The Sales Japan Series

I received this note following my attendance at a networking event run by one of the foreign Chambers of Commerce here in Tokyo.

“Dear Greg Story , I hope this message finds you well. It was a pleasure meeting you, and I truly enjoyed our conversation and the valuable insights you shared. Please feel free to reach out if there is anything I can assist you with. I would be delighted to stay connected and explore potential opportunities for collaboration. Thank you again for your time, and I look forward to speaking with you in the future. Best regards,”.

Frankly, I was shocked to get this note.  It was from a Japanese businessman, so bravo on the quality of the English.  It was sent that same afternoon, so well done on the cadence.   My shock was induced by the fact that we didn’t have anything even faintly resembling an insightful conversation.  Our conversation, such as it was, can be recorded as relatively brief. This note, upon receipt, came across as a “canned” response which felt as if he probably sends this out to every man and his dog, so totally non-tailored or personalised and therefore a comprehensive fail. 

He was in the property management field, he told me, and he made no effort to filter me to see if I was a prospect who could become a client.  Yet he bothered to send me this note.  What was the point?  Honestly, when we are networking, we need to do much better than this.

In my case, I only send follow-up notes to people who are high possibility prospects.  How do I know that?  I filter them during our conversation.  I only need a few pieces of information to work out if there is any potential gold in this conversation for my business. 

Their meishi or business card is the first filter. What is their position inside the company?  Are they a decision-maker who can buy my training?  For me, the second filter is company size.  If they are under thirty people, then the chances of us doing any in-house training delivery is slight. The modest numbers of staff make it hard to justify the expense.  However, they could be a candidate for sending even just one person to our public classes – a light and inexpensive option.  If they have over thirty, then in-house delivery is a possibility. 

The next filter is, do they have any need? On the back of my card, I list the following information:  “Soft skills” training, so that it is clear we are doing corporate training.  I have these categories: Leadership, Sales, Presentations, Communication, DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and Executive Coaching, all prominently displayed.  On the spot, I go through these with the person I have just met explaining what we do. In a light-hearted manner, I then ask them if they need any of these?  But I am deadly serious about trying to unearth any hints regarding what would help them grow their business.   

Some people flippantly say, “we need all of them”.  That is okay, because I am not so easily deflected. I then push them for which one in particular would be the best for their people. I am trying to filter to see if there is a real need there or not.  If there is, I will tell them I will get back to them after the meeting and mention “let’s get together”.  I am conditioning them to have no surprise or resistance when my email turns up trying to set a time and date for our meeting.

If my filters eliminate them as a potential client, then I am pleasant, but I move on and try and find someone who is a buyer. Some people say to me they find they get stuck at networking events and spend the whole time talking to one person because they don’t know how to break off the conversation and meet other people.  Here is how I do it: “It has been a pleasure chatting with you.  Why don’t we try to meet some other people while we are here?  I look forward to catching up again in the future” and I shake their hand and simply walk away.

For networking and follow-up, the process has to be well organised and congruent.  There is no point sending a follow-up email to someone who is clearly not a prospect.  There is no point sending a follow-up email unless you have already set it up that you will do so, rather than doing it out of blue like this gentleman did with his all weather template.

I have used the example of my training company for the filters, but take your own industry sector and work out what you need to know to succeed in your business.  What would be some relevant filters you can apply to strangers to know which basket to place them in?

People who don’t make their living selling, hearing this brutal clarity, may feel this seems mercenary.  Trust me, they have no idea they are alive.  Sales is a rough and tough profession and a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. Our most important tool is our time and how we use it.  We cannot be dilettantes and swan around in a daze, like most people I meet at networking events.  We have to be laser focused on getting new clients and we must let nothing distract us from that pursuit.

When civilians criticise me for this hardheaded businesslike approach, I just ask sweetly, “how do you find new clients when networking?”.  I then ask whether they think their own salespeople are strong enough in finding new buyers, and are they committed enough to growing the company by finding new clients?  Finally, I ask “what would be the impact if your salespeople adopted this approach and used their networking time as effectively as possible?”.  They go very quiet in response and cease their uneducated critique of this pro-salespeople’s hard won expertise, as they should. 

“Thank you for submitting your proposal for our capability development project.  We appreciate the time and effort your team invested in preparing the proposal.  After careful consideration, we have decided to proceed with another vendor whose proposal more closely aligns with our current needs and strategic direction.  This decision was not easy, given the high quality of all the submissions we received.”

I have stopped crying now, but this is the response I got from the buyer. Obviously, I have looked back on this deal and have tried to fathom what went wrong.  They contacted us, so that means they were a hot prospect looking around for possible providers.  I met with them face to face to ascertain what they wanted.  This proved to be a little tricky because they were a bit vague on what they actually wanted.  As is often the case with HR people, they are casting a broad net to see what they can drag in, because they themselves don’t have a lot of expertise regarding possible content.

I duly took copious notes, suggested some things during that first meeting to see if there was any interest.  There was interest, but looking back, I wonder now if that was only because they didn’t have a clear idea of what they wanted, so everything sounds good in that case.

I didn’t just send them the proposal by email.  I organised a second face-to-face meeting to walk them through the proposal, so I could gauge their body language and deal with any issues on the spot if they were unclear or uncertain about the contents.  All textbook stuff. I left that meeting feeling like I had the winning formula for them, so I was devastated when I got this rejection.

Was it the money?  It could have been, because my pricing was 16% higher than what they spent with another company for the previous year’s training.  I didn’t think that was outrageously different though, and I tried to assuage the price rise with loading on the value we provide.  When the HR people see the training supply as a commodity, however, with no differentiation, then price becomes the easiest tool to wield. I could have just matched the price with what they paid the previous year, but if you believe in what you are doing, you have to defend the quality, the brand, and the differentiation you bring to the equation.  It is a risk and in this case, it didn’t fly.

Was it the content?  This is hard to say because their needs were open and broad.  They didn’t really have a clear picture of what they wanted, which was good and bad.  Good, because it opened up a lot of possibilities and bad because it opened up too many possibilities.  We all have our limitations as suppliers and our areas of strength.  We tend to work within certain frameworks, because that is the content we are most familiar with and most confident in.  It is always better to have a buyer who is very specific about what they want, and there is the downside that you don’t have it at all.  That is okay, because that at least tells you why you failed to get this deal.  It is that buyer vagary which is frustrating, because you could have made the deal but you are never really sure at the end as to why you didn’t.

Was the chemistry not there with the buyers?  I would say in this case I was too confident about the chemistry.  I thought I did a good job in both meetings with connecting with the two HR representatives.  One of the problems with chemistry, though, is that it isn’t a huge differentiator and it is easy for a rival to match you in this element.  Salespeople, by definition, are good with people, good communicators and we are all the same in that regard. Maybe my successful rival was equally charming and engaging and what I was doing wasn’t a big enough differentiator to make a difference in the end. 

One thing which on reflection may have been a mistake is we spoke in English.  We could have chosen either language, but one of them seemed to want to speak in English and the more junior person in Japanese.  It may have been better for me to speak in Japanese with them.  There were no communication issues with our conversation, but it may be a comfort factor which I could have paid more attention to.  This was a multinational company so English is expected by people in their roles, but we are still in Japan. I don’t believe this was a deal breaker at all, but it is something to consider.  The argument can both ways also that speaking in English with a multinational company emphasises your suitability for them over a pure Japanese domestic supplier.  It is not definitive, but something I will pay more careful attention to going forward.

Can I get a clear answer as to why the deal didn’t get done?  Basically no.  The buyers don’t want to get into justifying their decision for you. They have taken it and they have told you there were multiple options and they chose another one rather than you.  In these cases, I just write back and say, “thank you for letting me know.  I look forward to the next opportunity to work together with you”.  I leave it at that and accept the umpire’s decision and move on.

Getting rejected has a negative psychological effect on all of us in sales, so we have to be very careful we don’t let it impact our confidence or self-belief.  In my case, I always say to myself, “they are stupid not to take my offer”. I reflect on what I did and what happened, but I always put the blame on the buyer.  This may seem irrational and delusional at one level, but it makes a lot of sense for when you fall down seven times and need to get up the eighth and keep going. 

My psychological equilibrium in sales is more important than accuracy about who is to blame for this failure.  Sales is rough and mean and we have to protect ourselves because most times we don’t get the deal. We cannot allow that to impinge on our optimism that we will get the next deal.

n the West, we often emphasise that inaction doesn’t necessarily mean safety for the buyer, and there is a real cost to taking no action. We talk about the “opportunity cost” of doing nothing. A buyer’s competitors aren’t stagnant; they’re actively seeking new advantages with something better or more advanced. The market is never still either, as it’s always shifting, and companies need to be agile to keep pace. Economic conditions are equally unpredictable, with movements in currency, oil, gold, agribusiness etc., and other factors creating constant change.

In this volatile environment, companies can’t afford to stand still. Innovation, adaptation, and flexibility are essential. Any opportunity to strengthen an offer relative to competitors must be seized and maximised. The ideal outcome is one where our offer can’t be easily compared to what salespeople know as the “Matrix from Hell.” This matrix, favoured by procurement departments, lists items to be purchased down the vertical axis and supplier names across the top on the horizontal axis. Prices are then compared, and the cheapest option is chosen.

We don’t want our offer to fall into this pricing matrix. Instead, we aim to differentiate our offer so that it defies easy comparison. We need to add value beyond price alone. If our offer lacks the necessary depth, we need to think creatively about what we can provide to stand apart, avoiding price reductions or loss-leader tactics. Our goal is to create “apples to oranges” comparisons, making it impossible for price to be the only factor in the buying decision.

As a result, we constantly highlight the downside of inaction to the buyer. In this VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous), how can any company feel confident doing things as they have always done them? The ground is shifting beneath our feet, and companies need to be capable of responding. As salespeople, we represent something new and different for the buyer, offering them a lifeline to navigate the daily VUCA challenges.

Do Japanese buyers see it this way? Unfortunately, they don’t. Change in Japan is a double-edged sword. Intellectually, it’s acknowledged as necessary, but buyers instinctively resist it. They closely associate change with risk. Culturally, Japan emphasises group dynamics, partly to disperse any risk among all members, so no individual is held accountable if things go wrong. Japanese salespeople, for instance, prefer bonuses over individual commissions, as they feel more comfortable being rewarded as a group.

Buyers share this perspective. They don’t want to be singled out over a purchasing decision. Collective agreement to change suppliers or add a new supplier feels much safer. The ringi seido system of collective decision-making perfectly suits this desire to spread accountability. By obtaining the seals or hanko of all key decision-makers on a proposal, the potential blame is shared if something goes wrong.

A salesperson parachuting in with their shiny idea about the opportunity cost of doing nothing quickly finds themselves in a thorny position in Japan. No one here is likely to get fired for missing an opportunity. Buyers fear mistakes far more than they fear a lack of urgency. With no pressure to act, talk of “missing out” seems quaint. Here, doing nothing isn’t equated with loss; in fact, it’s often praised, as it avoids risk and keeps the enterprise safe.

This cultural inertia partly explains Japan’s relatively small venture capital market, the lack of unicorns, and the many “zombie companies” that neither thrive nor disappear but manage to survive. Everyone involved seems determined to make no changes, ignore opportunity costs, and look away from change, hoping it will pass them by.

If you’re passionate about motivating buyers to embrace change or realise the consequences of opportunity cost, be prepared to feel like you’re talking to yourself. Japanese buyers see no upside to making changes and plenty of downsides, so they tend to hold their ground. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but we should avoid making opportunity cost our primary “hail Mary” play to close the deal.

One of the worst combos in sales is a virtual meeting online and the buyer says, “send me your proposal” or even more insane, you volunteer to send it. Even if you managed to sit down face-to-face with a buyer, do not under any circumstances finish up the meeting with this sentence, “I will send you my proposal”.  Sale is hard enough as it is, so why do salespeople decide they are not living on the edge enough and make these types of ludicrous statements?

We usually get one hour in the first meeting to go through the first part of the sales cycle: build rapport with small talk, get permission to ask questions, ask questions to understand 1. where they are now, 2. where they need to be, 3. why they aren’t there already and 4. what will it mean for this individual if it all goes swimmingly?

This requires that as the salesperson, we shut up and let the buyer do most of the talking and that we take very good notes. One handy note taking technique is to divide the note page into four quarters representing these four questions and then write the answers in the corresponding quarter of the page.  If you have missed something, it becomes immediately obvious, because there are few or no notes in that quarter.

In our proposal, we will outline what we have understood is their need. We will then outline what we suggest is the best solution to deliver on this need and then explain what it will cost.  Of course we never ever use words like “price”, “cost”, etc and instead we only refer to the “investment”.

This sounds infinitely simple, but have we understood their need?  Have they actually been totally forthcoming about the full gamut of their need?  Are they holding back key information we need to know in order to provide the best solution for them?  Why would they not share that critical information with us?  We assume they want to buy something.  Maybe they have a vague interest.  We have managed to blag our way into a meeting with the buyer, but their motivation isn’t high. They may have a mild dose of curiosity or they may be a psychopath who loves to torture poor, unsuspecting salespeople.

Salespeople generally have poor listening skills.  They are often not really listening completely, because they hear one piece of the puzzle and their brain inflames with an internal conversation about the clever next thing they are going to say. At this point, they actually stop listening to the buyer.  Or they may hear an objection and the brain goes into overdrive with what they are going to say to destroy that objection. They stop listening to all the other vitals hints from the buyer about what they need, in order to concentrate on their sparkling riposte.

Consequently, what they regurgitate in the proposal may have missed the mark or more likely, missed key bits which the buyer needs to hear about in order to organise the Purchase Order. Given this likelihood, imagine what a disaster it is to send the document off and allow the buyer to sit there and silently think, “I am dealing with an idiot who has not understood fully what we need”.

Here is Dr. Story’s iron discipline sales requirement.  When wrapping up the meeting, grab your schedule and make them open theirs and find a date and time for the next meeting. In that meeting, you will bring the proposal and go through it with them to make sure you have correctly and fully understood their needs.  Get into their diary right there and then, because trying to do it later can be difficult and sometimes it never happens at all.

If they say, ‘just send it to me”, under no circumstances accept that statement. Instead, say “I will need to show you something, so let’s find a time for me to do that”.  Do not dilute the power of what you have just said by adding to it with more justifications.  Keep the strength of that bold statement intact, break eye contact, hold your pen at the ready, look down at your diary, and suggest dates and times.

We want to be sitting right across from them when we go through the details to read their body language reaction to what we are outlining.  We want to make sure we have properly understood their needs and that our solution is attractive to them.  We want to tease out any doubts so that we can deal with these spiky porcupines on the spot.

Hunting for new clients is difficult and expensive.  Marketing tries to drive people who are seeking our solution to our door through the website, advertising, search words and SEO.  That all costs a lot of money and the success ratio can be quite low.  We attend networking events and these usually cost money too. Now our most fundamental sales goal is not a sale.  We are desperately looking for the reorder. If we can get that, it means we don’t have to spend any more money on getting this client on board. We can amortise the acquisition costs across a stream of orders which brings our per buyer acquisition costs down substantially.

Another source of clients are clients.  These people have bought from us in the past, but the trail has gone cold.  Maybe they stopped and never resumed because of an internal crisis around money and they had to cut costs.  Perhaps our champion got moved and their replacement has their preferred list of suppliers and we are not on their list.  Maybe we screwed up an order and got cut.  There are so many reasons to have lost touch with a buyer in Japan. It is made more difficult here because of the rotation of staff through different sections of the company, as they try to create an army of generalists.

Trying to get back on the bronco after having been bucked off is extremely tough.  The people there now may not remember us at all.  In effect, this becomes a cold call and we have to start again.  We need some powerful tools to get back on their buying list.

Hopefully, we have a good record keeping system and we can pull up what we supplied previously, how long they were our client, who we were dealing with on their side etc. We will need to reference all of these details to gain credibility as a supplier. If they have never done any business with us, then there are many hoops to jump through, whereas being a previous supplier clears a lot of those hurdles.

We may have introduced a new product or solution since we last communicated.  Often, we may have numerous solutions and they only selected one, when in fact we can solve a broad range of issues for them.  This is the time to introduce any new products and also the range of existing products to them.  What wasn’t required before may now be of interest.  Perhaps a rival supplier isn’t doing a great job and we turn up as an alternative.

If we have something we can demonstrate or show as a solution that is helpful. In our case, as a training company, we can offer free refresher classes for their staff who are our graduates.  The price is right, they know who did the training previously and in most cases those same people will still be working there.   As we rerun what we previously supplied the people involved recall how good our solution was.  They are possibly in more senior roles now and they may want this solution for their team.  They may also be stimulated to look for what else we can do for them, as they recall their satisfaction with us a supplier.

If it happened that we screwed up previously, there may be a chance that the people who recall those details are no longer there and we can start with a clean slate.  Japan, however, is pretty good at record keeping and our beautiful name may be mud and still listed on their blacklist of people to never use again and the conversation will go nowhere. I called on the same company after a couple of years break. The people I met were new, but I was amazed when they consulted their records and perfectly quoted what had been discussed in the previous meeting.  Don’t underestimate Japanese record keeping prowess.

If they have a good memory of us and we have developed something new, then that can often be the hook to get us the meeting.  They may be curious about what we have come up with and be prepared to hear us out.  It is not easy, but it is easier than trying to blag our way into a meeting with total strangers, who have no knowledge of us and what we do.

We all have buyers who have fallen by the wayside and it is worth the effort to rekindle those relationships and try and restart the business. We could be leaving a lot of money on the table by not trying to reconnect. Chasing new buyers is expensive and hard so let’s get out our records and go back and touch base again and try and get some deals going.

We know that there are a lot of salespeople who are totally untrained.  They have cobbled together bits and pieces of the sales process but they don’t have the whole picture in their brains.  I remember when Dave Stearns, a Carnegie Master Trainer came to Tokyo to certify us a Sales Trainers. He started with the top right hand corner of the whiteboard and then he slowly outlined every single aspect of the sales process and the flow filled the whiteboard from top to bottom, from left to right.  It was an amazing tour de force from someone who is a real master.  At the time, was sitting there thinking that I could never do that. Well today I am using our sales process and doing the exact same thing in my head when I sit across from the client.

The only difference is that in Japan it is rare to get through the whole process in one sitting.  Here it is more likely we get up to the point of the questioning model and the explanation of the solution comes in the next meeting as we present our proposal.  At this point we go into handling any objections and then closing the sale.  Again in Japan, that closing of the sale part of the process may not trigger an agreement, but it will set off an internal process to look at what we are suggesting. 

The decision-making process here is complex and glacial with many actors involved.  Most of the key decision makers we will never meet, and it is up to the people sitting in front of us to become our champions and push the deal though.  This internal harmonisation process though takes a lot of time and we have almost no leverage.  Telling our champions to “speed it up” is a like a sick joke, because they don't have any capacity to do that as they seek internal agreement to move forward.

In the Ringi Seido decision-making system, the Section Leaders and Division Heads who will be impacted by the deal though the changes it will trigger attach their hanko or seal on the proposal document to signal agreement.  When there are enough of these achieved the document gets elevated to the Directors level and usually they rubber stamp approve it because they know all the due diligence has been completed down below.

To bridge between the questioning component and to be invited to propose our solution, we have to move into the suggestion phase.  There is no great detail required at this point.  What we are doing here is to try and make sure that what we are thinking will be a good fit for what they are after.  We have heard their story, we know what they want to achieve and mentally we are rummaging around our magic solutions box to see if we have what they need. We explain in rough terms what would be involved and check to see if that sounds directionally correct. If we do get it right, then we talk in general terms about the outline of the possible solution and see if they think that is a match for what they want.  If it is and they think that will work then we are invited to submit our proposal along with the other potential rival suppliers they are talking to.

The Proposal will go into much greater depth and detail about what is involved and how it will work in practice.  It may not be precise enough, but if we are most of the way there, we can still refine it further according to their feedback and we are not out of the running yet.  Naturally pricing has to be attached and it we are higher than our rivals, which hopefully we are, because our quality is better, then we submit and see if they go for our ideas. This is important because at this point they are just ideas and until we get the business and can execute, the buyer has to take our word for it that we can do what we say we can do and at the quality level we say we can provide.  There is a lot of trust included at this point.

This is why the way we present has to be very well executed.  We have to be making suggestions and constantly checking back to see if there is a match.  If it isn’t we need to know that information early and redirect to something else we think may.  The level of confidence we have and the degree of detail we can provide off the top of our head, without referring to any materials is important.  It sends a message to the buyers that we know what we are doing, we have done this before and we know they results we can deliver. 

Mentioning previous projects for other clients is important because it means we are not using them as the test bed.  Japanese firms don’t want to be the guinea pigs for anything.  They want to know that it works already. We may not be able to drop the names but when we describe what we did and what happened they are relieved to hear there is a track record of successful implementation already. The way we describe it is so key. We have to do it with supreme confidence, belief and knowledge to demonstrate we know our stuff.

Basically, we know that a third of the potential buyers we meet will never buy from us, another third will buy, but not right now and the remaining third are ready to go, if they can be convinced to take action right now.  The issue though is when we meet them for the first time, we don’t know which bucket they fit into and we can waste a lot of time and energy thrashing around before we work it out. The knowledge gain process is not straightforward and there are a lot of traps and feints ahead of us, as we make our way forward into the impenetrable jungle. Is there a faster way?  Perhaps if we can plumb the depths of our experience and identify some buying or non-buying signals this will help us speed things up.

Being salespeople, buying signals are difficult for us because we don’t take “no” for an answer.  We will push for the meeting even in the face of resistance.  Our sales exploits have informed us that the buyer who assures us he has absolutely no more than fifteen minutes to meet with us, will spend ninety minutes talking to us if we have what they need.  We also know that “no” isn’t a permanent feature and things can change, so we never give up hope.  It also means we go up a lot of dead ends and have to extract ourselves for the waste of time, black, smelly, squelchy bog we have become trapped in.

Let’s look at some loser situations we will encounter, when meeting potential buyers, as warnings to weight up the investment of our valuable time with them. I had a great lunch with the ebullient foreign President of this firm, which had been bought by a very large Japanese enterprise a few years earlier.  He was excited about bringing our training into the firm to strengthen the sales team and to deliver the sales numbers the headquarters wanted. His Japanese CFO had been sent in from the mothership. That snippet of information should have sounded a warning bell for me.  The lunch went well, he was excited and I was excited to get things going, so I ignored that deadly little trip wire.

That ebullience I should have realised was built on a foundation of sand within his own organisation and that the Japanese CFO actually pulled the strings not him. The lesson here is that when you know the firm has been purchased by a larger entity, or is a joint venture of some type, definitely check who has come across from the mothership and what positions they hold. 

Look at the President you are talking to through that lens and ask some subtle but important questions about how decisions are made.  What I should have done was to ask about how he was going to get the people to whom he reported to okay the purchase of the training I was proposing and then settle back and very carefully analyse his answer.  I needed to strip his ego and bold front out of the equation and take a good look behind the velvet curtain to try and get a sense of who had the real power.

In the end, despite our conviviality at lunch, he just kept peppering my follow-up attempts with a string of excuses and stalls.  The penny dropped eventually and I realised this deal was never going to happen, because he couldn’t convince his CFO to okay the expenditure.  His ego can’t allow him to admit to me that he has little or no power within his own organisation, despite have the grand title “President” on his business card.

Another President who I have been chasing after for a long time now, tells me he wants our training, but my follow-up emails and calls never get a response.  When I collar him at an event, we are both attending, he pleads he is so busy with this or that and so couldn’t get back to me, but he is still interested.  Here it the conundrum.  Yes, he is interested, but can he translate that interest into a deal with his firm? I know his industry is in turmoil and although the technical changes don’t directly affect his business, the overall industry direction does.

The chances of a deal happening seem slim, but the price of a regular follow-up email is not high. However, I shouldn’t invest any emotional energy into him whatsoever because only pain is in that future. What I don’t want though is he eventually gets religion about doing the training and wanders off with a competitor, because they were the last contact he had from a provider.  That would really hurt if that happened. Things can change rapidly in business, but we just don’t know enough about the buyer’s internal situation to know when. Can you imagine if I finally corner him at some future event and he says, “Oh yeah, we did the training with XYZ company”.  Would that be grounds for justifiable homicide?

I am a great fan of Victor Antonio, who writes books, gives lectures and training on sales.  I listen to his Sales Influence Podcast and he has a lot of solid, credible advice. In a recent episode he spoke about not using “weasel words” in sales and being more directive and certain with the buyer.  Weasel words are defined as “words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading” and in sales would include words such as  “perhaps”, “maybe”, “could”, etc.  I was thinking about how this would apply in Japan.

The culture here of modesty, humility, not standing out, not being openingly directive is the exact opposite of the culture in the USA, where you have to be more aggressive.  As a consequence, if I started being more assertive with my buyers, I believe they would dismiss what I was saying as American style push selling and reject both me and my solutions.

I have lived here for 40 years in total now, so over those three sojourns, I have adapted my Aussie self to fit in with the way things work here.  In sales, when I first started trying to convince buyers to buy, I was using consultative selling methodologies.  That meant asking questions to understand the buyer needs.  However, I am sure when I got to the solution explanation part, I was being very strong and forthright in my recommendation that they buy what I was offering.

Having sold here for many years now, I have changed that method to be less strident in my recommendations and I do use a lot of what Victor calls weasel words in the sale.  I have found that being too pushy with the buyer doesn’t go down well.  Being too assertive isn’t viewed positively and the buyer feels they are being pressured to purchase.  Deals don’t get done as a consequence.

If it was black and white, that would make things easier, but where is the line between strongly believing in your solution and being too pushy.  I know I really believe in what we sell.  We see the results from our training and how it changes people’s lives, so we are all true believers. The problem is the buyers have to buy it, before the results are delivered and they have to take our word for it that what we are saying is true.  We know for certain but they are not sure.

We also know that confidence in the solution does sell.  If we are too hesitant, too unsure, too circuitous in our explanation, then the buyer may not receive enough confidence from us, that what we are proposing will do the trick.  How much is too much confidence and how much is too little?  As I say – where is the line?

I have found that the key is to be humble about what we say will happen after the sale, in terms of what they will receive in terms of results, and then pile on the evidence.  We can be very sure, passionate and enthusiastic about what we have seen work for someone else.  We can speak with total belief about what we have observed.  We can speak with authority of one who has witnessed the changes and the improvements.  In our explanation of the results from our training, the total certainty is there because we have seen it with our own eyes. When we speak about whether this will automatically transfer across to this particular buyer’s situation, we have to be more conservative.  Having perfect knowledge of the buyer’s situation internally and externally, is unlikely for us. We cannot say, “well this worked for XYZ company, so it will definitely work the same for you and you will get equal or better results”.

This is where the weasel words are needed.  If we are too strong in our recommendation we will be doubted.  Every buyer is concerned that what they buy won’t work as advised, and that internally they will be blamed and scolded for their selection of supplier.  They like the passion we show for our belief in the solution, because this gives them more confidence in the possibility it will work.  By not trying to push the sale through, we also show our respect for their position.  We need to say something like, “this worked well for XYZ company, so given your situations are very similar, there is a strong probability it will  work the same for you too”. 

When we say it with these caveats, we sound more reliable to the buyer, because we are not giving any 100% guarantees, which may or may not be worth anything. We sound more honest too, because we are introducing the possibility it won’t work for them, but that we will make a 100% effort to see that it does work.  That small sense of doubt gives the buyer confidence that what we are saying isn’t salesperson blarney and that we are honest and can be trusted as a partner. 

We are telling the buyer that we are not here for a sale. We are here for the repeat order and we will do everything we can do to make sure it works so that more orders flow and we build a solid trusted advisor partnership. What we say and how we say it matters in sales and semantics are crucial in getting the deal across the line.

The denizens of the upper floor, quiet, luxurious C-suites with expensive wall hangings and deep pile carpets, determine the changes the organisation needs to make to survive or to do even better. They expect everyone below to get behind their dispositions.  Deep down in the engine room of the sales team, these changes are communicated by their boss.  Usually, sales leaders become the boss because they lasted through two consecutive recessions and were the last one left standing or they were the star producer and were kicked up to management, many years ago. 

Invariably, they received no leadership training on the way through, so they are constantly making it up, using trial and error as they go along.  They may just bluntly tell everyone how it is and expect the salespeople will snap into line and obey the new direction. 

Sales is an emotional rollercoaster of constant rejection, with hard sales targets and permanent instability.  Somewhere in that firefight, the salespeople have carved out their own little world and cobbled together a construct, held together with string and adhesive tape, which allows them to survive or possibly thrive.  Then the big bosses turn up and tear a hole in that neat little safe and sound world.  Suddenly, the salespeople have to make changes to what has always worked and their sales leader is no help.  What happens to their motivation?

Salespeople are already world class, gold medal winning whiners.  It is always someone else’s fault as to why they can’t make their targets.  The system requiring them to make this latest change has just handed out the ultimate all-weather, all season excuse for missing the numbers.  Finding the path of least resistance is how most people operate and salespeople in particular, because they are permanently time poor.  They cut corners and shave off service quality to ensure maximum speed.

Change means slowing everything down and recalibrating what needs to be done.  These changes will often impact their clients and particularly in Japan, salespeople hate having to bring any changes to their buyers, which will affect their operations. How can salespeople adjust to change?

Decision One is whether to continue with this company or not?  In Japan, there is a dearth of salespeople, so job mobility is at world recording breaking highs.  Taking your clients and moving is super easy today, so their response to the changes is “goodbye big bosses, I am leaving with all my business cards, to work for the opposition”.

What about for those who choose to stay?  First order of duty is to not rely on the boss for how to make the adjustment. Expect they won’t be much chop when it comes to this type of thing, as they are totally untrained for it.  Salespeople have to work it out for themselves.  Once that reality is accepted and the change is confronted directly, then some analysis is needed.

In any change, there are pluses and minuses and salespeople must run the ruler over where these are located.   Are there any advantages to the buyers with these changes?  If this is the case, then that is always going to be a great conversation and one the salesperson can look forward to initiating.

More likely, how can the negatives of these changes be minimised for the buyers?  Ultimately, the salespeople have to be agnostic about what they think about the changes and be fully focused on what they mean for their clients.  If the changes are a pain for the client, what can they do the reduce the amount of pain or what can they do to counterbalance the pain?

Maybe they can’t do anything and they consequently lose that client.  Well salespeople lose clients all the time, so there in nothing unique in that.  They also know how to find new clients, so they have to get busy with that activity and find clients for whom the changes are not an impediment to doing deals. 

Salespeople have to be resilient or they cannot survive in the rough and tumble of the sales life, so adjusting to the new is built into their DNA.  They won’t necessarily welcome or like the changes, but they can make them work because they are experts in adaption. 

Salespeople turn up in Japan and expect things to be pretty much the same as where they have come from.  After all, sales is sales right? Wrong.  Japan, as usual, is quite different. If these newly arrived salespeople had received training on how to sell, then they are probably going to try a consultative sales approach.  This is absolutely what they should be doing, except it doesn't work in Japan. The consultative approach at base has a very sensible and basic idea – ask the client what they want and then give it to them. Simple stuff.

The issue in Japan is the client won’t open up and tell you what they need. Buyers have been trained by crap salespeople here to expect a pitch of what you have to offer, so the buyer can lean back and shred it, trying to sort out the risk factor. If you come to the buyer and start asking questions about their firm’s current situation, they don’t see this as a means of better understanding their situation, so that you can provide the most relevant and effective assistance.  They see it as prying, as exposing their dirty little, embarrassing secrets to strangers and therefore to the broader world, broadcasting all of their failure points and weaknesses. 

We may start with our consultative sales approach and hit a wall on our first question: “What is the current situation for your company?”. This sounds innocuous enough, but that is not how the buyer interprets it.  They feel, “I can’t answer this salesperson’s questions, because I don’t know them well enough and the trust is not sufficiently built yet”.  That is a big gap from the get go. 

At this point they usually segue into “Tell me about what you do and about your products”. This is bad.  We are now throwing mud at the wall and praying something will stick, which is not much of a sales strategy. How can you get the pitch right if you have no idea what they need.  Most of us come to client sales meetings with numerous products and solutions, but which one will hit the mark?

In the West we are very logical.  If what the salesperson is genuinely interested in what we need and if what they are saying seems to make sense, then we are prepared to look at buying.  The Western buyer is not terrified of making a mistake.  They are not fearful of sharing information with strangers.  They are not dubious about foreigners selling them stuff. They are looking for ways to help their firm do better in the market, for methods to outfox their competitors and gain an unfair advantage in the hand-to-hand combat of business.

The Japanese buyer is very conscious that if they introduce something new, like a new supplier and anything goes wrong, they will lose face and will suffer in the internal future promotion stakes.  They are not focused on helping the firm to do better, because they are driven by their own personal self-interests.  They have also discovered that the safest path is the one of doing nothing new.

I was talking to the HR Manager of a car dealership about some sales training for their firm.  They have had sales training before, but the results were not impressive.  My angle was “try us as a new approach, bring in something fresh and differentiate your salespeople from all the competitors”.  I thought that was pretty conclusive and convincing. 

Weeks later I was told they went with another firm who specialises in sales training for dealerships.  This is what they had been doing in the past and not getting the change they wanted, but the safest path forward is always to do what you have always done in Japan and take no risks with anything new.  They will get the same results they have always gotten but everyone will feel safe and no one will lose their job.

In Japan, we need to set up the consultative approach with getting permission to ask questions before we launch forth.  In the West we never have to so this step because every gets it.  Not Japan though. 

Here is the simple, quick formula: explain who you are; explain what you do; talk about who else you have done it for and the results; suggest you could possibly get similar results “but to know if that can happen or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”.  In 95% of cases this works and I get permission to dig into their dirty laundry and find out their problems.  There are still those buyers though, who just brush that effort aside and say “give me your pitch”. 

I really want to cut my losses and leave right there, down my cheap, bitter, horrible green tea and depart, because I know that without understanding their needs, I have little chance of talking about the things of most value to them. I don’t do a runner because that would be abrupt and considered rude in Japan. I soldier on, fully understanding every minute with this buyer is keeping me away from a buyer who will buy.

Consultative sales can be done in Japan, but it needs some modifications to allow for the pitchfeast mentality on the part of the buyers. Once we understand where they are coming from we can work our way around the resistance and get to the heart of their issues and hopefully we have a solution that will work.  If we don’t, we shouldn’t waste our time or theirs and we should go find a buyer we can help.