x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

15:26

309: Pitching Preferred In The Japanese Sales Call

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/09/27

In modern economies, asking the buyer questions to understand their needs would be considered the most basic of the basic skills of a salesperson. This isn’t happening as much as you would expect in Japan, the world’s third largest economy. Most salespeople everywhere are untrained and are left to work it out for themselves. Japan has what they call OJT – On The Job Training - as the main teaching method. In this busy boss life, that is now reduced down to taking the new salesperson with them on

en

12:04

308: Boosting Our Champions In The Sale

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/09/20

Usually, we meet our contact in the company through a cold call, a referral or networking and we sit down and have a talk about the needs of the organisation. If we are doing a professional job, we will have explained what we do, mentioned a client we have done work for and the success they achieved as a result. We will then suggest that “maybe” we could do the same for this company too, but in order to know if that is possible or not, we ask if we can ask a few questions. Once we have received

en

13:48

307: What About The Deals We Lost

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/09/13

I am a big fan of Victor Antonio who is a sales coach in America. He has an excellent show called the Sales Influence Podcast. In a recent episode I listened to he had some very interesting statistics. According to US research, salespeople, on average, close about 40% of the deals they are seeking. That means they lost 60% but what happened to that group who didn’t buy? The shocking component of this research was the fact that only 20% went with a rival offer in preference to our genius effort.

en

13:22

306: Trust In Sales Is Everything

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/09/06

I had been busy, so setting this appointment had been difficult. Eventually, we found the day and time to meet. I asked for the address and the text note mentioned the building and I knew it well, so all good to go. Except when I arrived there, the entry registration desk people said there was no company of that name in the building. I checked my text note and sure enough, it specified this building. I did a quick search of the company name and found the right building, but now I was late. I

en

14:15

305: The Japanese business Glass Permanently Half-Empty

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/08/30

Many years ago, my job was to help Australian companies crack the Japanese market. One of the elements of that job was explaining the Japanese business psyche to the Australian businesspeople targeting Nippon. As you might imagine this wasn’t an easy task, as the mindsets are so different. White colonisation of Australia started in the late 1700s and the first convicts and settlers arrived into a vast continent, without one permanent structure, bridge, road or port. Aboriginal life was nomadic.

en

14:27

304: Preparing For Selling During A Recession

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/08/23

“Out of the frying pan into the fire”, seems to be an appropriate descriptor for where we are now. We have been battered by Covid, or at least many of us have had that unpleasant experience, but now everyone, even those who sailed through Covid, are about to get swept up in to the next recession. Inflation, rising interest rates, supply chain turmoil, energy supplies being weaponised, the list is long and depressing. Japan relies on foreign markets and if the USA has a sniffle, Japan catches a

en

18:57

303: The Final Five Of Your Sales Call

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/08/16

A miraculous thing often happens when I am meeting clients for the first time. We have had our meeting, I am closing up my organiser where I have been taking my notes, I am getting ready to leave, when they will drop some major insight or important piece of information on me. It is always a bit fraught because the meeting has obviously ended, I am already packed up and I cannot easily unpack the organiser and start making additional notes. I have to wait until I am out of sight to then grab that

en

12:08

302: Clients Forget The Price

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/08/09

Have you ever paid for something that you found was very good and which you used for many years. You will have forgotten perhaps the price you originally paid, but you have not forgotten the quality you received. You always maintain a positive mindset about that company and the product or service. On the other hand, if you paid for something that didn’t deliver what you expected, over time, you will forget the exact amount of money involved, but you will always recall that the quality was poor and

en

14:18

301: Why Does Everything Take So Long In Business In...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/08/02

“In our business, at our size, we have to be the speedboat, we cannot be the oil tanker”, is a key mantra for my Franchise company. Why is that the case? I am the only non-Japanese in the firm and I was frustrated at the slow pace of decision-making and action taken by the team. Growing up in Western business, speed of decision-making and taking action are requirements drummed into you from any early age. Other foreign leaders in Japan reading our speed mantra will be sagely nodding their heads

en

14:33

300: Should We Worry About Our Competitors

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/07/26

The ferocity of competitors depends on a number of factors. Are we in a commodity market where price and supply capacity determine all and it is a race to the bottom? Are we in a narrow band market where there are few suppliers and market share is hard to expand? Is our business exposed to currency swings? Are technological breakthroughs by rivals either going to deeply wound us or even drive us to the wall? Would a regulatory change up end our business relative to our competitors? Are deep

en

12:41

299: Controlling Your Public Image As A Salesperson

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/07/19

In the good old days we could have multiple public personas in sales. We could be the professional salesperson, but that image was entirely separate to our family life. We could enjoy boozy celebrations and getting off our face with relative anonymity. We could accumulate customer complaints and deal with them in private. We could rely on word of mouth from within a limited circle of acquaintances. When we met people for the first time, they basically knew almost nothing about us, except the

en

14:24

298: Networking In A Time Of Covid

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/07/12

For the last two and a half years business networking has been dead. The usual suspects who hosted live networking events migrated everything online, so you become totally restricted in your ability to create any relationship with the people attending the event. The hosts kick it off, the speaker speaks, the Q&A gets underway, the hosts wrap it up and you are left hanging there, without any good means of connecting with possible clients on the call. The hosts these days, don’t release who is on

en

11:55

297: You Have Three Seconds For An Effective First...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/07/05

In our presentation training classes we ask the participants, “how long does it take for you to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time?”. How about you? How long do you take to make a judgment about someone you are meeting for the first time? It used to be people in our classes would say 30 seconds, others would say up to a couple of minutes. Today, the answers are now down to three seconds! What does that mean for us in sales? We have such a small window to make

en

13:35

296: When Is Too Much, Too Much In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/06/28

The most common complaint we get from clients about their sales team is that they are too passive. They are great at farming, but not great at hunting, growing the size of the existing business and finding new buyers. “It is as if they were working for the buyer and not for our company, because they bend over backwards to keep the client happy. Maybe too happy”, is not an unusual comment. On the other end of the scale is the American style hard sell effort which takes no prisoners, brooks no

en

12:11

295: Wasting Salespeople

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/06/21

Useless salespeople who cannot sell get fired. But are they really useless or are their sales managers useless or their companies useless? There are some industries which are notorious for the up or out mentality and recruiting certainly comes to mind. There is a lot of rhetoric floating around about saving mankind, through matching the buyer and seller of services, but the reality inside these companies is brutal. These are corporate meat grinders, who have massive churn because the targets are

en

12:06

294: How Good Are Your Supporting Documents To Drive...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/06/14

Japan just devours data, statistics and information. When you visit some scenic spot, there will be an amazing level of data available about that venue. The announcement on the subway train when you arrive at your stop will warn you that there is a specific gap in so many centimeters between the platform and the train, so be careful. I first discovered this data addiction when I was here as a student, some forty years ago. I attended a scholarly conference on Sino-Japanese Relations, as that

en

13:51

293: Silence Is Golden In Business In Japan

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/06/07

Tension is a good thing in business, because this is how we get things done. There is an issue which needs solving and either we fix it ourselves or we outsource the specifics to someone else. There is a tension between scaling up and preserving oxygen, otherwise known as, “cash flow”. I have this issue all of the time. I want to grow my company, but I don’t want outside investors, so bootstrapping is required. That means the process is going to be slower than getting the cash in the door and

en

13:11

292: Be Bullet Proof Against Criticism Of Your Follow-up

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/05/31

The phrase “I was ghosted” is a new addition to the sales lexicon but the problem is ancient. You meet someone at a networking event, have a positive conversation and then you follow up with them. Your email goes nowhere and all you get is crickets. So you send it again as a forward, so that the previous one is there in the thread as a subtle shaming reminder “hey, I wrote to you, but you haven’t answered me yet”. More crickets. What do we do in these cases? Being old school, I like the

en

12:27

291: Your Agenda Or The Buyer’s When Selling

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/05/24

What would the buyer’s agenda be, during the sales call? “Don’t take too long, because I am busy”, “Don’t waste my time with stuff I don’t need”, “Don’t erode my cash flow”, “Don’t rip me off”, would probably be the most prevalent. Our clients often tell us one of the biggest problems they have with their sales teams, is the buyer runs the sales meeting. Their own salespeople just sit there, nice and sweetly and do whatever the buyer wants. “We are paying them, but we feel they are working for

en

10:59

290: Work On Your Sales Not In Your Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/05/17

We have all heard that business advice to “work on your business, not in your business”. When we are the owner of the business we can sometimes forget this, because we love doing the sales ourselves and spending time establishing relationships with our clients. I know this a problem for me, because the successful sales process is like a drug and you want more of those dopamine hits when you land the deal. Salespeople like people and they like the personal elements of dealing with buyers. To

en

469 results

Similar Podcasts

TaxTalent.com The Golden Rule Podcast

Adam Golden

TaxTalent.com Podcast

Tony Santiago

Handelsblatt Crime - spannende Streitfälle der deutschen Wirtschaft

Ina Karabasz, Solveig Gode, Sönke Iwersen

Deffner und Zschäpitz – Der Wirtschafts-Talk von WELT

WELT

Black Box - La scatola nera della finanza

Guido Brera e Gian Luca Comandini -...