The Sales Japan Series

A miraculous thing often happens when I am meeting clients for the first time.  We have had our meeting, I am closing up my organiser where I have been taking my notes, I am getting ready to leave, when they will drop some major insight or important piece of information on me.  It is always a bit fraught because the meeting has obviously ended, I am already packed up and I cannot easily unpack the...

Have you ever paid for something that you found was very good and which you used for many years.  You will have forgotten perhaps the price you originally paid, but you have not forgotten the quality you received.  You always maintain a positive mindset about that company and the product or service. On the other hand, if you paid for something that didn't deliver what you expected, over time, you...

"In our business, at our size, we have to be the speedboat, we cannot be the oil tanker", is a key mantra for my Franchise company.  Why is that the case?  I am the only non-Japanese in the firm and I was frustrated at the slow pace of decision-making and action taken by the team.  Growing up in Western business, speed of decision-making and taking action are requirements drummed into you from any...

The ferocity of competitors depends on a number of factors.  Are we in a commodity market where price and supply capacity determine all and it is a race to the bottom?  Are we in a narrow band market where there are few suppliers and market share is hard to expand?  Is our business exposed to currency swings?  Are technological breakthroughs by rivals either going to deeply wound us or even drive...

In the good old days we could have multiple public personas in sales.  We could be the professional salesperson, but that image was entirely separate to our family life.  We could enjoy boozy celebrations and getting off our face with relative anonymity.  We could accumulate customer complaints and deal with them in private.  We could rely on word of mouth from within a limited circle of acquainta...

For the last two and a half years business networking has been dead.  The usual suspects who hosted live networking events migrated everything online, so you become totally restricted in your ability to create any relationship with the people attending the event.  The hosts kick it off, the speaker speaks, the Q&A gets underway, the hosts wrap it up and you are left hanging there, without any good...

In our presentation training classes we ask the participants, "how long does it take for you to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?".  How about you?  How long do you take to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?  It used to be people in our classes would say 30 seconds, others would say up to a couple of minutes.  Today, the answers are no...

The most common complaint we get from clients about their sales team is that they are too passive.  They are great at farming, but not great at hunting, growing the size of the existing business and finding new buyers.  "It is as if they were working for the buyer and not for our company, because they bend over backwards to keep the client happy. Maybe too happy", is not an unusual comment.  On th...

Useless salespeople who cannot sell get fired.  But are they really useless or are their sales managers useless or their companies useless?  There are some industries which are notorious for the up or out mentality and recruiting certainly comes to mind.  There is a lot of rhetoric floating around about saving mankind, through matching the buyer and seller of services, but the reality inside these...

Japan just devours data, statistics and information.  When you visit some scenic spot, there will be an amazing level of data available about that venue.  The announcement on the subway train when you arrive at your stop will warn you that there is a specific gap in so many centimeters between the platform and the train, so be careful.  I first discovered this data addiction when I was here as a s...

Tension is a good thing in business, because this is how we get things done.  There is an issue which needs solving and either we fix it ourselves or we outsource the specifics to someone else.  There is a tension between scaling up and preserving oxygen, otherwise known as, "cash flow".  I have this issue all of the time.  I want to grow my company, but I don't want outside investors, so bootstra...

The phrase "I was ghosted" is a new addition to the sales lexicon but the problem is ancient.  You meet someone at a networking event, have a positive conversation and then you follow up with them.  Your email goes nowhere and all you get is crickets.  So you send it again as a forward, so that the previous one is there in the thread as a subtle shaming reminder "hey, I wrote to you, but you haven...

What would the buyer's agenda be, during the sales call?  "Don't take too long, because I am busy", "Don't waste my time with stuff I don't need", "Don't erode my cash flow", "Don't rip me off", would probably be the most prevalent.  Our clients often tell us one of the biggest problems they have with their sales teams, is the buyer runs the sales meeting. Their own salespeople just sit there, nic...

We have all heard that business advice to "work on your business, not in your business".  When we are the owner of the business we can sometimes forget this, because we love doing the sales ourselves and spending time establishing relationships with our clients.  I know this a problem for me, because the successful sales process is like a drug and you want more of those dopamine hits when you land...

The famous Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi often referred to the importance of the basics in the American Football game, the blocking and tackling.  Being an Aussie and a Rugby fan, I sort of know what he is talking about.  The brilliant plays, full length of the field returns, Hail Mary throws, the tactics and strategies are all important, but if the basics are not being done properly, it...

If you have ever watched one of those nature documentaries about the piranha fish, they can strip an animal of its flesh in seconds.  The way they do that though is totally different to a shark.  Growing up in Australia, we are all experts on sharks and we know that they can distend their lower jaw to make the size of the bite larger.  They will take huge chunks of flesh off your body at a time. ...

The sales process has a number of stages we must pass through. One big one is gaining trust.  We need to explain who we are, what it is we do, where we have had success before and suggest we could do the same for the buyer's firm.  Permission to ask questions is another key step.  When you think about it salespeople are incredibly rude.  We hardly know them and yet we start asking questions about...

I do a lot of coaching for salespeople and there is a common theme which continuously arises, which reveals why they are not getting sales with their clients.  They get very deep into the weeds of the solution for the buyer.  The features of their widget monopolise their own minds and that is what they try to use to envelop the client with.  It doesn't work for a simple reason.  Clients buy the ap...

I was contacted by an international training organisation about facilitating training for their clients here in Japan.  They solemnly announced they do "value based" selling.  Well I think all good salespeople do value based selling, so I checked out their website to see what they meant when throwing this type of terminology around.  As I suspected, it was another one of those persistent re-invent...

A bloody war in the Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, global oil and gas prices surging, grains in short supply driving up food costs, rare metals shortages, inflation taking right off, increased spending on guns rather than butter – none of this looks good.  By the way, did I mention we have a world Omicron virus variant pandemic raging still, while 25% of Americans are unvaccinated and 42% of the US...

Price conversations are a bad thing.  Invariably, you are dragged into the mud and blood of comparisons with someone ridiculously cheaper.  We get these requests – "send me your price sheet". My ears prick up like a Dobermann when I hear those words, because I am mentally getting ready for trouble.  I know a couple of things are happening here, none of which are good for me to make this sale happe...

"Greg, you are everywhere!".  I am often told this by business people here in Tokyo.  What they mean is that I am prolific on social media, video and audio.  Well, if you are in sales today and you are not prolific in promoting yourself, then what are you doing with your time?  It is an old saw in sales that "it doesn't matter how many people you know, it is more important how many people want to...

Even the best laid plans go astray.  The sale has been completed, the funds have been paid and we get busy in our sales job moving on to help other clients.  Another department may be tasked with handling the next steps with the client.  It doesn't matter who is doing the delivery of the solution, because if something goes wrong, the buyer expects us to fix it and to take accountability.  In Japan...

The word "closing" itself can be controversial in sales.  It implies we are ending the process rather than starting the partner relationship with the buyer.  In modern times the word "commitment" from the buyer is often preferred.  I am okay with both and I have chosen the word "closing", simply because this is what most people can easily understand about this latter stage of the sales cycle. Clos...

The sales cycle is a simple progression to get the client to the point of purchase.   We have established rapport and trust.   We have asked intelligent questions to understand how we can help them.   We have come up with a great solution to solve their issues. We may have pre-empted all of their objections, but that doesn't mean they are going to give us a "yes".   Before we get to the point of a...