Episode #313: Secrets Of The Japanese Sales Call

In modern economies, asking the buyer questions to understand their needs would be considered the most basic skills of a salesperson. This isn’t happening as much as you would expect in technologically advanced, well educated, sophisticated Japan, the world’s third largest economy. In Japan, busy bosses or more experienced salespeople, will take the new salesperson with them on a couple of sales calls. End of the training. Going straight into the detail of the features of the solution is the mainstream technique here.

Should you adopt the same sales approach when trying to sell to Japanese buyers? If this is how they roll, then isn’t that the obvious way forward? Let’s explore what we need to know about how to be successful in selling to Japanese buyers.

What is different in the Japanese sales equation?

1. Of course, you can be like all the Japanese salespeople, except it isn’t very effective and is even more difficult for foreign suppliers to pull off. The buyer needs benefits, not features to be able to give you a “yes” decision. Logically, you would think that this would ensure Japanese salespeople first ask questions too, rather than focusing on the features of their solution. However, poorly trained salespeople in Japan have trained the buyer to expect this method. The buyer then tears it apart, to make sure the risk element of the decision has been eliminated or reduced.

To get the decision accepted by the relevant divisions within the company, requires the outcomes to be substantially worthwhile for them to agree. Features won’t be enough, so we have to know what the needs are first, in order to match our solution and make it convincing to the buyer side.

That means asking questions first to understand their needs. In the West, we never even think of the process of asking permission to ask questions, because consultative sales is the accepted way of doing things. When dealing with Japanese clients, because of the status imbalance between seller and buyer, we have to ask for permission first.

Remember, they don’t know us and they may be reluctant to start sharing all the problems (dirty laundry) their firm has with a salesperson they met just two minutes ago and especially from a foreign salesperson with whom they feel zero cultural and linguistic similarity.

2. Trust takes time in Japan, a lot of time. The trust element for foreign suppliers is close to zero, until there has been a track record of reliability established. How do you create a track record if you can’t get to the first sale? This is where we need to provide similar cases from other buyers who resemble this buyer and preferably those who are in Japan. By the way, any statistics you show, which don’t have a Japanese element, will just be rejected as not relevant. “These are the excellent client satisfaction results in the US and Europe”, means nothing to the Japanese client, because from their point of view, Japan is so different, these foreign numbers don’t mean anything.

The “slow” part is a pain for foreign suppliers, because everything in the West is about speed to profit. Quarterly share performance as a basis for making investment decisions is ridiculous anywhere and Japanese buyers feel absolutely no time pressure to do anything. We might think the concept of suffering an “opportunity cost” by being too slow to move, is going to be convincing to get them to buy now. Don’t worry, many of us have tried it, but without great success. This idea is always trumped by a preference for risk free or low risk decision making.

Using sample orders or small scale commitments are the way forward to establish that trust. Don’t expect anything to happen fast and at scale. It may take a while to become accepted. If you ask for a small piece of their business to demonstrate your reliability, that is an easier concept to get pushed through the many layers of Japanese buyer decision-making hierarchy. Japanese buyers definitely prefer the Devil they know (your established competitors) to the Angel they don’t (that would be you), because it is less risky. You have to become familiar, but that takes time.

If you don’t have a long enough time horizon for the Japanese buyer, you are better off selling your solutions elsewhere, because you are the only one in a hurry or facing time pressure for results. Let me give you an example. The Toyota Prius car was launched in 1997 and did not make a profit until 2001. Losses for five years in a row. However, by 2009 it became the top selling car in Japan. How many foreign Boards and shareholders would be able to match that patience and acceptance of years of losses? How long will your bosses support you to crack the Japanese market or to make a sale to Japanese buyers located outside Japan?

As an aside, Toyota is busy researching Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel source, while everyone else is concentrating on advances in battery power. My prediction is Toyota will dominate the global Hydrogen fuelled vehicle market for heavy load transport. Let’s see if I am right.

Adjusting our expectations and time frames are a starting point for winning business in Japan. When we get a new sale, I will ask my salesperson, “when did we start talking to this client?” and the answer will often be “three or four years ago”. That is not uncommon. What this means though is you need a full sales buyer funnel to survive those years of slow decision making. Trying to speed things up by pushing your sales though the layers of internal decision making won’t work, because you will never meet the people involved. When they say, “we will think about it”, they are being honest, because of the collaborative decision-making process.

Be patient, start small, be consistent and to win, just keep going.