The Sales Japan Series

Four Powerful Japanese Mindsets For Sales Sales is a battle.  Not a battle with the buyer, although sometimes it feels like that when they won't purchase from us.  The war is going on inside our own heads.  We have imposter syndrome telling us we are not good enough to do the job, even when we have some modicum of success.  We have the reverberation of negative self talk, telling us we are useless...

Sales is such a rollercoaster.  You have a good month or a good quarter then you hit a wall.  Clients change their mind, something happens to the supply chain beyond your control and the order get cancelled.  You usually cannot control the quality of the solution being delivered and someone else in the organisation doesn't do their job professionally enough and you suffer.  We do have total contro...

Objections are good.  That sounds a bit counterintuitive I know, because what we actually want is to land a deal and an objection seems to be an obstacle preventing that from happening. There is a process for dealing with objections and we need to be disciplined to follow it every time and not be derailed by our emotions.  When we get an objection, our automatic response is to argue with the buyer...

Today, we are going to talk about the importance of listening for salespeople. That might sound ridiculous. You might be thinking, "Well, of course I listen to the buyer". I can assure you my wife often complains that I am not listening to her, so we may be deluding ourselves as to what level of world champion listener we actually are. You might be thinking, "well listening to my partner may have...

After having asked the buyer a lot of questions about their current situation and where they want to be, we know if we can help them or not.  It isn't a given that we can.  Only we will know if we have the right solution for them.  We could provide a wrong or partial solution. The client will not however get the outcomes they need.  Yes, we grab the dough in the short term, but our business reputa...

Do you have a sales questioning model?  Is there a journey you want the buyer to complete? Do you have questions organised which will lead them along that path? Or are you all over the place, following your "muse" instead?  Surprisingly, a lot of salespeople have very little structure in their sales meetings with buyers.  Why would that be the case?  They may be untrained in sales.  They may be co...

The word shoshin or beginner's mind in Japanese is a great metaphor for the world of sales.  When we start some activity there is a simplicity, a purity about what we are doing.  We don't have enough information or experience to have any particular angles on what we are looking at.  We take things as they are and we have no delusions about how they should be.  We have no habits yet, because the ac...

In 2022, let's all commit to asking more intelligent questions of buyers.  For those who don't ask questions, because they are too busy delving into the micro details of the solution, this will be a major change for the better.  How on earth can you know if the solution you are promoting is the right fit for the client's problems, if you haven't clearly established what the real problems are?  Rat...

Clients don't need to do anything.  We discover this unfortunate fact very quickly in sales.  We also discover they are never on our timetable of what needs to happen. They can stay with the same supplier or they can make no changes to their current situation.  Neither of those are helpful for a salesperson.  There must be some driver for the buyer to take action and take action right now. There h...

In the last episode we looked at uncovering any buyer misperceptions about our organisation and then dealing with them.  How did that go?  Today we will work on one of the most critical phases in the buying cycle – uncovering buyer needs. Depending on where the client sits in the buyer organisation, they can have different needs.  In broad brush terms, we can assume that the CEOs are strategy focu...

Business is brutal and sometimes clients have received incorrect information about our companies from competitors or the media.  When I was selling on behalf of Australian exporters in Nagoya, I remember a client telling me that our competitors had said the Aussie company was verging on bankruptcy and was about to go under. You can easily imagine what effect that had on business for that exporter....

This week we will look at improving our questioning skills and setting up the meeting agenda.  There are a variety of qualifying questions we need to design before we meet with the client, be that meeting online or in person.  What we don't want is to be trying to work it out on the spur of the moment.  It is always better to have a basic structure and then adjust to suit the situation, than tryin...

In sales, we definitely need a Credibility Statement.  Buyers are always worried about buying what they don't need or paying too much for what they do buy.  The subterranean vibe is one of distrust toward salespeople.  So we have to work hard to overcome that fundamental doubt.  Salespeople without a solid sales process won't have this valuable persuasion tool at their disposal.  In fact, they wil...

What is your pre-approach regimen before you meet the buyer?  We cannot do everything and our time is finite. We should be trying to save our valuable time for meetings with the most qualified clients who can buy.  This might be new clients or existing clients who have more capacity to buy from us. It is always disheartening when you analyse the existing buyer activity and realise we are only sell...

In this episode we will look at KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.  These are activities which when carried out effectively lead to revenue results.  There are also behavioural aspects to KPIs which are important and shouldn't be neglected.  Everyone has their own business area, so the construct of the KPIs will vary across industries and sectors.  What are they for you?    Has your company alrea...

We know that our attitude determines everything.  Henry Ford is often quoted for saying, "if you think you can or your think you can't, your right".  In the 1920s, psychologists understood that we can change our futures by changing how we think.  Up until that time, everyone talked about God's will or fate and as individuals we had no options.  Today we understand the power of our mind to drive ou...

  Usually gaining access to the big company President is a real coup.  We now have the ear of the decision maker and if we can convert the Prez, then we are going to get the sale.   In Japan, unless the President is also the owner, then gaining access and then a sale is usually a mirage.  There is a particular species of President in Japan called a wan man shacho or the dictatorial President who d...

  Every minute, there is more and more competition for the same clients, so we need to differentiate ourselves very clearly.  I see new competitors entering the market all of the time, even during Covid.  You would think at least during Covid, things would quieten down a bit on the competitor front, but no.  Existing competitors are getting more and more desperate, so they start giving everything...

  We have so many things pulling us in different directions at the same time, we can get a bit overwhelmed by all the sales work we have to do.  We can get caught up in the weeds of our daily work and lose sight of the big picture. We are being beaten up over the numbers or lack thereof, the revenue budget daily, weekly, monthly status. How can we get the right focus on what we should be doing and...

Over Parts One and Two we have been exploring how to apply some human relations principles when we are working with our buyers.  Buyers don't buy products or services.  They buy us first and the solution comes with us, as a package.  If they don't buy us, then the package can be the best one on the planet on paper, but they won't bother to buy it because it doesn't feel right because the trust is...

In the last episode we looked at the first three of the human relations principles we can apply when interacting with our buyers. Sales is all about trust.  Trust is built up through what we say and what we do.  It is also a function of our behavior with buyers.  We face a tricky equation of getting on with all types of buyers with different outlooks, communication and personality styles.  There a...

If we want to succeed in sales, we want to build a strong relationship with our buyers.  Having to run around and create a new buyer every single time is seriously hard work.  Yes we must hunt, but we also want to farm. However, nowever, nHoot all buyers are easy to deal with.  We might think they should change, so that they are easier to deal with. They should make it easier for us to sell them o...

You would think that if your business has survived Covid, then the pandemic will have cut a swathe through your competitors.  Therefore, we would all be granted a temporary reprieve from the usual rigorous competition for client business. Counterintuitively, there seems to be more and more competition for the same clients, so we need to differentiate ourselves very clearly.  What we absolutely don...

At the center of everything we do is the customer relationship.  Additionally, like planets revolving around the sun, there are five stages of the sales cycle revolving around the customer relationship, which we must pass through in order to make the sale.  In a way, this is our roadmap for when we are talking to the buyer.  If we want to make a sale and get the re-order, we must control the sales...

We all know that without trust there will be no sale and much worse than that, no ongoing sales.  So how do we build trust with our buyers? It is a critical salesperson facility, because research shows that 63% of buyers would rather buy from someone they completely trust, than from someone who gives them a better price.  Think about that – trust trumps price.  What is the cost of creating trust v...