weapon that can destroy our race.  Who thought we would be that stupid? ...

My eyes are closing.  I am struggling to stay awake.  There is something about this presentation that is not working.  I thought, it must be me.   I must be tired.  Later however I realized the problem.  I was being lulled into sleep by the monotone delivery of the presenter.  The brand by the way is gorgeous.  This is seriously high profile, a name that everyone knows and respects.  The name alon...

Pricing is usually set by the boss and salespeople are just there to get out and sell at that designation. The trouble though is salespeople are not convinced by any price setting methodology. They only believe in the reality of the market. The way they know the reality is the degree of pushback they get from clients, when they are trying to sell.    When you have no belief in the value backing up...

You have to tell people how it is or you will lose power and authority.  If you swallow what you want to say, you will diminish yourself.  If you avoid hard conversations, you will have less influence.  You need to tell them exactly how you are feeling.  This was the tenor of the advice coming from an American communication "guru".  While listening to this, I thought this is absolutely going to fa...

We can speak to a group and then there is another level, where we try to captivate our audience.  What makes the difference.  The content could even be the same but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner.  Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life.  The quality of the argument we are going to present is important.  We definitely need...

Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service.  He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book "Moments Of Truth".  I was reminded of Carlson's insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore.  While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an...

"Born to lead" is nonsense.  Many things shaped that person in order for them to achieve credibility with others.  Of course, we can become a "leader" as part of our company designated hierarchy.  We sit somewhere in an organizational chart above others, with various reporting lines elevating us above the hoi polloi.  We know many people with that august title of "leader", who we would never willi...

Sometimes you see a confident leader really bomb their presentation.  It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast.  If they are totally hopeless and they bomb, well that is understandable.  But a competent leader shouldn't bomb their presentation.  He did and I was wondering why that happened?  It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that...

Pizazz is one of those unusual words, that sounds kind of cool, but is a bit vague.  In presenting terms, we are really looking at being more interesting and engaging and doing that in a sparky, non-anticipatory way.  A workman like, by the numbers, presentation is fundamentally boring.  A recent presenter did a painting by numbers job with his effort.  The talk had completed the exercise in the a...

The hero's journey is for the very, very few.  The reality is there are more of us who need the cooperation of others, than those who can succeed despite others.  The problem is although we made need the cooperation of others, we are not that good at it.  We limit our scope through two key areas – how we communicate and how we react.    Reflecting the preferences of others is a veryeffective way o...

Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes.  This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines.  Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued.  The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff.  Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn't all that important.  The quality of the data or the...

Tricky area in sales, showmanship.  The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc.  Yet, like storytelling, this is an important part of the sales professional's repertoire.  Clients are card carrying members of the Great Guild Of Skeptics.  They are highly doubtful about salespeople's claims. We need to bring some powerful persuasion t...

We love acronyms!  Our workplaces are thriving with them such that we can hold extended conversations composed entirely of seemingly impenetrable codes.  They are handy though and this one REAL is short and serviceable to describe best practice leadership attributes.  It always good to have evidence around pontification. This summary of the great and the good tendencies amongst leaders is based on...

When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in humanity is restored.  There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well.    The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event.  The presentation was well structured...

Bullying, humiliation, ridiculous targets, rubbish goods, stress, shame – a toxic cocktail often suffered in the sales environment.  We often get into sales by accident.  There are no varsity courses in sales.  There is training available by companies like ourselves, but often this is not offered by the employer.  The assumption is you look after yourself.  We won't invest in you and we will fire...

I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses.  Here are my musings after 51 years of training in traditional Karate. Stepping on to the floor The dojo is the ultimate equalizer.  Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks's mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else.  In bu...

We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media.  Most of these representations however have very little relevance in the real world of business.  A lot of the work done on negotiations focuses on "tactics".  This is completely understandable for any transactional based negotiations.  Those one off deals where there is no great likelihood of any on-going relationship between buyer and selle...

Projects have been around for a long time of course and in the modern era we have accumulated a vast amount of best practice on how to manage them.  It isn't usually that we don't know what to do, it is that we don't actually do it.  We get into trouble when we just leap in and dig straight into the logistical entrails,  without giving enough thought to a macro 360 degree view of what is involved....