The Sales Japan Series

Don’t Blow The Solution Presentation To The Buyer

Finding clients is an art and so is building trust and credibility that you can help them solve their business problems. We might be very charming …

Widen That Buyer Gap Or Else

Having a buying need and doing something about it can often be quite disparate ideas. There are many things we would all like to do in business to grow our companies. T…

Handling Buyer Objections

None of us like to hear “no”. We are raised with this word from our parents and we didn’t like getting it then and we don’t like getting it now. We have something in our m…

Buyers Please Object

Buyers should buy and not quibble, hesitate or question. That at least is what salespeople hope for. That may happen, but the frequency is not high and you certainly wouldn’t w…

Stop Cutting Corners

Life is full of various rhythms and flows. We have a set piece most mornings. Arise, eat, get ready for work, head out the door. We work, finish, go to the gym, hobby, etc., or…

How To End The Year Strong

Salespeople work to certain rhythms. One of the negative rhythms is to ease off as we get close to the end of the year. In Japan, most financial years end in March, so th…

Brand Killing Customer Service

You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed. Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients. B…

Back To Basics Baby

We get lazy. We start cutting corners. We get off our game. We chill, cruise and take the foot off the pedal. Sales is demanding and a life of constant pressure. The temptation …

Sales Is Easy, So Why Do We Make It So Hard?

The object of a sale is to exchange a good or a service for money. The degree to which that money can exceed the variable and fixed costs associated wit…

Clueless Cold Calling In Japan

Cold calling always creates a debate amongst the sales community. Some say it has seen it’s day, others defend it as part of the sales resource bank for getting leads…

Dealing With Buyer Price Push Back

Pricing is usually set by the boss and salespeople are just there to get out and sell at that designation. The derivation of that price point can be quite varied.…

Excuse Time Is Over Baby

“I would be able to sell a lot more except for all the extraneous, external factors over which I have zero control”. Actually, you have never heard this line of argument be…

“I’m Listening”. No Your Not!

Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets. In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in the client’s best interests.…

Salespeople Need Better Self-Awareness

Sales is one of the few things in business you can measure accurately and immediately. Are you getting greater efficiencies from your internal systems? Is the…

Showmanship In Sales

Tricky area in sales, showmanship. The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc. Yet, like storytelling, this is …

To Push Or Not To Push?

Pushy salespeople are very, very annoying. They try to bug you into buying and we really don’t like it. We may actually buy, but we don’t like them anymore and probably wo…

Real World Negotiations

We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media. It could be movie scenes of tough negotiations or reports on political negotiations with rogue states led by lunatics…

Boozing Your Way To Sales Success in Japan

 A LinkedIn post I read recorded how an American sales guy got off the booze and the client entertainment rat race. It got a lot of coverage and comment b…

Jealousy, Envy and Spite In Sales

Sales is a tough enough job without having additional complications. Clients can be very demanding, often we depend on logistics departments and production divisio…

Rejection

 Everyone hates to be rejected, but not many people have this as a fundamental aspect of their work. We ask colleagues for help and they assist, we ask our bosses for advice and they prov…