Episode #317: The Japanese Concept of Shu-Ha-Ri for Sales

The Japanese idea of Shu-Ha-Ri is a combination of three characters – 守破離. Shu is to protect the traditional techniques, the basics, the fundamentals. Ha is to detach and break away from the tradition, to innovate and depart from our attachments to what we are doing. Ri is to transcend to a level where there is no self-consciousness of what we are doing, we make it our own, because we have absorbed it all and it is now part of us. We have this same notion in the West, but I don’t think we have come up with three words to describe it as the Japanese have done.

In sales we can see the process at work. When we get sales training, there are so many moving parts, so much sophistication and subtlety, it can be a bit overwhelming at first. We have to make sure we know our USPs, our unique selling propositions to differentiate ourselves from the great unwashed who represent our competitors. We need to know how to build the trust needed with the buyer. How do we open the conversation, how to bridge from one conversation to the next? How do we set the agenda for the meeting? How do we handle the questioning discovery component, deal with the pushback and ask for the order. There are a lot of elements in a sales process.

Clients are not helpful in this process. They will try and drag the conversation all over the place, away from our well plotted little sales track. In the process, at the end of the sale’s call, we realise we didn’t get certain key information and we have to go back and get it which is both a waste for everyone’s time and rather embarrassing. We also realise that our questions were too perfunctory and too superficial and didn't yield any of the gold we needed to convince this client that urgent action is needed on their part to buy our offering.

In the Shu stage, we have to memorise the steps we need in the sales process and keep moving along the continuum to make sure we get to a deal at the other end. As we get more sales calls done, our sales talk improves and we also begin to realise we can handle sales talks for a variety of buyers with their different personality styes and their different needs.

At a certain point, we are comfortable with the process and we enter the Ha stage where we are looking for improvements and innovations, because the sales world is super competitive. We may start experimenting with new approaches to clients, to see if we can increase our success ratio or if we can speed up the deal flow process. We might start adding in techniques we have studied from sales gurus which are for more advanced salespeople. There are so many variables in the sales process, it means the opportunity for innovation is almost unlimited. This whole frame only works for those salespeople who are trained.

The untrained don’t have a solid base off which to work and to elevate through innovation. They are doing idiosyncratic sales which they have cobbled together through a process of trial and error. Of course we can all do it this way, except that it is very wasteful of good opportunities and it takes a lot longer to become excellent in sales. Trained salespeople benefit from a broader perspective available to them to start innovating and trialing new approaches off an established base of techniques which already work.

In the Ri stage we don’t even feel there are stages anymore. The whole sales process becomes a smooth and seamless flow from one aspect to another, as we move clients along the railway track to an agreement to buy. When we get pushback such as “your price is too high” we don’t even blink. We are not having any mental conversation with ourselves about how should deal with this objection, because we are already dealing with it, without any conscious thought. It is as if our sales reflexes just kick in automatically and all the while we are relaxed and confident and these feelings are being flooded to the buyer.

When 100 people have told you your price is too high, you are not fazed at all. When you are trained you have a process for handing these types of objections and you just unleash the system on the buyer and it does all the work. This doesn't mean we become too relaxed and arrogant about our own skills. Naturally, every buyer and every situation is different and we need to taper our remarks accordingly.

So where would you locate yourself on this Shu-Ha-Ri journey in sales? One thing we cannot do is let the grass grow under our feet and believe we have plenty of time to move through the these three stages. Sales is unforgiving and It is in a constant make over. We need to always be out in front or we will be left behind. Business moves at the pace of sales being made, so the pressure to speed up that process up is immense.