Episode #251: Close That Sale

You would think that asking for the order would be the simplest thing in a sales job. Not the case here in Japan. Surprisingly a lot of salespeople here in Japan never ask directly for the order. They get to the point where they should ask but they choose not to. One of the reasons is they fear rejection, getting a “no”. They job of sales is an emotional rollercoaster all around the world, so preserving your self-esteem and self-belief is critical. There is nothing like getting rejected in selling to knock your ego around. Japanese salespeople have found a way to avoid that regretful eventuality by not actually asking for the business. It is left vague, sort of hanging there.

They usually lack skills in selling, so the steps which they should have completed in a professional manner, haven’t been done, so in fact they have no right to ask for the order. If you have built the trust, have asked well designed questions to fully understand the client’s needs, presented the correct solution, dealt with any hesitations or objections, then you can confidently ask for the order.

The way of asking doesn’t have to aggressive or hard sell. Actually, that won’t work in Japan, so let’s forget about that idea. We can simply ask , “shall we go ahead?”. Or we might offer an alternative of choice, such as, “would you like to start in January or would February be better?”. The selection of either of those months means that you are accepting the business and will go ahead with the deal. Another soft variation that works well in Japan is using a minor point. We can ask, “Shall I send you a hard copy of the invoice or is an electronic copy okay?”. Either answer means “yes”, we have an agreement.

Most often in Japan the answer is “we need to discuss it” or “we need to think about it”. In American sales training they have a harder edge and go after that statement, “What do you need to think about?’ or “How long will you take”. That type of pushy sales technique just won’t work in Japan.

Here they do have to think about it and they do have to discuss it. The person you are talking to is usually not the final or sole decision maker. They have the ringi seido system here where all the stakeholders have to attach their chop or seal to the recommendation to show they have been informed and that they agree. That means there is a lot of consultation required internally, so it is hard to make any commitments to the salesperson immediately. No manner of bullying the buyer is going to change that situation.

We have to be thinking how can we help our champion sell the idea to the other colleagues. We have to provide the arguments and show the value to make their persuasion job easier. We also need to find out who are the primary people who need convincing inside the company and we need to find out what issues might be important to them. Knowing this, we can help our champion address any potential pushback that might occur behind the closed doors of the client company, on our behalf.

We need to ask for the order to flush out any objections we may not have dealt with well enough in the earlier part of the sales cycle. Maybe we didn’t do a good enough job designing questions to fully understand the needs of the buyer. Maybe our solution wasn’t a good enough match for what they needed. Perhaps we didn't handle the objections which arose well enough. Sometimes the objections we were told were just a smokescreen and the real objections haven’t emerged yet. We need to get these out in order to deal with them. If we don’t ask for the order we won’t get the business and we won’t get to find out why we are not getting the business.

If they do bring up an issue, don’t fight it. Say, “Yes I see and why is that a problem for you?”. Any answer you start with words like “no”, “but” or “however”, will be guaranteed to have the buyer stop listening to you and go into combat mode to argue with you. We need to ask them why this is an issue to get more detail on the table so we can deal with it. Remember objections are like headlines in a newspaper and we need to get access to the full article explaining what the headline means. So we must dig for more detail. If we can’t deal with the objection, then don’t waste any more time, get out there and find the next potential client.

When closing in Japan do not use aggression, force of will or tricky closing techniques – none of that will work. Use soft sell here. Expect they will need to think about it, so you are prepared to help them sell the idea internally.