The Sales Japan Series cover art

The Sales Japan Series

By: Dr. Greg Story
Listen for free

  • Summary

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

    387 How To Present Your Sales Materials To The Japanese Buyer
    May 28 2024
    Japan loves detail. A lot more detail than we expect in the West. I remember a lecture I attended at an academic conference on Sino-Japanese relations here in Tokyo in the early 1980s. The Professor was making this point about the Japanese love of detail by relating how a Zen metaphor had been imported into Japan from China. In the Chinese telling, there was a bucket to draw water from the well and there was no great attention placed on the apparatus, but instead on the broader philosophical Zen point. This was the main objective of the telling of the story. In the Japanese version, there was a lot of minute detail about the circumference and depth of the well, how it was dug out and reinforced, the construction of the bucket and the rope and a host of other statistics, somewhat diluting or even obscuring the broader philosophical Zen point. The takeaway for us in sales is that the Japanese buyer has an insatiable need for details. This is cultural, but also a defensive posture to help them ensure they don’t make a bad decision to entrust their company’s fortunes to us. The idea is that the more information they can assemble, the greater the likelihood they won’t get into any trouble in the future. Usually, we will have corporate brochures, flyers, catalogues etc., to show the client. We should make a point of emphasising how long we have been in operation and, in particular, how long we have been here in Japan. Longevity in Japan is its own proof of acceptance by the market and therefore validates risk reduction to take us on as a supplier. When we start outlining the scope of our services, we should be prepared to go into a lot more detail than we would normally need to bother with in a Western context. If you ever look at Japanese local websites, they are exploding stars of massive details and the screen is saturated in text. I don’t think we need to go that far, but we do need a balance. There are some busy people who will just scan the content and be satisfied with that and others who will want all the detail. We can cater to both by using headlines and summaries and other pages or resource sections for packing in the gory details. We are all busy and social media is training us to have shorter and shorter concentration spans, so the first sentence in any paragraph has to be well constructed. We want to plant a hook in that opening volley which captures the curiosity and intrigue of the buyer to keep reading. Don’t start with boring bumf and expect to have your content consumed by the reader. We need to keep repeating this hook idea every paragraph. Most Japanese companies do not want Minimum Viable Products tested on them or to be a pioneer in their industry. These things work in the West, but Japan expects the product or solution to work perfectly from the outset and to have no problems and no defects. Adjusting the solution based on buyer feedback isn’t an option once you have sold the solution. It has to work from the get go. Testing something new is not attractive to the buyer, because the risk is felt to be too high. Therefore, it is always good to come armed with case studies about other clients who have benefited from your solution. This is not that easy in Japan, because clients often won’t allow you to promulgate that they are even a client, let alone share what you did for them and what happened. Clients would tell me they couldn’t allow us to mention they were a client because it wouldn’t be fair to our competitors! Huh? But this is Japan, and this is how they see these things. Corporate secrets are well guarded here, so getting a case study together is no snap. Always make sure you have information about yourself and the company's history. The buyers want to know who they are dealing with. You will need to include basic details about the company like who are the executives, the headquarter address, your main bank, the amount of capital you hold, etc. In my case, I always refer to myself as “Dr. Story”, because I have a Ph.D. and that is a big differentiator with my competitors in the corporate training market. Do you want to be taught by a guy with a Ph.D. or some bozo with no credentials? I will also sometimes mention I have a M.A. from Sophia University here in Tokyo, because that says “l am a local” to the Japanese buyer. I will often mention I am a 6th Dan in traditional Shitoryu karate, because that tells the buyer I am really serious about Japan and have deep knowledge of the culture and language. When I have the chance, I will also reference the 9 books, three in Japanese, I have published and the multitude of podcasts and videos I have released, because that is a massive form of credibility building. It says I am a serious expert in my field and you should use me rather than someone else who doesn’t have any of these proof points. We need to think carefully about what we hand over to the buyer and...
    Show More Show Less
    11 mins
  • 386 Controlling Our Hour For The Sales Meeting In Japan

    386 Controlling Our Hour For The Sales Meeting In Japan
    May 21 2024
    Usually in Japan, we are granted an audience with the buyer for an hour for the meeting. Sometimes with Western buyers, they want to restrict the time, so we only have thirty minutes, which makes things very difficult. We also know that if we can capture their interest, that thirty minutes can magically become much longer. We also know that there will be more than one meeting, so we don’t have to try to squeeze everything into that initial conversation. One point though – in the case of a second meeting - always have your diary there and set it while you are with them in the same room. Don’t leave it or you will get crushed in the competition for their time by other competing forces. That first hour should be concentrated on building rapport and trust with the buyer at the very start. We need to establish our credentials and our trustworthiness. In most cases, they don’t know us at all and we turn up expecting them to share their deepest, darkest corporate secrets with a stranger. Remember your parents told you, ”don’t talk to strangers”. This first meeting requires good communication skills, centered around our choice of the content and the way we express it. Stumbling, bumbling speech patterns are automatically assumed to show we are an incoherent idiot, unprofessional, unreliable and best stayed away from. Japanese buyers are trained to hear our pitch and then completely destroy it, as a defence mechanism against making a bad decision. We don’t want that. Instead, we need to get their permission to ask questions during that first meeting, so that we can avoid pitching into the void. If we don’t know what they need, how on earth do we know what to pitch? If they want A and we keep talking about B, we will not get the business. We have to know they are interested in A and not B. To find out what they want, we use a simple four-part structure: I. who we are 2. what we do 3. who we have done it for and what happened 4. suggest we could possibly do it for them too I say “possibly” because we still don’t have enough information to know for sure. We are better to say we don’t know if we are a match and make the point that, “if I can ask some questions,I will have a better idea if we can help or not”. The temptation in Western sales techniques is to start enthusing about what a great help we can be and how we can do everything regardless of what they need. We are an omnidirectional wunderkind who can magically solve all of their corporate ills, because we are so awesome. This won’t work in Japan because it comes across as boasting, sounds like a lot of salesperson hot air and we should be avoided. Once we get permission to ask questions, we can start with either where they are now or where they want to be. It doesn’t matter where we start, but we need to know the answer to both. We need this so that we can gauge the distance between the two points. A client who is really close to solving their problem internally believes they don’t need us, because they can do it themselves. We need to disabuse them of that idea if we can. Sometimes we can’t do that. In that event, we have to pack up our stuff up, get out of there and find someone we can help. Once we know where they want to be, we need to find out what is preventing them from getting there. Hopefully, the reason we uncover will help us to position ourselves as the solution they cannot generate internally. The issue with knowing the blocker is that it is not enough. Most deals never happen because the buyer doesn’t have enough urgency attached to benefiting from the solution. If we just respond by saying we have the solution, that won’t be enough. We need to explore the timing and the importance of speed. If we don’t do that, we will be left in limbo waiting for the buyer to get around to taking action. This is where pointing out the opportunity cost of no action is important, because clients assume no action has no cost. We can’t leave them thinking like that. We will need to dig deep with the questions to understand their requirements, motivations, fears and concerns in this first meeting. In the next meeting, we will explain how our solution will take care of what they want. This is where we get into the nitty-gritty details of the solution and walk them though how it will unveil inside their company. Just talking about the mechanics is not enough, because we need to connect the details of the solution to the benefits they will enjoy. That is also not enough because we need to describe what that benefit will look like inside their organisation. Buyers are sceptical of salespeople, so we need to lay out the proof of where our solution has worked elsewhere and preferably for a client very similar to them. Finally, we ask them a question which is very mild but deadly, by saying, “how does that sound so far?” At this point, we don’t add or ...
    Show More Show Less
    11 mins
  • 384 Sardonic Humour, Sarcasm and Irony When Selling in Japan

    384 Sardonic Humour, Sarcasm and Irony When Selling in Japan
    May 7 2024
    Aussies are a casual people. They prefer informality and being chilled, to stiff interactions in business or otherwise. They can’t handle silence and always feel the need to inject something to break the tension. Imagine the cultural divide when they are trying to sell to Japanese buyers. Japan is a country which loves formality, ceremony, uniforms, silence and seriousness. Two worlds collide in commerce when these buyers and sellers meet. My job, when I worked for Austrade in Japan, was to connect Aussie sellers with Japanese buyers. I would find the buyers and then try to find the Aussie suppliers. I noticed some distinct cultural differences in the sales process. It was always better when the Japanese buyers didn’t speak English. This stripped out the ability of the Aussies to directly communicate with the Japanese buyers. You would think that was a disadvantage, but in fact it was the saviour in a lot of cases. Unable to access their own language in direct communication with the Japanese buyer, they were forced to give up on some mainstream linguistic idiosyncrasies of Aussie interactions. Formality is a given in business in Japan and when, as the seller, you are forced to communicate through an interpreter, you are reduced to a staccato flow of thoughts and ideas. There is a delay in the communication and the Aussies had to sit there and wait to hear what the buyer said. They were forced into a more formal style of interaction which prevented them from free styling. This was good, because the Japanese buyers prefer the more formal approach. When the buyers could speak some English, the Aussies ran riot. They were freed from the chains of formality and immediately lapsed into casual interactions, with which they felt more comfortable. Humour is a big part of the Aussie male culture and they bring it with them wherever they go, including to the very much stiffer, buttoned up Japanese business world. The problem is you have to be another Aussie to get in sync with the humour. Self-depreciation is part of Japanese culture too and here it is more about being humble rather than putting yourself down. Aussies are also pretty humble people and self-depreciation is a male signal to other males that you are not trying to get above everyone else and that we are all equal. This reaction against the English class system in Australia has made fairness and equality basic building blocks of the culture down under. The problem is self-depreciation is very hard to translate. When we speak foreign languages, we are constantly translating what is being said in the other language into our own. Japanese buyers always had trouble trying to get the point of the self-depreciative attempts at humour by the Aussies. When it bombed, did the Aussies regroup and go in a different direction? No. They just doubled down harder to try to make the point, which meant they just kept digging a deeper hole for themselves. Hint to the wise, when selling in Japan be humble, but don’t make self-depreciative remarks about yourself – it won’t land the way you want it to land. Sardonic humour is a close cousin to the self-depreciative remarks. We Aussies got this from the English, because they love sardonic humour too. Again, it is very hard to translate and for Japanese to understand. Japanese communication is rather circular and vague. Sardonic humour is angular. You make comments at an angle to what had been said and hit hard on that angle to make a dark point, which is witty. Japanese buyers are fabulous at never making a direct point if they can avoid it, so no angles to leverage off. I notice this with my Japanese wife when I say something sardonic and it just goes absolutely nowhere. They don’t have that angle in their own language, so it is a hard one to grasp in a foreign language. Hint number two: forget attempting sardonic humour, because only you will get the joke. Sarcasm is a close relative to the sardonic humour category. Aussie male culture means growing up under a constant barrage of sarcastic remarks and one-upmanship. You have to learn how to be tough and take it and how to hand it out, to defend yourself. The speed of the riposte and the lacerative edge to the comment are being judged as a sign of wit and intelligence. No one gets sarcasm in Japan, in my experience. Trust me, I have tried it many times, only to see it fall as flat as a pancake. Hint number three: remove all efforts at sarcasm with Japanese buyers, they simply will have no idea what you are talking about. Irony is another Aussie favourite in the humour stakes. Like sarcasm, we males grow up navigating our way through ocean waves of irony smashing into us all the time. It requires a very high level of understanding of the language and the cultural context. Most Japanese buyers just don’t have strong enough English to even get close to understanding the point of the ...
    Show More Show Less
    12 mins
Management Economics
Show More Show Less

What listeners say about The Sales Japan Series

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com.au reviews

Amazon Reviews
No Reviews are Available
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.