The Sales Japan Series

The buyer is King.  This is a very common concept in modern Western economies.  We construct our service approach around this idea and try to keep elevating our engagement with royalty. After living …

Confidence sells.  We all know this instinctively.  If we meet a salesperson who seems doubtful about their solution or unconvinced it is the right thing for us, then we won’t buy from them.  The fli…

Buying from people we like and trust makes a lot of sense.  Sometimes we have no choice and will hold our nose and buy from people we don’t like.  Buying anything from people we don’t trust is truly …

Is selling telling or is it asking questions?  Actually, it is both.  The point though is to know what stories to tell, when to tell them and how to tell them.  We uncover the opportunity through ask…

Japanese salespeople really care about their clients.  This is good, except when it isn’t and that is usually when they are prioritizing the client over the firm which employs them.  Japan is a relat…

Luck is the nexus of hard work and persistence.  Salespeople need some luck, even if they have to create it themselves.  That old blues refrain “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all” ca…

An ideal work week for salespeople would start everyday with sales role play with colleagues.  When we do serious exercise we warm up to get into prime condition for becoming better at our activities…

In Part One, we talked about Jan Carlzon’s insights into the importance of consistent service  being provided to clients.  The buyer mantra is know, like and trust in sales. We also talked about the …

Journeymen salespeople are starting another year of selling.  Maybe their financial year is a calendar year or maybe the year wraps up in March.  It doesn’t matter, because there is a mental trick we…

There is a process to sales.  Amazingly, most salespeople don’t know what it is.  They are either ignorant, because they haven’t been trained or arrogant, arguing they won’t be entangled by any formu…

A stranger contacts you out of the blue or you meet them fleetingly at an event and they call you afterwards.  They are a salesperson and they want to sell you something.  Our typical reaction is one…

A stranger contacts you out of the blue or you meet them fleetingly at an event and they call you afterwards.  They are a salesperson and they want to sell you something.  Our typical reaction is one…

“I like talking with people, so I want to be in sales” is a terrifying conversation to have with one of your staff.  They are not doing so well in their current role, so they imagine they will just g…

“I like talking with people, so I want to be in sales” is a terrifying conversation to have with one of your staff.  They are not doing so well in their current role, so they imagine they will just g…

We often hear that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  The strange thing is where is this emotion coming from?  Most Japanese salespeople speak in a very dry, grey, logical fashion expecti…

Generally speaking, we mainly have failures of follow up in B2B sales.  The conduct of the sale’s meeting is normally done professionally.  Perhaps the salesperson could have asked better questions o…

Most of the time in Japan, I attend client meetings alone.  This is not how the Japanese do it.  The President going to a meeting alone, without some staff in attendance is rather rare.  Presidents h…

Why Japanese buyers demand sharper differentiation in today’s competitive market

Many companies thought that surviving the global pandemic would reduce competition. Instead, by 2025 the business envi…

We often hear that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.  The strange thing is where is this emotion coming from?  Most Japanese salespeople speak in a very dry, grey, logical fashion expecti…

Japan loves the Devil they know over the Angel they don’t know.  Change here is hard to achieve in any field, because of the inbuilt fear of mistakes and failure.  This country takes risk aversion to…