Episode #65: Sale's Case Studies

Getting client cooperation to create sale’s case studies in Japan is tough. Japanese companies are very careful about how much information they let outside of the firm. When you are thinking to yourself “we did a really great job and this would make a great case study”, get ready for rejection. Not everyone in Japan says “no”, but the percentage is very, very high in this country. When you think about it, this is a great opportunity gone begging. What can we do, to get around this problem?

Well the “no” usually means exactly that and companies do not relent in their negativity toward the idea. Our persuasion powers always fall short because this tends to be a company-wide policy issue and the people we are dealing with can’t change the policy. When you ask them why we can’t turn this magnificent triumph into a case study, they say annoying stuff like “if we do it for you, we have to do it for all the other providers”. Or, “the other providers will feel we are favouring you”. As a foreigner you are inclined to think “oh yeah, so what?” and want to question why any of this would be a problem. Well it is a problem, it isn’t going away anytime soon, so we have to be more creative.

We can create two types of case studies – the verbal and the print variety. The format can vary but if we think about how time poor everyone is today, clarity and brevity are virtues in both cases. We should start with the outcome, the result. Why begin at the end? We want to keep people reading or listening, so we need to break through all of the competing distractions and grab their attention. Extolling the wonderful and extensive outcomes of your solution gets them interested to see if the same pixie dust magic can be sprinkled on their enterprise. We are also showing our credibility. The outcome must be a relevant example that the potential buyer of your services or product can mentally extrapolate to themselves in order to have real meaning.

After dangling the goodies in front of the client, we now talk about the issue we solved. This is best delivered in the form of a story. Just going into the mechanics of the issue is boring and not likely to motivate the listener. If we can describe the people involved and the pain the issue was causing, we can start to ignite the listener’s emotional connection with the story. We can say things like, “The pressure from our client’s senior management had been intense. From last spring the section manager Shimada san was so stressed by the pressure for delivering the results on time, that he was developing an ulcer in his stomach. He even started to take time off to go to hospital. His whole team were worried because they felt they would not be able to get their piece of the project done in time. They saw a potential big loss of face because their colleagues would feel they had let the rest of the company down. They were all working hard but were concerned they were getting nowhere”. Now we have put some flesh on the bone. We have counted the human cost of failure. This is much easier to identify with than numbers in a spreadsheet cell coming up short. We have introduced a situation the buyer can mentally visualize in their own frame of reference.

Next we describe the solution we provided to fix this gap. This is the “how we did it” part of the story and again it shouldn’t be a simple mechanical telling of how what happened. We need to combine the solution description with the impact it had on individual members of the team. We talk about the features of the solution but we have to link those to the benefits we delivered to the company, how they took those benefits and applied them. We can say something like this, “The XYZ software we installed used a combination of our big data and artificial intelligence capability to isolate out the critical steps to meet the deadline. We saved hundreds of hours of team time and the additional efficiency actually delivered the project pitch perfect and ahead of the deadline. Shimada san could finally stop his ulcer medication and the team were regarded as the heroes of the hour. We were invited to the celebration dinner and what a phenomenal night of major partying that was. Everyone was ecstatic with what we had done together and they really thanked us for saving them”.

Even if you cannot reveal the client’s name, get these type of rich episodes into print and in front of potential clients during meetings. There is the dry rendition version – avoid that one. Instead use storytelling to emotionally involve the listener. If you do, then the story brings the key points alive and makes the buyer identify with the scenario in a way that they care what happened. This is powerful and we do not do enough good storytelling in our sales work. The irony is we are all dripping in rich and valuable detail, have plenty of scope to do this, but we don’t pull all the parts together. Find your hero stories. Collect the details and turn them into tales that reek of applied benefits gushing forth from the feature nitty gritty details of the solution. But remember to make it memorable through your storytelling.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

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About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.