Episode #378: How We Lose Clients In Sales In Japan

Finding clients is expensive. We pay Google a lot of money to buy search words. We pay them each time someone clicks on the link on the page we turn up on in their search algorithm. We monitor the pay per click cost, naturally always striving the drive down the cost of client acquisition. If we have the right type of product, we may be paying for sponsored posts to appear in targeted individuals’ social media feeds. This is never an exact science, so there is still a fair bit of shotgun targeting going on, rather than sniper focus on buyers. If we go to networking events, we may have to pay the organisation membership fee to be able to access the event and the fee for attending that meeting. Or we may pay a usually very expensive amount to attend as a guest. If we do old style advertising, then we pay for the ad and it has a very brief shelf-life before it is discarded, usually unseen and unread, despite our best wordsmithing efforts with the copy.

Given how difficult and expensive it is to get a client, you wonder how we could be so crazy as to lose a client we have already spent time and treasure on acquiring? It usually happens for a number of reasons. Our solution fulfilled a need they had at that time, but that need is a one off or not a consistent feature of their spending. It might be a seasonal spend, so there are limited time during the year to interact with the buyer and the connection isn’t as strong as it needs to be. The company may have run out of dough because of the market, currency exchange rates, wars disrupting supply chains or a pandemic killing millions of people and disrupting the entire global economy.

Maybe our quality slipped up or our consistency of delivery wasn’t where it needed to be and the buyer punished us by going to another supplier. Perhaps the buyer got moved around inside the client firm or quit and a new person has appeared. The new broom has their own ideas and wants to mark out their territory by bringing in their own preferred suppliers and we are now out in the cold. Or we have had a change of personnel. The person responsible for that firm has left the organisation and a new salesperson has to take over the account. The chemistry is not there and the buyer moves their business to a rival firm.

Client bonds are very fragile and so many things can destroy the continuity of the business. Even if you get on well with the buyer, they have bosses and maybe they have a different idea about how to move forward. This travels all the way to the top of the organisation back in headquarters. So many times the boss of the global business changes and a few months later you find yourself out on the street, because the purchasing has been centralised or rationalised or right sized or whatever and you are out. I have seen so many deals fall over because someone up the decision-making tree has decided to override the decision of the buyer I am dealing with. There is a policy change and now hiring is frozen, expenditures are reeled in and suppliers are cut loose.

A lot of this is beyond our control and we just have to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in business. When we make the change, we can do a better job of controlling the transition from one salesperson to the next. Unless we have fired the individual and they are out the door quick smart, there is usually a month period of notice that gives us the time to glue in the new person to the buyer. Japan as a formalised cyclical redistribution of jobs every few years, so firms here are used to people moving.

This should give us time for the existing client salesperson to take their replacement for them to meet the buyer and do the handover. What happens after that is the critical piece. If the new representative doesn’t work on creating their own connections with the buyer, then the business continuity can be at risk. This requires time together and busy salespeople may feel they are already maxed out taking care of their own existing clients. That is a big mistake and this is where some strong guidance is required to make sure they make the time and build up a relationship with the buyer. Just going once with your predecessor and then not making subsequent contact is a formula for losing the business.

Yes it takes time to go visit these individuals, but so does finding new clients to replace the ones you lost. We know that existing clients are like gold. We need to keep them close to us, but not everyone lives that truth and problems arise. Building chemistry between two strangers doesn’t happen overnight and it requires great skill in communication and time management to get all the right synchronisation to occur. We need to take this transition process very seriously and make sure everyone knows their role and responsibilities.

Despite our best efforts, it does happen that the change in staff leads to a loss of the business. Obviously, we need to make sure that is a rarity. We should assume the business will continue and then work backwards and decide what has to happen to make sure that becomes the reality. Strong boss leadership is needed here, because busy salespeople can justify just about anything to themselves. They need to be set the task and then we monitor what they are doing to safeguard that client relationship. Don’t leave anything to chance or good luck. Let’s make our own luck.