• The Sales Japan Series

  • 著者： Dr. Greg Story
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The Sales Japan Series

著者： Dr. Greg Story
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  • The vast majority of salespeople are just pitching the features of their solutions and doing it the hard way. They are throwing mud up against the wall and hoping it will stick. Hope by the way is not much of a strategy. They do it this way because they are untrained. Even if their company won't invest in training for them, this podcast provides hundreds of episodes with information, insights and techniques all based on solid real world experience selling in Japan. Trying to work it out by yourself is possible but why take the slow and difficult route to sales success? Tap into the structure, methodologies, tips and techniques needed to be successful in sales in Japan. In addition to the podcast the best selling book Japan Sales Mastery and its Japanese translation Za Eigyo are also available as well.
    Copyright 2022
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あらすじ・解説

The vast majority of salespeople are just pitching the features of their solutions and doing it the hard way. They are throwing mud up against the wall and hoping it will stick. Hope by the way is not much of a strategy. They do it this way because they are untrained. Even if their company won't invest in training for them, this podcast provides hundreds of episodes with information, insights and techniques all based on solid real world experience selling in Japan. Trying to work it out by yourself is possible but why take the slow and difficult route to sales success? Tap into the structure, methodologies, tips and techniques needed to be successful in sales in Japan. In addition to the podcast the best selling book Japan Sales Mastery and its Japanese translation Za Eigyo are also available as well.
Copyright 2022
マネジメント 経済学
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エピソード
  • How To Handle “We Are Happy With Our Current Supplier” Pushback

    How To Handle “We Are Happy With Our Current Supplier” Pushback
    2024/12/24
    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 though, if things go wrong, due to an initiative they introduced. Personal accountability is not very popular here. The decision-making system here is also a nightmare in this regard. Who is the decision-maker? Probably no single person. The meeting we attend may have one to three people present in the room, but they are the tip of the iceberg. An iceberg we will never get to meet by the way. Behind the walls of the office, sit their other colleagues who will have to sign off and agree on the change. The checks and balances of Japanese organisations guarantee a few things. One is it makes for good communication internally. No one faces an unpleasant surprise. I have found most Japanese, as individuals, are not good at dealing with the unexpected. The sudden emergence of something that had not been previously factored in, has these staff rushing for emergency exits in fear. The other thing this system supplies is the opportunity for all the vested interests to have their say. Fast action is not viewed as a plus. Reaching a consensus is very important in Japan and people expect to have input into any new arrangements. The piece of paper suggesting the change physically moves around the section head’s desks and each one applies their hanko or stamp to the document, indicating they are okay with the change. Nothing will happen until all of those stamps are there. Turning up and finding the buying team are already quite happy with their current supplier, means a lot of work has to be done internally by the people we are meeting, to make a change away from the known and established order. Who wants more work? No one in Japan, that is for sure. When you are dealing with small to middle size firms the supplier arrangements can be even trickier. They often have a strong owner running the show. They make a lot of the key decisions and then everyone else does the execution of the decision. You may not get to meet with the dictator directly. In many cases, the current supplier company was supplying their grandfather who started the business. Many a good time was had on the golf course, being entertained in the Ginza by geisha and visiting expensive cabaret clubs together in the good old days. Gifts flowed thick and fast as well, to cement the relationship. The current generation of the heads of the respective businesses may have been at school together, have marriage links between their two families or belong to special clubs as members. I see these connections at my very exclusive Rotary Club here in Tokyo. These are successful families who move in the same circles. The third generation of family business heads have deep links together built up over the last generations. Why would they change their trusted supplier to you? Be it a big corporate or a smaller concern, there are a lot of barriers to change in supplier relationships in Japan. Frankly, we have few levers at our disposal as a result. The one thing that companies fear in common though is getting left behind by their competitors. The globalisation of business has meant these harmonious relationships between supplier and buyer are getting shaken up. Just explaining the details, benefits, quality and pricing advantage of the solution you provide are not enough. We need to lob some dynamite into their current cozy little supplier arrangements, by bringing up their exposure to being blindsided by a competitor. We need to remind them that the best solution will win in the market or at least reduce their market share. We need to point out that in a competitive industry, no one cares about the depth of the existing relationships, because they are fully focused on their survival. Rivals will make key supplier changes and these will trigger changes across the industry, as everyone else has to adjust accordingly. By getting ahead of the curve, they can win time to adjust and win market share for themselves, vis-à-vis their rivals. Price and quality differentials only become meaningful in this light in the current market. Just talking about price or quality in isolation won’t move the buyers to make any changes. The effort to make new or change supplier arrangements needs a strong reason in Japan or else everyone just defaults to a “do nothing” stance. This requires we come armed with examples of where a change in supplier arrangements wiped certain companies out. The best option is relating changes in their industry, but even if we don’t have that, we need to show evidence of how dangerous it can be to avoid change. The drivers of change ...
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    17 分
  • 416 Mastering Referrals. How to Ask Without Feeling Pushy

    416 Mastering Referrals. How to Ask Without Feeling Pushy
    2024/12/17
    I have been in sales since 1988, with a slow, then fast migration of skills. I started my own small one-man consultancy in 1988 in Brisbane to assist businesses wanting to create revenues with Japan. I moved into commercial real estate in 1989, then into market entry in 1992, retail banking in 2003 and then selling soft skills training in 2010. I began my personal study of sales around 1990. The company didn’t provide any sales training, so I had to source it myself. I attended Tom Hopkins two-day Sales Seminar in Brisbane and that considerably boosted my understanding. The organisation I worked for in Japan brought in a sales trainer and I worked with him as his assistant for delivering sales training through N.E. Asia. When I joined Dale Carnegie I undertook the sales training they had and that further refined my skills to the point where I was able to certify as a sales trainer. If there is one area I see as a weakness in myself and for most people in sales it is asking for referrals. Japan shouldn’t make any difference when it comes to asking for referrals so I don’t think there is an market specificity preventing us from doing it. I had an uncomfortable experience when someone supplying me with personal services did a hard sell to me on referring him to other potential buyers. I had bought from him a few times, so there was a relationship there, but I always felt a bit wary about him. He is clearly focused on the money and fair enough, but I shouldn’t be feeling that. So when he pushed me hard on getting new business from him I didn’t like it at all. It felt dirty and unnecessary. Why do I owe him anything and have to introduce my contacts to him to grow his business. What had he ever done for me to grow my business - a big fat zero? He presumed that because I was a client, he had the right to ask me for referrals, but I didn’t feel he had won that right at all. So where is the line where we can comfortably ask the buyer for introductions to other people to get new business? I think the personal relationship is important, but they don’t have to be your bosom buddy in order to ask. Of course, if that is the case then it is easier. Firstly, we have to have built the trust with the buyer by delivering value for them. I try to make the buyers my friends, but that doesn’t happen in every case. The buyer becoming a friend shouldn’t be part of the qualifying process to be to ask for a referral. As long as we have delivered value we have a starting point. The way of asking is critical. The person I referred to, asked me in an extremely aggressive way and I didn’t like that at all. One of my failings is if people become aggressive with me, I instantly respond in kind. As I get older though, I am getting better at dealing with this flaw and when he was aggressive with me I didn’t say anything, so that is progress. The takeaway for me was never ask for a referral in an aggressive to too assertive fashion. Keep in mind the buyer doesn’t owe us anything. We need to remind them of the value we have provided. With this platform we can ask for their help. We should never ask a very broad request such as , “Do you know anyone who would benefit from our training?”. We have just opened the floor gates for them and they have so many possibilities they can’t fix on any that are helpful. It is like those consumer experiments where counterintuitively they have found reducing the number of choices on the shelves helps to move more product. We need to zero in on some choices for them to make from a limited number of people. We can say, “You have mentioned to me that you felt you received value from the training we provided. I wonder amongst your circle of family, friends, colleagues or business contacts, you can think of someone who would equally get value?”. We have reduced the entire Universe of people down to four buckets. We want them to be able to see the faces ion their minds eye so that the process is controllable. If they are struggling then we zero in on one of the buckets to see if we can spark some recognition of who might benefit. If they have someone on mind, we have to make the follow-up super easy and a light touch for them. If we ask them to call that person for us, while we feel this is perfect, they will feel that is too much. After all, they don’t work for us. However, if we say, “would you mind if I mentioned that we did some training with you and you thought they might also benefit from the same training?”. That is a light touch and easy for them to agree to. We might also ask them for the contact details of the person they have in mind and again that is an easy ask. We can copy them in on the email if we send an email and then that tells the person we are contacting that we have permission to make contact. If we do it by phone then we need to drop the name of the person who gave us the ...
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    14 分
  • 415 Micro Stories Unlock Trust In Sales Meetings In Japan

    415 Micro Stories Unlock Trust In Sales Meetings In Japan
    2024/12/10
    Storytelling is usually associated with novels of hundreds of pages, movies lasting two to three hours, television drama series fifty minutes long per episode. In sales in Japan we get a mini window to the buyer that, hopefully, in the first meeting will last an hour. During the second meeting, to present the solution, we will also get around the hour the buyer has allocated for the meeting with us. In both cases, we have to make sure the buyer, rather than us, is doing most of the talking. That is especially the case in the first meeting, because we don’t actually have any clear, in depth idea about what they need. The time should be spent in two phases – one establishing credibility and trust and the second phase devoted to asking questions to uncover their needs. The main opportunity for telling micro stories in phase one is around our background and experience. The buyer wants to know who they are dealing with. They want someone who knows what they are doing, someone who can help them and we need to fill in those details for them. We have all had the experience of buying something, we ask a question and the clerk says, “one moment please” and then disappears to ask someone else the answer. This is never a confidence builder. We immediately recognise we are being served by the clueless. That is the danger for us in sales in B2B situations, where we have to answer their questions without having to get the answer from someone else. We need to tell stories which will assure the buyer we are an expert in this field and we can give them concrete and valuable assistance to solve their complex problems. Usually, there is a rapport building phase at the start and this is where we can package up a mini-bio of who we are. Remember, we are a stranger to the buyer, yet we expect them to unveil all of their corporate problems and challenges. Recall what your parents told you: “don’t talk to strangers”, yet here we are trying to sell them something and they don’t know who we are. In Japan, in that rapport building phase, I am often asked about why I came to Japan. I have a plan for that question and so should you. I mention I came for two years to study Japanese at Jochi University as a Japan Education Department scholar and this has turned into 40 years. This gives the listener a lot of confidence that I know Japan and that I am an “insider” not just a gaijin or “outsider”. I also make a subtle point that actually the real reason I came to Japan was to study traditional Shitoryu karate. This reinforces for the listener that I know Japan at the deepest level having trained in the martial arts here – one of the last bastions of old style traditional culture. Establishing my Japan credentials isn’t enough though, because the issues at hand are commercial and I need to demonstrate that I know what I am doing so that I can help them. Having a strong brand like Dale Carnegie is helpful because I always mention that we started the training in Japan in 1963. This tells them we have a lot of experience in Japan, so we can understand their problems. I give them a very brief bio of Mr. Mochizuki, who launched Dale Carnegie in Japan, to personalise the point. In the second meeting, when presenting the solution, it is vital to have stories of how other buyers succeeded with the solution. These don’t have to be long stories, but they need to do three things: one, put flesh on the bone of what the solution does for the buyer in application; two, explain how that buyer was able to adapt the solution to their business specificities; and three, talk about the success they had with it. We may not be able to mention the name of the other buyer, for confidentality reasons, and we should definitely point that out. No buyer wants to hear all about the juicy details of another company and then hand over the details of their own company to you, knowing you have such a big mouth and will go around telling everyone about their secret business, if they do business with your firm. We just have to make the point it is a company very similar to the current buyer. We should talk numbers, best expressed as percentages of growth, or speedy turnaround or major cost reductions, etc. Japanese companies rarely want to be the first mover because of their risk aversion. They prefer others to trial it first and then they can study the results to see if it is for them. We don’t have that much speaking time with the buyer, so we need to have micro stories we can draw on to bolster our credentials as a reliable, trustworthy partner. We also need to allay their fears that what we have won’t work for them, by telling micro stories of where it has worked for other buyers. These stories can’t be just pulled together out of thin air in the moment. We need to have worked these up for meetings with clients before we meet them, so that they are lean and pared down for easy...
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    11 分

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