Salespeople have sales tools which often are not thoroughly thought through enough. These can be flyers, catalogues, slide decks, etc. They can also be proposals, quotations and invoices. Usually the salespeople are given the tools as they are and either don’t ask for improvements or don’t believe the marketing department has much interest in their ideas about the dark art of marketing. Consequently, there are some areas for improvement which go begging.

Flyers, catalogues and slide decks tend to be very evenly arranged. Every page is basically presented in the same way. Yet, as salespeople we know that there are going to be certain products which are more popular than others. These items and corresponding pages should be up the front. It might mean breaking away from the sectional approach, of all the bits and bobs being collected together in their respective places, separate and cordoned off.

Also, on important pages of these most important products or services, there are bound to be key words or key paragraphs that, over time, we have learnt are of the most relevancy to our clients. There will also be key data tables, diagrams or photos which should be drawn to the buyer’s attention. Why don’t we have marketing do something with this information. Maybe make the font larger, or add bold or highlight using colour. This is only a matter of adjusting the layout of the page and getting the next round of printing or soft copy to reflect these updates.

Generally speaking, we don’t want to be handing our materials over to the client, in the first instance. We want to spin the item around, so that they can easily read it. With our nice pen we draw their attention to the areas we want them to see. Not everything on that page has equal value. Some sections will be more important than others. They can read the whole thing later at their leisure, but while we are there with them, we want to go through the content and determine what they need to focus on. When we leave the materials with them the highlighted areas will draw their attention to where we need them to be looking for information.

If this is so easy, why are all the sales materials we see all look the same – flat, undifferentiated and no attempt to direct the eye of the reader? Everyone has their job. Marketing is there to produce the materials, but they don’t know which are the key sections for buyer purview. Salespeople are busy running around seeing clients and just take what they have been given. They never think to make requests to marketing to change the materials.

What if the buyers have different interests? That will be true, but it will also be true that 20% of the key information will suit 80% of the buyers, so we should concentrate on that content. If there are particular sections which are not highlighted, then we can deal with that problem when we are with the buyer.

The other areas for some marketing effort are around how we present quotations, invoices and proposals. We should be advertising our services or goods on the quotations and invoices. Key people in the buyer’s company will see these materials and here is a chance to get our information in front of them. If there are soft copies involved this allows us to add links to the website where more information can be found. QR codes are also good for taking information on a page to a website.

Proposals can be very florid or very flat. Something in the middle is a good idea. We don’t want the presentation of the information overwhelming the messages. We also don’t have to just rely on text. Visual stimulation is very powerful and photos of people are always attractive to us. This is where we salespeople need marketing’s help. We need someone who has great layout skills and knows how to assemble the look and feel of the pages.

Let’s rethink our sales materials and ask what more could we get from them?

I hear some people say translating terms like “nemawashi” into English is difficult. Really? I always thought it was one of the easier ones. Let's just call it “groundwork”. In fact, that is a very accurate description ,from a number of different angles. Japanese gardeners are superstars. There is limited flat space in this country, so over centuries gardeners have worked out you need to move the trees you want, to where you want them. They prefer this approach to just waiting thirty years for them to turn out the preferred way. It is not unusual today to see a huge tree on the back of a big truck ,being moved from one location to another and presto instant garden. The roots of that massive tree will be wrapped up in cloth to protect them. That wrapping process is called “nemawashi”. In business, it means being well prepared for the business meeting – doing the ground work beforehand.

In a Western context being well prepared for the meeting will mean assembling all the data and analysis in order to make an impassioned plea for your idea or suggestion, to be accepted by the big bosses. We all get to the meeting, listen to the different approaches and we make a decision in that meeting. What could be more time efficient and logical? They never do it that way in Japan.

Concepts of time efficiency differ for a start and throwing massive amounts of overtime at a problem is not problem in Japan. The meeting is also a ceremony, because the decision has already been arrived at beforehand and the gathering is just to formalise the outcome. This happens in the West too. Whenever you see global leaders delivering their joint statements or signing agreements, they didn’t arrive at the wording during the meeting. That was all worked out by their minions beforehand, over many hours of debate, negotiation and discussion. The TV cameras just capture the big guys and gals inking the document, after all the “groundwork” has been completed.

I was talking with a Western businessman recently and he was relating how hard it was to get the team behind his ideas. The issue was, he was trying to get it all agreed to, at the key meeting and hadn’t invested the time to do the groundwork. What he needed to do was go to see all the key people, the influencers, the stakeholders with a vested interest and explain the idea. Get their input and agreement and then rinse and repeat with the rest of them. By the time the meeting happens, everyone will recognise parts of their preferences and ideas in the submission. Agreement flows easily in these cases.

In sales, we will probably not have direct access to all of the decision makers, influencers and stakeholders. Our primary contact has to become our champion for sheparding the agreement through the internal nemawashi process. Asking them directly who are these hidden decision makers is insulting. It says, you are a nobody, but I still need your help. We need to be more considerate of their “face” and ask in a way that enhances their face.

Once we have established the trust, have uncovered their needs, shown we can help and have dealt with any hesitations they may have, we are ready to marshal our forces for the final push through to a “yes” to the sale. We explain, we understand that many people will be interested to know about this change in the delivery of product or services. We also know that they will be tasked to explain it to others who cannot join our meetings. We ask how can we help them? This is a rhetorical question because we want to get into the detail of who are the players. So we go straight into asking who do they think would have the most concern about the change and why they would be concerned? We keep repeating this process until we have fleshed out the people who will have the most interest in saying “no”. The next stage is to arm our champion with the tools to deal with the pushback. We try to understand the concerns and then arrive at creative ways of overcoming those concerns.

This is what we mean by nemawashi or ground work. Is it time consuming – yes! Do we have to invest the extra time – yes! There is an internal logic to the way decisions are made in Japan. There is no point railing about how the Japanese business decision making process should be Westernised, so it is more familiar for us. That is never going to happen, so we need to be better and more flexible to understand the system and then become a master of influence within it. We need to become the nemawashi maestro!