Episode #54: You Can't Cold Call In Japan. Really?

Unrequested contacts are frowned upon in Japan. Direct mail goes straight in the bin. Emails from unknowns are deleted. Incoming phone calls are neglected and never called back. This is grossly unfair you might be thinking. You might also be thinking that cold calling is a dead duck in Japan. Well that is not the case. Cold calling always has a relatively low hit rate but there are occasions where you have no entry point for a prospect you wish to connect with and the cold call becomes a necessity. There are techniques which can cut through and can secure new clients, but you have to know what you are doing. Do you know how and can you add cold calling to your arsenal for breaking through the walls that Japan regularly springs up?

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

According to a joint study by Nomura Research Institute and the University of Oxford, AI and robots will replace the human workforce in greater numbers and forty nine percent of Japanese workers will lose their jobs by twenty thirty. AI will likely carry out a majority of work being done by professionals such as medical diagnoses and writing prescriptions on behalf of doctors or composing courtroom scenarios for lawyers. In other news, the Tokyo Game show this year devoted a much larger space to competitive video gaming and competitions were held on all four days of the show. This year there were two stages set up for esports competitions. Fans can see how the players fare in group environments and this will raise the popularity of the games, according to Capcoms’s Shigenori Araki, head of esports. According to Hideki Okamura the Chairman of the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association, “the market lags behind that of other countries. If you compare our market to the market outside of Japan, you can see a big gap. That why our organization was created”.

This is episode number fifty four and the topic is Can’t Cold Call Japan. Oh Yeah, Really? Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. The pressure for increasing results is not constant. It is just keeps surging “higher, faster, further”. The sales team do work hard. They are polite, conscientious, quite customer focused. Great! So why can’t we grow sales fast enough to meet our targets. What is the problem?

There are some simple reasons. Current customer numbers are too few. Current customer volumes are not growing. Current customer share of wallet is not changing. Sales will often blame marketing for not generating new leads for sales to go after. They will be surprisingly terrific advocates for all the reasons the customer puts on the table about not being able to buy at all, buy now, or buy more. Blaming everyone else for insufficient sales volumes is a well developed skill here in Japan (and everywhere else salespeople walk the earth) .

Helpfully, you pipe up with a shiny idea: “what about going after new customers?” At this point marketing’s lack of lead generation gets recycled as the excuse. Innocently, you mention the “C” word! Shock, horror and pity drains the blood from the Sales Director’s face. “Don’t you know Story san, this is Japan, you can’t do cold calling here”. Case closed.

Having been through this scenario a number of times here, and having also seen plenty of cold calling getting done, “skeptical” doesn’t even come close to describing my reaction to this useful intervention to explain the finer points of Japan to me. Walking into a new organization with a crystal clear recollection of salespeople in the previous company, phones taped to their wrists so they get through their cold calls, always concentrates the mind in these circumstances.

What is usually meant is not that you can’t physically cold call companies here, but just the effectiveness is so low, it a major waste of time. This is too true, when the cold calling is done poorly.

Curiously, the same “experts” who tell you that you can’t cold call, accept the tobikomitechnique of just dropping in unexpectedly. Why suddenly turning up at a couple of companies and dropping off some business cards and literature in a day is thought to be more effective than sitting at desk and calling 100 prospects a day is a quaint curiosity.

This always reminds me of the same arguments you hear about you can’t get referrals in Japan. “Do you know anybody who might be interested in our widget?” must be one of the most criminal statements to ever escape from a salesperson’s lips. The problem is when the way you ask is rubbish, don’t be surprised with a pathetic result. Design is critical to increasing the success rate for cold calling and referrals. Amazingly, hardly any sales people ever plan their conversations. They just sashay from one failure to another wondering, why this approach doesn’t work.

Cold calling works much better when we are very clear about the outcome we can expect to achieve. There are products and services you can sell over the phone, however there are very, very, very few. The main aim should be securing a face-to-face appointment. That means you are only selling a date and time over the phone – nothing more.

Before you even get to that point, you need to speaking to the person who has the diary spot you want a piece of. There are armies of hapless young Japanese women occupying the bottom rungs of the machine, whose only joy in life is getting rid of salespeople trying to see the decision maker.

If you are persistent then they have this great technique of passing you over to the next most senior male in their section. Usually some spotty faced, no authority, nobody completely afraid of their own shadow, and seemingly able to go to retirement, without ever having had to make a decision in their entire career.

This is where you need a blockbuster credibility statement that summarises who you are, why you are calling and why speaking to their boss will change the world. Design is everything. By the way, you only have to design the one credibility statement, because you use the same one on their boss.

You might refer to some recent research you would like to share which will be a big help to their business now and into the future. You should mention that you can’t share it over the phone because you need to show it to them, to head off the “Well tell me now!” or “Email it to me!” comebacks. You might mention that you recently came across some ideas that seem to be working extremely well for others in their industry. If possible, mention actual numbers that you can later provide as concrete evidence when you meet. You need to refer to the cost of not speaking with you – the opportunity cost – of not investing 30 minutes with you. Fear off loss is a strong driver of action in some, often more so than greed for gain.

Only ever ask for 30 minutes – less sounds flakey and more sounds burdensome. Asking for “18 minutes” or “23 minutes” etc., sounds like you are a total conman, and warning lights and bells will go off in their head. If you can’t convince them face to face in 30 minutes to hear more, stop wasting everyone’s time and get off to the next prospect. Often you go into a short meeting because the prospect is super busy and has absolutely no time, can hardly even spare 15 minutes and you find yourself discussing your solutions for the next 90 minutes!