The Sales Japan Series By cover art

The Sales Japan Series

By: Dr. Greg Story
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  • 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
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Episodes
  • 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 ...
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    12 mins
  • 383 Being Convincing In Front Of The Buyer In Japan

    383 Being Convincing In Front Of The Buyer In Japan
    Apr 30 2024

    Blarney, snake oil, silver tongued – the list goes on to describe salespeople convincing buyers to buy. Now buyers know this and are always guarded, because they don’t want to be duped and make a bad decision. I am sure we have all been conned by a salesperson at some point in time, in matters great and small. Regardless, we don’t like it. We feel we have been made fools of and have acted unintelligently. Our professional value has been impugned, our feelings of self-importance diminished and we feel like a mug.

    This is what we are facing every time we start to explain to the buyer why they should buy our widget. We are facing a sheer, vertiginous rock wall of climbing difficulty. The cure for all of this caution, disbelief, doubt and fear is honesty.

    I talk about understanding our kokorogamae or true intention in sales. Are we here sitting in front of the buyer to make a bigger bonus, higher commissions, keep our job or there to help them succeed in their business? If our true intention is anything other than trying to help the buyer do better in their business, then we are never going to be able to continuously scale that rock face of difficulty.

    Yes, we might get one deal done, because we are a silver-tongued sales monsters who can snow the buyer. The object for the vast majority of us is never a sale, but always the reorder. Yes, there are some smash and grab businesses where they grab the loot and never see the buyer again. I know one salesman here in Tokyo who told me when he was selling meat in the US, he always had to find a new town, with new suckers to sell to, because once the buyer received the meat, the quality was poor and he could never go back.

    The difference between us is that I would never have taken that job because it offends my fundamental values and professionalism as a salesperson. I don’t want to be that guy who has to run away from the buyers and be afraid to meet them again. I can honestly say that I have never sold anything to anyone that would cause me to be ashamed or fear meeting the buyer again. That is the sales life I want for myself, not one where you are forced to live in the shadows and fear being outed as a crook. I can say that after he told me that story, I lost all trust in him and would never buy anything from him. His basic human values are doubtful to me and I don’t want spend my time with people like that.

    Realistically, though, there are few cases like this and for most of us in sales, we are looking for an ongoing relationship with the buyer. We want to build the trust and get the repeat business forever. If we have the best interests of the buyer firmly at the front of our mind we are fearless. We can walk into any networking event full of strangers and meet new people without trepidation and search for new buyers. We can walk into that first meeting safe in the knowledge that we know what we are doing. We understand that in that first meeting we are there to find out what they need and make a judgement as to whether we have it or not. If we don’t, then we don’t waste their time or ours and we move on to find the buyer we can help.

    I liken this to if you were a researcher who found the cure for cancer, you would be fearless to bring this to the attention of the buyers. There would be no hesitation and you would try to find as many people as possible to help. For an introvert like me, walking into a crowded hall full of businesspeople is overwhelming. Walking up to total strangers and introducing yourself is not the norm in Japan. I have to overcome my fear of this moment to find who are my potential buyers in the room. It is never easy for me and most people who meet me assume I must be an extrovert. Not true, but I am in sales, so I have to become more extrovert in public.

    One of my sales heroes is Zig Ziglar and he put it beautifully, “you can get everything you want in this life, if you help enough other people get what they want”. That is the true sales mantra and the one I follow religiously. It steels me against my introversion, my fears of the strange looks I get when networking, the rejections and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which come as part of this sales life.

    If we have the buyer’s best interest firmly in the front of our minds, we will find the right words, the proper explanations, be able to answer the difficult questions fluently and in general, exude a vibe of total confidence, which the buyer picks up on. They are not just reading our words. They are searching for a holistic answer to this questions: can I trust this person?

    The only answer can be “yes” and if our kokorogamae is correct, then that is the answer they will be feel and receive.
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    11 mins
  • 382 Selling To Sceptics On The Small Screen In Japan

    382 Selling To Sceptics On The Small Screen In Japan
    Apr 24 2024
    We are slowly emerging from Covid, yet a few leftovers are still hanging around, making our sales life complicated. One of those is the sales call conducted on the small screen using Teams or Zoom or whatever. These meetings are certainly efficient for the buyers, because they can get a lot of calls done more easily and for salespeople, it cuts out a lot of travel. Efficient isn’t always effective though. In my view, we should always try to be in person with the buyer. Some may say I am “old school” and that is quite true. Old school though has a lot of advantages when selling. Being there with them, we can take the client through the materials much more easily and we can read their body language in depth and minutely. Buyers are always sceptical about salespeople, because everyone is risk averse and concerned about getting conned or taken for a ride. When we are in the room together, they can get a better sense of who we are. They can read our body language to make sure our words match up with the intentions we are spruking. I had a sales call with a new client and, being in the room together, I could hand over the training manual and take him through it page by page, explaining the content of what he would be buying. I could easily control what page he was on so that we were in synch. We have to be careful when handing materials over that we are on page five and so are they, rather than they are racing ahead of us to page twenty. The commentary coming out of our mouth has to line up with what they are looking at in the materials. It happens that they race ahead of us, so we have to be aware of that danger and control what the buyer is looking at very carefully. I had another new client sales meeting, this time online and with three people on their side. They degenerate into three tiny little boxes on screen and it gets worse once you start sharing documents online. It is very hard to read three people’s reaction when you are in the room with them let alone trying to do it remotely. As we know the current systems aren’t as good as teleprompter technology. You can look into a camera lens on a teleprompter and read the text appearing on screen at the same time. With these various virtual platforms, the camera is located on one part of the computer screen, usually at the top and the people you are talking to are located way down below. You have to make a choice – look at the camera and not at your audience or look at your audience and not at the camera. The teleprompter technology eliminates that choice, but it hasn’t been applied to the virtual world as yet. In this situation, I look at my camera and give up trying to read the reaction of the buyers online. This is a big give up, by the way, and most unsatisfactory. I do it this way, because what they see is me speaking directly to them, making eye contact all the time. From their screen angle, they see me staring straight at them. This creates the sense of trustworthiness. On screen, I can keep staring at them intensely, without it creating any tension, as would happen in Japan if we were in person. Japanese culture avoids too much direct eye contact. This is why people look at our chin or throat or forehead. On screen, though, we are safely removed and so if we look down the barrel of that lens, we can keep applying the eye contact without it becoming intrusive. It allows us to connect with the viewers. Yes, we cut out the travel time and the costs to get to the client, but we are giving up a lot more in return. Being there is so much better and more valuable. Yes, it may take three hours there and back to hold the meeting and only one hour to do it online. But that one hour in person enables us to be so much more persuasive. We are also better able to recognise pushback or reluctance. It is almost impossible to read the vibe going on between the attendees on their side. When you are together in the room, you can see if there is any difference of opinion amongst the buyer group or cases where one person is not onboard with the idea. Onscreen, that is much more disguised. These various elements are hard to gauge on the small screen. We often find ourselves doing too much talking to compensate for the restricted nature of the small screen interaction. We feel we have to add energy and vitality to the sale process in a way we don’t feel such a strong need when we are in person. The communication distance gets us ramping up our side of the conversation to try to inject some enthusiasm into the buyer group. We are trying to will them to buy because we feel the remoteness of the situation. Buyers are often working from home these days and so they insist on online meetings. Remember, for them, not buying is the safest and preferred option. We, on the other hand, have a duty to help supply solutions to buyers and for us we should always choose the best medium for that purpose....
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    12 mins
Management Economics
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