Episode #248: Ask Don't tell

In the West, we have all been trained in consultative selling for many decades. The buyers are used to salespeople turning up and asking a lot of questions to find out if there is some way they can help the buyer, through providing their solution to solve buyer problems. The act of asking of questions is never even thought about, because that is how it is done.

In Japan, they don’t really have professional salespeople, because here they have pitchpeople instead. They ask no questions, just turn up and give their pitch. They roll out the flyers or the brochures and go straight into the nitty gritty of the detail and the spec. They want to throw enough mud at the wall to see if any of it sticks. This is what the buyers have been trained to expect as well – no questions, just a pitchfest.

If you are coming out of the Western sales environment, you are going to be using consultative sales techniques and start asking the buyer a number of questions. This is a problem. In the West, we say the buyer is King. In Japan, the buyer is not King, but God. By the way, God doesn’t brook any questions from impertinent salespeople. They are insulted to be asked questions. God is used to getting the sales pitch and then destroying it, to make sure the risk factor has been fully minimized.

You can ask questions of the buyer in Japan, but you can’t just blunder your way in there and start blasting forth from the get go with probing questions. Fully boned up on American style sales methods, I remember applying these questioning techniques in Japan, in my early sales career here. I was met with stone cold, motherless silence by the buyers. In short order they were changing the subject and calling for my pitch.

To ask questions in Japan, you need to set it up first. Here is how you do that. You begin with a bit of chit chat to break the ice at the start of the meeting. Next you describe what it is that you do. Then give an example of a similar company’s case where you have helped them improve their results. Suggest that “maybe”, you could do the same for them. Then say, in order for you to know of that is a possibility or not, could you ask a few questions?

For example, “Dale Carnegie Training is a global specialist soft skills training company. We help people to develop in their careers and develop businesses to get the outcomes they are after. An example of this would be XYZ company, where we trained all of their Hotel staff and they found the client feedback really got a lift and repeat bookings definitely improved. Maybe we could do the same for you. I am not sure, but in order for me to know if this is possible or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”. There is your request for permission to ask questions, as opposed to going straight into the questioning format.

You will notice we say “maybe” rather than we can “definitely” do that for you. In the West, we might say “we can definitely do this for you” as a statement. We say “maybe” in Japan and we do this to make it soft and less aggressive. We only ask for permission to ask a few questions. If there is no match, well there won’t be many questions, but if it is a match and there is interest, there may be many questions – we won’t know that until we ask the first few questions of the buyer.

We ask well designed questions of the buyer and are simultaneously mentally running through our library of solutions, to see if we can help them. If we can’t, we shouldn’t be wasting everyone’s time. We should be off finding a buyer we can actually help.

When it comes to the solution provision part, we know what they are after, so we can link our product or service to the solution provision they need. In Japan, it doesn’t work like that. The pitchperson here turns up and skips straight past the questioning stage, plunging headlong into the detail of the solution. They do this, not even knowing if it is the appropriate solution for the needs of the buyer or not. The buyer has been trained by these pitch people and are simply not able to encompass the concept of questions for God.

You turn up with your professional Western sales approach and start asking questions. Normally, what you will get then from the buyer is total silence. They just don’t respond and it feels very awkward. This is because they can’t accept God getting questioned by a nobody. As I mentioned, they will just change the subject and be asking for your pitch. Trust me, you don’t want to go there.

You have to set it up and get permission to ask questions. If you do that you will be successful in Japan. If you want to be pitchperson instead, let me know how that is working out for you. I don’t think it will go too well. Much better to be a professional salesperson and ask well designed questions to uncover where you can be of service to the buyer. Remember, with questioning buyers in Japan, always get their permission first.