Episode #11: Salespeople Don't Care

I thought “Yes!” at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. This guy is good, really good at sales. Just what we need to get the results moving around here. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

Japan is interesting. It defies economic theory. In a labour shortage the salaries of workers should rise to reflect the tightening worker supply situation but wages are not moving yet. Male unemployment numbers are down to 2.9% and women are at 2.7%. The job to applicant ratio for regular workers (as opposed to part-time workers) is at a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.01 rising above 1.0 for the first time since 2004. The job availability rate improved to 1.51 from 1.49 in may this year making it the highest level since 1974. Economists ponder the contradiction that there is anemic wage groth despite tightness in the labour market. They identify this as a drag on private consumption which accounts for 60% pf gross domestic product. Hidenobu Tokuda senior economist at Mizuho Research institute noted, “The labour market has already tightened to a considerable degree and if the economy continues to recover, it will become more difficult to cope with the country’s labour shortage”. We notice it too – hiring sales people has become much more difficult than two years ago and it only looks to becoming worse.

This is episode number 11 and we are talking about how Sales People Don’t Care.

Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox the other morning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care–Anonymous”. Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically stamped on to the brain of every single person involved in sales.

Don’t miss it - selling stuff is a tough gig. Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be tough to survive in a sales job. You need other things too. Product and technical knowledge is important. Total command of the detail is expected by clients. However, we need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about?

Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy Siberian mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”.

I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs?

I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth? I can sense they have already bought the 3 series Beemer before the ink is dry?

The quote at the beginning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care” reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae(心構え).

It can be simply translated as “preparedness” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. I would prefer to translate it as “getting your heart in order”. Sounds a bit woo, woo doesn’t it.

Well it is sound business sense. This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what you want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction?

Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Huh? There I go again. Does this sound a bit too “let’s all hold hands around the a tree” California emotional for you?

Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn’t centered on their best interests and therefore they won’t buy from you. Even if somehow you do manage one sale, you will miss the key objective – the buyer’s re-order

Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the “smooth talking” salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to. They are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand. Wolf of Wall Street ring a bell here. That dude went to jail, which is where he deserved to go, for ripping all of those punters off and stealing their savings. He is out of jail now and is a sales trainer – the mind boggles at the thought. This is why people don’t trust salespeople. We have to prove we are different because we are judges guilty from the outset.

The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was also a criminal.

A criminal? Well, the criminal part didn’t surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks. Let me make a note to Sales Managers – do background checks!. He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the role play, and WOW, what a closer! I thought “Yes!” at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie. He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamae was plain wrong. What a wake up and smell the coffee moment for me. I realised how naïve and trusting I was.

So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. Change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a power personal brand.