Episode #377: Using Demonstrations And Trial Lessons To Sell In Japan

Salespeople are good talkers. In fact, they are often so good, they decide to do all the talking. They try to browbeat the buyer into submission. Endless details are shared with the client about the intricacies of the widget, expecting that the features will sell the product or service. Do we buy features though?

Actually, we buy evidence that this has worked for another buyer very similar to us, in a very similar current situation in their business. We are looking for proof to reduce our risk. To get us to the proof point, we make a big deal about how the buyer can apply the benefits of our solution inside their company. Is that what happens in reality though?

In Japan, judging by what our clients tell us and by the raw material we find attending our training classes, it would be a miracle if the salesperson went through these critical five phases of the explanation of the solution: 1. feature 2. benefit 3. application of the benefit 4. evidence and 5. trial close. Most Japanese salespeople are absolute experts on the most intimate details to do with the features. However, they completely forget to expand that information to elucidate the benefits and beyond that, they have no clue what is supposed to come next.

In fact, finding a similar client in a similar situation in the current market is usually a stretch for us in sales. Even if we had such a rare case, often we are precluded from talking about it because of certain clauses in the contract or by a Non-Disclosure Agreement we signed.

How do we prove what we are saying then? This is where a trial session or a demonstration comes in handy. We can talk as much as we like about how great we are and our solution, but seeing is believing. If it is equipment, then running the machine can show whether the output will satisfy the demands of the buyer. If it is a service, we may have to recreate the situation and show how we do things.

Recently we did both. We had a request from one of Japan’s biggest financial institutions to run a sales training session, to see if we have what they want for their 3000 person sales team. In any trial, we have to make a decision on what we will choose for the content?

My advice would always be to choose the most difficult content. Isolate out the areas where everyone really struggles. This is usually the most relevant content and also the content which they currently have the most trouble with too. If the content is too easy, then they will think they can do it themselves and therefore they don’t need us.

In the services sector, this also raises the bar on the delivery side of things. Complex content needs a lot of expertise to deliver it professionally. If they are thinking to bring it in-house, they may watch the session and decide that they do not have the right resources to pull that off by themselves. Ergo, they have to buy from us to eliminate the gap they are facing between where they are and where they want to be.

In a demonstration, similar to a trial session, getting the participants to get their hands dirty is critical. Theory is fine, but doing it for real is a totally different thing. I was teaching a module on “How To Disagree Agreeably” to the leadership team of one of the 5 star hotels here in Tokyo. We went through the theory and then we had the role play practice. It was revealing how much they struggled to replace their old habits with what they had just learnt. It really brought home the importance of not just understanding things intellectually, but the importance of getting it to gel inside yourself and make it your own.

When we run a session or a demonstration, the client can see the content relevancy for their need and our expertise to deliver it to the team. We can usually customise the content further, if it is not quite where they need it. The delivery part shows our professional standards, our ability to relate to the team and whether we can be trusted. We have talked up a big game in the first few meetings about how great we are and now it is “game time” to show what we have. These impressions have to match up or there is no trust. No trust means no sale and we can’t have that outcome, can we!