Episode #405: The Required Mindset For Selling In Japan

Salespeople turn up in Japan and expect things to be pretty much the same as where they have come from. After all, sales is sales right? Wrong. Japan, as usual, is quite different. If these newly arrived salespeople had received training on how to sell, then they are probably going to try a consultative sales approach. This is absolutely what they should be doing, except it doesn't work in Japan. The consultative approach at base has a very sensible and basic idea – ask the client what they want and then give it to them. Simple stuff.

The issue in Japan is the client won’t open up and tell you what they need. Buyers have been trained by crap salespeople here to expect a pitch of what you have to offer, so the buyer can lean back and shred it, trying to sort out the risk factor. If you come to the buyer and start asking questions about their firm’s current situation, they don’t see this as a means of better understanding their situation, so that you can provide the most relevant and effective assistance. They see it as prying, as exposing their dirty little, embarrassing secrets to strangers and therefore to the broader world, broadcasting all of their failure points and weaknesses.

We may start with our consultative sales approach and hit a wall on our first question: “What is the current situation for your company?”. This sounds innocuous enough, but that is not how the buyer interprets it. They feel, “I can’t answer this salesperson’s questions, because I don’t know them well enough and the trust is not sufficiently built yet”. That is a big gap from the get go.

At this point they usually segue into “Tell me about what you do and about your products”. This is bad. We are now throwing mud at the wall and praying something will stick, which is not much of a sales strategy. How can you get the pitch right if you have no idea what they need. Most of us come to client sales meetings with numerous products and solutions, but which one will hit the mark?

In the West we are very logical. If what the salesperson is genuinely interested in what we need and if what they are saying seems to make sense, then we are prepared to look at buying. The Western buyer is not terrified of making a mistake. They are not fearful of sharing information with strangers. They are not dubious about foreigners selling them stuff. They are looking for ways to help their firm do better in the market, for methods to outfox their competitors and gain an unfair advantage in the hand-to-hand combat of business.

The Japanese buyer is very conscious that if they introduce something new, like a new supplier and anything goes wrong, they will lose face and will suffer in the internal future promotion stakes. They are not focused on helping the firm to do better, because they are driven by their own personal self-interests. They have also discovered that the safest path is the one of doing nothing new.

I was talking to the HR Manager of a car dealership about some sales training for their firm. They have had sales training before, but the results were not impressive. My angle was “try us as a new approach, bring in something fresh and differentiate your salespeople from all the competitors”. I thought that was pretty conclusive and convincing.

Weeks later I was told they went with another firm who specialises in sales training for dealerships. This is what they had been doing in the past and not getting the change they wanted, but the safest path forward is always to do what you have always done in Japan and take no risks with anything new. They will get the same results they have always gotten but everyone will feel safe and no one will lose their job.
In Japan, we need to set up the consultative approach with getting permission to ask questions before we launch forth. In the West we never have to so this step because every gets it. Not Japan though.

Here is the simple, quick formula: explain who you are; explain what you do; talk about who else you have done it for and the results; suggest you could possibly get similar results “but to know if that can happen or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”. In 95% of cases this works and I get permission to dig into their dirty laundry and find out their problems. There are still those buyers though, who just brush that effort aside and say “give me your pitch”.

I really want to cut my losses and leave right there, down my cheap, bitter, horrible green tea and depart, because I know that without understanding their needs, I have little chance of talking about the things of most value to them. I don’t do a runner because that would be abrupt and considered rude in Japan. I soldier on, fully understanding every minute with this buyer is keeping me away from a buyer who will buy.

Consultative sales can be done in Japan, but it needs some modifications to allow for the pitchfeast mentality on the part of the buyers. Once we understand where they are coming from we can work our way around the resistance and get to the heart of their issues and hopefully we have a solution that will work. If we don’t, we shouldn’t waste our time or theirs and we should go find a buyer we can help.