The Sales Japan Series

Selling Yourself Before You Meet The Client

I have been recruiting new staff over these last few months.  One of the younger candidates breezily told me during the interview, “I checked you out on …

How To Sell To A Buying Team

Selling to companies in Japan usually means sitting in a meeting room with a single buyer or perhaps two people.  There are occasions though where we may need to pres…

Nine Major Mistakes By Japanese Salespeople

We see Japan as a modern, high tech country very advanced in so many sectors.  Sales is not one of them.  Consultative selling is very passé in the West,…

My Clients Never Call Me Back

Today in business, reaching anyone by telephone is nothing less than a miracle.  Japan is particularly good at making sure you can never catch clients.  The lowest ran…

The One Minute Pitch

If you have been following me for a while, you know how down I am on pitching.  This is the standard modus operandi in japan.  Turn up to the meeting with the buyer and bludgeo…

Add Some BANTER To Your Next Sales Call

I am a permanent student of sales.  I study the books and tapes from the greats – J. Douglas Edwards, Charlie Cullen, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar…

Success Negotiating – Part Two

In Part One we covered the four steps involved in negotiating: Analysis, Presentation, Bargaining and Agreement.  Today we are going to go a bit deeper.  Before getti…

Success Negotiating: Part One

Our image of negotiating tends to be highly influenced by the winner takes all model.  This is the transactional process where one side outwits the other and receive…

How to Present To A Diverse Buying Team

This is very tricky in Japan.  Because of the convoluted decision making process here, there will be many voices involved in the final decision. What makes…

The 80/20 Rule Of Selling

We are all familiar with the 80/20 Pareto Principle, where 20% of buyers account for 80% of the sales and 20% of the salespeople, account for 80% of the revenue.  There is…

How To Disagree But Still Keep Your Customer

The Customer is King.  How do you say “no” to the King?  In ancient times, if you said “no” to the King, you would lose your head.  Keep your head -…

Survival Tips For Stressed Out Salespeople?

When we are under stress our concentration and productivity levels are much lower than normal.  Sales has to be one of the most stressful occupations o…

In Sales We Need To Create Super Re-Order Customers

Here is an important mantra: We don’t want a sale, we want the re-orders.

That task however is getting harder and harder.  Customers today ar…

Sales Bad News Travels In Threes

Our financial year ends in August and we are up over 20% on last year’s revenue results. I should be ebullient, chipper, sanguine, fired up for the new year, but I …

Why No Omotenashi From Some Chinese Retail Services In Tokyo?

This is a controversial piece today, because I am singling out one race, one group in isolation.  It is also a total generalisation and…

Why We Mess Up Customer Service

Poor customer service really irritates us.  When we bump into it, we feel betrayed by the fIrm.  We have paid our money over and we expect excellent customer service…

Typical Japanese Salespeople’s Objection Handling Issues

Getting pushback, rejection, disinterest when you present your solution to the client’s problems is the natural state of things.  Getting a …

Generating Your Own Leads In Sales

Marketing plays a key role in generating leads.  They are trying to maximise the accuracy of the segmentation of the data base, to make offers that resonate speci…

Stop Slamming The Square Peg Into The Round Hole When Selling

One of the most dangerous people on the planet is the salesperson who doesn't listen well enough to the client’s needs.  They miss the …

Really Understand Your Expectations Of Your Sales Team

We hire people and they don’t perform as we expected.  The time passes and the numbers are not rolling in.  We thought they would be more proa…