Episode #77: Selling To Buying Teams

In Japan it is rare to be selling to one person. Even if we only meet one person, there will be others who have to be consulted and have an influence over the buying decision. It is often the case that we meet teams of buyers in the meeting. We may have our champion helping us to become a provider for the client company, but there may also be blockers who attend the meeting to make sure nothing happens. When the numbers increase, the complexity of getting a positive decision goes up.

When we are dealing singly with our champion, we have to arm them sufficiently to run through the blockades within the firm. They need to be given the right arguments to deal with the naysaysers inside the company. There will be different executives involved, with different agendas and we have to give our champion the bullets to fire off, when they hit resistance.

During the meeting we are facing a mixture of viewpoints on the buying decision. We need to run the ruler over this group and decide who we are dealing with and what are their buying perspectives. Generally there are four different types of buyers apart from our champion. The Executive Buyer will be the CEO. They tend to take a long term viewpoint and are driven by strategic value and growth opportunities over time. The Financial Buyer is usually the CFO and they have shorter time frame in mind than the CEO. They are driven by costs because they are looking at the cash flow situation of the company and the debt burden. They are interested in payment terms – usually long ones – and flexibility around the conditions associated with the purchase. The Technical Buyer can be the functional specialist, the accountant, scientist, engineer, doctor, HR specialist, etc. They tend to be driven by efficiency, practicality, capacity. The User Buyer has direct application of the purchase and are concerned with the features, the ease of use, the reliability, the warranties etc.

Giving a one size fits all presentation to a buying team made up of people with different perspectives is going to be insufficient to the task. The presentation needs to be structured so that the tasty bits are presented to each perspective, in a way that they can identity with it. We should prepare on the basis that all four buyer types will be in the room and then vary our presentation according to who actually turns up.

There is no guarantee that concentrating on the President is going to bed down the deal. Often the President will have delegated the final decision to the person who has the biggest stake in the decision. They may be trying to empower their staff and won’t overrule them, even if they personally hold a different view. Japan is also a classic for ignoring any women in the room because they are not perceived as having any say in the final decision. This is old style thinking.

I was at networking function and met a very attractive, smart young businesswoman who had a big title on her business card. I guessed correctly that she was a family member of the majority owners of that company. I didn’t go and see her, but sent one of my very capable female consultants to do the follow up meeting. Don’t assume that because they are women, you can concentrate on the men and still do business with that company. Those days are over.

Also don’t just address your remarks to the English speakers in the group. They are rarely the decision-makers. When you talk make eye contact with everyone in the group and include them in what you are saying. It doesn’t matter if they understand the English or not, but they will understand you recognise their importance in the group.

You may have experienced the reverse situation. The buyer only talks to your Japanese staff member and ignores you even though you are the boss. This can happen even when you speak Japanese. It is very annoying. So don’t do the same with your buyer group, involve everyone in your remarks.

Just to make the whole picture more challenging, there is another layer of complexity we need to add to the meeting. Each of the people present on the buying side, will have a particular personality style which will impact on how they like to communicate.

Those who are Drivers are very task and outcome driven and are strict time-is-money types who will make a quick decision and want to move on to the next project. Get straight to the point with them and be direct, they won’t be offended.

Their opposite style are the Amiables who like to get to know who they are dealing with, so that the right element of trust is established. They are not in a hurry and don’t like pushy salespeople. Be subtle and soft in tone and body language.

Analytical styles are logical, data and proof driven. They love numbers to three decimal places and having all the ducks in a row, arranged nicely. They dismiss all salespeople statements which are not backed up by fact as pure fluff. Talk numbers and logic. If you want to make a statement, then wrap it up inside a question. If they say “yes” to the question then they are accepting the statement. For example, you want to make the statement that, “we can guarantee delivery in three days”. Don’t state that. Instead ask, “If we could guarantee delivery in three days, would that help your business?”. If they say yes, they have validated the importance of quick delivery.

Their direct opposite type are Expressives. They like the big picture, look at holistic solutions and love to brainstorm on strategy. They hate getting stuck down in the weeds with a lot of small fry detail. Talk about the future and how brilliant it will be with your solution to their problem.

So in addition to the buyer’s job function perspective, we also have to be aware we need to switch our communication style to suit who we are talking to. We will need to be talking about the area of their interest and in the communication style they like. This takes quite a feat of flexibility on the part of salespeople, but this is what separates the great from the good.

What Is The One Key Thing When Presenting?

I was talking with a friend, while we were having lunch at this very nice Italian restaurant he frequents, near his office. Between dishes, we were talking about how he has to go to his US headquarters and join all the other representative Country Heads from around the world and give his report on how the business is going in Japan. I was thinking that that must be a very high profile and pressure presentation. So I mentioned how great our High Impact Presentations Course was. In my own case, I wish I had done it 20 years earlier, because it would have changed my career trajectory. Anyway, my friend was patiently listening to all of this and then asked me a very profound question, “What is the one key thing when presenting?”.

What he was getting at was that if we had to boil it all down, what is the one most critical skill we need to be effective as a presenter. This is a major question in business. After all, this is our personal and professional brand we are putting out there on show for all the world to see. This is not something we want to get wrong. I had no hesitation in telling him “focus on your audience”.

Great. What does that mean, because aren’t we all focusing on our audience when we present? Definitely, yes, we should be focusing on our audience, but often we are deluding ourselves. If we break down the presentation and analyse it, we can see that focusing on your audience has major ramifications for your degree of success when talking in front of others.

We may have what we want to say in our mind when preparing the talk. We may be an expert in our field and have a whole bunch of stuff we want to share because we are excited by the content. However, we may have not taken the trouble to think about what the audience would be most interested in? Why would they turn up? What will they be expecting to hear? We may have not bothered to research who would be in the room. What would be the age range, the gender mix, the degrees of expertise on the subject. Did we do our research so we could focus the topic down to the slant most likely to impress our audience? Or did we just talk about what we were interested in?

Who were we thinking about when we got up to speak? We may have started our talk focused not on the audience but on ourselves. We were thinking how nervous we were feeling. We feel captured by our high pulse rate, our sweaty palms, our dry throat, our weakness in the knees. The focus is 100% inward not outward.

We may have been very deeply engrossed in the notes we were reading, such that we didn’t even look up at the audience. Or if we did, we used one of those fake eye contact approaches, where our eyes look in the direction of the audience but we are not really looking at anyone. We may have decided to ignore half the crowd and only talk to one half of the room or maybe only the front row or maybe no one, because we are staring over all the seated heads at some spot on the back wall. Or we may be skimming across the room looking at everyone for one second and therefore looking at no one. We cannot engage anyone in the audience with a fleeting one second glimpse but we can try to give the impression of an attempt to engage with our audience. This is not a talk focused on the audience. Do the audience members sitting there feel that we are talking directly to them individually and not to an amorphous mass.

We may have decided that the audience was pretty dumb, so we need to read the text on the slides to them. We might even do that by turning our back on the audience and staring up at the text on the screen. We are so focused on the text and the content and not on those listening to us.

Just to drive home the lack of focus on the audience, we cram so much information on each slide, that they becomes impenetrable. Analytical types love jamming ten graphs on the one slide or throwing up the entire text document on screen. We may hit up the slide with five different colours in a florid mess. Or we may have gone crazy, like an example I saw recently, where the presenter used four or more different fonts in the text. This made it super hard to read for the audience members. Where was the focus? It was on the presenters “cleverness” to showcase so many fonts on each slide, even though it was a disaster. Not to really rub it in, but the Japanese presenter was delivering a two hour lecture to a local Chamber of Commerce on presenting skills.

We may be rambling, because we have a poor structure for the talk, so we are hard to follow. We may not have applied a logical flow to the talk to make it easy for the audience. “Don’t make your talk hard to follow” is a fundamental rule. Or we may speak in a monotone to see how many people we can put to sleep. By hitting key words we can emphasise key messages we want the audience to take away with them. We may be umming ahhing like a legend, to really distract the audience from the message. We have not done any work on polishing our presenting skills, because we are not focused on the audience but selfishly on the most friction free, time efficient approach. That means no extra effort being made.

We may have spent a total time of zero minutes practicing the talk before we gave it. We may have spent our time instead working on the slide deck. It takes time to cram ten graphs on the one slide, with five different colours and four different fonts for the text. This major effort will just suck up any potential rehearsal time before the presentation. So where were we focused after all?

Even though we may imagine we are focused on the audience, we may in fact be missing the opportunity or actively working against that aim. Take another look at whether you are actually focused on your audience or whether you are just imagining it.

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.