215: Fantasies, Folly, Mirages, And Other Illusions of Salespeople

12/08/20 • 11 min

“I like talking with people, so I want to be in sales” is a terrifying conversation to have with one of your staff. They are not doing so well in their current role, so they imagine they will just glide across to sales to have an easier time of it. They may try and do it internally as a switch of roles or they may quit their current job and go and try to get a sales job somewhere else. Given the shortage of salespeople in Japan at the moment and from now on ad nauseum, there is a strong chance they will be picked up by a competitor or another company quite easily.

They are partially correct. Yes, it helps if you like people as a salesperson. Also, having good communication skill is a definite requirement. Talking to someone and persuading them to hand over their hard earned cash is a different equation. What do we talk about, how do we talk about it, when should we be silent, when should we speak up? These are important questions about which they are ignorant.

When I hear people say they like “talking to people” that sets off an alarm in my head. One of the biggest issues with salespeople is that they talk too much. I am guilty of it too. I am passionate about helping people to grow their businesses and their careers, so I bring a lot of belief and energy to the conversation. That is all good, but it is also dangerous. If I am doing all the talking, I maintain possession of what I already know but I don’t gain any additional knowledge of the client and their problem.

Sometimes, I catch myself and realise the only noise in the room is me talking, so I should ask the client a question, shut up and get them talking instead. I want them to tell me about their current situation and where they want to be. In Japan, you can’t do that. Clients are passively expecting your pitch, so they can destroy it and assure themselves this is a low risk transaction they are considering entering into. So, the first thing out of our mouths here has to be a question seeking permission to ask questions. People who like talking will have no problem with this traditional pitch approach. In fact they will probably be happy, to get straight into the pitch.

Fine all around except for one small thing. What are you pitching to the client? How do you know what solutions from your line-up will best match the client’s need? What normally happens is the salesperson blunders on, talking about things which are irrelevant to the client. They completely squander their client facing time and leave the meeting with nothing. This is not good.

Get permission first, then ask those first two questions – where are you now and where do you want to be? We are trying to gauge urgency on the buyer’s part. If they think they can bridge this gap, then they will try and do it themselves and not involve any external parties. That means no business for us and we are wasting our time to continue sitting there chatting with them, no matter how much we enjoy a good chat.

If they can’t do it by themselves, then we want to know why? There is no point going straight into solution mode at this point, talking, talking, talking. We should ask that exact question: “if you know where you want to be, why aren’t you there now?”. What a pearler of a question. In this answer lies our raison d’etre. Maybe we can’t do it for them. That is good to know, because we have to high tail it out of there and go and find someone we can help. No point hanging round for more chatting with a business dead end in front of you. Another other issue is talking past the deal. When the buyer agrees, only talk about the follow up and stop selling. People who like talking get themselves into trouble by saying too much and opening up a Pandora’s box of deal breakers.

If we are doing our job, we are hardly talking at all during the meeting, except to ask a few clarifying questions. “Liking to talk with people” is a mirage, would-be salespeople see about what is involved in a professional sales life. This is their uniformed illusion about the job. Instead, I want to hear, “I like asking people questions”. In all my years in business though, I have never heard that lucid comment emerge as a precursor to a life in sales. If you want a career in sales, now you know what to say to a prospective boss to get them interested in hiring you.

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214: Group Selling is Not for the Faint Hearted

Most of the time in Japan, I attend client meetings alone. This is not how the Japanese do it. The President going to a meeting alone, without some staff in attendance is rather rare. Presidents have degrees of prestige and one of the indicators is how many flunkies they have in attendance. My ego is big enough already to have to worry about people carrying my bag around for me. The Japanese client meeting can often be quite an affair though with many people seated around the room, waiting to hear what you have to say. Invariably, you have no idea who is turning up on their side, who they are or what they do.

The key word there is “waiting”. They expect this to be a presentation from me to them, with zero interaction, no questions and then they go away and thrash it out internally on what they want to do next. The punters in the room are the earpieces of their respective sections, there to record and then report what was said and who said it. There will usually be one or two designated interlocuters on their side who will engage with the seller to facilitate the meeting. That facilitation is usually to insist we give them a presentation on our offer, done passively, without any insight into what they need.

You can see the problem immediately. We have many solutions, so which one is the best for them? To know this we need to be asking questions. The buyer side don’t quite see it that way and we can have a tense standoff. We ask seller style consultative questions. No one answers them from the buyer side and the silence hangs heavy in the air, trying to strangle the seller. If we hang tough and let that silence hang around for a long time, eventually someone on the buyer side will say “give us your pitch”. When we hear this we know things are not going well.

Being on our own is not a big deal, because usually we can make decisions on our own. We don’t need to work the idea through the system to get some type of convocation to agree to it. What is not good though, is to squander our time before the meeting. We should be pumping whoever is organising the meeting logistics, for information ahead of time on who will be attending. Who are they, what do they do, what rank are they, etc., are key things we want to know before we turn up. We shouldn’t presume there will only be a couple of people we already know in the meeting, if it is an important stage or the first meeting.

If this doesn’t happen, then after the initial exchange of business cards with the big boss, quickly dart around the room and exchange cards with everyone else there. This way you can arrange the cards on the table in front of you, according to where they are sitting, to see who is who and you can check their rank and area of responsibility. These are generalisations, but the CEO will be thinking strategy going forward, the CFO will be thinking protecting cash flow, the technical people will be thinking fit for purpose and the users will be thinking ease of application of the solution.

Knowing roughly what the audience interests are is only a start. To avoid giving a pitch into the void of not knowing what they want, you need to set up permission to ask questions. They are expecting you to tell them about what your company does and what you can do for them. Here is an example of how this could go. “Dale Carnegie Training has been around for 109 years world wide and nearly 60 years here in Japan. We are soft skills training experts covering sales, leadership, communication and presenting. We have had a lot of success in Japan helping our clients to improve their effectiveness and grow their market share. Maybe we could do the same for you, I am not sure. In order for me to know if that is possible or not and to know which part of our line up best suits your internal needs, would you mind if I asked a few simple questions. The answers will guide me on what I should present to you regarding which parts of our line-up will be the best match for your business?”.

Once you have permission to ask questions, start with the people tasked with facilitating the meeting. If they need more detail to answer your questions, they will involve some of the other experts in the room. We won’t get a lot of time to do this, as everyone is sitting there expecting a pitch which they can then flagellate within an inch of its life, by asking mean and nasty questions. They won’t be denied their Colosseum moment of throwing you to the lions for too long.

You will at least get enough information to know what to present and how to present it. You won’t get an answer at that meeting on whether there is any interest or not so don’t push it. They need to harmonise opinions on their approach and they will do this after the meeting. Someone will be tasked with getting all of the feedback and bringing this to the most senior person.

Japan teaches you many things, especially patience!