Episode #401: Don’t Get Emotional In Sales In Japan

I have been coaching a founder client here for quite a while now and his emotional reaction to his clients not buying on his schedule always surprises me. I keep telling him, “it is business; it is not personal”. We know that there are some customers who will just never buy, some who will buy now and some who will buy in the future. We just don’t know which is which until we get rejected.

When I get rejected in a deal, they are not rejecting Greg Story. They are rejecting my offer, in its current construction, at this point in their cash flow cycle, within the bounds of their strategic direction, in relation to what my competitors are offering and a whole bunch of other stuff I will never even know about.

Does it still hurt? Yes, of course it does. I get super annoyed and upset like everyone else. The difference between me and my client, who I am coaching, is I never pass that emotional reaction on to the client, who said “no” to my stupendous offer. He does pass it on because he feels so upset and frustrated. I keep telling him to chill. Write the email if you must, to get your hurt feelings out, just never send it. My advice isn’t working as yet, but I will continue to counsel him to not take it personally.

I had my own rejection case the other day. I was doing an RFP for a client and they came back and said they went with a rival firm who specialises in sales in their industry. What was my initial thought? “They are idiots” was the first reaction. This was followed by “why are they just doing what all of their competitors are doing? Why not use another more differentiated approach with something more fresh?”.

What did I reply? I didn’t mention any of that. By the time the decision has worked its way through their internal decision-making system, there is no going back. Telling them they are stupid may make me feel good, but it won’t alter their course of action. I wrote what I always write, “thank you for letting me know” and that is that. I don’t bother with appeals for consideration in the future. I just accept their idiotic decision and move on to find someone smarter, taller, better looking and who bathes and who can do a deal with us.

Now I also put them on my follow up list, because not every deal works out. Their situation can change and maybe my competitor is useless and what they provide doesn’t work. So I keep in touch and ask them if they have any needs that we can help them with, and I do this regularly. The initial interval is around six months. That is long enough for them to realise they made a huge mistake by using my competitor and that they got nothing from that ridiculous solution they chose instead of mine. After that, I follow up every three to four months, because business is fluid and what wasn’t on the table is now in play.

How long should you follow up for? Ryan Serhant, who I follow and who started his own successful real estate brokerage in the US, says “keep following up until they die”. I am not that pushy, because I figure there are reputational costs to being too pushy and too insistent in Japan.


Tokyo is big, but it is also a small village in many ways. We sell to Japanese domestic firms and foreign multi-national companies. Our reputation as Dale Carnegie, a business based on being able to get on well with all different types of people, has to be careful how we are perceived in the market. If we say one thing, but do another, then our brand consistency will suffer and so will our sales.

Where is the line between persistence, which is admirable, and being too pushy, which is frowned upon here? It is not always clear, but if I feel that there is no interest, then after about four follow-ups with no reaction stretched over a twelve-month period, I will shelve that firm for a while. The people may change in the future and maybe someone smarter will be the person to talk to or maybe their business has changed and they are now more open to our solutions.

Regardless of what the client does, we can control how we react and we must keep cool, calm and collected in the face of failure and rejection. Is that easy? No, but the choices are few. My client hasn’t quite gotten to the point of handling the rejection in a calm, non-emotive manner yet, but I will keep working on him until he gets there. I am constantly working on myself, too. I have found that no one is a clear genius with this stuff and we are all a work in progress.