The Sales Japan Series

Selling To Clients On-Line In These Covid-19 Times   Covid-19 might actually be good for sales.  It might short circuit some of the dumb things salespeople do, when meeting face to face with buyers.  With clients reluctant to hold business meetings because of their fears of the contagion from Covid-19, we need to connect to buyers through either phone calls or video calls.  With more people workin...

Covid-19 Is Truncating Your Sales Activities, Therefore….   First the agreed purchases were postponed.  Then the events were cancelled.  Next the sales calls were canned.  Buyers are in lock down, many are at home working from there.  The economic fallout from the virus is weaving its way into the fabric of the economy, starting with the small and medium enterprises. It won't stop there because th...

Unprofessional Professional Salespeople   Salespeople in their forties, who have been selling their whole careers are professional salespeople.  They are not Johnny Come Latelys who found themselves washed up on the shore of the sales profession or people who wandered through the wrong door and found themselves in a sales job.  They have been in the game for decades and have acquired vast experien...

Selling Through Others In Japan   We may think we are selling directly to the buyer in japan but often we are not actually dong that.  Selling through distributors is obviously a case where we sell through others. However when the buyers are sitting in front of you, you can easily delude yourself that you are going direct.  No true in most cases.  Yes, if you are dealing with a "one man shacho", t...

Dealing With Buyers Who Won't Reveal Their Problem   The basics of professional selling requires good questioning skills on the part of the salesperson.  We understand the buyer need and then we match that need with our solution.  Pretty straight forward stuff really.  What do we do though when the buyer won't reveal their real issues or are hiding the problem from us?  This is a deal killer right...

Expectations Of Newly Hired Salespeople   Be they people new to sales or new to that company, there is always a delay in new salespeople producing results.  Sales leaders often have unrealistic expectations around how much a new person to the business can produce.  If they are already selling in that industry, product or service area and have an existing client base, then it is reasonable to expec...

Just In Time Is Bad In Sales   Toyota is famous for its JIT or Just In Time system of logistics when building cars.  Parts arrive exactly when needed, so have vast space for item storage isn't necessary, saving time and money.  When we are selling we sometimes stray into this territory too, but this is a bad move.  In the case of salespeople they are doing their background research into the compan...

Selling Beyond The Sale   The main goal is always to get the sale agreed.  To get the buyer to say "yes" and specify when delivery will take place.  All of the efforts are concentrated here but  is that enough?  Over promising by salespeople is legendary.  They do this to get the sale over the line.  The potential damage to the brand is not in their minds because that is not their department.  "Pr...

  Dealing With Really Tough and Mean Questions From Clients   When we give our presentation to the client we are in full control of the situation.  We know what we are going to say.  When we get to the end, or part way through, and the client asks us a really tough question, this can be difficult to deal with.  Especially, if the client is unhappy and asks the question in a very aggressive or accu...

How Good Are Your Key Touch Points In Sales?   Jan Carlzon's book "Moments Of Truth" should be standard reading for everyone in business and particularly those of us in sales.  He talks about taking over as CEO of the Scandinavian Air Services (SAS) airline when the company was failing and had terrible consumer reviews, regarding their service.  With his team, they identified every touch point on...

Happy Holidays!  How To Massacre Your Brand Promise   The end of year holiday season is a time of great retail commercial activity around the world.  Brands work well because they bring with them a promise of reliability and trust.  We buy the brands over the non-brands to reduce risk and increase our certainty that our buying decision is a good one.  The issue for firms is how to protect the bran...

2020 Ushers In New Deals – Are We Ready To Get Our Share?   Greek myths don't have too many happy endings or uplifting messages.  Mostly they are cautionary tales about the Gods treating us like playthings, usually with unhappy consequences.  The patron Greek myth for salespeople is the one about Sisyphus.  The son of Aeolus, the God of the Winds, he was sent down to Hades to be punished by fulfil...

Reflecting On Your Learnings In Sales   You are as only as good as your last sale is harsh but true as a synopsis of our sales life.  Bosses are not interested in what you did last year, because that is history, done and dusted.  They are focused on this year's numbers.  They got their big commissions, bonuses, promotions, their five star holiday with the family.  They are looking at you for a big...

Leading An Intentional Sales Professional Life In 2020   The targets for the year are already set or will be set shortly, no matter when your financial year begins.  These numbers are irrelevant.  What is more important is what you are going to do to improve yourself this year to make hitting those targets more certain and easier to do.  We tend to roll one year into the next without any intervent...

Why "Okay, Send Me Your Proposal" Is A Bad Idea In Japan   Getting to the request for a proposal stage is usually thought of as significant progress in Japan.  This means there is an interest.  Or may be not.  Japan is a very polite society so a direct "no" is difficult to deal with. Over centuries, the society has found all sorts of clever ways of saying "no" indirectly.  When you get this reques...

Selling Yourself Before You Meet The Client   I have been recruiting new staff over these last few months.  One of the younger candidates breezily told me during the interview, "I checked you out on social media".  This is the modern age, where everything about us is available only a few mouse clicks away.  This "checking you out" phenomenon has been around for some time and the frequency only inc...

  How To Sell To A Buying Team   Selling to companies in Japan usually means sitting in a meeting room with a single buyer or perhaps two people.  There are occasions though where we may need to present to a larger number of buyers in a more formal setting.  It may be a pitch to secure the business or it may be a means of getting the buying team more easily coordinated on their side.   Before we k...

Nine Major Mistakes By Japanese Salespeople   We see Japan as a modern, high tech country very advanced in so many sectors.  Sales is not one of them.  Consultative selling is very passé in the West, yet it has hardly swum ashore here as yet.  There are some cultural traits in Japan that work against sales success, such as not initiating a conversation with strangers.  Makes networking a bit trick...

My Clients Never Call Me Back   Today in business, reaching anyone by telephone is nothing less than a miracle.  Japan is particularly good at making sure you can never catch clients.  The lowest ranked staff on the totem pole are designated as the "first impression" bearers for the company. They are invariably doing a pretty poor job of it because they are not properly trained.  They think their...

The One Minute Pitch   If you have been following me for a while, you know how down I am on pitching.  This is the standard modus operandi in japan.  Turn up to the meeting with the buyer and bludgeon them with detail and data on your solution.  Ask no questions but keep throwing a ton of mud up against the wall hoping some will stick.    I always stress you need to get permission to ask questions...

Add Some BANTER To Your Next Sales Call   I am a permanent student of sales.  I study the books and tapes from the greats – J. Douglas Edwards, Charlie Cullen, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar.  I follow this generation of sale's trainers such as Grant Cardone, Jeffrey Gitomer and Victor Antonio.  Now Victor Antonio is someone I like, because I can see that his methods will work here in Jap...

Success Negotiating – Part Two   In Part One we covered the four steps involved in negotiating: Analysis, Presentation, Bargaining and Agreement.  Today we are going to go a bit deeper.  Before getting to the negotiations stage though we need to determine our position and that of the other side.  Which items are negotiable and which are not?  What would an ideal outcome look like? What would be a...

  Success Negotiating: Part One   Our image of negotiating tends to be highly influenced by the winner takes all model.  This is the transactional process where one side outwits the other and receives the majority of the value.  Think about your own business?  How many business partners do you have where this would apply?  For the vast majority of cases we are not after a single sale.  We are thin...

  How to Present To A Diverse Buying Team   This is very tricky in Japan.  Because of the convoluted decision making process here, there will be many voices involved in the final decision. What makes it even harder is that some of those key influencers may not even be present in the meeting.  Those proposing the change have to go around to each one of them and get their chop on the piece of paper...

The 80/20 Rule Of Selling   We are all familiar with the 80/20 Pareto Principle, where 20% of buyers account for 80% of the sales and 20% of the salespeople, account for 80% of the revenue.  There is another 80/20 split which we need to adhere to.  This refers to the amount of time we are speaking relative to the buyer.  Salespeople love to talk.  They love to dominate the airwaves and through str...