I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses. Here are my musings after 53 years of training in traditional Karate.

Stepping on to the floor

The dojo is the ultimate equalizer. Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks’s mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else.

In business we forget this and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities. We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people’s real abilities are recognized and rewarded.

Starting

The class begins with a short meditation interval. This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what will now come. Next everyone is bowing toward the front. The front of the class represents all who came before us. We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization. By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going. Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion. Finally we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travellers on a journey of self-discovery.

How do we start the work day? Is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY we are there.

Stretching

We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles to be able to operate at a very high level of performance.

If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice or are you just practicising on the client?

Basics

We repeat the same drills over and over, every class. We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution. We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought.

A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity?

Sparring

Free sparring is 100% spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of move and counter move. At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in one minute, but using our techniques with full body commitment.

When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker? Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes? Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains over their brawn?

Kata

These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents. The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection. The form is set and so Zen like releases the mind to go beyond the form.

Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected? Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness? Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation?

Strengthening and warming down

Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance. We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles.

Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace? Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people? Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested?

Finish

We repeat the bowing and this time we add the Creed. Voicing carefully chosen words which represent the value system of that dojo, (e.g. Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect) so that these are the last things setting into our minds, before we go back to our usual routines of life.

How do we end the workday? Do we set up for the next day by reviewing what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow? Do we reflect on the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better?

The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal brand suicide.

There are elements of the sales process which are so fundamental, you wonder why I would even bring them up. For example, believing in what you sell. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe but keep selling.

The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people.

When I joined Shinsei’s retail bank, I recognised immediately that 70% of the salespeople should never have been given a sales role. My brief was “we have 300 salespeople and we are not getting anywhere – come in and fix it”. The vast majority of people in the role of convincing wealthy Japanese customers to buy our financial products were really suffering. They lacked the communication skills, the people skills, the persuasion power, the warmth, the concern for the customer, etc., which they needed to be successful.

As Shinsei, we worked out who was best suited for a sales role and gave those people the proper training to equip them for success. The remainder were given a role elsewhere in the bank. What training did we give them? The ability to ask good questions, to fully understand wealthy customer’s needs.

At Dale Carnegie we do a lot of sales training and we see the same client issues come up continuously. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly.

Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty.

Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on three powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how your solution satisfies their need.

If you want your sales team to be successful, make sure they get a proper sales process, get certainty, get fluency and get going!