Episode #94: Fire the Client

When is enough enough with bad actors? What do you do when they are the buyer’s representative? How much crap should we be prepared to take from nasty people just because they are the client?

The customer is kamisama (God) in sales. We hear this a lot in Japan across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up? Actually no!

Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices. If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment. Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills. If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge.

Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society. When the company President tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson, then you might be thinking, this is looking good. Not necessarily. What often surprises me about section managers in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want.

Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to quote on a product or service, but there is no intention to buy from you. This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens.

We were contacted by a large company asking for a quote on a particular piece of training. Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the quote, it will be fine (!). This is a tricky one, because you don’t know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help.

To test the system in these cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the quote. Sounds like a very poor sales effort and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers.

If they are really interested, then they will get back with either more questions or an order. If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor’s sales effort. That is a double ouch isn’t it!

These things happen in business, but the key point is do not take it personally. Sales is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and your emotions are always under attack. Accept that sometimes you will get played by the buyer, but keep a record of the incident. Every six months give that company a call to see if your nefarious counterpart is still working there. People are becoming much more mobile in Japan, compared to many years ago and there is a good chance the puppeteer or bad actor has moved on. We should not deal with that individual buyer again, but we can try to deal with the company.

There are usually many buyers in your market and many who you have had no contact with as yet, so there is little need to deal with bad buyer behavior. As the old saying goes “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault”.