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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

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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12:12

269: The Client's Needs Analysis Process

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/12/21

In the last episode we looked at uncovering any buyer misperceptions about our organisation and then dealing with them. How did that go? Today we will work on one of the most critical phases in the buying cycle – uncovering buyer needs. Depending on where the client sits in the buyer organisation, they can have different needs. In broad brush terms, we can assume that the CEOs are strategy focused, CFOs are bottom line focused, the user buyers are interested in ease of use and the technical

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11:58

268: Dealing with Misperceptions

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/12/14

Business is brutal and sometimes clients have received incorrect information about our companies from competitors or the media. When I was selling on behalf of Australian exporters in Nagoya, I remember a client telling me that our competitors had said the Aussie company was verging on bankruptcy and was about to go under. You can easily imagine what effect that had on business for that exporter. There was a very famous case of national brand damage, through linguistic imperfection. In 1985, the

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13:05

267: Designing Qualifying Questions and Our Agenda...

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/12/07

This week we will look at improving our questioning skills and setting up the meeting agenda. There are a variety of qualifying questions we need to design before we meet with the client, be that meeting online or in person. What we don’t want is to be trying to work it out on the spur of the moment. It is always better to have a basic structure and then adjust to suit the situation, than trying to come up with brilliance on the fly. Yes, we have to be flexible and adaptable、 but planning is

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12:12

266: Building Our Credibility Statement

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/11/30

In sales, we definitely need a Credibility Statement. Buyers are always worried about buying what they don’t need or paying too much for what they do buy. The subterranean vibe is one of distrust toward salespeople. So we have to work hard to overcome that fundamental doubt. Salespeople without a solid sales process won’t have this valuable persuasion tool at their disposal. In fact, they will be like lemmings leaping off a cliff, running headlong into the explanation of the features of their

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11:03

265: Our Pre-Approach in Sales

The Sales Japan Series ·

2021/11/23

What is your pre-approach regimen before you meet the buyer? We cannot do everything and our time is finite. We should be trying to save our valuable time for meetings with the most qualified clients who can buy. This might be new clients or existing clients who have more capacity to buy from us. It is always disheartening when you analyse the existing buyer activity and realise we are only selling a small amount, compared to what we could be selling. It is even worse when you discover, they are

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