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  • 385 Recruit Your Audience When Presenting In Japan

    385 Recruit Your Audience When Presenting In Japan
    2024/05/14
    Almost 100% of presentations that I see in Japan are one directional. The audience sits there passively and the speaker presents to them. There is no interaction with the audience. I was watching an interview with Clint Eastwood in his approach as a movie director. He was talking about his famous Western “The Unforgiven” and talking about how he shot some key scenes, such that the faces of the actors were in the shadows and not fully revealed. I can’t remember exactly how he expressed it, but he said you don’t have to show the whole face with full lighting, because the audience is intelligent. They can fill in the gaps. I thought that was a good metaphor for presenting. As the presenter we don’t have to show everything in full lighting from our side. We can create some gaps and allow the audience to fill in the blanks themselves from their imaginations and their viewpoint. We do this to some extent already when we use rhetorical questions. These are questions which we pose to the audience but we are not actually asking them for an answer – we provide that after a suitable hanging pause. What about if we actually make it a real question and source the answer from the audience? Now we cannot be doing this every five minutes, as that will be massive overkill, but we can drop some questions into our talk. We might plan to use these questions to overcome flagging energy and declining interest from the audience. This is why you never want to be lowering the lights when you are presenting. You want to be able to study the faces of the people arrayed in front of you for any signs of distraction, boredom, or tiredness. When I did my TED talk, the audience was in complete darkness because all the lights were blazoning away hitting me up on stage and making it impossible to read any reactions. It was very unnerving, especially when you are used to being able to study the audience reactions to what you are saying. Now when we ask a question to the audience here they are confused. Firstly, they are not trained for this and they are not sure if this is a rhetorical question, which we will answer or whether they actually have to answer. The next line of confusion is who amongst the audience should answer this question. In Japan, no one gets any prizes in life for going first, so it almost guarantees that everyone will be holding themselves back. The third line of confusion is fear. They worry if they get the answer wrong, they will look like a fool in front of everyone. They also fear that someone else will come up with a much more intelligent answer than theirs and they will look stupid. So casting a question before an audience here is bound to get no immediate answer. We have to help them by setting it up. Just blasting forth with a question is a bit shocking, as this is not how things are normally done. We need to say something like, “In a moment, I am going to pose a question, because I am very interested to get your experiences and ideas on the issue”. Now we have fired off a warning shot, so that when the question is unloaded, no one is surprised. We help them even further by using our eye contact and gestures to indicate to an individual or a group of individuals that we want to hear their answer. By holding out our hand gesture palm up, it is very unthreatening. If we used a pointed finger instead, that is very aggressive and will drive a shudder of fear into an audience with its power. We simultaneously use our eye contact and look at a member of the audience we are indicating to, thus requiring an answer. It is always good to pick those who were seated on the same table as you, if it were a luncheon or breakfast event, or someone you were chatting with at the start, as you will have established some rapport. Depending on the relationship, we can call out their name as we ask the question, “So Suzuki san what has been your experience with….”. We should immediately thank them for contributing and start applauding and inviting the rest of the audience to join us in recognising them. We might even say, “let’s thank Suzuki san for sharing her experience and let’s also recognize her professionalism to volunteer her answer”. This opens up the floor now to call on other people. We don’t do too many of these at the same time. It can become a distraction. It can also suck up a lot of time. Not everyone is able to be succinct and get to the point. You may also inadvertently discover some people who have a lot of pent up need to talk and they will hijack your presentation. Now you are on the back foot trying to regain control of proceedings, and that is not a good look for the presenter. At the very end wrap up of your talk you can again recognise those who contributed their ideas and get everyone to applaud and thank them. They leave feeling a mile high and the rest of the audience feels you did the right thing by ...
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    12 分
  • 384 Sardonic Humour, Sarcasm and Irony When Selling in Japan

    384 Sardonic Humour, Sarcasm and Irony When Selling in Japan
    2024/05/07
    Aussies are a casual people. They prefer informality and being chilled, to stiff interactions in business or otherwise. They can’t handle silence and always feel the need to inject something to break the tension. Imagine the cultural divide when they are trying to sell to Japanese buyers. Japan is a country which loves formality, ceremony, uniforms, silence and seriousness. Two worlds collide in commerce when these buyers and sellers meet. My job, when I worked for Austrade in Japan, was to connect Aussie sellers with Japanese buyers. I would find the buyers and then try to find the Aussie suppliers. I noticed some distinct cultural differences in the sales process. It was always better when the Japanese buyers didn’t speak English. This stripped out the ability of the Aussies to directly communicate with the Japanese buyers. You would think that was a disadvantage, but in fact it was the saviour in a lot of cases. Unable to access their own language in direct communication with the Japanese buyer, they were forced to give up on some mainstream linguistic idiosyncrasies of Aussie interactions. Formality is a given in business in Japan and when, as the seller, you are forced to communicate through an interpreter, you are reduced to a staccato flow of thoughts and ideas. There is a delay in the communication and the Aussies had to sit there and wait to hear what the buyer said. They were forced into a more formal style of interaction which prevented them from free styling. This was good, because the Japanese buyers prefer the more formal approach. When the buyers could speak some English, the Aussies ran riot. They were freed from the chains of formality and immediately lapsed into casual interactions, with which they felt more comfortable. Humour is a big part of the Aussie male culture and they bring it with them wherever they go, including to the very much stiffer, buttoned up Japanese business world. The problem is you have to be another Aussie to get in sync with the humour. Self-depreciation is part of Japanese culture too and here it is more about being humble rather than putting yourself down. Aussies are also pretty humble people and self-depreciation is a male signal to other males that you are not trying to get above everyone else and that we are all equal. This reaction against the English class system in Australia has made fairness and equality basic building blocks of the culture down under. The problem is self-depreciation is very hard to translate. When we speak foreign languages, we are constantly translating what is being said in the other language into our own. Japanese buyers always had trouble trying to get the point of the self-depreciative attempts at humour by the Aussies. When it bombed, did the Aussies regroup and go in a different direction? No. They just doubled down harder to try to make the point, which meant they just kept digging a deeper hole for themselves. Hint to the wise, when selling in Japan be humble, but don’t make self-depreciative remarks about yourself – it won’t land the way you want it to land. Sardonic humour is a close cousin to the self-depreciative remarks. We Aussies got this from the English, because they love sardonic humour too. Again, it is very hard to translate and for Japanese to understand. Japanese communication is rather circular and vague. Sardonic humour is angular. You make comments at an angle to what had been said and hit hard on that angle to make a dark point, which is witty. Japanese buyers are fabulous at never making a direct point if they can avoid it, so no angles to leverage off. I notice this with my Japanese wife when I say something sardonic and it just goes absolutely nowhere. They don’t have that angle in their own language, so it is a hard one to grasp in a foreign language. Hint number two: forget attempting sardonic humour, because only you will get the joke. Sarcasm is a close relative to the sardonic humour category. Aussie male culture means growing up under a constant barrage of sarcastic remarks and one-upmanship. You have to learn how to be tough and take it and how to hand it out, to defend yourself. The speed of the riposte and the lacerative edge to the comment are being judged as a sign of wit and intelligence. No one gets sarcasm in Japan, in my experience. Trust me, I have tried it many times, only to see it fall as flat as a pancake. Hint number three: remove all efforts at sarcasm with Japanese buyers, they simply will have no idea what you are talking about. Irony is another Aussie favourite in the humour stakes. Like sarcasm, we males grow up navigating our way through ocean waves of irony smashing into us all the time. It requires a very high level of understanding of the language and the cultural context. Most Japanese buyers just don’t have strong enough English to even get close to understanding the point of the ...
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    12 分
  • 383 Being Convincing In Front Of The Buyer In Japan

    383 Being Convincing In Front Of The Buyer In Japan
    2024/04/30

    Blarney, snake oil, silver tongued – the list goes on to describe salespeople convincing buyers to buy. Now buyers know this and are always guarded, because they don’t want to be duped and make a bad decision. I am sure we have all been conned by a salesperson at some point in time, in matters great and small. Regardless, we don’t like it. We feel we have been made fools of and have acted unintelligently. Our professional value has been impugned, our feelings of self-importance diminished and we feel like a mug.

    This is what we are facing every time we start to explain to the buyer why they should buy our widget. We are facing a sheer, vertiginous rock wall of climbing difficulty. The cure for all of this caution, disbelief, doubt and fear is honesty.

    I talk about understanding our kokorogamae or true intention in sales. Are we here sitting in front of the buyer to make a bigger bonus, higher commissions, keep our job or there to help them succeed in their business? If our true intention is anything other than trying to help the buyer do better in their business, then we are never going to be able to continuously scale that rock face of difficulty.

    Yes, we might get one deal done, because we are a silver-tongued sales monsters who can snow the buyer. The object for the vast majority of us is never a sale, but always the reorder. Yes, there are some smash and grab businesses where they grab the loot and never see the buyer again. I know one salesman here in Tokyo who told me when he was selling meat in the US, he always had to find a new town, with new suckers to sell to, because once the buyer received the meat, the quality was poor and he could never go back.

    The difference between us is that I would never have taken that job because it offends my fundamental values and professionalism as a salesperson. I don’t want to be that guy who has to run away from the buyers and be afraid to meet them again. I can honestly say that I have never sold anything to anyone that would cause me to be ashamed or fear meeting the buyer again. That is the sales life I want for myself, not one where you are forced to live in the shadows and fear being outed as a crook. I can say that after he told me that story, I lost all trust in him and would never buy anything from him. His basic human values are doubtful to me and I don’t want spend my time with people like that.

    Realistically, though, there are few cases like this and for most of us in sales, we are looking for an ongoing relationship with the buyer. We want to build the trust and get the repeat business forever. If we have the best interests of the buyer firmly at the front of our mind we are fearless. We can walk into any networking event full of strangers and meet new people without trepidation and search for new buyers. We can walk into that first meeting safe in the knowledge that we know what we are doing. We understand that in that first meeting we are there to find out what they need and make a judgement as to whether we have it or not. If we don’t, then we don’t waste their time or ours and we move on to find the buyer we can help.

    I liken this to if you were a researcher who found the cure for cancer, you would be fearless to bring this to the attention of the buyers. There would be no hesitation and you would try to find as many people as possible to help. For an introvert like me, walking into a crowded hall full of businesspeople is overwhelming. Walking up to total strangers and introducing yourself is not the norm in Japan. I have to overcome my fear of this moment to find who are my potential buyers in the room. It is never easy for me and most people who meet me assume I must be an extrovert. Not true, but I am in sales, so I have to become more extrovert in public.

    One of my sales heroes is Zig Ziglar and he put it beautifully, “you can get everything you want in this life, if you help enough other people get what they want”. That is the true sales mantra and the one I follow religiously. It steels me against my introversion, my fears of the strange looks I get when networking, the rejections and all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which come as part of this sales life.

    If we have the buyer’s best interest firmly in the front of our minds, we will find the right words, the proper explanations, be able to answer the difficult questions fluently and in general, exude a vibe of total confidence, which the buyer picks up on. They are not just reading our words. They are searching for a holistic answer to this questions: can I trust this person?

    The only answer can be “yes” and if our kokorogamae is correct, then that is the answer they will be feel and receive.
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    11 分
  • 382 Selling To Sceptics On The Small Screen In Japan

    382 Selling To Sceptics On The Small Screen In Japan
    2024/04/24
    We are slowly emerging from Covid, yet a few leftovers are still hanging around, making our sales life complicated. One of those is the sales call conducted on the small screen using Teams or Zoom or whatever. These meetings are certainly efficient for the buyers, because they can get a lot of calls done more easily and for salespeople, it cuts out a lot of travel. Efficient isn’t always effective though. In my view, we should always try to be in person with the buyer. Some may say I am “old school” and that is quite true. Old school though has a lot of advantages when selling. Being there with them, we can take the client through the materials much more easily and we can read their body language in depth and minutely. Buyers are always sceptical about salespeople, because everyone is risk averse and concerned about getting conned or taken for a ride. When we are in the room together, they can get a better sense of who we are. They can read our body language to make sure our words match up with the intentions we are spruking. I had a sales call with a new client and, being in the room together, I could hand over the training manual and take him through it page by page, explaining the content of what he would be buying. I could easily control what page he was on so that we were in synch. We have to be careful when handing materials over that we are on page five and so are they, rather than they are racing ahead of us to page twenty. The commentary coming out of our mouth has to line up with what they are looking at in the materials. It happens that they race ahead of us, so we have to be aware of that danger and control what the buyer is looking at very carefully. I had another new client sales meeting, this time online and with three people on their side. They degenerate into three tiny little boxes on screen and it gets worse once you start sharing documents online. It is very hard to read three people’s reaction when you are in the room with them let alone trying to do it remotely. As we know the current systems aren’t as good as teleprompter technology. You can look into a camera lens on a teleprompter and read the text appearing on screen at the same time. With these various virtual platforms, the camera is located on one part of the computer screen, usually at the top and the people you are talking to are located way down below. You have to make a choice – look at the camera and not at your audience or look at your audience and not at the camera. The teleprompter technology eliminates that choice, but it hasn’t been applied to the virtual world as yet. In this situation, I look at my camera and give up trying to read the reaction of the buyers online. This is a big give up, by the way, and most unsatisfactory. I do it this way, because what they see is me speaking directly to them, making eye contact all the time. From their screen angle, they see me staring straight at them. This creates the sense of trustworthiness. On screen, I can keep staring at them intensely, without it creating any tension, as would happen in Japan if we were in person. Japanese culture avoids too much direct eye contact. This is why people look at our chin or throat or forehead. On screen, though, we are safely removed and so if we look down the barrel of that lens, we can keep applying the eye contact without it becoming intrusive. It allows us to connect with the viewers. Yes, we cut out the travel time and the costs to get to the client, but we are giving up a lot more in return. Being there is so much better and more valuable. Yes, it may take three hours there and back to hold the meeting and only one hour to do it online. But that one hour in person enables us to be so much more persuasive. We are also better able to recognise pushback or reluctance. It is almost impossible to read the vibe going on between the attendees on their side. When you are together in the room, you can see if there is any difference of opinion amongst the buyer group or cases where one person is not onboard with the idea. Onscreen, that is much more disguised. These various elements are hard to gauge on the small screen. We often find ourselves doing too much talking to compensate for the restricted nature of the small screen interaction. We feel we have to add energy and vitality to the sale process in a way we don’t feel such a strong need when we are in person. The communication distance gets us ramping up our side of the conversation to try to inject some enthusiasm into the buyer group. We are trying to will them to buy because we feel the remoteness of the situation. Buyers are often working from home these days and so they insist on online meetings. Remember, for them, not buying is the safest and preferred option. We, on the other hand, have a duty to help supply solutions to buyers and for us we should always choose the best medium for that purpose....
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    12 分
  • 381 The Two-Step Process When Selling In Japan

    381 The Two-Step Process When Selling In Japan
    2024/04/16

    Getting a deal done in a single meeting is an extremely rare event in Japan. Usually, the people we are talking to are not the final decision-makers and so they cannot give us a definite promise to buy our solution. The exception would be firms run by the dictator owner/leader who controls everything and can make a decision on the spot. Even in these cases, they usually want to get their people involved to some extent, so there is always going to be some due diligence required. In most cases, the actual sale may come on the second or even third meeting. Risk aversion is a big thing is Japan, so everyone is very careful to make sure their decision is the right one and that there will be no blow back on them, if things go bad.

    I met the owner of a very successful accounting business at a networking event. It was a very crowded affair and as is my want, I will just shanghai strangers and introduce myself. “Hi, my name is Greg” as I extend my hand to shake theirs, followed in short order by my reaching for my business card.

    I followed up to set up a meeting, which we had, and it went quite well. He invited me back to meet his team. The people I met were quite well established in the company and focused on the administrative side of things. He was obviously thinking about the training arrangements and logistics and that is why he wanted me to explain what we will do to these two staff members. He was the decision maker, but we still had to involve other members of the team to get the internal buy-in. We had a third meeting with just him and I, to sort out the final arrangement and set dates, etc.

    In another case, I met an insurance company representative at an event and followed up for a meeting. He directed me to one of the staff who takes care of HR and I had an initial meeting to uncover their needs. Following that discovery meeting, we had a second meeting where I presented our options to solve their issue. There was a competition with other suppliers of training to see who they would choose. We then had a third meeting, and he brought a colleague from their department and I explained what we do and what we do for them in that meeting. Again, the decision had been taken as we had won the competition and now he was harmonising the next stages internally, to get it to become a reality.

    Because the steps are elongated, I often don’t even bother to bring any Flyers with me to the first meeting and spend the whole time trying to best understand their needs and wants. This way, the full hour of time usually allocated can help me clearly ascertain if we have what they need or not. It is always a good idea to set up the next meeting at the end of the first meeting, because everyone in Tokyo is so busy you need to get into their schedules fast. Once I have done that, I bring the materials to the second meeting to support my recommendation and we go through them together. It is not uncommon to have to come back a third time and go through specific elements once more, to help them gain a clearer understanding of the contents and its suitability for their situation.

    Once you understand the cadence of doing business here, you are not getting exercised by how slow the process is or by trying to cram everything into one meeting and driving for a “yes” decision. That is very unlikely, and we need to be thinking in terms of three meetings rather than one. If we can get it done in two, then magic, but don’t expect that to happen.

    Risk aversion and team decision-making ensure that things will move slowly. No one is in a hurry to buy anything we have to offer and we have to keep that thought firmly in the front of our minds. No one gets fired for being overly cautious in Japan and risk taking is not well regarded as a concept. Patience and a full pipeline are the requirements for doing business here. If you are desperate, then you will have a rocky time because no one is on your timeline and frankly, they don’t care. We have to adjust ourselves to the way they do business, and trying to reverse the natural order of things here is a fool’s mission. “Ride the wave in Japan” is always the best advice.
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    11 分
  • Sell With Passion In Japan

    Sell With Passion In Japan
    2024/04/09
    We often hear that people buy on emotion and justify with logic. The strange thing is where is this emotion coming from? Most Japanese salespeople speak in a very dry, grey, logical fashion expecting to convince the buyer to hand over their dough. I am a salesperson but as the President of my company, also a buyer of goods and services. I have been living in Japan this third time, continuously since 1992. In all of that time I am struggling to recall any Japanese salesperson who spoke with emotion about their offer. It is always low energy, low impact talking, talking, talking all the time. There are no questions and just a massive download of information delivered in a monotone delivery. As salespeople, our job is to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer. But it is also more than that. The buyer’s mental meandering won’t necessarily have the degree of passion we need for them to make a purchasing decision. So we have to influence the course of that internal conversation they are having. This is where our own passion comes in. I always thought Japanese people were unemotional before I moved to Japan the first time in 1979. The ones I had met in business in Australia were very reserved and quite self contained. They seemed very logical and detail oriented. After I moved here I realised I had the wrong information. Japanese people are very emotional in business. This is related closely to trust. Once they trust you, they have made an emotional investment to keep using you. No one likes to make a mistake or fail and the best way to avoid that is to deal with people you can trust. How do you know you can trust them? There is some track record of reliability there, that tells you the person or company you are dealing with is a known quantity that will act predictably and correctly every time. The problem with this approach though is that you will only ever be able to sell to existing accounts. What about gaining new customers? You have no track record and no predictability as yet. When you meet a new customer they are mentally sizing you up, asking themselves “can I trust you?”. Naturally a good way to overcome the lack of track record is to create one. Offer a sample order or something for free. This takes the risk out of the equation for the person you are dealing with. To get involved with a new supplier means they have to sell the idea to their boss, who has to sell it to their boss, on up the line. No one wants to take the blame if it all goes south. A free or small trial order is a great risk containment tactic and makes it easy for all the parties concerned to participate in the experiment. The other success ingredient is passion for your product or service. When the buyer feels that passion, it is contagious and they are more likely to give you a try to at least see if there is some value to continue working with you. When he was in his mid-twenties, my Japanese father-in-law started a business in Nagoya and needed to get clients. He targeted a particular company and every morning he would stand in front of the President’s house and bow as he was leaving by car for the office. After two weeks of this, the President sent one of his people to talk to him to see why he was there every day bowing when the President left for work. When he heard that my father-in-law wanted to supply his company with curtain products, he told him to see one of his subordinates in his office to discuss it. That company eventually became a huge buyer and established my father-in-law’s business. Was that a logical decision, just because some unknown character is hanging around your house everyday like a stalker? No it was an emotional decision. What my father-in-law was showing the President was his passion, belief, commitment, discipline, patience, seriousness, earnestness and guts. That is a pretty good line-up for a new supplier in order to be given a chance. We need to remember that buyers are wanting to know our level of belief in what we are selling. The way we express that is through our passion and commitment to the relationship and the product or service we supply. Is our demeanour showing enough passion, without it seeming fake or contrived? Do we have enough faith in what we are selling, that it naturally pours out of the pores of our skin? Are we painting strong enough word pictures to get the buyer emotionally involved in a future involving what we sell? Audit your own levels of passion when you are in front of the buyer. Do you sound sold on your own offer? Do you sound committed to go the extra mile? Do you sound confident and assured, showing no hesitation? Are you honest about what is possible and what is not possible? Always understand that buyers, whether for themselves or for the company, buy on emotion and justify it with logic. Make sure you can supply that emotional requirement as ...
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    13 分
  • 380 Dress For Success When Selling In Japan

    380 Dress For Success When Selling In Japan
    2024/04/01
    I recently launched a new project called Fare Bella Figura – Make a Good Impression. Every day I take a photograph of what I am wearing and then I go into detail about why I am wearing it and put it up on social media. To my astonishment, these posts get very high impressions and a strong following. It is ironic for me. I have written over 3000 articles on hard core subjects like sales, leadership and presentations, but these don’t get the same level of engagement. Like this article, I craft it for my audience and work hard on the content and yet articles about my suit choices get a lot more traction. What I take away from this is people are interested in how we present ourselves in business. The thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that first impressions are so important. In sales, people judge us hard based on how we look, before we even have a chance to open our mouths. If we don’t get that initial visual interaction correct, then we can be playing catchup to correct an unhelpful first take on us. “Clothes maketh the man” is an old idea and is related to this first impressions equation. The other thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that I dress for the meetings I am going to have that day, rather than some random selection of what is back from the dry cleaners. We are going to make an impression with the buyer one way or another, so I want to be in control of that impression as much as is humanly possible. I believe there is a direct link between how we present ourselves and the degree of credibility we can instil in the client. If we make a mess of the fabric and colour combinations, we are screaming “unsophisticated”. I do not recommend for men to ask their wives for advice. Study this “dress for success” topic for yourself and become the master of your own universe. If we are turning up with ancient stains on our tie, or our suit, it is interpreted as sloppy and there is now a strong doubt about our quality consciousness. If our shoes are scuffed or not displaying a high shine finish, it says we are lazy, not detail oriented and unreliable. The term “down at heel” means “poor” and it comes from the fact that the back of the heel of the shoe has worn down and has not been repaired. Either we are too poor and obviously not a success in the sales profession to be able to repair it, or too indifferent and either way, it is a bad sign for the buyer. If we are wearing a brown or tan belt with black shoes or vice versa, it says “hick” and someone who lacks common sense. The exact matching tie and pocket square colour combination is another faux pas these days. Would we want to accept these types of salesperson as our “trusted advisor”? I doubt it. I certainly wouldn’t take their advice on anything if they can’t even dress themselves correctly. Suits too large or too small are another bad indicator. They have either lost a lot of weight, but haven’t bothered to get their suit taken in, or they are getting chubbier and haven’t had the suit taken out, because they won’t spend the money. It isn’t that expensive to alter an existing suit, and the difference is total. If the suit trousers are too long or too short, it looks off – go and get them altered or replace them. Style and fashion are difficult to navigate. Suit jacket lapels get skinnier, ties get wider and then get narrower, trousers get slimmer and then get fuller, socks get discarded when wearing shoes – all sorts of temporary fashion trends take over the dictates of what is appropriate. Suits can last more than one fashion trend and you have to debate with yourself whether that wide lapel is still going to present the right image with the client when everyone else is wearing a narrower lapel these days. I struggle with this. I have a favourite double breasted Versace suit from years ago and because the style is dated; I don’t get to wear it much or at all and that seems a waste. However, if I am dressing for my client, then the answer is simple – leave it in the wardrobe for a day in the future when that trend makes a comeback. My mantra when I leave the house every day is to check my look in the mirror and ask myself, “do I look like one of the most professional people in my industry?”. If I don’t, then I go and make a few changes, until I am satisfied I can pass that test. Here is a caveat. For a lot of men in Europe, they will be wearing a jacket and trouser combination, rather than a suit and the American trend is to much more casual clothing. In certain industries, like IT, you will hardly see anyone wearing a suit. Now I sell in Tokyo and everyone here wears a suit. I remember I was so surprised when met the President of a gas stand and he was wearing a suit, so men’s suits are predominant here. Therefore, I dress for this business environment and you should do the same for your reality. There is a correlation between the quality of...
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    12 分
  • 379 Selling Yourself From Stage In Japan

    379 Selling Yourself From Stage In Japan
    2024/03/26
    Public speaking spots are a great way to get attention for ourselves and what we sell. This is mass prospecting on steroids. The key notion here is we are selling ourselves rather than our solution in detail. This is an important delineation. We want to outline the issue and tell the audience what can be done, but we hold back on the “how” piece. This is a bit tricky, because the attendees are looking for the how bit, so that they can apply it to fix their issues by themselves. We don’t want that because we don’t get paid. We are here to fix their problem, not for them to DIY (Do It Yourself) their way to a solution. All selling is public speaking and presentations skills. However, very few salespeople are trained as speakers or presenters. This is incongruous, isn’t it? We need to be able to present to the one person in front of us or to hundreds of prospects all gathered together at an event. First of all, we are selling our personal brand and then by extension the solution we are representing. That is the correct order and just jumping to the solution won’t work. Buyers buy us first and then what we sell. We all know we can’t do good business with a bad guy or gal and our talk is a due diligence process to see if we can be trusted. The dumb way to sell from stage is to provide all of the content up front and then come in at the end with the shiny sales pitch. There is a discernable break in the flow and the audience braces themselves for the pitch. This isn’t the way to do it. We need to be interspersing our pitch throughout the talk, so there is no discernable shifting of gears by the speaker. This way, there is nothing to brace against or push back on. The way to do this is to determine what are the key problems and fears confronting the audience. We have the fix for these and can be a trusted partner for them. Once we have determined what are the key problems, we construct our talk to address all the most high priority needs in the time allotted. The talk is broken up into specific chapters, rotating around the key issues. We need to create hooks, which will grab the attention of the listeners. In each chapter, we outline the downside of not doing anything about fixing the problem we have raised. We also talk about what needs to be done to fix it, but we don’t reveal how to fix it. To get the point to register with the buyers, we pose rhetorical questions about what will happen if they don’t take action to deal with it. We are painting a dismal picture for them of the future ramifications of leaving the mess as it is. The fact that we understand the problem in detail tells the audience we are an expert in this area. If we have some visible proof of our expertise, all the better. We might point them to our books, blogs, podcasts or our video shows. Today, all of these things are much easier to pull off than ten years ago. For example, Amazon prints my books one at a time if I request it and so no garage is full of unsold books, which used to be the reality for most authors. Today, creating blogs and pushing them out through social media gives us credibility at almost no cost. The same with podcasts and videos. There might be some small cost to recording the shows and hosting podcasts on a platform like I use with LibSyn, but really the cost is marginal. YouTube hosts my videos and it is free. Our mobile phones provide amazing quality for recording video and video editing software is not prohibitively expensive. Editing things yourself is possible in a way it wasn’t before. This means we can project our expertise beyond the physical limits of the stage. Let me give you a case study. Please go to LinkedIn and find my page. You will see I am posting all the time on three subjects – leadership, sales and presentations. If you scroll down through the feed, you will just see over three thousand posts. My prospective buyers don’t need to read them all, but they can see there is a substantial collection of my expertise there. They can read what I publish and check it for themselves, whether it is good enough or not. This substantially bolsters my personal brand. It also allows the buyers to follow up after the talk, to check me out further before they buy what I am selling. For risk averse buyers, this is very important. By incorporating the key hooks into the talk itself, using well-crafted questions to create fear that they may have trouble if they don’t fix a problem we have flagged, we eliminate any resistance against what we are selling. When there is an obvious transition from sharing information to now selling, there is a large barrier created between the speaker and the audience. They are thinking, “I love to buy, but I hate being sold. Now I am getting the hard sell by this speaker”. Doing it the way I have outlined, we never have any barrier, because we have been working the crowd all ...
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