The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By cover art

The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

By: Dr. Greg Story
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • For succeeding in business in Japan you need to know how to lead, sell and persuade. This is what we cover in the show. No matter what the issue you will get hints, information, experience and insights into securing the necessary solutions required. Everything in the show is based on real world perspectives, with a strong emphasis on offering practical steps you can take to succeed.
    copyright 2022
    Show more Show less
Episodes
  • Create Raving Fans When Presenting In Japan

    Create Raving Fans When Presenting In Japan
    May 5 2024
    We can speak to a group. Then there is another level, where we try to totally captivate our audience. What makes the difference? The content could even be the same, but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner. Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life. We see this with music. The same lyrics, but with a different arrangement and something magical happens. This new version becomes a smash hit. Speeches are similar. A boring rendition is given a delivery make over and suddenly has the audience sitting on the edge of their seats fully enthralled. I am sure we would all vote for the enthralling version, so how to do we do that? The quality of the argument we are going to present is important. We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A. It sounds counterintuitive, but we should start from the close when designing the talk. We work hard to clearly define what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience. Only then do we start to work backwards, structuring the rest of the speech from that point. Once we know what will really resonate with the audience, we begin gathering evidence to back that assertion up. We have to remember that broad statements are too easy to make. This is the Era of Cynicism, “fake news”, so the listener will need a lot of convincing. We now do a rough sketch of the key points and attach the supporting evidence. In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it. We must make sure that the evidence is super, super strong. We need really compelling proof, in order to build solid credibility for our argument. The next stage is vital, especially in this Age of Distraction. We have to wrangle a dynamite blockbuster opening. We have to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience. The things they were doing before they got to the venue and all the things they have to do after this speech. The hand held device is a modern day siren call. It so silkily diverts their attention away from us, as they check email and social media. We have to smash through all that obstruction. We sweep all before us and clear a path so that the audience will actually hear our message. The first words out of our mouth had better be super compelling. If not, we will lose the battle for people’s modern miniscule attention spans. We need to carefully design what that will be, because it won’t happen by itself. We want our visuals on screen to be clear and instantly comprehendible within two seconds. It used to be ten seconds, but now we are down to just two, so really take a cold hard look at what you are putting up on screen. If it is taking the viewer longer than two seconds, then the slides are too dense. Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three. Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added or just kept as they are. This intrigues our audience to learn more. We can then talk to the point we want to make. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible. If we are going to use video, it had better be short and really, really hot. The transition from slide deck to video, back to slide deck must be seamless, so none of that tech fail we often see on display. Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us. This is key because they flag. Classical music has its lulls and crescendos and so should we. Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval. This should be synchronised with some powerful visuals on screen, to further drive home the point. This is not a result of chance, good fortune or fortuitous accident. We need to plan for this massive impact on the audience. We structure the presentation so that this brings all the vocal and visual elements together, in a powerful, distinct, one in a million way. We are meticulously sprinkling stories throughout the speech to highlight the evidence for our key points. Data by itself is fundamentally dull, but stories fleshing out the data, should be scintillating. These will be full of visual stimulation, using word pictures to conjure mental pictures in the minds of our audience. We bring physical locations to life, describe vivid colours, talk about the season, mix in people they may know and importantly, explain the why of the story. In this way we take our listeners on a magical journey, where they see the scene playing out in their own mind’s eye. It is a bit like reading a novel, after having seen the movie. As you read it, you can mentally imagine the scenes you saw previously on screen. This is exactly ...
    Show more Show less
    15 mins
  • Real World Business Negotiating In Japan

    Real World Business Negotiating In Japan
    Apr 28 2024
    We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media. It could be movie scenes of tough negotiators or reports on political negotiations with lunatic led rogue states. Most of these representations however have very little relevance in the real world of business. A lot of the work done on negotiations focuses on “tactics”. This is completely understandable for any transactional based negotiations. Those are usually one off deals, where there is no great likelihood of any on-going relationship continuing between buyer and seller. This is false flag. The aim of sales is not a sale. The aim is repeat orders. If you want to be permanently in 100% prospecting mode, then transactional selling is fine. That gets tiring and is tough, as you have to spend all of your time hunting because you can’t farm. Now there will be some cases with buyers, where that is how it rolls and there is not much you can do about it. The majority of salespeople though are trying to strike up a lifetime relationship with the buyer, so that the orders keep coming rain, hail or shine. The style of negotiations for this business play are completely different to the one-off, transactional occasion. In this world “tactics” are only partially relevant. Going one up on the buyer, getting the better of them, isn’t sustainable in a continuing relationship. They remember what you did to them and they definitely don’t like it. They either dump you completely as the supplier or they even it up down the road. They don’t forget and they don’t forgive. Technique has a role, in the sense that there are certain best practices in negotiating, which we should observe. The philosophical starting point though is key. What are we trying to do here, what is our purpose? Are we trying to build an on-going business relationship where we become the favoured supplier or are we after a one–off smash and grab deal? If you highly evaluate the lifetime value of the customer and this is your main consideration, then you will have a lot of commitment to win-win outcomes. The consideration of the communication style of the buyer is another important negotiating consideration. How we communicate with the buyer will vary, that is, if we know what we are doing. Clueless salespeople will have one default mode – the way they personally like to communicate and that is all they have in their tool box. Professionals understand that if the buyer is micro focused, we go with them on facts, detail, evidence, testimonials, proof etc. If they are the opposite, then we talk big picture and don’t get bogged down in the smaller details. We describe what future success looks like. If they are conservative, self-contained and skeptical, we drop the energy level to match theirs. We don’t force the pace, we spend time having a cup of tea to build the trust in the relationship. We mirror what they like. If the buyer is a “time is money” hard driving, take no prisoners type, then we don’t beat around the bush. We get straight down to business. In rapid fire, we lay out the three key reasons they should buy, we get their order and then get out of their office pronto. With this analysis in mind, we prepare for the negotiation by analyzing the buyer’s perspective. We use what we know about them and their situation to build up a picture of what they will need from the deal we are negotiating. We match that with what we can provide and we amplify the value we bring to the equation. We now set out our BATNA – our “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. This is our walk away position. We have analysed the potential of this client, by looking at their lifetime value as a buyer. This can have a big impact on how we see the pricing. When negotiating with a big multi-national buyer, I had to take a painful hit on my pricing. I only agreed to this though, because the volume in the first year was very substantial and the understanding was that this would be repeated annually. Now, it may not become annual, who knows, but if it does, then this is a major feast of guaranteed farming that allows a better balance to all the other hunting required. In another case, I “fired” the buyer because their pricing requirement was too low. There was no prospect of any on-going business and the volume was not attractive. When you believe you bring value, you enjoy inner confidence in your pricing. We all have our positioning in the market. If we want to maintain that, then we have to be prepared to reject low ball offers that damage our position and our brand. Hopefully you don’t have to do this too often, because you can convince other buyers to pay the full tariff. In most cases, sales negotiating requires a holistic approach, rather than a “mechanical” tactics driven approach. Decide what type of relationship you want with the buyer. If it is win-win, then we are ...
    Show more Show less
    13 mins
Management Economics
Show more Show less

What listeners say about The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Average customer ratings

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

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available