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PODCAST

The Sales Japan Series

Dale Carnegie Japan

The vast majority of salespeople are just pitching the features of their solutions and doing it the hard way. They are throwing mud up against the wall and hoping it will stick. Hope by the way is not much of a strategy. They do it this way because they are untrained. Even if their company won"t invest in training for them, this podcast provides hundreds of episodes with information, insights and techniques all based on solid real world experience selling in Japan. Trying to work it out by

business management

All Episodes

12:52

329 Can ChatGPT Deliver the Perfect Sales Script?

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/02/14

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 need to design the question we want answered intelligently and it will do all of the work. When you have to listen to sales people using sales scripts on you, the conclusion is ChatGPT must surely be able to do a better job, because the bar is set so low. Of course there are scripts and there are

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13:24

328 We All Need Our Evidence Bit In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/02/07

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, because they fit into the ideal client persona profile we carry around in our heads. If we have been artful, we will have managed to secure a meeting, be it online or more preferably, in person. After some preliminary small talk to gauge some sense of what personality style they are, we switch up our

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14:31

327 Do You Need To Speak Japanese To Sell In Japan?

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/02/01

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 have sufficient fluency to conduct a sales meeting in Japanese, even though they make speak some level of Japanese language. I don’t know if I would call myself “fluent”, because I know how complex the Japanese language is and I know that often I cannot always understand everything being said in the

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13:31

326: Asking For The Business In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/01/24

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 closes and they didn’t work. Naturally he had written his one book with a better alternative. I was thinking about what he said and asked myself are these typical closes actually outdated or not? Everything is contextual so it is hard to give a bullet proof undertaking, but I think they still work and

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14:49

325 Regret At Leisure If You Tolerate Riffraff...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/01/17

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 things with our money. Real estate agents tell one version of the truth to buyers. Government officials purloin our money. Everywhere you look, someone is ripping us off. However, these industries and institutions do not get blanket smeared with the failings of the few, like in the case of

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16:28

324: How To Hit The Sale’s Target In Japan

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/01/10

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 however these are only partial wins. Problems and issues are a bit like icebergs – there is a lot more going on below the surface than can be spotted from the captain’s bridge. The salesperson’s role is to go after the whole iceberg and not just the obvious bit floating above the waterline. The standard

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13:27

323: Selling Is All About The Basics

The Sales Japan Series ·

2023/01/03

We are starting the New Year and have we decided how we will start it? Are we going to just slide back into our old habits and pick up the threads of the deals we were working on before the break? Or are we going to do some fresh thinking about what we are doing and how we are doing it? As salespeople, we are all massively time poor. That sets off a series of decisions where we are constantly cutting corners to shave off some time. Unfortunately we also shave off some activities we shouldn’t be

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12:46

322: No Cushion, No Sale In Japan

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/12/27

A cushion, in the sales world, isn’t that thing you bite into with frustration when your old client buys from your competitor rather than you. It is a ploy, a trick, a device, a subterfuge to stop us making a mess of the deal. Most salespeople have no idea what a cushion is or how to employ it, which is why they are losing sales on a regular basis. The hardest people to teach this technique to are seasoned salespeople. Actually, in my recall, teaching anything to experienced salespeople is

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13:05

321: Understanding Features and Benefits

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/12/20

Most salespeople are very good on the detail of their solutions. The more technical the solution, in order to be able to explain it to the buyer, the more expert level of knowledge is needed. The only problem with this expertise concentration is that buyers don’t buy features. They have a problem which they need solved and the features are a necessary tool, but it is the outcome produced through the tool, which is what attracts the buyer’s attention. If we spend all of our time in the weeds of

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12:04

320: Over-Servicing Japanese Buyers

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/12/12

A very common complaint from foreign bosses here in Japan is that their sales staff are over-servicing the Japanese buyer. Sometimes they are left to wonder who their staff are really working for – their company or the client’s company. I am sure there are many sales bosses based outside Japan thinking, “that is the type of problem I would like to have with my sales crew”. When we travel out of Japan and we are exposed to service in Western countries, there is always such a negative contrast with

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12:31

319: Steve Jobs And The Death Of The Salesperson

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/12/06

Proprietary research findings, industry experience, thick product catalogues, detailed flyers were the currency of the salesperson, before the advent of the iPhone. The salesperson was an unknown quantity, so the only guarantee was their firm’s brand. The individual didn’t have a personal brand. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007 and changed sales forever. That salesperson of old has been killed off by the technology. The client today has access to everything the salesperson has and they

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12:05

318: The Ideal Client Profile

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/11/29

Knowing where to find potential clients is one of the core skills of salespeople. Yes, marketing drives activity and we have our networks, but we need to keep that sales funnel full. That means we need a healthy flow of new prospects to talk to. Where will these new buyers come from? Often we have to create them out of thin air. Cold calling has become so much more difficult with remote work, as our buyers are hiding out at home. They are protected by a steel wall of blockers making it

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11:29

317: The Japanese Concept Of Shu-Ha-Ri For Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/11/22

The Japanese idea of Shu-Ha-Ri is a combination of three characters – 守破離. Shu is to protect the traditional techniques, the basics, the fundamentals. Ha is to detach and break away from the tradition, to innovate and depart from our attachments to what we are doing. Ri is to transcend to a level where there is no self-consciousness of what we are doing, we make it our own, because we have absorbed it all and it is now part of us. We have this same notion in the West, but I don’t think we have

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12:24

316: Are Your Buyer Questioning Skills Good Enough?

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/11/15

Many salespeople contemplating this title would be flummoxed. They don’t have really good questions for the client because they don’t ask any questions whatsoever. They are losers who go straight into the detail, the nitty gritty of their solution. How do they know this is the right solution? They don’t worry about that, because they are delving into the product catalogue or the flyers for the micro detail of the solution. I can call them losers because they irritate me. They pollute our

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12:29

315: Four Strategies for Building Confidence In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/11/08

Buyers can smell fear and desperation on salespeople. When the sales funnel is sad and prospects are few, we panic. The client picks up on this and unconsciously they hesitate to work with us, because for them something doesn't feel right. We are suffering. We are reminded of the Sales Manager’s mantra, “don’t tell me about what you have sold in the past, tell me what deals you are doing today”. Sales is a moving feast where we have to constantly recreate our results every week and the boss

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10:54

314: Don’t Argue With The Client

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/11/01

The client is always right. No they aren’t. We usually have more information about our offering than the buyer and are across the breadth of our range of solution in a way they can never be. We are interacting with a variety of buyers in the industry and the sector and are constantly picking up intelligence on what is working and what isn’t. We are not being driven by internal politicking, as ambitious rivals jockey for position. We have the client’s best interests at the forefront and firmly in

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12:16

313: Secrets Of The Japanese Sales Call

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/10/25

In modern economies, asking the buyer questions to understand their needs would be considered the most basic skills of a salesperson. This isn’t happening as much as you would expect in technologically advanced, well educated, sophisticated Japan, the world’s third largest economy. In Japan, busy bosses or more experienced salespeople, will take the new salesperson with them on a couple of sales calls. End of the training. Going straight into the detail of the features of the solution is the

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12:22

312: Hope Is Not A Strategy In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/10/18

When you are told that “hope is not a strategy” you get the point. You also know that actually there is a fair bit of hope built into your strategy. Every sales organisation comes up with targets and often these are based on hope more than science. There is imperfect information floating around and we use this as the basis of our assumptions. There is incomplete data and we have to extrapolate based on those numbers. Things can change quickly and the ramifications can be completely unexpected.

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13:56

311: Reducing Friction In The Sale In Japan

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/10/11

Inertia is a powerful retardant to getting deals done in Japan. Either they already have a regular supplier or this is a new solution with which they have no experience and they don’t want to risk anything. Buying from you represents a number of changes which must take place on their side. Change equals risk in the Japanese buyer’s mind rather than opportunity. Doing nothing with the new solution is an easy decision. Sticking with the existing supplier is an easy decision. When we are trying to

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12:55

310: Are We Ready For The End Of Covid

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/10/04

Depending on your industry, times have been tough in sales. We see the Japanese Government trying to resuscitate the inbound tourism industry to increase jobs and revenues to gather more tax income. They are about to open the economy right up to stimulate business. Domestic tourism is worth about three times as much as foreign tourism contributes to the economy. There is a big kick opportunity there once Covid allows us all to travel more freely within Japan. Capital expenditures have been put on

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469 results

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