The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

 Our education moves through many transitions.  We do our basic academic education at school and university and then we hit the university of life.  Company education programs begin with very basic i…

Japan is a big small place.  It is about the same size as the UK, but is covered in mountains, the latter making up 70% of the land area.  We have very few of those horizon stretching field vistas li…

In business, we are asked to present as a team.  We may be pitching for new business and the presentation requires different specialist areas of expertise.  This is quite different to doing something…

Brace yourself for everything to take a big hit twice a year.  Speed, attention to detail, output, results are about to fall off a cliff.  No this has nothing to do with currency rates, wars, supply …

How I hate those four words – “send it to me”.  I get that heavy feeling in my stomach and around my shoulders.  I know we are now on the path to sale’s hell.  I particularly hate it when I hear that…

Brace yourself for taking some big hits in Japan.  Speed, attention to detail, output, results will fall off a cliff.  No this has nothing to do with wars, currency rates, trade regulations, tariffs,…

When you contemplate this title you are probably thinking about heroic sales efforts, massive privations, sacrifice, striving, discipline, patience and forbearance.  Actually I am not talking about a…

When we are presenting, we can be mentally separating out personal selves from the content of the talk.  There will be facts, data, statistics, details, examples, evidence, etc., which is all rather …

Performance evaluation is not popular anywhere, but especially so in Japan.  Teamwork and so team performance review is preferred to individual accountability here.  Some firms are deciding that beca…

Stony motherless silence unleavened by a stony face.  That was the reaction to my questions from this first Japanese buyer and subsequent other buyers. I had studied the American sales guru’s sales t…

Good posture never goes out of fashion.  Standing up straight shows confidence, allows good breath control and projects energy.  Given this is pretty simple, then why is it we get this so wrong when …

A friend of mine was lamenting that he had not taken the time to complete our High Impact Presentations Course.  He had had it in the back of his mind for some time, that he really ought to work on t…

You would think that asking for the order would be the simplest thing in a sales job.  Not the case here in Japan.  Surprisingly a lot of salespeople here in Japan never ask directly for the order.  …

Japanese language has lots of insightful sayings and “mikka bozu” or only lasting as a priest for three days is one of them.  It means we wilt in our determination and fold after just three days of c…

In the West, we have all been trained in consultative selling for many decades. The buyers are used to salespeople turning up and asking a lot of questions to find out if there is some way they can h…

New Financial Years, new calendar years, new starts or not?  We religiously muscle up and set our resolutions to improve ourselves in the coming 12 months.  Often these resolutions are inwardly focus…

Japan loves data and detail.  All good, but it can be a trap when you are here trying to make sales in Japan.  In a Western sales model there is a defined process to go through and the buyer is also …

The organisers of public presentations are usually not very happy for the presenter to start flogging their company’s products to the audience.  They are looking for good information for the assemble…

Listen to our most popular episode in presentations for The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show!

Formulistic presentations may tick the boxes, but definitely don’t ignite much enthusiasm in the audien…

It sounds quite obvious not to hire people who are dangerous.  The problem is people can have a nice resume, can sound quite articulate in interviews and we buy this false persona.   They can also ha…