92: Handling Buyer Objections In Business In Japan

07/31/18 • 10 min

Handling Buyer Objections In Business In Japan

You would expect that salespeople would hear a lot of objections from buyers, particularly the same objections and therefore would be pretty good at handling them? Well that actually isn’t the case. In some cases, the salespeople imagine they can drive the process by force of will and by pushing the buyer to change their mind. This is ridiculous anywhere, but especially so, here in Japan. Or they want to argue with the buyer, outmaneuver them, outwit them, some how trick them into buying. Again ridiculous.

Japan is a very risk averse culture and the objections are important to the buyer, to get a surety of making a low risk buying decision. The buyers are salaried employees who don’t want to see any decision they make, coming back to haunt them and negatively impacting their ride up through the ranks. The easiest way to do that is to take no new decisions (like buying from you).

An objection is like the headline in a newspaper. It is very concise, but there is a long article explaining what that headline is all about. When we hear that objection headline, we need to get the full story in order to be able to successfully deal with that objection. There is no point hearing the objection and then answering what you second guess the point may be. It is a bit like at school, when you get the essay topic and you write your answer only to discover that is not what the teacher was after. We have to be sure what the buyer is after before we attempt to answer the objection. Don’t answer what you think might be the problem, ask them before you say anything.

I was at an event recently, sitting next to a Japanese Sales Director and I asked him how he handled objections. His answer nearly had me falling off my chair in shock. He said whenever he meets an objection, he drops the price by 20%. I was mentally calculating what that meant, because he had told me there were ten salespeople in the team. So ten people, dropping the price by 20% every year, for 5 years amounts to a diabolically large number. There is no need for that, I told him, which was a new concept in his case.

He was dropping the price because he didn’t know what to do. What he should have been doing was questioning the objection. He should have been asking the buyer why they held that view? If they say the price is too high, we need to ask them why they think the price is too high. Remember, the price is too high is only the headline – what is in the main body of the article?

In another example, I had that exact reaction from a client. When I questioned why they thought the price was too high, they said because the amount exceeded their budget allocation for training for that quarter. So I asked what if we could spread that investment over two quarters, would that help? They said yes, that would be fine. So the real objections was timing, not price, but if I had just dropped my price by 20%, I would never have known that.

Also when people give their objection, we have to be thinking, is this really the objection? It is like the iceberg metaphor. What they say is the bit above the waterline, but the real objection is out of sight, underwater. We do this ourselves when we are out shopping. We see a nice suit, check the price, then take a deep breath because it is too expensive for us. When the clerk asks us about buying the suit we don’t say, “well I have been too unsuccessful so far in my career to be able to afford an expensive suit like this one”. No, we talk about that bit above the waterline. We don't like the colour or the pattern or whatever, but not the real reason.

So when we get an objection, we need to keep asking if there any other points and keep asking if there are any other points, until we have flushed out some of the issues. We then ask them to rank these issues in priority order and the most pressing objection is the one we answer. Often all the others disappear, once we handle the main one.

If the objection is a game breaker then that is it. You can’t force the buyer by force of will and badgering them to buy. Leave that sales call and go and spend time with someone you can properly serve, don’t waste your most valuable resource – time.

Don’t argue with the buyer because they may not be a buyer today, but one day they may buy. Leave the door open. You may find that you can do a deal in the future, so don’t burn your bridges over one deal and don’t be remembered as a pushy pain.

Handling Buyer Objections In Business In Japan

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91: Explaining The Application Of The Benefits To Buyers In Business In Japan

Explaining The Application Of The Benefits To Buyers In Business In Japan

Japan loves data and detail. All good, but it can be a trap when you are here trying to make sales in Japan. In a Western sales model there is a defined process to go through and the buyer is also trained on how that works as well. In the Japanese case there is a love of detail bias. This will take you down the wrong path, if you let the buyer control the sales call. Which is what happens to all the Japanese salespeople here, by the way.

The buyer loves the detail, the spec, the features of the product. They can’t get enough of that stuff. The problem is we don’t buy the features, we buy the outcomes, the benefits. In sale’s training we often use the example of buying a hand drill at a DYI Center. There are tonnes of detail on the drill – weight, speed, power source, battery life etc. We are not buying a drill, because what we are really after is a hole of a certain diameter in brick, metal, concrete or wood etc. The drill‘s features are not what we are buying, but that is often all the salesperson talks about.

So here in Japan we have to be careful, because the buyer can drag us down into the morass of the detail and features of the product or service. We have to control the sales call and redirect the conversation away from only the detail on the spec and move on to the outcomes, the benefits these features will provide for the buyer. Generally speaking, most salespeople around the world get to the feature bit and only a tiny minority elevate the conversation to cover the consequent benefits from the features. Japanese pitchpeople have trained the buyers here to focus on the spec, the detail, the data.

We need to get to a higher level of discussion. We need to be drawing word pictures they can see in their mind’s eye. We need to be describing all the future benefits they will get from this purchase. This requires telling stories, talking about outcomes and results.

Having done that we need to show some evidence that what we say works. The series of statements coming out of the salesperson’s mouth is not counted as evidence by buyers. Salespeople like to talk a lot. We can do this, we can do that or we have this, we have that. So what? We need to be referring to the cases where we have helped other companies. We need to provide data to back up what we are saying. We need to be showing the application of the benefits and where this has worked elsewhere. This makes the whole sales call more credible.

This has to be real – you cannot make this stuff up. If you want to lie to the buyer, then get out of our profession, we don’t want you polluting the waters. It has to be authentic, real, something that you can prove to the buyer if they want that level of detail. Then you have to move into a trial close to see if there are any areas of concern. Is there anything we haven’t covered in sufficient detail. Did we miss anything, are there any objections to what we have said?

The Japanese pitchperson doesn’t get to any of this level of sophistication. They are bogged down in the detail of the features. Remember, the buyer has been trained to only expect the pitch. They will keep you there and keep asking detailed micro questions. They do this because they are risk averse and they want to make sure there will no issues with your solution. That is fine but we can’t stay there for the whole sale’s call. You have to move them out of the minutiae, up the ladder to the next sunny uplands of benefits, application of the benefits, evidence that this works and a trial close. This is a structure and the Japanese pitchperson doesn’t have any structure.

We need to reeducate buyers on selling here. We have to guide them along a different path to what they are used to. It isn’t easy but if you want to make sales in Japan this is the requirement.

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93: Closing Sales In Business In Japan

Closing Sales In Business In Japan

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 seidosystem 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.