Episode #212: Japanese Companies Employ Kunoichi Ninja To Answer Incoming Phone Calls
THE Sales Japan Series
Ninja are masters of illusion, invisibility and subterfuge. All of these traits have pretty much died out in modern times, except for a small bastion of steadfast office workers. Some Japanese commentators have tried to imply that the salaryman is the modern day samurai. Loyal to their modern Han, the firm, giving up their lives for the greater good, sacrificing family for their corporate captains of industry. This sounds pretty good until you meet some of them. Unremarkable, grey, uninspiring, they are more often like the army of the walking dead. The system has drained all the life out of them, as they trudge forward in lockstep toward retirement. Japanese “office ladies” however are the true warriors in the modern day firm. They are the kunoichi (くノ一) or female ninja of modern times.
They are always poised ready to strike. They are tasked by the older males of the firm to answer the incoming phone calls. They relish this opportunity to slay salespeople making cold calls. They have subterfuges aplenty at their ready to get rid of us when we call their firm. We boldly make the call, identify ourselves and our company. They immediately recognise we are cold calling salespeople, because they have been doing this for years. They have picked up that tell tale hesitation, that lack of sureness in our voice, that warbling reluctance to engage with such a formidable enemy.
Their first weapon employed is a thick, grinding silence. You speak and they say nothing. There is no acknowledgement of your very existence. It is as if we are an illusion, a figment of our own imagination. We are unseated immediately and now feel firmly in retreat, pushed on to the backfoot, by this vicious employ of the void. Suddenly ums and ahs are tumbling forth from our mouths, as we try to regather our fragile senses and press on.
If we don’t know the person’s actual name and most often this is the case, we ask to speak with the person holding a certain position within the company, such as the line manager or the head of HR etc. The kunoichi has been clever to not reveal her own name. They state the company name when we call and then they go dark. We don’t even know who we are talking to, even if we wanted to complain about this brutal treatment. No Japanese salesperson would ever dream of complaining, but as foreigners, it may be worth a try. A common kunoichi ploy is to simply say “they are not here”. We don't know if they are there or not, but I would guess in 99% of cases they are there and this is a tactic to deny us access to the decision maker.
The voice telling us this information is icy, unfriendly, bored, impatient and disengaged. The whole ninja approach here is to hide people and information from us. This works like a charm in Japan. The average weak kneed, untrained, no guts salesperson collapses at this point under the weight of this ninja tactical pressure and blurts out “I will call again later”. This is a bald faced lie. They didn't have the guts to engage with the kunoichi this time around and mentally, they have given up immediately on the possibility of a reengagement. They are broken into small pieces and their tender egos have been crushed by her towering strength.
Even if we know the name of the person, we will get the same stall line anyway. If we are not put off so easily, we may ask when they will be back. We say this although we know the game is in play and this will register the next pushback of “I don’t know” followed by more deathly silence. They are so expert at using screaming silence, it is actually impressive. If we keep pushing and ask for them to take a message, they are not so easily willing to cooperate and will just calmly and methodically say, “call back later”. What would you say to that little hand grenade blowing up in your face? We have to realise we are dealing with cold calling salespeople killers here, who will show no mercy nor margin. Remember in the Japanese sword dramas, the hero drives the sword into the back of the bad guy and then twists the hilt slowly. And that is the good guy!
We should never invite obliteration, so we don’t ask for permission to leave our contact details. We just don’t want to invite that brush off. Instead we just say, “okay, I understand, please write this down” and then go straight into spelling out our name and phone number really, really slowly. Then we repeat it all again to make sure they got it. Tell them if we don’t hear back, we will call again the day after tomorrow. We need to strongly imply we know their kunoichi game, we are not falling for it and we will keep calling back until hell freezes over.
Don’t talk to me about how tough cold calling is in New York folks. When you have to deal with the kunoichi of Japan, you are elevated to a different dimension of pain and despair.