The Sales Japan Series

Victor Antonio is one of my favourite podcasters on sales and he recently had an episode on reducing friction in the sale.  This got me thinking about how would that work in Japan?  A big barrier to …

Listening to a young salesperson in his first sale’s role talking about being nervous to present to a high powered, senior company President, made me think about that.  As we all get older, we forget…

In Japan we don’t have the custom of haggling when we go to shop.  The price is the price is the price, in the consumer world and if you don’t like it, don’t buy it.  In the B2B world though there is…

Role play is one of the keys to improving in sales.  We are in a psychologically safe environment where we can experiment and learn.  The majority of salespeople however are practicing on the client.…

Salespeople are constantly talking to clients, but if you think about it, clients don’t have that many conversations in a year with salespeople, so there is a massive power imbalance in play.  That i…

I was chatting with a prospective client about a proposal I had submitted and he offered this feedback from one of his colleagues from the senior management team, “we don’t need to bring in trainers,…

How could we lose track of buyers?  Unfortunately it is very easy.  That nice person we have been dealing with inside the company, the one with whom we have built a solid relationship, where the trus…

The front row of sales training courses will often have the best salesperson sitting there trying to get even better.  The salesperson who is failing or is a mediocre performer is nowhere to be found…

You have done an excellent job as a salesperson, hitting your numbers and getting a strong reputation as a “producer”.  The big bosses like the cut of your jib and decide that they will promote you i…

There was an excellent effort on display here.  A salesperson was using LinkedIn to find potential buyers and conducting energetic prospecting activities to reach out with cold emails.  A total waste…

Arguing with buyers is a slippery slope to sales oblivion.  “I told him off and made him fly straight”, is a leap into seller delusion.  In Japan, the buyer isn’t King, but GOD.  The seller is in no …

In Japan we usually need a couple of meetings with the client to get the business.  In Meeting One, we build the rapport and trust, we explore their needs and try to understand if what we have is act…

We salespeople love to talk.  We are enthusiastic about our differentiation, our solution, our features, the benefits and a myriad other remarkable things about what we sell.  Many salespeople have n…

If you are a student of sales, then you will know all about SPIN Selling developed by Neil Rackham, based on his 1970s and 1980s research involving 30 researchers who studied 35,000 sales calls in 12…

In many sales organisations, sales scripts are a way of harmonising the messaging as well as getting newbies up to speed.  ChatGPT can come up with a sales script within about one second.  We just ne…

We have found the prospect.  It might have been through desk research then a cold call or a chance business card exchange at a networking event.  We have decided they probably need our solution, beca…

There are many non-Japanese speaking business people doing deals with Japanese companies.  They may be flying in for meetings or may be based on the ground here.  Even those locally based may not hav…

I was listening to a sales podcast and the expert guest was lampooning some typical closes as outdated, insulting and useless.  He was relating how early in his sales career he had come across these …

Riffraff inhabit all corners of the business world, but the sales profession suffers more than many others.  Bankers do all sorts of evil things with our money.  Stock brokers do all sorts of evil …

Sale’s solutions are what make the business world thrive.  The client has a problem and we fix it, our goods or services are delivered, outcomes are achieved and everybody wins.  In a lot of cases ho…