Episode #254: Don't Pitch

Stony motherless silence unleavened by a stony face. That was the reaction to my questions from this first Japanese buyer and subsequent other buyers. I had studied the American sales guru’s sales techniques. I was a devotee of “consultative sales” and here I was in Japan trying to sell stuff and failing. In those days back in the early nineties, I was primed to ask my questions using the American guru sale’s models. Find out if they are the decision maker, if they are ready to move right now, what they like about what they have now, what are the things that aren’t fully satisfying their needs, etc.

This is all well and good and today we are still doing consultative sales. We sometimes call it solution selling, value selling or whatever, but essentially it is the same basic premise. Find out what they are doing now, find out what they would like to be doing, discover why they are not doing it already and then provide the pain point relief. This makes a lot of sense and should work in Japan too. Like a lot of imports into Japan, that have been successful overseas, there is often an adjustment or two needed to be made to meet the needs of the local market.

When I met the buyers and went through a little bit of chit chat, I would move straight into questioning mode. To my chagrin, the buyers sat there motionless. I would repeat the question, but nothing was coming out of their mouths at all. They were as silent as the tomb. Not being great with those long Japanese silences in conversation, this made me very uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what on earth I should do. I had just asked the same question twice, about their current situation and was getting a very cold, unfriendly reaction. Not a brilliant buying signal!!!

After what seemed an age, that first buyer just requested I tell him about our product. Well that was progress, I thought and went ahead with a glowing rendition of the finer points and wonderful attributes of this product, a crowning triumph in the modern era. The buyer then filleted my presentation like he was going to work on a tuna fish in a sushi shop. He was carving up my argument about my product’s suitability for Japan and for his business. Well I gave it the old school try to win back some credence for what I was offering, but left that meeting with my tail firmly tucked beneath my legs.

This would happen all the time. I started to wonder why I kept getting this pitch request and wasn’t being allowed to be a consultative salesperson in Japan. Gradually, I realised the problem was that I was launching into my questions, without receiving permission to ask questions first. I wanted this person, to whom I was a complete stranger, to fork over the most intimate details of all of the company’s failings, weak points, gaps, holes and shortcomings within three minutes of meeting him for the first time. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

I also realised that the reason the buyers were tearing my presentation apart was for them to satisfy themselves that this decision to buy would be an extremely low risk idea and that it would not feature any blowback on them in the future. They were reveling in their risk averse natures and shooting my argument full of holes. This was their way of getting a comprehensive view of the risks. So I came up with the addition of the extra step in the process, to seek permission to ask questions first.

All good and it works – most of the time. Incredibly though, some buyers will wave that away and insist that you give your pitch regardless. They have been so well trained by pitchpeople, masquerading as salespeople, that they can only comprehend a sales conversation as a pitch, critique it then reject it continuum. What should we do with these holdouts for our pitch? We could just give up and give a desultory overview of our line-up and then retreat. We need to have a Plan B for this occasion for buyers who are intransigent pitch requires.

So, give your pitch with as much gusto as you can manage, but study their faces like a hawk. As soon as you see them start to disconnect and lose interest, you need to jump back in there and try to get your questioning model going. Say to them, “I wonder if what I am saying is of any interest? I get the sense that I may not be highlighting the key things you are interested in. I certainly don’t want to waste your valuable time today. May I ask what you would rather hear about?”.

This allows us to get out of pitch mode and bridge across to questioning mode, so we can find out if we have what they need or not. They have problems for sure and we have solutions, but we can’t move forward unless we know if we can help them or not. The only way to find that out is to ask them questions. Once we get to this point where we realise we have what they need, then sales will start to happen, as we better match their needs with our solutions. If you get pushed into pitching, see if you can pivot back to the questioning model. After all, you have nothing to lose, because your pitch rarely results in a sale. You have gotten the meeting, you have their attention, so that is a big deal. Now let’s try and convert that opportunity into a sale.