The Sales Japan Series

Breaking Into The Mind Of The Buyer   Life is busy, busy today. Communications has sped up business to an extent unthinkable even ten years ago.  Every company is a publisher now, due to social media's pervasiveness. Content marketing is driving original content creation and release.  LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are favouring live video, so we have to become television talents.  Voice is the...

Saying "No" To Buyers   Normally, as the seller, we are getting told "no" in sales, rather than the other way around.  When salespeople become desperate to hit their numbers, they start to do crazy things.  They start telling lies to the buyer, they exaggerate the scope of the solution, they savagely discount the price, they overpromise on the follow-up, they agree to horrendous delivery dates, th...

Three Keys For Sales Success   Know, like and trust are critical components for success in business.   The "know" bit hopefully is being taken care of by your marketing efforts and your personal brand.  What about the like and trust elements?  If the buyer doesn't like us, then the chances of getting a sale becomes so much more difficult.  What makes you likable?  If they don't trust us, then the...

How To Deal With The Dog Days Of Sales   Nothing goes in a straight line in sales, does it.  That order we received gets canceled, suddenly, inexplicably and mercilessly. The client disappears from the face of the earth and despite initial interest, is now permanently incommunicado. Appointments are not coming your way, as we learn that everyone is too busy, not interested, already have it, the br...

"Your Price Is Too High" - Your Reply Is?   When your client hits you with 'your price is too high" what do you say? Are you flustered, wondering how to reply?  Is your brain freaking out, as you flash possible answers through your mind.  Or are you straight off the blocks and into an argument with the buyer?  Are you telling them why it is not too high and why they are wrong, wrong, wrong? By the...

What To Say When You Get A "No" In Sales   What are the chances of getting a "no" to your offer in sales?  Probably around 70% of the time, this is what we will get.  Given that type of frequency and hit rate, you would think that salespeople would be masters of dealing with this type of response. You would be wrong.   The chemicals kick in and sales people lose all reason.    I was reminded of th...

When Is The Best Time To Call A Prospect In Japan?   Japan is merciless with salespeople.  When you call the client's company everyone is doing their absolute best to make sure you don't get to talk to the boss.  They won't tell you their name, they don't offer the take a message for you, the whole vibe is "get lost".  If you don't know the precise name of the person you want to speak with, then t...

Sales Call Roadmap   Because the vast majority of people in sales have no idea what they are doing, they are making it up as they go along.  Wouldn't it be better to have a roadmap to progress the making a sale?  This roadmap will keep us on track and not allow the buyer to take us off on a tangent that leads to nowhere. Foundering around with no central direction wastes a lot of key buyer facing...

Technical Salespeople Must Be Good Presenters Too   Knowledge of the specifications, functionality, inner workings are all fine and dandy but not enough anymore.  Increasingly technically specialised people are being asked to deal with people other than their normal counterparts.  Once upon a time, the engineers spoke with other engineers on the buyer side and that was about it.  A nerdy lovefest...

No Value, No Sale   We believe in our product and we are very knowledgeable about the facts, details, specs, etc.  We launch straight into our presentation of the details with the buyer.  They want to negotiate the price.  Do we see the connection here, the entire catastrophe?  Often salespeople are slogging it out, lowering the price, hurting their positioning of the brand, lowering their own com...

How To Handle "We Are Happy With Our Current Supplier" Pushback   Japan loves the Devil they know over the Angel they don't know.  Change here is hard to achieve in any field, because of the inbuilt fear of mistakes and failure.  This country takes risk aversion to the highest heights in business.  There are no rewards for salaried employees to take risk.   There are massive career downsides thoug...

Selling In The Coming 5G World   The release of 5G or fifth generation mobile networks is only a few short years away, probably around 2020.  There is a lot of controversy at the moment about the reliability of different providers, but the real story hasn't been grasped yet.  Our phones currently run on a 4G standard, which provides a certain  connectivity speed.  Interestingly the move from 4G to...

Selling Yourself First   Selling yourself first can have two dimensions.  One is selling yourself on the product or service, so that the client feels your integrity when you recommend the purchase.  The other aspect is that the buyers buy us first and then they buy the product. They are related, because our belief in what we are doing shines through and the client feels they can trust us. Conmen w...

Lying Salespeople   Riffraff inhabit all corners of the business world, but the sales profession suffers more than many others. Bankers do all sorts of evil things with our money.  Stock brokers do all sorts of evil things with our money.  Real estate agents tell one version of the truth to buyers. Government officials purloin our money. Everywhere you look, someone is ripping us off.  However, th...

Client Need Clarity   Do we have a clear understanding of what the client's needs are?  These can vary beyond the obvious of increased profitability.  It might be more important to gain market share, than drive profits.  Or, it may be that profits are not as much emphasised, as investing in further growth.  How do we seek to understand their needs and at the same time differentiate ourselves from...

"Never Forget A Customer; Never Let A Customer Forget You"   This is an old saying in sales and one we forget at our cost.  We might have made the sale and then we keep moving forward.  We get wrapped up in the intricacies of the getting other customers to commit and in the logistical details of delivering our previously sold service or product.  Our schedule fills up quickly and we have filled it...

Join The Conversation Going On In Your Prospect's Mind   We have all had the experience of talking at cross purposes with someone.  We are both having a conversation that makes sense to ourselves, which is logical and congruent, but which baffles our interlocutor.  After a while we realise we were both talking about unrelated things.  This is not the type of conversation we want to be having with...

The Successful Salesman and Saleswoman Has A Plan   "We don't plan to fail, we fail to plan", is an old saw that is still true today.  Despite an avalanche of tools to help us plan well, we still manage to do a lousy job of it.  Another oldie goldie is "a good workman doesn't blame his tools" and so this applies perfectly to the tech panoply we have at our fingertips. Having tools available and us...

Forensic Sales Questioning Skills   The idea of asking questions of buyers during sales calls is actually ancient.  For at least eighty years, we have known this is the most effective way of getting agreements to our offers.  If this key insight has been around for so long, how come there are so few salespeople who have discovered it yet?  Salespeople turn up to see clients and launch forth straig...

Read The Air When Selling   There is a saying in Japan, Kuki wo Yomu, which means read the air or be aware of the atmosphere or subtexts in the meeting.  In sales, we need to be on high alert all the time for what is the atmosphere prevailing with the buyer at this moment. What are any changes we are noticing during the meeting and what sort of changes do we want to see.   I was talking to a sales...

Building Expert Authority With Buyers   "You are who Google says you are" is a quote from Timbo Reid, the host of the "Small Business Big Marketing" podcast which I follow.  His point is people check us out before they meet us, using search engines like Google.  In sales, buyers will also peruse our company website, search us out on Google and probably look us up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and...

Sales Poor Performers   Are you failing in sales or do you have sales staff who are not making their numbers?  Sales is a brutal, metrics based activity where there are no hiding places or at least none that can be sustained.  Eventually, the numbers show if you are making it or you are not.  What happens then?  In the West the usual next step is you are fired and a replacement is found.  Japan is...

We Give Added Value. No You Don't!   The chocolate on the pillow, the fruit bowl or the wine bottle and glasses in your hotel room are often cited as examples of good service, adding extra value to the client. We may be doing something similar in our business, from our side for free, that we imagine is adding extra value to the buyer.  The idea is cute but the thinking is a bit fuzzy.  I am on a d...

"We Don't Have Any Budget". Yes You Do!   In the profession of sales, this is one of the most widespread pushbacks on our sterling offer. It also a false flag as well.  We should never believe it when we hear this, because they certainly have budget.  What they really mean is they are not prepared to allocate any of their budget for this product or service.  Why would they be that crazy and not ma...