Episódios
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“There are no excuses for failing in sales”, is a common ideological position. However, is this really true? There is no doubt that sales is a very macho environment for men and women. There are set quotas, targets, numbers to be hit and if they are not hit, then that person is deemed to be failing. There are no hiding places in sales. You make your target or you don’t. Now, if we fired every salesperson who failed to hit their target, we wouldn’t have many people in sales. Japan makes this especially fraught because the declining population translates into a shortage of salespeople. This also means that the quality of salespeople in the market is only going to decline. Whether we like it or not, we will be looking for anyone with a pulse to hire because we need warm bodies. Targets smargets in this case.
In sales anywhere, we know a couple of things. The majority of people in the business are untrained. Companies want off the shelf top earners who they can cut loose and let them go forth and bring in the dough. That is an epic delusion in this day and age in Japan. People who can sell are not moving because the company is doing its best to keep them. That means the ones who are mediocre, or worse, are mobile. Even this supply will dry up as companies become more and more desperate for salespeople and will keep their underperformers because they at least know something about the product lineup and have met a few customers.
We also know that at any point in time, a third of people we meet who we hope will become clients will never buy from us. There may be many reasons for this, to do with budgets, decision-making, ideology around self-sufficiency, stupidity, etc. Another third will buy, but unfortunately not according to our monthly sales quota driven schedule.
In Japan, especially, it is exceedingly rare to meet someone and then immediately get a sale. The dispersed decision-making process in business here ensures that there are many voices to be consulted about a new decision to buy from an unknown supplier. This internal harmonisation can take a long time to come to fruition. The best way to think about is like this: “the buyer is never on your schedule”.
The remaining third will buy, and the question becomes why will they buy from you? The “you” is important here because firms don’t buy from other firms. They buy from the individual they meet, who is sitting across from them in the meeting room. They make their decision on that basis. Is the chemistry there between buyer and seller emanating from a solid foundation of trust? Where does this trust come from?
The biggest part of the trust equation is from the seller’s kokorogamae. This Japanese word can be variously translated, but in this context, “true intention” is the best version. True intention means what is really driving the salesperson? Is it desperation to keep their job by making their monthly sales target? Is it greed to score a big commission or a promotion? Is it to do the right thing which is best for the buyer? If it isn’t the latter, then we have a problem.
Correct kokorogamae is often defeated by the culture of the firm. Doing the best thing for the buyer is not a smash and grab activity designed to yield immediate returns. The focus of correct kokogamae is to get the repeat order, not a single sale. That mentality is very specific and the time frame is long. If the sales manager is pushing everyone for immediate sales revenues, then the needs of the buyer get tossed out the window and the salespeople will do and say anything to get the sale. In fact, everyone is working hard to dismantle the brand and destroy the client trust for short-term gains and this is driven by the leadership. Is it the fault of the salespeople that they are working for idiots?
Companies have to do much better by their salespeople. Target expectations need to be realistic and have attached timelines which make sense. Training is an absolute requirement, in particular, how to ask questions in order to fully understand what the buyer is trying to achieve. Pitching a solution makes no sense if you have no idea what the buyer needs, and this activity has to be replaced by intelligent questioning skills. The aim has to become the repeat order, because farming is a lot less expensive and more efficient than hunting all the time.
Just hiring people and then firing them is an option that is no longer able to be enjoyed by companies in Japan. Given that the quality of those recruited will just keep going down, these individuals have to be encouraged and developed. That requires time and treasure, but there is no alternative.
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Most of the sales jobs in Japan require the ability to sell in Japanese. That usually means native speakers of Japanese or foreigners who can operate at a highly sophisticated language level. There will be exceptions, but they are not that numerous. Probably the bilingual recruitment industry is one of the main employers of foreigners who can’t speak Japanese and English-language schools. One could argue that today neither requires any real sales skills. Recruitment, in particular, is at an inflection point where the demand definitely exceeds the supply, so anyone with a pulse can match a candidate from the database and invoice the firm looking to hire staff.
Be they Japanese candidates for sales jobs or foreigners, what should we be looking for? Some might look for a track record of sales results. That is one indicator, but often not all that useful. Is the methodology in your shop teams doing sales and being rewarded as a team with salary and bonuses? Or are there individual targets and commissions attached to the sales? This is such a different construct, it depends on how you are configured.
Japanese salespeople, in my experience, love a salary, bonuses and team accountability. They are reluctant to take individual responsibility for their sales results. The money is obviously better when operating as an individual, but most Japanese salespeople feel overly exposed to the harsh realities of the sales life in this situation and prefer the comfy team embrace. So expecting rocketing individual results from a salesperson who has been operating within a team is overly optimistic. Despite that, I always favour personal accountability for results and work on gluing the team together, even though they are focused on getting their own numbers.
How have they been trained is also a strong indicator? Very few salespeople anywhere on the planet have been given formal sales training. In Japan, it is usually on-the-job training or OJT where they go with their boss or more likely, with their senior to client calls. Japanese salespeople turning up on their own is rare in Japan. Usually they travel in pairs, as one is the understudy to the other, until such time that they become the senior in their own pair. Ideally, we either want properly trained salespeople or we want to be able to train them formally, rather than rely on the Japanese system of intergenerational mediocrity.
In some cases, the salesperson needs a degree of technical background for their work. Japan though has a weak connection between what they study at University and the jobs they wind up doing, so often there is no direct match. In many cases, the engineers may have the required technical training, but no formal sales training, so they are reliant on the OJT system for developing their sales abilities, which is at best a hit and miss affair.
In general, broad skills are required and, in particular, communications and human relations skills are needed. Technical people can often be duds at both, so they need to be developed. In other cases, the person has these key skills but is weak technically. The Unicorn is always hard to net. When I first worked at the retail bank in Shinsei, the hiring criteria was maths skills for salespeople selling investment products to wealthy individuals. A rather dubious idea, I thought, so I changed it to put more emphasis on people and communication skills. Naturally, the results vastly improved immediately.
The other element we need to think about is our brand. Does the person we are looking at hiring fit our brand or can we teach them how to fit. If I see a sales guy with some of the things we are looking for, but has scruffy, poorly shined shoes, I know that I can teach him how to fix that issue. If his haircut is a disaster, we can fix that too. The point, though, is the individual has to submit to the brand and fit in with the company’s thinking. In today’s environment where getting a sales job is super easy, maybe they don’t want to change themselves to match the brand and expect things to flow the other direction. In my case, I would always think long-term and want to defend the brand, because it is bigger than one salesperson.
There is no doubt that we are all facing a lot of difficulty finding suitable salespeople based on our preferred criteria. Whether we like it or not, we have to be flexible and the best idea is to train the people we hire to get them to the level we need. Expecting they will come fully outfitted from the get-go is now a fantasy. Times have changed and we need to move with the changes.
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I have been coaching a founder client here for quite a while now and his emotional reaction to his clients not buying on his schedule always surprises me. I keep telling him, “it is business; it is not personal”. We know that there are some customers who will just never buy, some who will buy now and some who will buy in the future. We just don’t know which is which until we get rejected.
When I get rejected in a deal, they are not rejecting Greg Story. They are rejecting my offer, in its current construction, at this point in their cash flow cycle, within the bounds of their strategic direction, in relation to what my competitors are offering and a whole bunch of other stuff I will never even know about.
Does it still hurt? Yes, of course it does. I get super annoyed and upset like everyone else. The difference between me and my client, who I am coaching, is I never pass that emotional reaction on to the client, who said “no” to my stupendous offer. He does pass it on because he feels so upset and frustrated. I keep telling him to chill. Write the email if you must, to get your hurt feelings out, just never send it. My advice isn’t working as yet, but I will continue to counsel him to not take it personally.
I had my own rejection case the other day. I was doing an RFP for a client and they came back and said they went with a rival firm who specialises in sales in their industry. What was my initial thought? “They are idiots” was the first reaction. This was followed by “why are they just doing what all of their competitors are doing? Why not use another more differentiated approach with something more fresh?”.
What did I reply? I didn’t mention any of that. By the time the decision has worked its way through their internal decision-making system, there is no going back. Telling them they are stupid may make me feel good, but it won’t alter their course of action. I wrote what I always write, “thank you for letting me know” and that is that. I don’t bother with appeals for consideration in the future. I just accept their idiotic decision and move on to find someone smarter, taller, better looking and who bathes and who can do a deal with us.
Now I also put them on my follow up list, because not every deal works out. Their situation can change and maybe my competitor is useless and what they provide doesn’t work. So I keep in touch and ask them if they have any needs that we can help them with, and I do this regularly. The initial interval is around six months. That is long enough for them to realise they made a huge mistake by using my competitor and that they got nothing from that ridiculous solution they chose instead of mine. After that, I follow up every three to four months, because business is fluid and what wasn’t on the table is now in play.
How long should you follow up for? Ryan Serhant, who I follow and who started his own successful real estate brokerage in the US, says “keep following up until they die”. I am not that pushy, because I figure there are reputational costs to being too pushy and too insistent in Japan.
Tokyo is big, but it is also a small village in many ways. We sell to Japanese domestic firms and foreign multi-national companies. Our reputation as Dale Carnegie, a business based on being able to get on well with all different types of people, has to be careful how we are perceived in the market. If we say one thing, but do another, then our brand consistency will suffer and so will our sales.
Where is the line between persistence, which is admirable, and being too pushy, which is frowned upon here? It is not always clear, but if I feel that there is no interest, then after about four follow-ups with no reaction stretched over a twelve-month period, I will shelve that firm for a while. The people may change in the future and maybe someone smarter will be the person to talk to or maybe their business has changed and they are now more open to our solutions.
Regardless of what the client does, we can control how we react and we must keep cool, calm and collected in the face of failure and rejection. Is that easy? No, but the choices are few. My client hasn’t quite gotten to the point of handling the rejection in a calm, non-emotive manner yet, but I will keep working on him until he gets there. I am constantly working on myself, too. I have found that no one is a clear genius with this stuff and we are all a work in progress.
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This is Part Three and is the conclusion of our series on how to provide superior customer service.
1. Go the extra mile
Time is always short and we all tend to cut corners and look for anywhere we can save time. On the receiving end of the service though, we are looking for as much personalised attention as possible, so there is a natural tension between these two aspirations. Training staff to think beyond the natural limits of time challenged customer service is the start. We can all do more. If we think of things from the customer’s point of view, we can extrapolate what would delight customers.
I visited the café of a well-known business to enjoy a hot chocolate. This was a small outlet, which had one table for customers to sit down. There were no other clientele, so I decided to sit there and drink my brew, before heading off. There were two staff working at that time and when the beverage was ready, the male staff member brought it to the counter.
He could just as easily have brought it to my seat, which was a metre away from the counter, but he chose not to. There was no time pressure on him, but his mind was in basic service mode and not in “go the extra distance” thinking. I am also guessing, given his age, that he was the manager of that small store, so you can see the problem with him in charge supervising others.
2. Using 3rd parties as proof points
No one in Japan wants to be experimented upon or be the Guinea Pig. They want proven, established, reliable, repeatable, high quality service. Years ago, I was with my family in a Korean Barbecue restaurant in the Azabu Juban. I noticed on the wall they had a hand written list ranking the most requested dishes. I thought that was a smart idea for a Japanese audience, who want safety, rather than novelty or adventure. The next day, I brought this up at the Shinsei retail bank, where I worked and suggested we do the same and list our most popular financial products. We did that and it gave that third party seal of approval, making the purchasing decision that much easier.
3. Master first impressions
We are all quick to judgement and often we base it on what we see, before what we hear. Just looking at how someone is dressed influences what we think about who they are. A lot of firms have uniforms for that reason, to standardise the image they want to project and to control the branding. The way we dress matters, so we have to work on that and make sure it is communicating the image we want. In the customer service sector, it might be voice first or it might be visual first. Either way, we have to be mindful of how we come across to the customer. The sound of our voice should always be friendly and helpful.
I had some lower back issues recently and went to a clinic which specialises in that area. The first doctor I met welcomed me, looked at me, gave me his name and listened to my problems. I had to go back again after a week and this time, because of the day of the week, I got a different doctor. Same clinic, but this guy was well overweight, slumped down in his chair, staring at his computer screen. He didn’t offer his name, look at me or seem happy to see me and my money. We are facing a major population decline here in Japan, so these doctors really need to hang on to their patients and the competition is only going to get more intense. Same firm and two entirely different impressions. Getting consistency is a matter of awareness and training.
4. Cross and upsell
Selling should always be with the best interests of the customer. We need to have that in mind, rather than ramming more sales down the gullets of the buyers or selling them stuff they don’t need. Cross selling is there to open up options for the customer, to give them more of what they need. Upselling is to upgrade the quality of what the client has already bought, to give them a better experience. Both have to be done in the customer’s interests and the customer has to feel that is the case.
I used to go to a dentist in Azabudaidai but I never felt my interests were upper most in his mind. I always felt he was seeing me sitting here in his dentist chair, visualizing his new Tuscan Villa, paid for by the additional dental work he was always suggesting. I stopped going to him because I didn’t feel he was trustworthy. There is a massive over supply of dentists in Tokyo and there are plenty of choices, so his greed was a very shortsighted measure.
5. Able to deal with different personality types
We have some people who are very detailed oriented called Analyticals, while others are the opposite and massively big picture, “don’t bog me down in the weeds” types known as Expressors. Others are fast paced and hard driving as they push, push, push called Drivers. The opposite types are Amiables - quieter, considered and want to have a cup of tea and get to know us before they will do business. In customer service we have to know who we are dealing with, because that will change the form of communication we choose.
We have our own preferred personal style and that is fine, but that means there are three other styles who are different from us and they demand a different approach in order for us to be successful with them. Generally, we can tell from the way they speak, which group they fall into. If they are confident, strong, assertive they are going to be Expressors or Drivers. If they are quieter and more reserved, then they are likely to be Analyticals or Amiables.
Just knowing this enables us to strengthen out voice or soften it, when we deal with them. That alone means we are doing a good job of matching how they like to communicate and they will feel more comfortable with us.
6. Skilled in conflict management
The service sector is bound to have conflict issues between what the customer wants and what the firm wants. In customer service roles, we often get very irate people talking to us and they are difficult to deal with. The usual breakdown is they want something and we don't have it, or we won’t do it.
How we communicate that is everything. We just covered different personality styles so that is the first line of response. We try and understand who we are dealing with. We may need a very detailed explanation as a result or can just be brief. Naturally, we have to be super polite all the way through. Being gruff with a Driver type is incendiary, so I don’t recommend that, but we can be direct and they won’t be offended.
We need to be looking for empathy, win-win solutions, practical alternatives, context and background explanations and of course lots of flexibility. I remember when I was in trade promotion, we had sold a new buyer on purchasing garden bark from Australia. It had to be just bark, with no twigs or pebbles or sand. The day the ship should have departed, the supplier called us to explain they missed the ship but “don’t worry, it will be on the next one”.
When we relayed that vital piece of information to the Japanese buyer, I could hear the anger coming out of the phone, being held by my staff member seated three metres away. It was so intense, such red-hot rage. He had promised his customers bark and now he couldn't supply it, so we were burning his business, by not living up to our side of the bargain.
That was the end of that business on the spot and no more orders. There was no wiggle room in that case, but wherever we can, we should be looking for solutions to alleviate the problem for the customer.
Over the last three session we have covered off a large number of things to think about in customer service. Information is good, but execution is the key. Often the issues we face are structural or the consequence of legacy systems. We need to keep upgrading our internal approaches to become better at servicing customers, so that we can outmaneuver our rivals in the marketplace.
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In Part One, we looked at some of the elements we need to be working on in providing excellent customer service, and so now let’s continue.
1. Friendly
This would seem to be a very basic requirement in customer service, but often the wrong people are placed in these roles and many of them don’t like people. Even those who do like people can suffer brutal invective from irate customers and this can impinge on their joy for the work.
In Japan, the land of the “customer is God”, we now see legislation against harassment of workers by customers. Dogeza is where you get down on your knees and bow by putting your head on the floor and is the ultimate sign of apology in Japan. In Chinese culture, we know it as the ‘kowtow”. Angry customers have been known to force staff to do the dogeza to apologise for the unsatisfactory service they have provided. It would be very hard to be friendly after being put through that experience. Japan is catching up in this regard and these types of outbursts will reduce as the system stops tolerating unbridled rage by customers.
2. Develop loyal fans
This is related to being friendly. The idea is to not just provide a great one-off service, but to enroll the customers as repeaters and make them loyal fans. All sales should have this as the goal. In Japan, though, we receive aloof, but polite service. Those serving see their role in the dimension of providing the good or service, and that is it. There are very few cases where the person serving is trying to establish a connection with the customer and encourage them to come back. Maybe they think that is the job of the marketing department and nothing to do with them.
There are many instances where I frequent the same establishment, but the service is never personalised. It is efficient and polite, but impersonal. I am treated just like everyone else, and there is no recognition that you are a regular. Notable exceptions would be Ali Bab and Lindo near my office in Akasaka, Shinsen Hanten in Nagatocho and Elios Locanda in Hanzomon, but they are rare cases. How hard is it to recognise regulars? Not very. All the staff have to do is say “thank you for coming back, what can I do for your today”. I love Princi from Milano in T-Site in Daikanyama, go there very regularly and five years later, I am still waiting for the day they recognise me as a loyal customer. Obviously, in most cases, there is no training or guidance for this, so it is always by the manual and we the customer are left feeling flat.
3. Immediately responsive
Customers are all busy all the day long and they hate wasting their valuable time. Service provision, which is slow or late, is particularly a problem in this high-speed world we inhabit today. When there are problems, we want them fixed fast because we are losing time by not having the good or service work as we expected. I ordered some deodorant on Amazon and was contacted by Japan Post to tell me the package was wet, which meant there had been some interior damage. I went online and registered a problem and I was very happy to immediately hear from the supplier that they would refund my money and they told me to not accept the package. I was mentally bracing for trouble, prevarication, quibbling, and fudging, but their instant response was better than my low expectation. I was very happy, and that is the same with all of us – we want things fixed and fast. Staff need to be trained to provide it
4. Never combatative
I hate one thing in particular and I have hated it my whole life, and that is being told “no”. I am sure I am not the only customer who is like that. One of the great ways of telling a customer “no” is to reference third parties. When I was at the Shinsei Bank, sometimes the customers would want us to do something which was not possible. Banking, by the way, is a highly regulated industry with tomes of rules. If we said “no, we can’t do that”, then to someone like me, that is a red rag to a bull and I will tell you the thousand reasons why it has to be a “yes”.
Instead, we would firstly agree that we could do it. Then we would pause, reflect in an obvious way and then ask the customer what do we do about the Financial Services Agency (FSA) rule that prohibits that action. Now we have said “yes” at first, so they are relieved and their guard is down. Next, we have made it a problem between them and the FSA and not with us. Third-party direction works well if you can access it.
5. Seeking win-win outcomes
Win-win is an obvious best solution, but many systems are not designed that way. This forces the staff into confrontation with the customer and it creates unnecessary tensions. Staff training will not easily overcome a structural problem. Take a good look at your internal rules and systems and see if they are designed in a way to be a “lose” to the customer and a “win” to the firm. Change them or improve them if possible.
6. No excuses
Highly litigious cultures like the US are hard wired to never admit guilt or responsibility, which can drive the customer nuts. There are also some personalities who cannot admit being wrong and will try some mealy-mouthed lingustic gymnastics to avoid taking accountability. I hate these types of people in any form. As the customer we don’t want excuses. We want soutions, compensation or retribution. We want you to fix the problem and we want it now. Again, this is about how we train and empower people. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel chain is famous for giving staff a certain amount of money they can right off to keep the customer happy. It works, as I have experienced firsthand.
I was staying in their Washington DC property and I went down for breakfast at the 6.30am opening time but the waiter apologised that they were not ready yet. I said “no problem, I will just sit by the window over there and read my paper”. He later came and told me they were now ready. When I went to pay, the waiter said “complements of the Ritz Carlton because we have inconvenienced you by making you wait”. That was service, I thought, and here I am telling all and sundry about it, for them, years later.
In Part Three will wrap up this look at Outstanding Customer Service.
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Elements Of Outstanding Customer Service In Japan (Part One)
Customer service in Japan is pretty good by comparison with most other countries. To me, it is polite yet impersonal. The status gap between those serving and those being served is quite rigid. In my own country of Australia, those serving are quite happy to have a conversation with the customer. They don’t see themselves as inferior in status and treat customers as equals. In Japan, there is no such equality. The language and the culture both reinforce the buyer as God, and those serving are mere mortals there to do God’s bidding.
Let’s look at some elements of excellent customer service over a three-part series. The sad aspect here is that what I am going to describe is totally obvious and will garner a “so what” reaction. I urge you to go beyond that initial first blush and use this as a measuring rod to calibrate how your organisation deals with customer service problems and check if you are operating at the right level of service or not.
1. Totally professional
This is fairly obvious, but that professionalism comes from a combination of attitude, experience and training. Even if you don’t have much experience, if your attitude is that you want to provide the highest level of service, then good things will flow from that starting point and we gain experience over time. If properly trained, then the whole process gets sped up.
2. Knowledge
Surprisingly, a lot of people in the service sector have very little knowledge of the inventory, systems, ethos and values. When you ask a clarifying question, their face fills with panic and they have to go seek the answer from someone else. This is a failure of leadership. If they were properly invested in, then they would know the answer without having to run off and find the answer.
3. Highly personalised service
Manualised or formulistic service is the norm in Japan. Companies try to reduce all complexity down to one way of doing things and for the majority of clients, that will be fine. To lift above the great unwashed competitors, we need to be able to provide a more personalised service.
I was reminded of this recently when I brought a pocket square online from Massimo Pirrone in Antwerp. The item arrived in a nice box and additionally, he included a short note and a very nice pen as well. It felt very personalised and I became an instant fan.
4. Take Ownership
Japan is very good when order and harmony prevail. Chaos, the unexpected disasters – not so much. The nature of customer service is that there is always going to be a high frequency of the unexpected occurring. The key is how we react to the changing situation.
When things go wrong, customers want the issue solved and solved instantly. They expect the person they are interacting with to make it happen, regardless of the degree of difficulty. Japan has a nasty edge to it when customers exploit their expectations too far and start bullying staff, because the customer is God.
If the person serving the customer takes ownership of the problem, they will keep pursuing the solution until resolution. That is the mentality the supervision and training need to reinforce.
5. Anticipatory
Omotenashi is the high point of Japanese service and a big element is the person serving the customer to anticipate what the customer needs before they voice that request. On a hot day, being served some iced water as you enter the business is a nice touch, completed without you have to place an order. This is an attitude of service that drives behaviour. With the right leadership, this can be taught.
6. Proactive
This is similar to anticipatory, in the sense that we are not adopting a passive stance. We try to arrange things well before the need arises by being well prepared. We are always looking for faster and better ways of doing things.
We are making suggestions for the client, for their best interests, rather than expecting them to have complete knowledge of what we can do for them. They will never know our business to the depths that we do and so we have to be thinking ahead and bringing up possibilities which wouldn’t necessarily occur to them.
We will keep going with our list of things to think about in terms of the service we currently supply and how we supply it in parts Two and Three.
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About The Author
Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training
Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery". He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”.
Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki.
He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
Has 6 weekly podcasts:
1. Mondays - The Leadership Japan Series,
2. Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series
Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え
3. Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series
4. Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series
Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト
5. Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show
6. Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews
Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:
1. Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show
Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV
2. Fridays – Japan Business Mastery
3. Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews
In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.
Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo.
Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan.
Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.
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Watching Joe Biden destroy himself during the debate with Donald Trump was painful. He was appealing to the American voting public, that is to say, around 68% of voters based on the 2020 numbers, a then record turnout. This type of debate is similar to closing the sale in business. We have to outline why what we are doing is good for the client and why they should choose us over the alternatives. Polling, surveys, focus groups etc., provide politicians with insight into the needs of the voters and they construct their close on that basis.
We do the same, except that we do research on the firm, the industry sector, the individuals we are meeting to build up a picture of who we are dealing with. By the way, in today’s world, they are doing the same to us. Are you satisfied with what they will find out about you? I digress. We then ask a series of questions to better illuminate what the buyer needs. Once we have zoomed in on what they require and have internally confirmed we have what they need, then we explain our proposition and go in for the close to get their agreement to make us their preferred solution provider.
Joe Biden couldn’t close the sale because of the way he communicated his message. His low energy didn’t convey conviction or confidence. In sales, we have to be careful to not come across as a pushy salesperson, hell bent on getting the required revenues to make our monthly targets. We have to have conviction, energy, confidence without it being pushed too hard. Japanese buyers do not react well to being pushed.
One reason is that they are rarely the sole decision maker and harassing them to buy is pointless. The decision will go through many people before it is resolved one way or another. What we can do though is to communicate the details of how the solution will work well inside their company and the benefits they will get which they are not enjoying today. There is a line between enthusiasm and pushy and we have to tread on the correct side of that line. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm is an old saw and it is true. We need to convey the belief that what we are offering will be the best thing for this buyer.
If we can fire up our interlocutor, they will be primed to sell our ideas inside the company and bring on board the other sections who will be impacted by this buying decision. We will probably never meet these people, so our champion has to be our communication mouthpiece to spread the good word about what we are proposing.
One way to fire up our champion is to provide them with a lot of data, proof, statistics, testimonials, etc. Japanese buyers are, I would say, the most risk averse group on the planet, so we have to come packing evidence if we expect them to go to bat for us.
I think Biden should have destroyed Trump in that debate, because he is the incumbent and has the numbers to support the policies he has introduced. When I see video of other politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom or Senator Bernie Sanders in action, they are machines on the numbers and that is what Biden should have done as well. In our case, when we are talking to buyers, we have to come with numbers too. “Claims are easy, but where is the proof” is what the buyer is thinking and we have to provide that answer.
Storytelling should be seated on top of the numbers. Buyers have trouble recalling stats, but we are all pretty good on recalling stories. Being able to assemble the numbers and then weave them into a convincing story is one the key skills in sales. That story should feature where the solution has created value for another client, very similar to this one. Being able to explain how the other client converted the solution we provided into tangible benefits is what the buyer wants to know in Japan, because no one wants to the be the guinea pig. They like to see others take the risk of the new and then they can safely follow in behind and get the value, without the fear of it turning out to be a dud.
Biden blew the close and as salespeople, we have to make sure we are not replicating that meltdown. We need to understand how to communicate value in a way which is easily accessible to the Japanese buyer. My own failures as a salesperson can usually be traced back to poor ability to muster a compelling and convincing argument as to why they should stop just using their current suppliers and start using me as well, or preferably instead.
We see a Biden failure replay, but do we reflect well enough on ourselves and our own communication abilities in sales? It is always a good practice to go back to the basics, back to the drawing board and rework what we say and how we say it for the buyers. Just doing the same old, same old, is what got Biden into trouble. He needed to rise to the occasion, but he couldn’t. What about us? Let’s make sure we are fully prepped and capable of delivering a powerful, convincing message to convert buyers into lifetime clients.
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I belong to Dan Slater’s Delphi Network and every week his newsletter contains unattributed quotes from CEO conversations he has heard at his recent events. One of them caught my eye about sales. The anonymous contributor was saying that selling in Japan has to be no selling, a bit like a zen approach – “the sales of no sales” type of approach. I found that interesting and was wondering what on earth this CEO was talking about?
The inference was that in Japan you can’t try to sell company representatives to buy your solution and you need a much more tangential angle of entry. I thought to myself, well that doesn’t gel with what I have been doing here. I definitely sell companies on the idea of buying our training and have zero hesitation about doing so. What is the difference? I may be creating a straw man here to make my point and risk misinterpreting what this CEO said, but I think they know little about sales.
They are probably imagining that sales is all hard sell. We enter the gladiatorial arena and we brow beat the buyer in submission. Relentless with our 50 closes, we never take no for an answer. We push and push and keep trying to jam the square peg into the round hole, regardless that it will not fit.
That is not sales to me and it certainly is not an approach which will yield revenues in Japan. When I first got here doing sales in the late 1980s, I tried to use “consultative selling” techniques which I had studied from American sales gurus. It was very distressing to find that these techniques were not working at all here.
I would get straight into the sales conversation and start asking them detailed questions about the condition and status of their business. To my confusion, they wouldn’t answer my questions. Instead, they would ask me questions about myself and my company and they wouldn’t buy.
Looking back, I now realise that I was so naïve and an idiot. I turned up for a first meeting, they didn’t know me or my company from a turnip and they got grilled on the inner sanctum questions about their business, from a total stranger, and even more exotically, a foreigner to boot. No wonder they wouldn’t answer my slick well-honed consultative sales questions.
I had built no trust and, worse, was in a hurry. Business trips are expensive and I had to justify the cost of getting me to swan around Japan for weeks at a time to my Aussie bosses back in Brisbane. The buyers in these cases were actually non-buyers, and trained me on what I needed to do. I realised I needed to spend more time talking about who I was, who my firm was, what we had done so far and establish a foundation of understanding and work toward building trust.
I am a slow learner, so for many years the sales meeting was basically run by the buyers rather than me, the sales guy. I actually can’t recall where this idea came from, but at a point in time, I realised I needed an entry point which would allow me to be able to ask my questions and to be able to follow the consultative sales approach.
My formula was and is very simple. I describe who we are, what we do, who else we have done it for and the success they have had and suggest that MAYBE we could do the same for this buyer. I then say, “In order for me to know if that is possible or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”.
The MAYBE bit is very important in Japan. In other parts of the world, salespeople will no doubt be very bolshie on the fact that they are the perfect partner, that their firm can do the whole shebang. Here we need to introduce some softness into the equation, some muted tones, indirect assertions which don’t come across as pushy.
Not every buyer here will accept this approach and some, a tiny minority, will insist on hearing my pitch. I do it, but what I want to do is stop the meeting right there, pack up my gear and leave. I have no idea what on earth they need, because I haven’t been able to ask any questions, so what am I pitching against? I am flying blind and there is a zero possibility this conversation will lead to a client or a deal, so I should reduce my losses, leave and go find a client I can help. Obviously, that is too confrontational in Japan, so I give my pitch, trying to make it broad enough that it might jag some point of interest. It rarely succeeds.
Getting permission to ask questions is the key to the door of getting deals in Japan and if this step is not achieved, then you are trapped in mindless pitch hell.
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There are farmers and hunters in sales and both are needed in organisations. The hunters are energised by landing the deal and bored with the paperwork and administrivia required after the sale. The farmers are not much chop at landing new clients, but they are genius at taking care of existing clients and keeping them as repeater clients.
I am a hunter. I realise about myself that I love finding new clients, discovering what they need and then helping them to achieve their goals and aims. There is the thrill of getting the deal, manufactured from nothing because you had to go out there and beat the bushes. Now, not every effort results in a deal. Sadly, a number escape, some go with a competitor (ouch), some ghost me and do nothing. I always take all three of these outcomes badly.
It sounds trite to say it, but I really believe that what we have can help the buyer and if they don’t take the offer, they are missing out. I believe that 100%. Now, the emotional roller-coaster of sales means we need to have a safety net when we stumble. We can’t always land the deal, so there are going to be more failures than wins. How do we keep our confidence and certainty intact to allow us to get back up and try again? Part of this is how we rationalise failure.
I always say to myself that the buyer made a mistake to not buy from me. I recognise I can always do better as a salesperson and that I am not perfect, but beyond that I don’t blame myself. I analyse what I did and didn’t do, but I don’t allow any negativity into my brain. Sales is so emotional, I feel I have to isolate that side of me from the results. When I land the deal, I don’t start leaping about the place in unbridled joy either. I feel a quiet pleasure that I can now help to transform this company’s business. That is what we do, and we have seen it happen with our own eyes, so we know it is true and not just marketing pap.
Those moments of success have to the leaven out all the failures. Recently, I spoke about having a very depressing week where one deal after another either fell over, was lost, or was postponed. That was hard and coming one after another, you begin to doubt yourself. In sales, it is never about the big deals you have done in the past, it is always about what are you doing right now. This is the reality of sales, which is why we have to insulate our minds from fears of inadequacy and failure.
For hunters, the finding of the client and then transforming that relationship into a deal and a client is what keeps us going. I attend a lot of networking events and I have my pattern of behaviour. I always arrive early and stand at the table with all the name badges. The staff hand me my badge and then can’t work out why I don’t buzz off, get out of the way and go inside.
I keep standing there and I carefully scan every name. I am looking for people I already know so that I can use their name when I see them, in case I may have forgotten it. I look for companies who could be prospects and I look for people I have wanted to meet, but have not managed it so far.
When I finish that, I stand right in the doorway and start meeting people who come in. Often they mistake me for one of the hosts of the event but I don’t mind that, I want to meet them. I exchange business cards with them and ask them about their business and how many people they have. That information is enough for me to make a judgment about how we can help them. If they have few people, then it is hard to organise training and our public classes are perfect for them. If they have over thirty people, then they can possibly do an in-house class.
Following that, I work the room and try to meet as many people as possible. In sales, I have to kiss a lot of frogs before I can find the beautiful princess. I was doing just that at the New Year’s party for the American Chamber. I had been there, standing around for hours already and had met a lot of people. I bumped into an older Japanese gentleman who I didn’t know and exchanged cards.
Next month we are delivering Leadership Training For Managers in-house, for all of his senior managers. That is creating a new client from nothing but my time and effort to attend the event and work the room. Obviously there were many meetings after that initial meeting but I got the deal and we will get paid for the training.
These successes help to balance out the failures like that big Japanese Pharma company who recently told me they went with a competitor – did I mention ouch. The wins are important to keep us hunters going, because it is tough duking it out in the market. We need to be resilient and unemotional, both about the failing and in the winning. We are constantly living on the edge of winning and losing, and that is where the thrill of the chase is determined.
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I had a meeting with a client I have been chasing for business for the last ten years. They have had the same President right throughout and we get on very well, but this has not resulted in any business coming my way. Over the years, I had been introduced by him to his various HR people, and that is where it has always floundered. Maybe they had their own internal solutions and didn’t need us or the HR people didn’t like me or didn’t like the President trespassing on their turf. Actually, I have no idea why we have never been able to crack the code, but finally, I thought we were getting somewhere.
I was to have yet another meeting with the President from last year and it kept getting postponed and postponed. Finally, we had our meeting in January and he said wait until June and we will continue the conversation. I was somewhat surprised when his assistant reached out to me to have that June follow-up meeting before I did the follow-up from my side.
I expected he would be in the meeting with the new HR head he had recently hired, but he did not appear. They had three executives there for the meeting, including one based outside Japan who was visiting. Naturally, I had notes for the January meeting and I was working off the basis that this meeting was a continuation of the previous meeting direction with the President.
So, I get straight into outlining the solution for them based on my understanding from my previous discussion with the President at our January meeting. That was a mistake. I assumed he had briefed them on our talk, but it gradually dawned on me that wasn’t the case.
My approach was wrong. What I should have done was to first ask them what they understood the situation to be around what the President wanted. I didn’t do that and so wasted a lot of time and effort early in the meeting barking up various wrong trees.
I could see this genius, transformational idea of mine, wasn’t going anywhere. They kept asking me rather tactical questions. This totally confused me because the President had been operating at the strategic level. In the course of them getting frustrated with me not getting the picture, they explained the problem from their point of view. I was floored.
The things they wanted were the most basic requirements. I couldn’t initially get my head around what I was hearing, because it didn’t correspond with the image I had in my mind. This firm has been around a long time and they have been very successful. They have many branches and, therefore, I assumed, they had all the basics well and truly nailed down. Their ducks were in a row, I thought, but not true.
Being a 112-year-old training company and being here since 1963 in Japan, I have a huge curriculum resource at my command and can operate at the most basic or sophisticated levels. In other words, I could give them what they want once I understood it.
I was reflecting on why this meeting was initially so hard. I see that I had a direction for them in my mind based on the meeting with the President and I forgot to do the sales basics with them. I assumed we were advancing on a previous conversation going on to the next level. I was operating above the fluffy white clouds and they were down a deep mine shaft.
What I should have done was to expect that the busy President had not briefed them at all or not to a very distinct degree. I should have ignored what I thought was happening and should have dealt with what I had in front of me – three people I didn’t know and should have assumed that I had no idea what they wanted. I wish I had been that smart.
If I had started that way, it would have been obvious to me that I needed to focus down on the basics for them. This hand it over phenomenon from the President to the working level staff is a common enough thing in business for busy senior executives. I will make it my rule from now on to ignore what I think is happening and check to see what they think is going on and what they need to fix their issues. I promise to do better.
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