Episode #414: Thrill, Skill, and Follow-Through: Mastering Sales Account Management In Japan

Bosses love hunters.

They beat the bushes and find new clients for the business.
Usually, they love the thrill of the hunt and wrestling the buyer down to do the deal. CRM systems, paperwork, boring follow-up detail—not so much.

This is the preserve of the farmer. That person you can entrust the client to, knowing that they will be well taken care of. The follow-through will be well executed and, in a fair wind, will remain a repeat buyer.
I'm a hunter and easily bored with the mundane aspects of sales.

I'm also the boss, so I know how we need both hunters and farmers operating at peak performance levels.

Here are some aspects of the farmer we need to perfect.

1. Building and Maintaining Strong Relationships

Trust based on a track record of reliability and predictability is crucial.
This calls for clear, frequent, and transparent communication with the buyer's side.
Omotenashi—service—means anticipating and exceeding the client's needs. Client needs change, their internal structures change, and we must be on top of those changes in order to remain relevant.Farmers are good at the detail and at scheduling regular contact. Hunters have already moved on to the next exciting deal.

2. Deep Understanding of the Client

Every industry and every sector is different, and every firm is unique.
So the ability to tailor services specifically for that buyer is needed. That means keeping up to date with changes in the industry, economic growth rates, currency rates, inflation rates, supply chain, etc.
The farmer knows who the players are on the buyer's side and what interests and concerns them. The key decision-makers can also change. Farmers keep abreast of these changes, always sensitive to wind direction fluctuation, which could eject them from the ongoing business.

They know what their counterparts' KPIs are and how they are measured and rewarded. They have to know what the personal interests of the buyer are in order to provide a holistic solution for them.

3. Strategic Account Planning

Design-in is the holy grail in manufacturing. It means your component or service is designed into the product or process from the start. To get to that stage, we have to know the client's plans, objectives, timelines, milestones, quality thresholds, price points, etcetera.

To keep the relationship humming along, we have to stress the value we bring and accommodate the needs of the buyer from the point of view of lifetime value and not this month's sales quota.

Not always easy, though. Headquarters mandate cost-cutting, and things go south very rapidly. That agreed deal is now shattered on the rocks, and the details are now flotsam and jetsam being pounded by the surf.

We serve a lot of folk in the automobile sector, and we have had two major clients really pull back on their spending. They're being hammered by their Chinese EV competitors. One recently celebrated the appointment of a new CEO and promptly ceased all training and froze their programs. Ouch.

The other recently informed us that the next contract will be decided by Dutch auction. The last thing you want to hear in a sales negotiation is the phrase "Dutch auction." The new contract bid starts at zero and goes up, and whoever raises their hand first gets the deal at that price point.

There's no differentiation here for a quality-versus-price comparison. It is a very unsophisticated methodology but highly in favour of the low-price buyer. Procurement department buyers, who see all items like nuts and bolts—basically undifferentiated—love it.

If you're in the service sector, where there are vast differences in quality provision, you are not going to love this way of thinking. Ouch.

4. Collaborative Problem-Solving

The farmer sees themselves as an extension of the client's firm and gets involved to help solve their problems. They do this through the prism of their product or service. They become an outside consultancy looking for areas where they can add value. Often, as salespeople, we see across many industries. Companies in industry A hardly ever mix with companies in industry Z, but we do.

We see what works and doesn't work across the range of our clients and their problems. We can bring in things we've seen work well elsewhere and help the buyer achieve the goals they have set.

Let's remember that farmers are important in any sales team. Hunters may be very flashy, flamboyant, and exciting, but they often create chaos and despair. They often lose repeat business because of their lousy follow-up and poor personal organisational skills. Farmers can glue the customer to us and keep that flywheel turning.

Bravo to the farmers out there.