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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

12:27

289: Blocking, Tackling And Grinding In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/05/10

The famous Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi often referred to the importance of the basics in the American Football game, the blocking and tackling. Being an Aussie and a Rugby fan, I sort of know what he is talking about. The brilliant plays, full length of the field returns, Hail Mary throws, the tactics and strategies are all important, but if the basics are not being done properly, it all comes crashing down and you will never win. Sales is the same. Blocking and tackling is boring,

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09:55

288: The Piranha Client

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/05/03

If you have ever watched one of those nature documentaries about the piranha fish, they can strip an animal of its flesh in seconds. The way they do that though is totally different to a shark. Growing up in Australia, we are all experts on sharks and we know that they can distend their lower jaw to make the size of the bite larger. They will take huge chunks of flesh off your body at a time. The piranha however only takes small bites but there are a tremendous lot of them and this is where the

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13:56

287: Can You Stimulate The Buyer Greed Gland In Japan?

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/04/26

The sales process has a number of stages we must pass through. One big one is gaining trust. We need to explain who we are, what it is we do, where we have had success before and suggest we could do the same for the buyer’s firm. Permission to ask questions is another key step. When you think about it salespeople are incredibly rude. We hardly know them and yet we start asking questions about corporate secrets around our failures, lack of progress and barriers to success. Salespeople are

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12:16

286: Bait Your Hook In Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/04/19

I do a lot of coaching for salespeople and there is a common theme which continuously arises, which reveals why they are not getting sales with their clients. They get very deep into the weeds of the solution for the buyer. The features of their widget monopolise their own minds and that is what they try to use to envelop the client with. It doesn't work for a simple reason. Clients buy the application of the benefits of the solution, not the features. You would think, “Greg, this is highly

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11:27

285: A Different Value Based Selling

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/04/12

I was contacted by an international training organisation about facilitating training for their clients here in Japan. They solemnly announced they do “value based” selling. Well I think all good salespeople do value based selling, so I checked out their website to see what they meant when throwing this type of terminology around. As I suspected, it was another one of those persistent re-inventions of something old, but cunningly repacked to appear shiny and new. Basically, they find out what

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11:20

284: Mentally Preparing For The Coming Economic...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/04/05

A bloody war in the Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, global oil and gas prices surging, grains in short supply driving up food costs, rare metals shortages, inflation taking right off, increased spending on guns rather than butter – none of this looks good. By the way, did I mention we have a world Omicron virus variant pandemic raging still, while 25% of Americans are unvaccinated and 42% of the US population are obese. Even non-academic, totally amateur economic observers like me, can see the signs

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11:26

283: Package Up The Value In The Sale

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/03/29

Price conversations are a bad thing. Invariably, you are dragged into the mud and blood of comparisons with someone ridiculously cheaper. We get these requests – “send me your price sheet”. My ears prick up like a Dobermann when I hear those words, because I am mentally getting ready for trouble. I know a couple of things are happening here, none of which are good for me to make this sale happen. The buyer is possibly shopping the deal to get three quotes to keep the compliance department

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12:52

282: The Big Sales Audio Landgrab

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/03/22

“Greg, you are everywhere!”. I am often told this by business people here in Tokyo. What they mean is that I am prolific on social media, video and audio. Well, if you are in sales today and you are not prolific in promoting yourself, then what are you doing with your time? It is an old saw in sales that “it doesn’t matter how many people you know, it is more important how many people want to know you”. Fine, but how do you get that to work? Afterall, there are only so many people we can meet

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13:14

281: Handling Post Purchase Mistakes

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/03/15

Even the best laid plans go astray. The sale has been completed, the funds have been paid and we get busy in our sales job moving on to help other clients. Another department may be tasked with handling the next steps with the client. It doesn’t matter who is doing the delivery of the solution, because if something goes wrong, the buyer expects us to fix it and to take accountability. In Japan we are their tanto, the designated person to handle this account and there are strong expectations

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11:48

280: Closing

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/03/08

The word “closing” itself can be controversial in sales. It implies we are ending the process rather than starting the partner relationship with the buyer. In modern times the word “commitment” from the buyer is often preferred. I am okay with both and I have chosen the word “closing”, simply because this is what most people can easily understand about this latter stage of the sales cycle. Closing doesn’t have to be something scary or any big deal. In fact, the less complicated we make it the

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10:16

279: Painting a Word Picture Of Why They Should Buy Now

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/03/01

The sales cycle is a simple progression to get the client to the point of purchase. We have established rapport and trust. We have asked intelligent questions to understand how we can help them. We have come up with a great solution to solve their issues. We may have pre-empted all of their objections, but that doesn’t mean they are going to give us a “yes”. Before we get to the point of asking for their agreement for the deal to go ahead, we need to set up the request. We have to remember

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12:13

278: Four Powerful Japanese Mindsets For Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/02/22

Sales is a battle. Not a battle with the buyer, although sometimes it feels like that when they won’t purchase from us. The war is going on inside our own heads. We have imposter syndrome telling us we are not good enough to do the job, even when we have some modicum of success. We have the reverberation of negative self talk, telling us we are useless, when we fail to meet the sale’s quota. The clients are beating us up on price, the sales manager is beating us up on results. The vast

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12:13

277: The Salesperson's Time, Treasure and Talent

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/02/15

Sales is such a rollercoaster. You have a good month or a good quarter then you hit a wall. Clients change their mind, something happens to the supply chain beyond your control and the order get cancelled. You usually cannot control the quality of the solution being delivered and someone else in the organisation doesn’t do their job professionally enough and you suffer. We do have total control though over our time, talent and treasure. Are we making the most of this control? Time is the most

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12:28

276: Becoming a Master of Handling Objections

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/02/08

Objections are good. That sounds a bit counterintuitive I know, because what we actually want is to land a deal and an objection seems to be an obstacle preventing that from happening. There is a process for dealing with objections and we need to be disciplined to follow it every time and not be derailed by our emotions. When we get an objection, our automatic response is to argue with the buyer and tell them why they are wrong. How has arguing with the buyer been going for you? Not too good I

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11:58

275: Listening Skills

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/02/01

Today, we are going to talk about the importance of listening for salespeople. That might sound ridiculous. You might be thinking, “Well, of course I listen to the buyer”. I can assure you my wife often complains that I am not listening to her, so we may be deluding ourselves as to what level of world champion listener we actually are. You might be thinking, “well listening to my partner may have a few flaws, but I am a legend when listening to people who can pay money and buy from me”. We think we

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11:51

274: Our Solution Provision

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/01/25

After having asked the buyer a lot of questions about their current situation and where they want to be, we know if we can help them or not. It isn’t a given that we can. Only we will know if we have the right solution for them. We could provide a wrong or partial solution. The client will not however get the outcomes they need. Yes, we grab the dough in the short term, but our business reputation will get slammed and our trust quotient out in the marketplace will be eclipsed. We must always

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12:52

273: The Sales Questioning Model

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/01/18

Do you have a sales questioning model? Is there a journey you want the buyer to complete? Do you have questions organised which will lead them along that path? Or are you all over the place, following your “muse” instead? Surprisingly, a lot of salespeople have very little structure in their sales meetings with buyers. Why would that be the case? They may be untrained in sales. They may be constantly winging it. Or they may have a partial system, because they won’t be shackled by any system and

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12:37

272: Shoshin - The Beginner's Mind

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/01/11

The word shoshin or beginner’s mind in Japanese is a great metaphor for the world of sales. When we start some activity there is a simplicity, a purity about what we are doing. We don’t have enough information or experience to have any particular angles on what we are looking at. We take things as they are and we have no delusions about how they should be. We have no habits yet, because the activity is too fresh and new. There are no habits to unwind either, because we are deep into trying to

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13:13

271: The Smart Salesperson's Secret New Year's...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2022/01/05

In 2022, let’s all commit to asking more intelligent questions of buyers. For those who don’t ask questions, because they are too busy delving into the micro details of the solution, this will be a major change for the better. How on earth can you know if the solution you are promoting is the right fit for the client’s problems, if you haven’t clearly established what the real problems are? Rather than going through the charade of guessing what the best solution should be, we take the time to

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11:23

270: The Buyer's Gap

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/12/28

Clients don’t need to do anything. We discover this unfortunate fact very quickly in sales. We also discover they are never on our timetable of what needs to happen. They can stay with the same supplier or they can make no changes to their current situation. Neither of those are helpful for a salesperson. There must be some driver for the buyer to take action and take action right now. There has to be a gap between where they are now and where they want to be. This gap can be quite clear to the

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469 results

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