Episode #157: Add Some BANTER To Your Next Sales Call

I am a permanent student of sales. I study the books and tapes from the greats – J. Douglas Edwards, Charlie Cullen, Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar. I follow this generation of sale’s trainers such as Grant Cardone, Jeffrey Gitomer and Victor Antonio. Now Victor Antonio is someone I like, because I can see that his methods will work here in Japan, unlike a lot of other sales training which is more suitable for an American environment.

Victor mentioned something in his recent Sales Influence podcast that I thought was a great insight. He was talking about how to measure if a sales call was successful or not. He came up with the acronym BANTER and I wondered how we could apply this to Japan. Victor reckons you should be getting six out of six. Let’s try it and see how Japan stacks up

He nominated a simple scoring system of one point or zero depending on whether the elements of BANTER had been successfully gathered during the sale’s call or not. Acronyms like BANTER are difficult to apply in Japan because they are based entirely on the English language, so they don’t translate well. Nevertheless the idea is a good one. To score perfectly would give you six points and so you can gauge how well the call went, based on how close to six you got.

The B in BANTER stands for budget. We need to know this from our sale’s call don’t we. Does the client have budget for the good or service you are going to provide? Do you know what the budget is, has it been fixed, are there limitations on size or timing of expenditure? Japan is a difficult place to find out specifically about the budget. Often the answers given are vague because the buyer doesn’t want to release that information. They worry if they tell you too much, they will be lured into overspending the money. We will probably score zero for B.

The A stands for authority and this relates to were the people in the meeting authorised to make a decision? In Japan’s case, we will definitely score a zero here too. It is usually the case that the consensus decision making system requires people sitting a few meters away, hidden behind the meeting room wall, to have some say in the final decision. They do not ever attend the meetings, but they can veto the decision. We may have our supporters in the meeting with us but they rarely have final say over the expenditure for the budget. We score another zero.

The N relates to need. Does the buyer have a strong need for our solution. We must get permission first in Japan in order to ask questions to uncover need. Here the usual methodology though is to pummel the buyers with details of the solution prior to uncovering what the need may be. Japan would get a zero score in this category.

The T is for timing. When does the client need the solution by? This is a critical factor because we might have a supply problem if the need is strong but the logistics cannot match the required timetable. Japan is a country where decision making is glacial but the execution expectation default is yesterday. Usually we can find out the required timing in Japan, so we score a one.

The E is for engagement. Was the buyer showing interest, were they engaged in the details of the solution. Were they asking the types of questions that tell you the interest level is very high. There is both a quality aspect and quantity aspect involved here. Japanese buyers all have strapped on their laser beam for determining potential trouble so they definitely want to ask a lot of questions and really wrestle down the detail. It is like the issue of objections. Getting no objections is a worrying sign of no interest whatsoever. We should prefer to get an objection than to get no interest. Japan scores a point in this category.

Finally R – was there a request for a proposal or a trial or a second meeting. Was there some interest in advancing the sale to the next level? In Japan often the meeting end is left very vague. “We will think about it” being the most common result and they do need to think about it, because there are decisions makers not in the room, who need to be consulted. So Japan would score a zero.

Adding up the scores, we have reached two out of six for judging meeting success in Japan. That is about right I would say. If you can make here in sales, then you can make it anywhere, because it is so difficult here!