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Contenuto fornito da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
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The Japan Business Mastery Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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Contenuto fornito da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
The Japan Business Mastery Show aims to draw back the velvet curtain on what is rerally going on with doing business in Japan. Everything is so different here it can be confusing. This show will take you through all those minefields and position you for success in this market.
…
continue reading
267 episodi
Segna tutti come (non) riprodotti ...
Manage series 2553835
Contenuto fornito da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story. Tutti i contenuti dei podcast, inclusi episodi, grafica e descrizioni dei podcast, vengono caricati e forniti direttamente da Greg Story and Dr. Greg Story o dal partner della piattaforma podcast. Se ritieni che qualcuno stia utilizzando la tua opera protetta da copyright senza la tua autorizzazione, puoi seguire la procedura descritta qui https://it.player.fm/legal.
The Japan Business Mastery Show aims to draw back the velvet curtain on what is rerally going on with doing business in Japan. Everything is so different here it can be confusing. This show will take you through all those minefields and position you for success in this market.
…
continue reading
267 episodi
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×Japan discriminates against women in business. Former Prime Minister Abe’s modest targets for increasing female leadership numbers failed miserably. Abe’s campaign got nowhere, and with their tail between their legs, the Government significantly lowered their targets. This lack of progress is mirrored in Japan’s Rotary Clubs, traditionally male-dominated bastions within a global organization designed to foster professional connections and community contribution. Until recently, 94% of Japanese Rotary Clubs had no women members, including my own club. Since I joined in 2002, debates over admitting women were an annual occurrence, with opposition gradually dwindling as older members passed on. While there were no explicit rules against female members, selection processes magically excluded women. Thankfully, this era has ended in my club, although women still make up only 5% of Japanese Rotary membership, compared to the global average of 23%. Rotary in Japan remains a stronghold of influential businessmen, from local entrepreneurs to corporate captains of industry. These clubs reinforce existing male networks built during school and university years. While Rotary membership grows globally, Japan’s numbers have sharply declined since 2000, falling to less than half the world growth average. The recent acceptance of women marks a turning point, spurred more by declining membership rather than a genuine embrace of diversity. My own high powered club is large, wealthy, and conservative, with an average member age of 70 full of major CEOs and Chairman. If even this elite group can accept women, it does signal some broader societal change. My fellow club members are leaders of Japan’s largest corporations, so one hopes progress here reflects an evolving corporate culture. However, women’s underrepresentation in corporate training programs and leadership reveals latent barriers. Only 30% of participants in our company in-house training programs are women. Why? Because middle management is monopolised by men who do not groom women for future leadership positions. Diversity training is common now but often misdirected. With the current political pushback going on in America against DEI programmes, I wonder what will be the fallout in Japan? Companies here focus on upskilling women rather than educating male bosses about inclusive leadership. Often, I feel the whole exercise is a fake head nod to show they are doing something without achieving anything. The box has been checked and everyone can now move on. True leadership goes beyond managing processes; it involves developing all employees, including women. Without addressing male Middle Management’s role in perpetuating gender bias, progress will always be elusive. Abe’s original pathetic targets for women in leadership still remain distant. Womens’ advancement hinges on male decision-makers recognizing their role in promoting talent. Just as Rotary evolved to include women, Japanese businesses must transform their leadership approaches or pay the piper. Starting with male Middle Management, Japan’s fostering of inclusive leadership is essential for Japan’s future success. We are running out of people here and we need women to play a more active role in companies as leaders.…
Presenters get this wrong. Avoid creating a barrier between yourself and the audience. Presenters are often elevated on a stage or positioned at the front of the room, surrounded by podiums, slides, lighting, and microphones, all of which can inadvertently distance them from their audience. In Japan, standing above a seated audience requires an apology at the start of the speech, as such positioning implies superiority in a hierarchy-conscious society. Similarly, using a commanding voice or overly formal demeanour can create unnecessary separations. Instead, focus on building rapport and connection. To persuade your audience effectively, remove as many barriers as possible. Speak conversationally, as though addressing close friends with whom trust and familiarity have already been established. This approach creates an atmosphere of shared confidences, making the audience feel they are privy to special insights and data. Transition from speaking at your audience to speaking with them. One practical technique is to engage with your audience before the presentation. Arrive early, converse with attendees, and ask about their reasons for attending. Incorporate these interactions into your talk. Mention names and comments from the audience to create a sense of inclusion and intimacy. For example: “Suzuki-san mentioned an interesting point earlier,” or, “Obayashi-san shared new data during our chat before lunch.” Recognizing individuals publicly not only builds connection but also enhances their sense of value. Adjust your tone to be more inclusive and conversational. Speak as though you’re chatting over a backyard fence rather than addressing a formal audience. Use gestures to draw people in, such as extending your arm with an open palm or miming an embrace of the entire audience. Maintain eye contact for about six seconds per person to ensure inclusivity without discomfort. Self-disparaging humour can also break down hierarchy. Boris Johnson, for example, uses humour to appear more relatable, despite his elite background. While you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously, avoid overdoing it, as excessive self-deprecation can seem insincere or manipulative. To foster connection, shift your mindset to a friendly, informal setting. Include your audience in your presentation, adopt a conversational tone, and use gestures and humour to build rapport. These strategies make your delivery engaging, memorable, and effective.…
Salespeople often hope for straightforward buyers who buy without hesitation. However, reality is rarely so simple, and objections are actually critical to the sales process. When buyers hesitate, it signals interest, as it means they are considering potential issues. If buyers show no interest and raise no questions, that’s a warning sign—they’re not truly engaged. Objections suggest a mental commitment to the purchase, as buyers are naturally cautious and want to resolve potential risks before moving forward. In sales, objections reveal an intent to purchase and can guide us in addressing any reservations the buyer may have. When a buyer has no objections and doesn’t ask questions, they’re likely not invested in the product or solution, which could mean a failed sale. This is especially true in cases of high-cost or complex products; questions and objections indicate the buyer is working through a mental checklist and seriously evaluating the purchase. Addressing these concerns builds trust and moves the buyer closer to a decision. In Japan, decision-making is often done collectively, through a process called the ringi system, where various stakeholders in the company must approve the purchase. The individual in the sales meeting may be gathering information for others, not the final decision-maker. Consequently, they may raise fewer objections, not because they lack interest but because they’re not the end-user or the final decision authority. This can be misleading for the salesperson, who may not realize they still need to engage other decision-makers. A recent sales example illustrates this point: during a pitch to a financial institution with a scope ten times larger than they anticipated, the representatives raised few objections. This lack of questions signaled that they were likely not the decision-makers. This highlights the need to address the real stakeholders and make sure objections are raised and answered to progress the sale. No objections can indicate that the salesperson hasn’t demonstrated enough value or urgency. The true objective isn’t just a one-time sale; it’s to build a long-term partnership and ensure reorders. To achieve this, buyers need to feel confident they’re making the best choice for their business, requiring the salesperson to prove the product’s value and address any concerns that could prevent future purchases. Key Points Objections show genuine buyer interest and intent. No questions mean the buyer likely isn’t engaged or ready. In Japan, decisions often require broad approval, meaning the salesperson may not meet all stakeholders. Addressing objections builds trust and confidence, essential for long-term partnerships.…
Is speed expensive? Constant hustling can lead to large and small errors of judgment. We get so caught up in living 24/7 lifestyles that we start missing big pieces of the success puzzle. People are the key to most businesses, but look at how we treat them. We hit the panic button on a piece of work and make everyone jump through hoops to make sure the deadline is met. We either end the sentence for the person we are speaking with or we cut them off and lunge in with our own preferred words and ideas. Doing more, faster with less, we are constantly hustling to gain time. The process becomes addictive. The unrelenting daily email tsunami pushes us to gain extra time - all the time. Our “contemplative self” is subsumed by the “mad rush us”, leaping around like a lunatic. Imagine if every interaction you have with others, where you are focused on hustling for your personal gain, came back to haunt you. How would this change your behavior? You would definitely take more care about the people around you, how you spoke with others and your general interactions with humanity. You would be more considerate of others. The slow food movement was a reaction to the impersonalisation of the food service industry. We need a slow business movement to do the same thing in the way we run our businesses. Contemplation is vaporizing as we constantly hustle. Who we really are and what we actually stand for in our value system is getting bent out of shape. So if you find yourself hustling like mad, stop and ask yourself, what is the cost of all this speed? What am I actually doing with all of these contraband minutes? Unleash the contemplative you instead and practice tuning yourself into other people. This is the universal, timeless, key business success skill – our ability to do well in our engagement with others and we are in danger of losing it…
The beauty, weight loss, fashion, and entertainment industries project fantasies of success, often leaving people feeling inadequate. Comparing ourselves to wealthy actors, sports stars, or CEOs can amplify dissatisfaction with our own lives, making us wish we’d been born with better resources, opportunities, or advantages. However, dwelling on these thoughts isn’t productive; we aren’t going to be dealt a different hand in life. While past mistakes, poor choices, or unfavorable circumstances may weigh us down, it’s essential to stop focusing on what we cannot change. Instead, shifting our energy toward what lies ahead helps us progress. Many get caught up in revisiting past errors, but to move forward, it’s crucial to leave those burdens behind and focus on present strengths and opportunities. Moving forward means becoming our own "first responder." When disaster strikes, first responders act quickly to save lives. Similarly, no one will swoop in to rescue us, so we must act on our own behalf, developing a rescue plan to overcome mental barriers that limit us. While we can’t forget our past, we can stop letting it incapacitate us today. Worrying about past events doesn’t alter them. Instead, mentally “compartmentalize” these memories, so they don’t spill over into our present. With the past contained, the next step is to focus on our strengths. One of the most significant assets anyone has is time. Whether spent productively or otherwise, time is ours to use, and how we spend it determines our future. By viewing time as a key resource, we can direct it toward building the life we want. To use time effectively, set a clear vision for where you want to be. From there, identify specific, realistic goals and action steps. Progress may feel incremental, but with every action step, momentum builds, moving you closer to your vision. This process requires only a small amount of your most valuable asset—time—and yields a future crafted by your own efforts.…
"The good is the enemy of the great" reminds us that competent speakers often fall short of their full potential, delivering presentations that are solid but forgettable. Many presenters lack that extra energy—the metaphorical "ten degrees of heat"—needed to elevate their talk from adequate to impactful. An intelligent, prepared presenter can cover content, address questions, and complete their talk. Yet, without that added intensity, the presentation fades from the audience's memory almost instantly. The issue is usually a lackluster opening. When speakers start speaking at the same level as their pre-talk chatter, they fail to signal a shift to something meaningful, making it easy for the audience to remain passive. Audiences arrive distracted, their minds already full, so the first words must forcefully capture attention. The beginning of a presentation should demand focus, with language that grabs listeners and prepares them to engage. Opening with a vivid story, an intriguing statistic, or a compelling quote can draw people in. These "hooks" are essential in creating a memorable experience. This attention-grabbing start should also include physical tools like eye contact, voice modulation, and gestures. Using a strong voice and adding gesture strengthens the overall impact, forcing people to focus. Eye contact is essential, even with large audiences, as it creates a sense of connection and accountability. Directing focus to individuals for about six seconds at a time gives a sense of shared attention and purpose. Physical positioning is another tool. Moving closer to the audience or adjusting posture to convey authority and warmth can amplify the connection. For example, standing over a seated crowd can add power to the speaker’s presence. These non-verbal cues, combined with vocal dynamics, engage the audience effectively. Once a speaker has captivated the audience, the next task is maintaining that energy. Vocal variety, pauses for effect, and energy level must be sustained to prevent the talk from slipping into a monotone that loses attention. Pauses build anticipation and emphasize key points, making the talk more memorable. A good start sets the tone for a powerful presentation. Sadly, many speakers start flat, stay flat, and finish flat, leaving audiences unimpressed and unengaged. Don’t let that be your presentation. Action Steps Recognize that audiences are often inattentive at first. Understand you’re competing with short attention spans and various distractions. Use a strong opening to grab attention. Leverage voice, eye contact, body language, and positioning for impact. A powerful beginning makes it easier to sustain energy throughout.…
Hearing “no” isn’t easy, especially in sales. It’s a rejection we often react to emotionally, pushing harder in hopes of reversing the answer. However, immediately countering objections is usually ineffective, as this response is driven more by impulse than by strategy. A better approach is to use a “cushion”—a neutral statement that buys a few seconds to regroup and keeps the conversation calm. For example, if a client says, “it’s too expensive,” respond with, “It’s important to have good budget management,” instead of jumping into a justification. This brief pause lets you refocus and prompts you to ask “why” instead, uncovering the real reasons behind the client’s objection. Hearing a reason like “it’s too expensive” is often just a headline—surface-level feedback that may mask underlying concerns. Much like retail shoppers who claim they dislike a color to avoid revealing they can’t afford the item, buyers may deflect to avoid discussing their true reservations. Digging deeper is essential. Asking “Why is that a problem?” and probing further helps reveal their actual issues, and asking, “Are there other reasons?” ensures you’ve gathered all potential objections. Once the main reason is identified, determine if it’s based on fact or misconception. False information may require a firm rebuttal backed by evidence. If the objection is legitimate—like delivery time issues tied to quality standards—acknowledge it, explain, and see if there’s a workaround. In cases where finances are the concern, reframing your product as a solution to help improve their business can be effective. The key is addressing objections only after fully understanding the client’s perspective. Without this understanding, you risk wasting time on objections that don’t address their real concerns. Ultimately, by pausing, asking strategic questions, and prioritizing key objections, you can either resolve the issue or determine that it’s best to move on to another client who can benefit from your offer.…
Visionary leaders are often seen as motivators and guides, but to lead effectively, they must first have a clear vision for themselves. Many people offer sound advice to others while neglecting to apply it in their own lives, which can undermine their credibility as leaders. To be a visionary, one must back their vision with specific goals. Living an “intentional life” is a good starting point; it means choosing to accumulate meaningful experiences instead of drifting aimlessly through life. Before focusing on a corporate vision, individuals should concentrate on their personal vision. If one’s life is disorganized, it’s difficult to inspire order in an organization. A future vision should reflect the life one desires: where to live, who to be with, and what fulfills and entertains them. In the corporate world, significant resources are dedicated to defining a brand’s direction. Individuals should apply the same rigor to their personal branding. This involves envisioning the ideal location and style of one’s future home, including details about its color, design, and surroundings. By creating a vision book with images and words, one makes this vision more tangible. To live intentionally, it’s essential to visualize objectives in detailed, concrete terms. This includes contemplating the person one aspires to become, relationships with others, travel experiences, preferred styles, and even choice of vehicle. Crafting a detailed picture of the desired future state helps solidify goals. Once the vision is established, it’s crucial to set goals that align with this vision. Goal-setting is most effective when roles in life are considered. People often focus solely on professional objectives, neglecting their multifaceted nature. Each person plays various roles—spouse, parent, friend, etc.—and should establish corresponding goals in areas like finance, health, and personal development. These goals must connect back to the personal vision. While the vision serves as the destination, goals are the vehicles that facilitate progress. Establishing a timeline for achieving the vision necessitates creating milestones for the goals to ensure accountability. Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want.” To be a visionary leader, one must assist others in realizing their goals. The first step is to get one’s own life in order. This focus will establish the leader’s credibility and capability to support their team’s ambitions. When leaders successfully help their teams achieve their goals, they foster cooperation and become true visionary leaders.…
The saying goes that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," and in the world of presenting, an often misquoted statistic claims that 55% of audience impressions are based on appearance. While this stems from Professor Mehrabian's research at UCLA, it's crucial to understand the context: this percentage applies when the content and delivery of a presentation are incongruent. When a speaker's words don’t match their presentation style, audiences can become distracted, especially in today’s world filled with distractions like smartphones. As speakers, it’s our responsibility to maintain audience engagement. High-energy presentations, which I strive to deliver, can generate heat, making clothing choices critical. For instance, I avoid wearing light blue shirts, as sweat can create a distracting two-tone effect. Instead, I prefer white shirts and always wear a jacket to maintain a professional appearance. The sight of a speaker with sweaty armpits is unappealing and distracting. Proper fit is also essential. An ill-fitting suit can disrupt the audience's focus. I recommend avoiding bright jackets during presentations; they draw attention away from your message. Instead, keep the focus on your words. When presenting on a panel, be mindful of your posture, especially with leg crossing. It can lead to awkward views of hairy legs or ankles. To avoid this, I wear long socks. While I enjoy bright ties, I choose muted options for presentations to prevent competing for attention with my face. One of my pet peeves is when men allow gaps between the tie knot and shirt collar. This oversight can be distracting. I also shorten my tie length slightly so that it doesn’t peek out from under the jacket, which helps maintain a polished appearance. Attention to footwear is also crucial. Shoes should be spotless and well-maintained; scuffed shoes convey a lack of professionalism. Ensure that your belt matches your shoes—brown with brown and black with black. Mismatched accessories can undermine your credibility. Nametags, often made of distracting plastic, should not be worn while presenting. Instead, place them on the table or lectern to avoid visual distractions. While this discussion primarily addresses men’s attire, similar principles apply to women. The key is to prioritize facial visibility over fashion, ensuring that nothing detracts from the power of your message.…
Salespeople often fall into a rhythm of easing off as the year-end approaches, especially in Japan, where the fiscal year ends in March. This period, leading up to the holiday break, can see a decline in productivity that equates to 8% of the year. To maximize sales, it’s essential to maintain focus and activity through December. One effective strategy is to reach out to existing customers. Even if they are currently utilizing some of our solutions, there are often additional products or services they may not yet have considered. To identify these opportunities, create an Opportunity Matrix, listing available solutions at the top and clients on the side. Use check marks to denote what clients are currently purchasing and mark potential sales chances as A, B, or C for follow-up discussions. December is also an ideal time for prospecting, particularly by reconnecting with “orphans”—clients with whom you previously had a relationship but have since lost contact. Various factors, such as changes in personnel or economic conditions, may have caused these clients to drift away. Use this time to reach out, even if meetings may not occur until January. Another crucial action is to identify look-alike targets—companies in the same industry as current clients that would likely have similar needs. Instead of random calls, conduct targeted outreach to these potential clients, leveraging existing industry knowledge to craft compelling opening conversations. Finding the right decision-makers can be challenging, particularly in Japan, where information is not always readily available. Annual reports can provide insights into key personnel, while social media platforms like LinkedIn might also help, though penetration in Japan is relatively low. Utilize your network for referrals, and if necessary, refine your credibility statement to get past gatekeepers and reach decision-makers directly. When communicating with potential clients, emphasize your experience with their competitors to strengthen your credibility. Present a general statement about your services, back it up with evidence of successful collaborations with similar companies, and assert your authority to command a direct connection to the decision-maker. Ultimately, the goal is to expand the sales pipeline and maintain momentum through December, setting up meetings for the new year. In Japan, December, known as "shiwasu," signifies a busy time when teachers are on the move. Similarly, salespeople should stay active and focused as the year closes, ensuring a strong finish and a robust start to the new year.…
Leaders often rely on “automatic trust,” stemming from their authority, to gain compliance from team members. However, achieving genuine, “earned trust” is crucial for fostering motivation and commitment within a team. Unlike automatic trust, earned trust develops through consistent, authentic interactions where leaders show integrity in both “talking the talk” and “walking the walk.” Without earned trust, delegation becomes risky, as leaders may feel their team won’t reliably handle tasks, which hampers time management and the team’s growth. Conversely, when trust is high, team members willingly give discretionary effort, displaying greater creativity, dedication, and initiative. Building and maintaining earned trust requires time and steady effort. Leaders may inadvertently undermine trust by losing their temper, rejecting ideas without consideration, or failing to follow through on promises. Moreover, insufficient communication—where leaders focus on issuing orders instead of explaining, listening, or seeking input—can erode trust. Effective communication involves explaining the purpose of tasks, listening to team concerns, and fostering mutual understanding. A significant challenge in cultivating trust is finding the time for these trust-building interactions amidst a busy schedule. Leaders who don’t delegate effectively often have less time to engage meaningfully with their team, leading to a vicious cycle of mistrust and lack of delegation. To break this loop, leaders must prioritize one-on-one time with team members, understanding their motivations, interests, fears, and goals. These personal insights allow leaders to align delegated tasks with individual career paths and developmental needs, building a sense of purpose and accountability within the team. For successful delegation, it’s essential that leaders approach each task with their team member’s growth in mind, involving them in planning and monitoring progress. This process demands dedicated time, which may be easily deprioritized due to competing obligations, but committing to these conversations ultimately pays off by strengthening trust. In sum, building trust is an ongoing process that requires leaders to change their mindset, habits, and time allocation. Rather than repeating the same experience annually, leaders must continually work to strengthen relationships with their team. Earned trust not only requires effort but is invaluable in elevating team cohesion, individual motivation, and collective success. Consistent attention to these trust-building efforts results in a lasting foundation of trust within the team. Action Steps: Recognize the difference between position-based and earned trust. Develop delegation skills that foster growth. Reflect on whether genuine communication is occurring. Dedicate time to knowing your team deeply.…
There is an abundance of definitions on what is charismatic leadership? The definition proffered during a recent webinar was uncontroversial and acceptable: emotional and intellectual engagement, inspiration to go the extra mile – all quite reasonable elements. Somehow that left me feeling vaguely unfulfilled. Reflecting on charismatic leaders, what was it about them that made them so attractive? Of course they were highly skilled, experienced and professional. Yet their technical knowledge wasn’t the distinguishing feature, because hosts of uncharismatic leaders are equally skilled. Great communicators, they capture the key points, are concise, insightful, engaging. No shortage of would-be charismatic leaders with this resume but no cigar. Optimistic, positive, high energy, fast paced, dynamic – yes all good points, but there was still something missing. I think the missing piece of the puzzle here is the way charismatic leaders make us feel when we are with them. I have heard that in his prime Bill Clinton would speak with you and make you feel like you were the only person in the room, despite being one person in a massive crowd. What are some relevant behaviours we can adopt to make us more charismatic? Begin with praise and honest appreciation. This must be genuine and linked to actual behavior, not vagaries. There isn’t a lot of praise and appreciation floating around in the business everyday, because a lot of leaders are Driver personality styles, who prioritise task completion over building people. We can be different – we can look for the good, the strengths in our people and play to those rather than lurking around the cubicles with our super fault-finder nuclear harpoon at the ready. If we find fault, call attention to it indirectly. We should also use encouragement and make the fault seem easy to correct. Let them save face, don’t create a barrier by lambasting them. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. This means seeing people at their best and treating them that way rather than the opposite. We can ask questions, instead of giving direct orders. Socrates was on to the power of this approach centuries ago, but the typical boss today is still an order dispensing machine. When we tell, we own the task - when we ask, our people own it. We all own the world we help to create, so be the boss who gets help creating that world. Make them feel happy about doing the thing you suggest. Is this easy – no, but if our behavior is the driver then we need to persistently and permanently change our approach.…
Many people ask us at Dale Carnegie, what should I do with preparing my slide deck for my key note presentation? What’s too much? What’s too little? What’s the best way to make this work for me? That is what we will explore in this week’s show. Here’s some guidelines for using visuals. Less is definitely best. On a screen try to avoid paragraphs and sentences. If you can, use single words, and bullet points. Single words can be very very powerful. Just one word or even just one number can be very very powerful and then you can talk to the number, or you can talk to that word. Or just a photograph or a simple visual and you talk to the visual. You don’t have to crowd the screen with stuff that we can read ourselves. What you really want is the audience to be focused on you, the presenter and not what’s on the screen. This is very critical. We don’t want the screen competing with us so the less you have up there the better, because people look at it two seconds, they’ve got it and then they come back to you. Which is where you want them. And I mention that two seconds because I believe that the two second rule is a key rule. If you are putting something up on screen and an audience cannot see that and understand it within two seconds, it’s probably too complicated. Generally the six by six rule means that less is best. Six words on a line and six lines maximum on a screen is good. With fonts, try to make fonts easy to read. You might use for the title 44 font size, and for the text a 32. In terms of font types, sans serif fonts like Arial are very easy to read. For visibility, be careful about the using underline and bold. Italics are also not easy to read. Pictures are great. Pictures have a lot of visual appeal and as we say, a picture is worth a thousand words. In two seconds they’ve got it. Now they’re ready for your words to talk about the relevancy of this visual image. Colors are tricky, you rarely see people using them. Colors like black, blue, green - they work very well on a screen. Stay away from oranges, greys and red. Black and blue work together well as a contrast, as does green and black.…
We get lazy. We start cutting corners. We get off our game. We chill, cruise and take the foot off the pedal. Sales is demanding and a life of constant pressure. The temptation is when we get to a certain level of success we think well, we have done enough. We can justify that coffee break, that longer lunch, coming in late after the first mid-morning appointment and heading home early after the last early afternoon appointment. This is not how the pro thinks. We should be getting our hustle on, getting our motivation going, setting out sights high. We have to have a showdown with “average is good enough” self talk. We need to make sure we are doing the basics like a demon on fire. The pipeline tells no lies. It is either looking good or it is looking bad. That pipeline will determine the amount of business we can do in any given quarter and in any year. We need good basics in play to stuff that pipeline full of qualified clients. There are basics in sales we quickly try to short circuit. We are fooling ourselves. We need to have time allocation every day for prospecting. In the process of doing that, we should be polishing our pitch until it is tight and has a massive hook attached to it. We need to be parsimonious with the words to explain all of that. We need to be eloquent with the explanation of the hook, as to why the person answering the phone should bother to connect us with the line manager we wish to speak with. Every industry needs a specific hook, based on the pain points of that business. The pitch is canned and not canned at the same time. It has some common elements which are the best composed explanation of who we are, etc. The why you should care part, needs to be specific to that industry, the sector, the market, the firm in question at this point in time. We need to treat every lead coming in from our website, be it from an SEO enquiry or a paid click though from our ads like it was on fire. If we don’t get in touch with that potential buyer right now, the lead will combust further and become a burnt, unrecognisable cinder. Soon it will be too cold and too feeble to sustain the follow up call required. We have to fight complacency. The enemy of great is good. So no being satisfied with good is allowed! Don’t forget our sale’s pro basics need constant work, permanent polishing, endless eagerness.…
Before Shinya Katanozaka became President of ANA Holdings he came up with a genius idea. Allow the passengers to order breakfast, lunch and dinner whenever they pleased. Passenger surveys showed the clients were in full agreement. What the boss had not anticipated was that passengers would order the meals immediately on take-off, making it impossible to deliver on the promise. The plan was soon scrapped. The point here is not about being willing and unafraid to try new things, in order to differentiate ourselves from the hoi polloi of the competition. That courage and motivation is exemplary. The real issue is that no one inside the ANA organisation told him the “Emperor Has No Clothes”. When you have dynamic leaders, you often get the “success at all costs no matter what” dynamism, that comes as part of their personality package. They are mentally strong, persuasive, disciplined, hard working, intolerant of weakness, tough, masterful and basically a handful for everyone around them. As leaders in Japan, one of our biggest fears is ignorance. We may come up with a genius idea that is actually rubbish. The age, stage and power hierarchy here ensures no one wants to stand out by “speaking truth to power”. Subordinates learn quickly that taking personal responsibility for anything is a risky business. You become a powerful advocate for your own opinion, you are ace at debate, you can wrangle with the best of them to get your way. Hasn’t that been your formula for your massive success so far? Why change what is working? If the people around us don’t feel the trust to speak up, without being decimated by our forceful personalities, then we will keep on building our ladder higher and higher, better and better up against the wrong wall Listening to others is a new skill for most bosses, so it will take time to bed it down. The key is to slooooow down. To give our 100% concentration to the person in front of us. To really listen to them for a change. We have built up a reputation of not listening, of being the bulldozer, of pushing through regardless and of being oblivious to dissenting opinions. This will not get turned around in a day. This is the work of months of effort. This must become the new behaviour change we need to install, if we want to draw on the full power of all the opinions at our disposal. Here is the real crunch point – we have to become more humble about the validity of our own judgment and experience. Got it boss?…
Whenever I am in the USA, I love watching the different television preachers in action. I noticed they are master storytellers, usually using Bible incidents to make a point in the here and now. The parables in the Bible are all mini-episodes, which teach a point about success. They are definitely on to something with their storytelling expertise. As speakers, we have a topic to address, a key message we want communicate and the platform to do so. How can we add memorable, interesting stories to our talk which will bolster the point we are making? The best stories are the ones people can see in their mind’s eye. It is a bit like reading a novel, after you have seen the video series or the movie based on the book. You can easily picture the scenes, the situation, the characters, the backdrops, etc. when you read the text. This is what we should be looking to create. Short descriptions of incidents that inform a certain course of action. There should be people involved, preferably people they know already. We want locations they can see or imagine. We weave our point into these stories and draw conclusions for the audience on what course they should take. So, plan the talk well and paint a picture of the season, the location interiors, the people involved. We want the listeners to be able to see all of this in their mind’s eye. Combining storytelling, with a bit of showmanship, is a powerful move. Being energized will help us get our message through all the competing noise in a busy life. We need to use showmanship in moderation though or it can quickly feel manipulative. It will however lift the energy in the audience and grab their attention, as you download your key points. Try adding some excellent, illustrative stories into your next presentation and also see where you can add in some showmanship, to engage with the audience members. Let’s use storytelling to become much more memorable as presenters, but in a good way!!!…
You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed. Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients. Brands are there to decrease the buyer’s sense of risk. A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level. Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise. Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”. At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains. They have global footprints and they want clients to use them where ever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality. There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand. When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice. When I arrived at the Taipei WestIn Hotel check-in I was told there were no rooms ready. I asked when a room will become available. The young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn’t know. I ask her for the name of the General Manager. This is where it gets very interesting. Her response - stone motherless silence. Not one word in reply. Nothing! So I asked again. More total silence. I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response. More pure silence. This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone. Finally I get a whispered “Andrew Zou”. So what am I thinking now? Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained. There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar and wait. Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service. We all understand that. The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues. Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them. This would have to be a key area of training in that industry. The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership. If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well. The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia. The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels. From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company. Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise? How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide? Can people get to me easily if there is a problem? Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling? The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job. We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations. We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly. We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients. That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.…
We love acronyms! Our workplaces are thriving with them such that we can hold extended conversations composed entirely of seemingly impenetrable codes. They are handy though and this one R.E.AL. is short and serviceable to describe best practice leadership attributes. It always good to have evidence around pontification. “Reliable” is an obvious choice and though much upheld in principle, tends to break down in practice. Reliable is an attribute that leads to trust only when the staff observe that what is said is actually done, that promises are kept and that their own personal development is being given a high priority. “What is in it for me” is a common human frailty. Bosses who keep this in mind when making sure the organisation and individual goals of their staff are aligned, get more loyalty and more accomplished. “Empathetic” is closely linked to listening skills. Taking the viewpoint of the other person is difficult if we don’t know what that viewpoint is. Busy bosses don’t have much time to get below the surface calm of the workplace. Some don’t care – just get me the numbers – or else! Using our position power works up to a point but we miss out on a lot of creative potential as the opportunity cost. Successful bosses have good awareness and confidence to communicate they really do care about their people. “Aspirational” reflects ideas about grasping the bigger picture. Hovering above the melee of the everyday to see the vision to be realised on the far horizon. It means communicating beyond this quarter’s goals and placing each individual’s role in terms of their contribution to the bigger goal. The leader has to inject the ideas and concepts involved into terms that resonate with each person individually. “Learning” gets nods of approval but many executives have had one year of experience thirty times rather than thirty years of experience. Their views are still locked away in a mental vault, for which they have lost the key. Too busy to learn. Busy, busy working in their business, rather than on their business. If we aren’t prepared to permanently kill our favoured ideas and concepts, we must be prepared to risk falling behind, trampled by our competitors. REAL, is easy to remember and that at least is a start to actually realising its power. We know all of these things – we just forget or get too busy to do them. Let’s change that.…
Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets. In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in the client’s best interests. We know we should listen carefully to what the client wants, before we attempt to suggest any solution for the buyer’s needs. We know that by asking well designed questions, we can possibly come up with an insight that triggers a “we hadn’t thought of that” reaction at best and at worst, at least know if we have a solution for them or not. Under pressure though, salespeople can go temporarily deaf. Even assuming they are smart enough to ask questions in the first place, they may fall over when it comes to listening to the buyer’s answers. They are not actually plumbing the depths of what the client is trying to achieve. In fact, they are ignoring the hints and nuances in the sales conversation. What are they doing? They are fixated on their needs, their target achievement, their big bonus, their job security. The client may have outlined what they had in mind, but that won’t scratch because the salesperson needs a bigger sale to make target. They need to expand what the client wants regardless of whether the client needs that solution or not. Upselling and cross selling are legitimate aspects of sales, but the purpose has to be very clear. It is not about making the salesperson more money The client may not have the full view of what is possible, because they will never know the seller’s lineup of solutions as well as the salesperson. They will also not have had deep conversations with their competitors. They won’t have been allowed behind the velvet curtain, to see what their competitors are doing and how they are doing it. They will not have had a broad exposure to what other firms and industries are doing in terms of best practice. This is the value of the salesperson, because they are constantly doing all of these things. They are collectors of stories, problems, breakthroughs, successes and can connect many dots together. In this sense, they can see possibilities the client may not have know exist or may not have thought of. This is where the cross-sell and the up-sell add value, because the salesperson can expand the client’s world and help them to become more successful. That is a long way from ramping up the number value of the sale, to make target. Nevertheless, this is what happens when the focus is on the wrong objective. If salespeople are trying to expand the complexity of the sale, to manufacture a larger sale, at some point the client is going to drop out. Unless they see overwhelming value in increasing the scope, they are well aware that this enlarged project is over budget. Now budget is just a fiction and we all know that. It is an imaginary estimate of where expenses could be allocated and it occupies a cell in a spreadsheet line. Many times we have seen budgets miraculously appear from nowhere, when the perceived value is great. The “Rob Peter To Pay Paul” school of accounting. The point about value comes back to listening skills. If the salesperson is focused on the client’s benefit, then they can rummage through their memory banks for best practices that could be applied to help the client achieve their aim. In the process, this may mean increasing the investment to get a bigger return. If the salesperson is just focused on getting their monthly number, they are not really paying attention to the client’s needs at all. They just start padding the details of the project, so that the numbers are bumped up. Once the client feels they are being ramped up for the salesperson’s benefit, then the trust is gone and the deal won’t happen anyway. Salespeople need to be really listening to the needs of the client and should forget about what they want. As Zig Ziglar said, “if you can help enough other people get what they want, then you will get what you want”. Zig was a great listener!…
Basically your job is toast. There is a machine or there will soon be a machine that can do it faster, better and cheaper than you. Our skill set didn’t change much from the start of agriculture 12,000 years ago until the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century. This last 150 years has been busy. We have created a weapon that can destroy our race. Who thought we would be that stupid? Fifty years ago we didn’t believe machine translation of our complex language skills would get very far. Driving cars and trucks requires us, because it is such a delicate, detailed and difficult set of tasks. What a ridiculous idea to imagine replacing those cantankerous, aging Japanese taxi drivers and punch perm truckers here in Tokyo with a self-driving, self-navigating vehicles. Internet of Things Komatsu tractors ploughing rice fields by themselves, nah, never happen. Apocalypse Now style “death from the air” requires top gun pilots and gum chewing gunners, doesn’t it. Killing each other can’t be delegated to drones. Robot vacuum cleaners, programmable pets, hotty droid receptionists, nimble stair climbing machines, adult men (many with passports) waving light sticks at holograph vocalists (Hatsune Miku) – not possible right? Don’t worry, moral and ethical judgments, “the buck stops here” business decisions, hiring and firing employment protocols, creative brainstorming – there is a long list of actions which will always require people to be involved. We need the human interaction, to hear stories, to share experiences, to be motivated, to aspire together against the rival firm, to set and follow our organisation’s Vision and Mission. We want empathy, collaboration, a sense of ownership, relationships. Geoff Colvin in his book “Humans Are Underrated” references a recent Oxford Economics study asking employers which staff skills they will need the most over the next five to ten years. The top priorities were all right brain - relationship building, teaming, co-creativity, brainstorming, cultural sensitivity and the ability to manage diverse employees. Henry Ford complained that every time he wanted a pair of human hands on his assembly line, he got “a brain attached”. Today, we want that brain that can feel as well as think. We have to be good at being human and good in our interactions with other humans. Colvin noted, “being a great performer is becoming less about what you know and more about what you’re like. Here is the challenge for typical male CEO driver types, who are assertive and task, not people, oriented: how to lead organisations where technical skill is being outsourced to bots and the value of human interaction has become more critical to the success of the organisation?. Do you ignore it or do you decide to change? How do you change?…
My eyes are closing. I am struggling to stay awake. There is something about this presentation that is not working. I thought, it must be me. I must be tired. Later however I realized the problem. I was being lulled into sleep by the monotone delivery of the presenter. The brand by the way is gorgeous. This is seriously high profile, a name that everyone knows and respects. The name alone triggers images that are all first class. The slides and videos he presented were all quality. These people have money and they know about marketing very high end products. Our speaker had all of this powerful support going for him, yet the actual presentation was sleep inducing. Why was that? The brand is a passion brand, but there was no passion. The brand is a great story, but the storytelling was minimal. The delivery was wooden. Measured, but wooden. Fortunately, despite his lifeless delivery, the brand is so powerful it can survive his attempt to murder it. But what a wasted opportunity. It is not as if this brand doesn’t have competitors. He is their guy in Japan, so that is his job, every time, everywhere. It was a good audience too. These are people who appreciate a good brand, who are influencers, who can spread the message. No one will bother though because they were not receiving any energy from this talk. Brands are being recreated every single day. When the product is consumed that is a brand defining moment. If the brand promise is not delivered when the product or service is consumed, then the brand is that much lessened. If this continues, then the brand will disappear, vanquished by its competitors. If our man in Japan had given a high energy presentation, extolling the virtues of the brand, that would have been consistent with the positioning of the brand. If you are representing a funeral home however, that would not be appropriate. So obviously we need to be congruent. This brand case though would be a great platform for enthusiastic storytelling and verbal passion for the brand. Where were the gripping stories of high drama and intrigue, as they duked it out with their competitors across the globe and over the decades? Where were the human dimension stories of the customers who were famous and fans. There was little or nor energy being transmitted to the audience. When we speak we have to radiate that energy to the listeners. We need to invigorate them. We do this through our voice and our body language. It is an inside out process, where the internal belief is so powerful it explodes out to the audience. They see we are convinced, we are believers and they become believers too. Let’s raise our energy levels up when promoting our company in a public presentation. Make sure our voice is using all the range of highs and lows to get full tonal variety. No monotone delivery please. We need to punch out hard certain key words and phrases, like the crescendos in classical music. We need our body language to be backing this up, our gestures in sync with what we are saying. We need to lift the energy of the audience through our personal power.…
Pricing is usually set by the boss and salespeople are just there to get out and sell at that designation. The trouble though is salespeople are not convinced by any price setting methodology. They only believe in the reality of the market. The way they know the reality is the degree of pushback they get from clients, when they are trying to sell. When you have no belief in the value backing up that price point, your ability to sell at that rate is simply squashed. You default to discounting to get a small piece of something, rather than a very large piece of nothing. The crunch point is the sales price negotiation with the buyer. If you have gotten into the death spiral of last minute discounting, in order to move the product or service, you have now trained the buyer to extract the biggest possible discount every time. Instead, give them an ultimatum on price and a very, very short fixed time to take it or leave it. In the meantime, call another potential buyer. If you have not built up pipeline for your sales, then you are always going to be vulnerable to price collapse. If you discount once and then imagine that by telling the Japanese buyer this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a spectacularly rare alignment of the planets, which will never happen again in their lifetime, a never to be repeated offer, you are kidding yourself. Don’t miss this. In Japan, as soon as you drop the price, you are now locked into that price point with that client forever. It is not impossible to go higher but it is very, very hard to pull that one off. You have to be ready to drop the buyer entirely, to restore your price point validation. The equation here isn’t just with the buyer, it is with the salespeople as well. By dropping the price we tell them that this is all this is worth and they believe it. They cannot push the price back up, because they don’t see it at that level either. The company leadership has to intervene and say “burn that buyer if they won’t accept this price”. Be prepared to lose their business. If we do that, then the salespeople will get religion about the pricing validity. When we are haggling over the price with the buyer and they say that, “this price is too high”, “that is out of our budget”, “we can’t afford it at that level, ”can’t you drop the price”, “we never pay that much”, etc., we are in a bind. We want the sale, so we immediately go into discount mode. This is a big negotiating mistake. Don’t fold on the price pushback. What we should be doing is defending our price. We don’t do that by arguing with the buyer. We don’t do that by force of will. We do it by trying to better understand the client’s situation. Often salespeople stop asking questions at this critical juncture and instead go into high energy “tell mode”. They start telling all the good reasons why the buyer should pay the requested price. This won’t work. Firstly, don’t start your response by arguing with the client. Instead agree with them. We can say, “You are right and I understand it is a considerable investment”. If we disagree with them, they stop listening to us and start thinking about all the reasons their “too high” statement was correct. While we have their attention, we have to transition and question the buyer as to why they made that comment. “You just mentioned the price was too high, may I ask you why you feel that way?”. We avoid arguing and instead of us having to justify the price, we now need to switch it. After you make that comment do not speak. In this process of further explanation by the buyer, we pick up very valuable insights into the client’s situation. Armed with more data and insight, we may be able to come up with a flexible solution that is a win-win for both of us. We may in fact discount the price. We might give them longer payment terms or structure the payments across two quarterly budget periods. We may offer the discount on the basis of a volume purchase. All of this sounds simple enough, but when salespeople hear “the price is too high” they go blank and forget the basics. The job of the salesperson is to serve the client and that means to clearly understand the client’s situation. The only way to do that is to ask questions. It is not to be annoying, pigheaded, stubborn or inflexible. Quite the opposite. We are here to solve the client’s problem and we have to do that in an arrangement, that is a win-win for both of us.…
You have to tell people how it is or you will lose power and authority. If you swallow what you want to say, you will diminish yourself. If you avoid hard conversations, you will have less influence. You need to tell them exactly how you are feeling. This was the tenor of the advice coming from an American communication “guru”. While listening to this, I thought this is absolutely going to fail in Japan, if not everywhere. Dale Carnegie’s human relations principles however work well not only in Japan, they work well everywhere. So rather than trying to ardently assert our rights, telling others how we feel and gaining power through strength of will, let’s try some proven methodologies that actually work. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain The guru gave the example of someone keeping you waiting, suggesting you “respectfully” tell them how you feel about that. Dale Carnegie realised there was no point. Even if you are polite, people become defensive and are irritated to be reminded that they are less than perfect. They were late, you can’t get the time back, so you just have to accept others are not as reliable as you are and move on. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view When we are fixated on what we want, we become inwardly focused. The goal of successful human relations is to be liked and trusted. Selfishness won’t get you there. They are massively late, so what? Are they doing this to annoy us, to punish us, to irritate us? No, there are bound to be any number of things happening in their world which we don’t know about, so let’s not be too hasty to apply “our rights” to the situation. Begin with praise and honest appreciation Rather than launching into the witch hunt of the “crimes’ of the other person, zeroing in on the hard talk topics, build the relationship with praise. Not fake, apple polishing, sycophantic praise. Rather, genuine reflections on their good points, backed up with concrete evidence or examples. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves Few people listen today. Tied up in themselves, in having power or status, they are all about them. They interrupt others when they are talking, they try to display their cleverness by finishing other people’s sentences, they one-up others to be dominant. People however want to be acknowledged, to be heard and our job is to get them talking about themselves. Forget about being powerful through winning at hard talk. People will willingly cooperate with you, if you apply these principles. The ideas are easy to understand, but not so easy to apply.…
We can speak to a group and then there is another level, where we try to captivate our audience. What makes the difference. The content could even be the same but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner. Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life. The quality of the argument we are going to present is important. We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A. Importantly, we start from this point when designing the talk. We work out what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience and we start working backwards structuring the speech from here. Once we know what we what to say, we need to be gathering evidence to back up that assertion. In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it. Now we make sure that the evidence is super strong, offering really compelling proof, to build credibility for our argument. Next we work on a blockbuster opening. This has to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience. We have to smash through all that obstruction and clear a path so that they will hear our message. The first words out of our mouth had better be compelling or we will lose the battle for today’s minute attention spans. We want our visuals on screen to be clear and comprehendible within two seconds. Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three. Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible. Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us. Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval. This needs to be combined with some powerful visuals on screen to drive home the point. We are meticulously sprinkling stories throughout the speech to highlight the evidence we want to provide for our key points. Data by itself is fundamentally dull, but stories fleshing out the data are so much more scintillating. We sketch out physical locations, describe colours, talk about the season, mix in people they may know, explain the why of what is in the story. Our final close after the Q&A has to go out with a bang and not a whimper. We want a strong call to action. We need great structure, evidence, visuals, stories, pacing, energy, passion and belief in our presentation. The delivery is going to rock because we make it rock through rehearsal after rehearsal, until we have refined the whole thing into a symphonic triumph. That is how we need to be thinking to captivate our audience when we start constructing the talk. Begin with audience capture in mind.…
Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service. He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”. I was reminded of Carlson’s insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore. While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice. Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well. I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel. One of Carlzon’s observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand. The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer. So back to my story. As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn’t working. After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on. There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room. Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me. Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service. You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department’s efforts to create an excellent image of the organization. After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven’t you? But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand? Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn’t get properly briefed. As leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider’s web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with. We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again. First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers. Consistency of good experiences doesn’t happen automatically. We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.…
“Born to lead” is nonsense. Many things shaped that person in order for them to achieve credibility with others. Of course, we can become a “leader” as part of our company designated hierarchy. We sit somewhere in an organizational chart above others, with various reporting lines elevating us above the hoi polloi. We know many people with that august title of “leader”, who we would never willingly follow in a million years – pompous, tiresome, incompetent jerks! Can we become someone who others will follow when all the paraphernalia of leadership pomp and circumstance has been stripped away? How do we become a charismatic leader, whom others willingly wish to follow? The starting point is critical. If your desire for leadership is driven by personal aggrandisement and ego, where all good things must flow to you, this force of will factor is not attractive. Good leadership is differentiated by the followers desire to want to follow, when there is no coercion, structure or impetus to do so. We gravitate to these charismatic leaders because of how they make us feel. Effective leaders are good with people. There are some key principles they embody, which make us like and trust them. This is not artful manipulation, where they fake these principles in a cunning way. That approach exists and will ultimately be revealed as hypocrisy. What we are talking about here is having correct kokorogamae (心構え) - true intentions. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves Bossy people often love to brag. Instead, build the trust by focusing your conversation on them not you. As you stop dominating and start listening, you uncover areas of shared desires, values, interests and experiences which are magnetic in their properties and bind us more closely together. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view Often we are egocentric - it always about me, me, me. Having listened, we uncover the context behind their beliefs and arrive at a greater appreciation for their views and positions. We can more easily get on each other’s wavelengths. When this happens, we become more mutually simpatico, supportive and powerfully bonded. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders The inclusive, humble promotion of self-discovery unleashes powerful forces that encapsulates our shared direction. We become the catalyst for their self-belief. We all want to be around people who make us feel good about our better selves and with whom we share common goals. People will willingly follow us when we apply these principles. We must sincerely switch from a “me” focus to an “our” focus. Change our approach and we change our results. We will become a charismatic leader.…
Lawyers in Japan are an elite group. I attended a legal symposium, involving these super elite Japanese lawyers and yet the communication skills on offer were incongruent with their elite educations and high social status. I can never resolve how intelligent people can manage to stand up in front of an audience and position themselves such that they fully ignore one third of their audience. So here is a hint to ourselves. Whenever we are standing before an audience, always make sure we position our feet such that they are facing ninety degrees directly forward and just turn our necks and upper body, when we want to involve each side of the room in eye contact. Actually there wasn’t any real eye contact underway either. Speaking to everyone and nobody at the same time, is a common lack of professionalism in many speakers in Japan. Winning the audience over to us, getting them to listen carefully to what we are saying and drawing them in to our point of view, are all aided when we use eye contact. We seek to hold eye contact for around six seconds, before we move our gaze and make eye contact with another member of the audience. When we do this, we really engage our audience. In typical Japanese fashion, the main speakers were allotted a table to sit behind, decorated with a microphone stand. In this seated position, out came the sheets of the speech transcript to be read to us in a monotone voice. Extremely painful and ineffective. We must always keep in mind one key advantage we have over our audience. Only we know what we are going to say. If we forget something or if we deviate off topic slightly, well, only we know that. So whenever possible we should stand and deliver, no safety net, in full gaze of the audience without notes and use our eye contact to draw everyone into our message. The last part of the day was devoted to panel discussions. A couple of things to keep in mind for ourselves, if ever we are engaged in a similar panel discussion. Learn how to use the microphone correctly, so we can be heard clearly. I notice, so many people don’t speak across the mesh of the microphone properly, so they are not getting completely picked up by the audio technology. These are highly educated, super elite people in Japan and yet they make these fundamental presentation errors. So it tells us that being well educated and being in a prestigious job, does not automatically anoint us with the magic fairy dust of successful public speaking professionalism we all need. Remember, these are our personal and professional brands we are holding out there for all to see. To bolster your brand, get the training, because today is the age of persuasion power and we must master this skill if we want to be fully successful. Connecting with our audience is one of the key business skills we need to add to our repertoire when presenting.…
Tricky area in sales, showmanship. The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc. Yet, like storytelling, this is an important part of the sales professional’s repertoire. Clients are card carrying members of the Great Guild Of Skeptics. They are highly doubtful about salespeople’s claims. We need to bring some powerful persuasion techniques to the fore. This isn’t making up information to snow the buyer or doing a bait and switch, between what they think they are getting and what we actually deliver. This means using our communication skills to highlight the key points that will persuade the buyer, that what we are offering will help them and is in their best interests. What we say has to be true, but we don’t need to say it in a flat, lifeless, mundane or boring way. Showmanship would involve using persuasive word pictures to draw out the scene.A favourite example of showmanship is the car tyre puncture repair story. This is used to illustrate to salespeople the importance of showmanship, when explaining choices of action versus no-action to clients. Having a need to buy and buying are not always well paired together in the mind of the client. The example of the gas stand is used, where the service attendant notices the front left hand tyre of the car has a slow leak and offers to fix the puncture in 10 minutes. The client refuses the offer, because they are in a hurry and drive off. The same scenario is used again, but this time the attendant employs some word pictures and showmanship. So the attendant says: “Mr. Customer, I notice your front left hand tyre has a slow leak. We can repair that puncture in 10 minutes”. The client refuses, because they are too busy to spend the ten minutes repairing the leaking tyre. At this point the attendant doesn’t simply let the buyer leave, but says instead: “Previously, we had another customer here with the same issue – a slow leak in their tyre. Unfortunately they were also too busy to fix it. We saw a report later on the nightly news about a terrible accident. Apparently that same car tyre blew out while they were on the highway. It caused the car to flip and roll over three times. We saw the tangled mess of what was left of the car from the television station’s helicopter video. It was total tragedy. The television reporter said the whole family of four, including the two young kids, died in that accident. When we heard that, we all felt really bad, because we didn’t get them to fix the leak when we had the chance. We could have prevented that accident…. It will take us ten minutes to fix your puncture, let’s do it now, so we will all feel a lot better and safer” Notice the use of very emotive language to drive home the cost of no action. The tone is subdued but still powerful. We need to be looking for ways in which we can contrast the plus of using our solution, against the minus of doing nothing or using our competitor’s solution. Think about what you sell and what are some ways you can illustrate to the buyer that there are opportunity costs to not buying from you and buying now. Look for powerful word pictures to draw this out for the buyer. This is showmanship and we must become masters of communicating value to the client.…
In our lives, we have harvested a lot of experiences, which we can use in our presentations. If we were better organized, we might have had the forethought to keep notes, so it would be easier to refer to them when we are looking for material. Well there is a hint right there – keep notes from now on. You can just jot down in your Evernote or something similar, the key points you will want to recall later in a talk. Storytelling is not some Hollywood script writer level requirement for speakers. It is just telling our stories from real life and the lives of people we have observed. We can also share and acknowledge incidents from authors who have captured their experiences on paper, but in our own words. We just have to be observant and be able to see a good connection between a point we are making in our presentation and an example where we can relate it as a story. We know with planning our talk we should start with the conclusion of our talk first, boiled down to its essence. We then pick up the main points we are going to use to illustrate why our viewpoint or our conclusion is correct. We then design the opening to grab people’s attention, amidst the mad world they live in, which seems to permanently distract them. Now when we are fleshing out the key points we want to make, in the main body of the presentation, we are searching for evidence to back up our claims. This comes in the form of data, expert authority and stories to make the point come to life. This is the time to drop into the vault of our collection of stories and find good matches between the point and the story. This may seem hard at first, but when you reflect on why you think something, about an issue there is usually a good reason for it. Something happened which you witnessed or were aware of, which influenced your take on the matter. There will be a story in there somewhere. Usually these are either successes or failures. We can all become careful observers of things going on in our business lives, which we can sew into the fabric of what we will be saying in our talk. There is no shortage of actors and characters out there in businessland from which we can draw. Let’s start our collection today if we don’t have one and keep adding to it, if we do. Some of this stuff you couldn’t make up by the way, which is always exciting. The point is to capture it and employ it.…
Imagine my surprise, as an expert in sales training, when I meet salespeople who have not spent even one second trying to master the bridging of the gap between value and cost. Sitting in the audience at a speaker event, next to a thirtyish Japanese sale’s guy, we talked about how he does his sales. He told me he contacts a lead, gets an appointment, shows up and explains the service and submits a quote. Really? On the blank side of meal menu, I mapped out the elements of the sales process for him. Prepare for the meeting and focus your intention on one thing – getting the re-order, not just the solitary sale. Build trust through establishing rapport. Create interest by asking extremely well designed questions to understand the client’s needs. Now tell the client whether we can help them or not and if we can, explain the how of our solution. There may be points of insufficient clarity, concerns, hesitations or downright objections to what we are proposing. We need to deal with those before we proceed to ask for the order, and then we do the follow up to deliver the service or good. I then asked him what does he do when the buyer says, “too expensive”. His answer had me reeling. With a cherubic mien, he told me he offered to “drop the price”. Incredulous, I asked “by how much do you usually drop it?”. He quoted 20% as the number. There were four other sales people in his team and if that is how they roll over there, then that is an expensive first response to client pushback on pricing. Here is the snapper – do you know what is happening inside your team? Are they also dropping the price immediately as their first counter to an objection on the money? He should have said, “why do you say that” when told it was too expensive? Was the price objection genuine, a ruse, sport negotiation, time bound, or irrelevant because they haven’t seen enough value yet to understand the price point? There will be one highest priority element in the too expensive objection. It might be the actual volume of cash involved, budget allocation timings, internal competing project competition concerns, etc. Which one is it – we need to know. The moral of this story is to take a very detailed look at what your salespeople are doing. Don’t confuse seven years of sales experience with one year of experience seven times. Also, don’t imagine that they have a process, that they know how to explain the value or to deal with objections. Based on what we see in our sales training classes and talking with clients, in Japan, the chances of that being the case are very, very, very low.…
Japan loves rote learning and parents will pay cram schools to get their kids fully tuned up and on to the education escalator. Rote learning and exam technique is the standard educational approach in Japan right through to starting University classes. At University, unless you are trying for very specific careers like medicine, the elite bureaucracy or some job that requires you to pass a national exam, then the next four years are a type of Club Med for undergraduates. In the internet and AI age, when anything you want to know can be found through a search engine, how relevant is rote learning and exam technique for the future? We all know we need more innovation and creativity in companies. Where is this going to come from? If we think about the work skills, knowledge and abilities we will demand of our employees in the next twenty years, we can be absolutely sure the current Japanese system of education won’t be producing it. With lifetime employment, investing in training people made economic sense because you would reap the rewards. With greater job mobility on the horizon however, this social contract between staff and company will be broken. Young people, who will be in short supply due to demographic changes, will become like baseball free agents. They will rapidly discover they are able to swap teams for a better deal. So where are we up to? The companies aren’t training their staff as comprehensively as they once did. The staff themselves will find themselves being lured by recruiters to move on to greener pastures. I believe the educational construct in Japan basically has its ladder up against the wrong wall. What will become of this country? What will we need to do to prepare ourselves for this brave new world? Are we thinking about these prospects? If we haven’t spared a thought for this grim future of work, then now is a good time to take another look at assumptions, strategies, plans and targets. Those preparing now, will win in this coming war for talent. Game on!…
Normally when we give presentations, they tend to be pretty dry affairs. We marshal the facts, relate what happened, tell stories perhaps but in a one dimensional way. We are relating what happened, but are not making any attempt to bring it alive. However, what do we seek when we are looking for entertainment or education – we are looking for dialogue. Our television dramas, movies, novels, biographies are all using dialogue to good effect. Why not do the same thing in our talks, to make our key point stronger? Let me give an example of something that happened to me in 2010 in Miami. I was attending my first Dale Carnegie International Convention and hardly knew anyone there. In the evenings there would be various parties to attend and on this particular occasion I had the honour of meeting Dale Carnegie’s daughter Donna Dale Carnegie and she introduced me to Mike. Now Mike stood out in that crowd of Dale Carnegie people, because he had a long ponytail and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. It turned out that Mike was the contractor who did all the stage audio sound etc., for the Convention and had been doing it for years. “I always finish my year with the Dale Carnegie convention because you hold it in early December”, he told me. He also got me attention when he said, “I really like your organisation”. Being new to the Dale Carnegie world I was curious, so I asked him why he said that. He whispered to me in a conspiratorial fashion, “The things that people are saying out in front of stage and what they are doing behind the stage are the same”. I asked what he meant by that. He continued, “Well I do a lot of these same types of events and we are all hooked up on the mics, so we can hear what is going on behind stage, as well as out on stage. There are plenty of folks who say one thing to the audience, but carry on quite the opposite off stage. I found in years of dealing with Dale Carnegie people they are genuine and they live the principles they espouse and I like that”. I could say all of the same things and relate that story, just telling the details of what happened. However, when I include the dialogue, it brings the whole thing to life. People in the audience can picture a guy in a Hawaiian shirt, with a long ponytail, whispering this information to me. I can even cup my ear, as if I was listening to him, when he told me that secret part. They can hear his voice as I relate the story, which makes it more credible.…
“I would be able to sell a lot more except for all the external factors over which I have zero control”. Actually, you have never heard this line of argument before from a salesperson. This is because this statement is an honest appraisal of what they see as the problem, but they don’t express it that way. Instead they bitch about the boss, the market, industry changes, currency movements, the sales materials, the pricing and everything else but their pathetic sales ability. Are they accessing all the good information available to become better? No. They are not bothering, because they don’t see any correlation between their lack of an internal motivation to study to become better and their non-realization of sales success. People wind up in sales by accident. The turnover of salespeople is very high because it is a metrics based game. The numbers tell against you when you are failing and in short order you disappear. The companies invest nothing, preferring the law of the jungle to sort out who stays and who goes. Salespeople have more than enough resources to self-educate themselves about the finer points of sales. Here is how complicated this is: learn how to ask the client questions about what they need; listen carefully to the answers; tell them you either have a relevant solution or that you don’t; if you do, provide explanations that justify the trade off between the value you bring and the price you charge; supply it and follow up. This is what they do instead: tell the client all the details about the product or service without having any clue as to whether this is what they need or not; if they don’t have what the buyer needs, then try to force the square peg into the round hole and give them what you have any way, even if it doesn’t really fit; burn that client and move on to the next buyer. Let’s study, apply the knowledge, keep studying, keep applying, without pause. There has never been a better time to be in sales, because there is so much rich education material available about how to become a true professional. No more excuses baby, get to it.…
Sometimes you see a confident leader really bomb their presentation. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast. If they are totally hopeless and they bomb, well that is understandable. But a competent leader shouldn’t bomb their presentation. He did and I was wondering why that happened? It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that he realised he had bombed completely. The tepid applause reaction was a give away. The lack of questions a more immediate one. The issues were a misreading of the audience and an arrogance. The audience had been lured to the venue with bold promises of goodness and light. The content wasn’t good enough to back up the advertising and the audience spotted the gap straight away. The arrogance was an assumption about the leader’s credibility being sufficient to justify the content of the presentation. When we emphasise our years in business, we are aiming for increased credibility, linked back to our stupendous track record. Our speaker had not properly prepared the presentation. He was a good speaker and a competent presenter. He thought his track record stood for itself. The only problem was the content of the talk was rubbish. We tread a fine line with the longevity thing. Track record, sustained over many, many years is a credible thing for the audience. The only concerns are that the whole affair may be perceived as dated. When we talk about the good old days we like it because we were there, but the audience only cares about what is the relevance for them. We have to be skilled to make it fresh, new and connected to their current business reality. Our speaker failed in that regard. Our pride in our track record can make us blind to the fact that people don’t really care all that much. We like strolling down memory lane, but so what. We arrogantly assume that what we did was important. Where is the link to the audience’s current problem right now? This is the skillset needed in the leader presentation. Getting the audience need properly understood, suspending what we like to talk about and instead focusing on what the audience is keen to know about is our task. I am getting older too, so I took copious notes from this speech on what not to do, if I am ever tempted to talk at length about my good old days. I think we all should avoid that temptation too.…
I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses. Here are my musings after 53 years of training in traditional Karate. Stepping on to the floor The dojo is the ultimate equalizer. Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks’s mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else. In business we forget this and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities. We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people’s real abilities are recognized and rewarded. Starting The class begins with a short meditation interval. This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what will now come. Next everyone is bowing toward the front. The front of the class represents all who came before us. We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization. By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going. Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion. Finally we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travellers on a journey of self-discovery. How do we start the work day? Is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY we are there. Stretching We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles to be able to operate at a very high level of performance. If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice or are you just practicising on the client? Basics We repeat the same drills over and over, every class. We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution. We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought. A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity? Sparring Free sparring is 100% spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of move and counter move. At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in one minute, but using our techniques with full body commitment. When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker? Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes? Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains over their brawn? Kata These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents. The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection. The form is set and so Zen like releases the mind to go beyond the form. Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected? Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness? Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation? Strengthening and warming down Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance. We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles. Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace? Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people? Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested? Finish We repeat the bowing and this time we add the Creed. Voicing carefully chosen words which represent the value system of that dojo, (e.g. Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect) so that these are the last things setting into our minds, before we go back to our usual routines of life. How do we end the workday? Do we set up for the next day by reviewing what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow? Do we reflect on the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better?…
Salespeople don't set the price of what they sell. This is usually an obscure outcome decided by someone else inside the machine. It might actually be an elaborate process, where multiple variables are carefully calibrated, mathematical formulae are applied and a price is arrived at. Or, it might be a slightly moist index finger boldly thrust skyward to come up with a number. The latter is often the case when arriving at pricing for services. Regardless, the salespersons task is to sell at that price. This is where we get into trouble. Salespeople are total wimps when it comes to price. We have learnt that getting a sale is what counts and price is an obstacle in that process. If we are on a fixed salary and bonus or base salary and commission, the two usual cases in Japan, we get paid when we make a sale. Do we know the profit margin attached to each sale? Usually no and actually we don't often care either, as long as we get paid. We are just happy to (A) not get rejected by the buyer and (B) get a win, however small. Our self-esteem is totally tied up with getting sales, modest in size or otherwise. The instinct of the salesperson then is to make the price as malleable as possible. Offering a discount seems to get the buyer in a good mood and more likely to give us a yes. This reduced price immediately impacts our commission and if we keep doing this, will also impact our bonus and job security, as we don't bring in enough revenue relative to the target. The key problem is that the salespeople often don't believe in their own product or service. Because of this they can discount with gay abandon. This is a short-term gain for long-term pain. The ability to meet the price requirement is a critical piece of the salesperson’s skill set. Dropping the price may be easy, but we never build the skills to really succeed in this profession. It usually is a path to our removal by the sales manager, who understands we are unable to sell. Amateur salespeople, when they don't believe in the price, start right off the bat with a discounted price. They say stupid things like, “normally the price is x but I am going to offer it to you for y”. Or, “if you buy two, I will drop the price by x”. The client hasn't even requested a discount, begun haggling, attempted to massage the ask and yet lo and behold, a miracle has just popped up without warning. This tactic may be misinterpreted by salespeople, who don’t know what they are doing, as building trust and a good relationship with the client. That is a false dawn of hope on the part of our intrepid hero or heroine. Thanks to volunteering an unprompted price cut, the client now understands that your firm are a bunch of liars who say one thing, but do another. They also know you are a tricky bunch who are trying to snow buyers with your fiction pricing magic. They don't see the gratuitous lower price as a bargain. They see that as the starting point in a negotiation to drive the price even lower. By having a listed price and immediately offering a lesser price, the buyer feels you cannot be trusted because you cannot even defend what you say is the value of your offering. By dropping the price so quickly, the whole question of perceived value is brought into fundamental disrepute. There is no fixed price for this sale and therefore no equivalent particular value attached to it either. We are now in the Wild West of selling, where there the only rule is the right of force and the buyer has the Gatling Gun and we have a water pistol. The salesperson’s job is to pour on the value explanation and show why this pricing is fair and reasonable, fully justified and easily defensible. If they do need to meet the client’s restricted budget or need to allow the buyer to save face with their bosses, then any discounting should in the first instant be attached to volume purchases. If they buy more then the price can be adjusted. The amount reduced should be as smallish amount, as part of the first offer. Remember, we are now off the paved highway and are hacking our way through the dense brush of a negotiated agreement, where there are no maps, no signposts and no 5th Cavalry about to come to the rescue over the sand dunes. If the price point is to be assaulted, then the reductions should be small and fought heroically all the way. Do not go for round number drops or large number drops, go down in dribs and drabs. The client will feel much better knowing that they got a legitimate discount against the usual price, because they extracted that right out of the salesperson’s hide, rather than the salesperson rolled over right from the get go. When that happens, they doubt everything about you and your company because your pricing seems bogus. Never drop your price. Defend your price with value. Resist reductions all the way down and extract some form of quid pro quo against volume purchases. If you buckle, you will be destroying the brand, the brand positioning and the credibility of the firm. You may lose some sales. These are usually people who cannot afford you anyway. If you believe in the value of what you are selling don’t give in, defend, show value, fight, fight, fight.…
The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal brand suicide. There are elements of the sales process which are so fundamental, you wonder why I would even bring them up. For example, believing in what you sell. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe but keep selling. The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people. When I joined Shinsei’s retail bank, I recognised immediately that 70% of the salespeople should never have been given a sales role. My brief was “we have 300 salespeople and we are not getting anywhere – come in and fix it”. The vast majority of people in the role of convincing wealthy Japanese customers to buy our financial products were really suffering. They lacked the communication skills, the people skills, the persuasion power, the warmth, the concern for the customer, etc., which they needed to be successful. As Shinsei, we worked out who was best suited for a sales role and gave those people the proper training to equip them for success. The remainder were given a role elsewhere in the bank. What training did we give them? The ability to ask good questions, to fully understand wealthy customer’s needs. At Dale Carnegie we do a lot of sales training and we see the same client issues come up continuously. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty. Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on three powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how your solution satisfies their need. If you want your sales team to be successful, make sure they get a proper sales process, get certainty, get fluency and get going!…
One of our problem areas is what to do with our hands when we speak. Judging by most of the presentations I see in Japan, few speakers have worked this out yet. Here are some common habits we can improve upon to make ourselves much more persuasive and professional. 1. Hands in front of the body. The arms and hands when held in front of the body create a subliminal barrier between the audience and the speaker. It is saying “I don’t trust you, I am scared of you and I need to protect my most vital organs from you, in case of sudden attack”. We want to show we are totally confident and have a welcoming attitude to our audience. 2. Arms behind the back, clasped together. Since cave dweller days, we have learnt not to trust people whose hands are not visible to us. They may have been concealing a weapon. Instead have the palms open and facing forward, a gesture which is universal and timeless indicating “I am not a threat to you, because, as you see I have no hidden weapon”. 3. Arms folded across the chest or one hand touching one elbow while the other hand is held near the face. Like number one, these are defensive postures specifically designed to keep your audience away from your vital spots. In speaking term though, these postures send all the wrong messages. We want to be trusted as a speaker and to do so, we have to show we are open to our audience. 4. Hands in the pockets. This is a particular favourite of male executives who have no idea of what to do with their hands when speaking. The really confused thrust both hands into their respective trouser pockets achieving a sort of stereo effect. It presents the hands where they can be seen from the front, but it denies us the opportunity to use gestures during out talk. 5. Holding something in our hands. Sheets of paper can become a distraction as we tend to wave them around. The pages quiver and shake if we are nervous and this is visible to our audience. We are sending the wrong message to them. We want to convey belief and confidence in our message. We want to remove all distractions from what we are communicating and we want to free up our hands so we can employ our gestures to bolster our argument. 6. Gripping the podium, the microphone stand or holding the hand microphone with both hands. It can make us appear quite strained as we apply muscle power to the upper arms and raise our shoulders, as we ensure the podium does not make a sudden attempt to scarper. Best to not even touch the podium at all and just feel free to raise your hands for gestures. Don’t touch the microphone stand at all. Restrict the hand microphone usage to one hand only, so the other is free and readily available for emphasis…
Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. The hush has now swept across the room. All eyes are fixed on the MC, breaths are being held, awaiting the announcement of this year’s winner. Amazingly, it registers that it is your name they are calling to the stage. Emotion wells up. Your team join you for handshaking, shoulder hugs, high fives and backslapping. The prize is now firmly ensconced in your hand and you are beckoned to the microphone. What happens next? Do you find your mind is experiencing whiteout and goes blank. Do your nerves suddenly kick in when facing a sea of faces with thousands of eyes boring into yours? Do your knees mysteriously seem to have been drained of all their sinuous strength? Do you launch forth into a raging torrent of Ums and Ahs, followed by indiscriminate rambling, punctuated with pathetic apologies for your inability to string two words together? Are you having an out of body experience watching yourself have a public meltdown of stupendous scale. Seeing yourself trash your company and personal brands simultaneously, because you are demonstrating to all that you are a total dud as a professional? What would have been a better approach? Expecting to win is a good place to start. From that thought flows a stream of things that must be done, just in case lightening does strike, unlikely as that may have seemed at application time. What will be the content, how will you start, how will you end? It could go like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, let me say thank you to the judging panel for selecting us. I am sure it was a very demanding job for you and the organisers of today’s competition. On behalf of all the candidates, allow me to say thank you one and all for your efforts. Inside our company, Taro and his team regularly took the last train home in the coldest, darkest depths of winter and were back early the next day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, to get the Z project completed. Thank you all for going the extra mile, for your loyalty, commitment and perseverance, when so many doubted we could do it. We would not be standing up here tonight, if it wasn’t for Tanaka san at XYZ company. She gave us a chance to demonstrate we could deliver on schedule, on budget and at the right quality. I know that she had to weather some particularly tough internal meetings with her Directors last fall, but she went to bat for us. So we all say a very big “Thank you” to her and we are delighted she can be with us tonight. As we all know, we often spend more hours working with our colleagues than we spend with our own family. When we get home, exhausted, we unburden ourselves and share our concerns and worries. We need to set the ledger right and also share in the good times and tonight is just that occasion. I would like to thank my own family for their total support, which keeps me going. I would also like to recognise all the families of our team members who equally are giving their support. We know it is a sacrifice and we appreciate that you make that on the company’s behalf. So this prize tonight goes to all the angels at home who keep us going and make it all worthwhile. Finally, I would like to say how proud I am of our widget. We are committed to making the lives of our clients and their clients easier and more effective. We are on a mission to serve as many people as we can, because we know we are bringing value and growth to their businesses. Entwined inside their growth and success is our success and that thought drives us each and every day to do our best. Thank you!” That is two minutes. We have managed to say a lot in two minutes and we will leave a very positive impression with the audience hearing that speech. What if you go to all this trouble and you don’t win. You have definitely improved your speech making skill and you have put yourself out of harm’s way. Both are major wins, even if the big prize eluded you this time. There is always next year, the next occasion and your speech is ready to rock. You have positioned yourself in a good place from every angle.…
If we are presenting a brochure, flyer, price list, hard copy slide deck or any other typical collateral item, then we should adopt best practice for greatest success. Have two copies always, one for you to read and one for the client, unless you are a genius of reading upside down (which by the way seems to include all Japanese!). At the start, put your copy to the side for later if you need it and turn the client’s copy around to face them. Then proceed to physically control the page changes of the document. Don’t just hand it over, if you can avoid it. You want to walk them through the pages, under your strict supervision. There is usually a lot of information involved and we only want to draw attention to the key points. We don’t receive unlimited buyer time, so we have to plan well. You don’t want them flicking through the pages at the back and you are still explaining something up the front By the way, don’t place any collateral pieces in view of the client at the start of the meeting. Keep them unseen on the chair next to you or in your bag. Why? We want to spend the first part of the meeting asking solid questions to uncover their needs. Don’t distract the buyer from answering your questions – this is vital to understanding their business and their needs. As we hear their answers we set off a chain reaction. We mentally scan the solution library in our brain and start lining up products for them. The details will be in a brochure or a flyer etc., but by showing them at the start we will distract the client. It also implies I am here to sell you something. What is our mantra? Everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Keep the sales materials out of sight, until you absolutely know what you will need. If we hand over the sales materials at the start, they will be reading something on page five and you will still be focused on page one. If you allow this to happen, control of the sales conversation has been lost. The salesperson’s key job is to keep control of the sale’s talk direction, from beginning to end. If you can’t do that, then selling is going to be a tough employ for you. After placing the document in front of them, facing them, pick up your nice pen and use it to show them where to look. There are many distractions on any single page, so we need to keep the show on the road and them focused on the key items. Our pen is our navigator. Know where the items of most interest in your materials are located, based on what you heard earlier and skip pages that are not as relevant. Do not go through the whole thing, from beginning to end. You want them focused only on the most relevant and interesting elements of your presentation. Also you have to narrows things down, because you just don’t have that much time available to you. Action Steps 1. Control the reading flow of the presentation document 2. Use you pen as the navigator through written materials 3. Only show the materials after you have had your questions answered and know what they want…
We are all pretty average on recalling events, people’s names, locations, sequences, inanimate objects, etc., but we are geniuses on remembering feelings. We are especially good on how people made us feel and what super memories we have developed in this particular department. Business is deemed to be logical – cool, balanced, unswerving on the road to greater efficiencies. Ironically, we are such emotional beings trying to be detached, but we are usually not very good at it though. Ever find yourself still chewing over some ancient injustice? Something doesn’t arrive on time or in the right format and we have that chemical reaction that is triggered by the emotions of anger, disappointment, fear or frustration. People say something trying to be funny or witty but we take it badly. We instantly feel insulted, embarrassed, hurt, mortified or humiliated. There are some basic principles of successful human relations we forget at our peril. “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain” is an all weather wonder. Let’s resist the urge to correct others, to tell them off, to bring their personal failings to their attention immediately. It is not a cure that works well and in fact just builds pig-headed resistance, as the guilty party seeks to justify their dubious actions. “Let the other person save face” is a handy principle to keep in mind in public situations. Not everyone is quick, elegant or urbane and some people seem to invite correction, but let’s resist that urge. Just because they may not obviously react should be cold comfort. Remember to beware the dog that doesn’t bark. “Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say you are wrong”. Even if you feel they are so totally incorrect it is barely fathomable. Restrain yourself from leaping in and pointing out they are an idiot. “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it”. Incredibly, even people in sales forget this sage advice and want to argue with the client. We might win the battle over the point of contention, but we will lose the war over the long term. Maya Angelou summed it up brilliantly: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. So how do you make people feel? Apply these principles and let life get easier.…
The Master of Ceremony (MC) goes to the microphone to get the programme underway but the audience are simply oblivious, caught up in their own riveting conversations. The situation is much worse at receptions where alcohol is already flowing and the people down the back are generating a roar, a positive din, that drowns out the speakers. Here are seven ideas that will shut down the noisy rabble and provide a proper platform for the speaker to be heard. Make sure to turn off the background music well before you are ready to start. Surprisingly, this is often forgotten by the organisers. Speakers should not try to compete with irritating white noise in the background. Preferably always have someone else introduce you. Their job is to quiet the room in preparation for your presentation. This doesn't always go to plan though, because it can be a lucky draw on who introduces you. Be ready to take over if you need to, in order to restore some decorum. Don’t allow the podium to dominate you If you worry about speaking behind high podiums and appearing to your audience as a stylish coiffure just peaking above the water line, always arrive early and have the event staff provide a small raised dais behind the podium for you. Even better, dismiss the podium altogether, because now we can use our body language to maximum effect. Voice projection is key for cutting through crowd noise.Today’s microphone technology is very good, so you don’t need to have a stentorian voice to be heard. However, placing the microphone too close to your mouth creates dissonance, making it harder to hear you. Mysteriously, some speakers have the opposite problem and hold the microphone so low that there is almost no sound being heard. I saw a guy the other day wrap his entire hand around the microphone mesh – don’t do that if you want to be heard. Use Pauses. When you face a challenging noisy crowd, make sure to hit the first few words very hard. To get things going, start with a strong “Ladies and Gentlemen” with power invested into the first word and remember to draw that first word out slightly (Ladieeeeees). Elongate it for effect but don’t overdo it . Now include a small pause before a strong finish to the phrase. Like this: “Ladies and Gentlemen” I have seen speakers using assorted cutlery to bang on a glass, to create a chime that signals it is time to “shut up everyone and listen”. It works, however, one word of warning - don’t speak while pounding. Get their attention then speak. Similarly, you can also use powerful music to drown out the crowd’s babble and make them listen to what is coming next. Just a short piece will do, as it signals action is about to commence and people will switch their gaze to you at the front of the room. After the music ends, again use a slight pause and then start. To be heard above the din, remember: turn off the BGM well before you start; have someone else quiet the room for you; don’t allow the podium to dominate you; practice with the microphones, so that you know the correct distance and angle of elevation to use; hit the first word hard and elongate it slightly; use pauses – they add power to the speaker; if you strike a glass to produce a crowd-quieting chime, don’t speak while pounding; a short burst of music can silence an audience and clear the way for you to start speaking…
Usually this isn’t even a question for most presenters, because the organisers have already set up the room when you arrive. Our speaking spot has been designated for us. But have we been designated a spot by experts in public speaking or by the venue crew who usually just haul chairs, lug tables around and set up the stage? Sadly the coalescence between expertise in public speaking and membership of the logistics team is rare. So where should we stand? This will depend on the venue size, the illumination of the room, the size of the audience, the layout of the stage, where the screens are located and what you want to achieve. If we are using a screen, then is it hoisted high above us, are there two giant screens on the left and right or is it at our height in the center of the stage? In smaller venues, the screen is normally at our height and usually set up such that the podium is on the audience right of the stage. No particular thought has gone into this location and the choice is purely random, often linked more closely to power outlets and cabling considerations, than the speaker’s effectiveness. Stand on the audience left of the screen, so that the audience can read your facial expression and body language and then move their eyes right to read text or images on the screen. We read left to right, so this is a natural progression. We always want the screen to be subordinate to us. So set the proceedings up such that they have to look at you first, rather than at the slides on the screen. Our face is a trillion times more powerful as a communication tool, than anything that is on that screen. If there are giant screens above, then the chances are the venue is pretty large and the stage will be quite wide. Rather than being stuck in one place, work the stage area. I don’t mean nervous, fidgety, random pacing across the stage as I have seen done by many amateur presenters. I mean move right to the very apron of the stage and to the extremes of left and right to engage with all of your audience. Start in the middle of a large stage, as close as you can get to your audience. Remember, that to those seated at the back or up on the first, second or third tiers of seating, you are the size of a peanut. Yes, they have the giant screens but try to bring your physical presence as close to your audience as you can, to create a closer connection. Move slowly to the extreme left and then stop. Now we can engage everyone on this side of the room. After a few minutes move slowly back to the center and stop. Now move slowly across to the extreme right and stop. Then slowly back to the center, by which time it will be getting very close to your peroration. To be an effective speaker, we need to include consideration of the best logistics needed to support our efforts. Don’t rely on the clueless to prepare the venue properly, instead have a clue ourselves and always be in command of our environment.…
To succeed in our own business, we need three critical skills: the ability to master our time, to clone ourselves and to be persuasive. Time: Poor time control leads to inefficiency, wasted efforts, stress and missed opportunities. Entrepreneurs are geniuses at trying to do too much. This means they are run ragged with time demands and no good solutions. This has to be turned around and time gotten under firm control. Follow this mantra: “I can’t do everything on this list everyday but I can do the most important thing”. Each day decide the number one priority for your business and complete that, then start number two, and so on. Delegation: Being so busy is a result of not having trusted people around us to whom we can delegate. We must get leverage through our team. But we don’t. We cannot find the time to develop them, so we are stuck like a rat on the treadmill. Getting a better grip on your time will create space to spend on training your key people. Don’t fluff the delegation process, because you are clueless on how to do it. Don’t just dump stuff on people, expecting them to magically get it and somehow be able to come back with excellent work. Stop dreaming, it won’t happen. Have a meeting with the delegatee, where you explain the task in terms of how this is designed to help them grow and succeed in the business. Talk in terms of their interests not yours. Inspire: Investors, potential new staff, valuable existing staff, clients, all need your persuasive ability to impress and keep them happy. If you are an unclear, unimpressive speaker, it is hard to get people to believe in you and follow you. You can be a tyrant, but let me know how that is working out for you? Honey does better than vinegar, when it comes to communicating with people. You will never work it out on your own. Get the necessary speaking training and stop kidding yourself. Master time, grow the leverage throughout your team and learn how to inspire people. Get on to it. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here ( https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here ( https://bit.ly/43o5FVK ) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1. Mondays - The Leadership Japan Series, 2. Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3. Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4. Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5. Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6. Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1. Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2. Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3. Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.…
There is an old truism in sales, “sales is nothing more than the transfer of the enthusiasm of the seller for the product or service to the buyer”. What are we doing when we are speaking? We are selling! “Hang on a minute there Greg. I am a professional, I am not a car or vacuum cleaner salesman”, you might be saying to yourself. That sort of self-talk is dated and dangerous. Make no mistake, we are all in sales, regardless of whether our business card has salesperson written on it or not. So if we are up at the podium, out there on stage, standing up in the room to speak, we are selling. Firstly, we are selling our personal brand. Depending on how good a job we do, this will sell the company brand. The next thing we are selling is our message, the conclusion we have reached, the insight we have gained. Of course, we have to a strong base in the subject matter. In fact we should be subject matter experts if we are going to get up in front of people and talk. Given we have the expertise to speak on the subject and given that we realise we are selling ourselves, our company and our message to the audience, then we need to add the magic ingredient of enthusiasm. The way to be enthusiastic is to speak on a subject or an aspect of a subject, which lights your inner fire. Inside your profession there are bound to aspects which you feel very strongly about, so talk about those and your enthusiasm will naturally emerge. Relive things that happened in your experience that has become a foundation of your belief in what you are telling the audience. Tell the story of what happened to you and how it impacted your views. Talk about the lessons, the trials, tribulations, the highs and the lows. Your feeling for these stages of the tale will shine through and the audience will be right there beside you. When you relive the whole journey, the good, the bad, the mediocre, the inner passion you have for what happened, will burn forth and captivate your audience. By combining our belief in our message, with an enthusiastic delivery, we will carry the audience with us, along the journey of belief that we have trod already based on our real world, hard won experiences. That combination is unbeatable.…
Having a buying need and doing something about it can often be quite disparate ideas. When the buyer is looking at the gap between where they are now and where they want to be and they judge it is pretty close, they don’t feel any urgency or need to buy. They will have certain drivers pushing them along in their role in the business, but this gap perception component is key in selling to buyers. If we can’t show that the opportunity cost of no action is too high, then they are not inspired to do anything. We have to draw out the implications of taking no action, of doing nothing. When and how do we do that? In the questioning stage, we can draw attention to the size of the gap. Now if we say “that is a pretty big gap you have there and you should fix that”, they doubt us. We are salespeople, so the buyer is always mentally dismissing everything we say as fluffy sales talk. We need them to tell us the gap is big and needs attention. Also tell us that it needs attention right now. When we are discussing the Should Be question - where they want to be in the future we need to add a little question to this process. We ask where they want to be and then we follow up their answer by asking them, “What happens if you can’t get there fast enough?”. No one ever gets there as fast as they want, so it automatic opens up the idea of a gap that needs addressing. When we are asking about the Barrier Question along the lines of “if you know where you are now and you know where you want to be, why aren’t you there yet”, we have another chance to emphasise that they need our help to achieve their goals. We find out what is the obstacle holding them back and then we ask the gap widener - “What happens if you cannot clear that obstacle?” If we try to point out these aspects which won’t work and we say it, we won’t be believed. We have to get them to tell us it won’t work, under their own steam, at the current pace, with the current resources and investment. Once we get them thinking about that gap we can start suggesting when we present the solution that we are the cure for all their ills. We have the ability to help them get where they want to be faster and more smoothly.…
Sadly, not everyone is like us – wonderful, charming, amusing, attractive. Despite our best efforts to be a role model of perfection, setting them a good example, others persist in being a major pain. Here are some selective tips on negotiating with the difficult amongst us. 1. Meet on mutual ground Try to meet, rather than engage in a protracted email war or discuss complex issues over the phone. Face to face is best and preferably on neutral ground for both of you. Away from the workspace is often best, such as over coffee or lunch, away from the office. 2. Clearly define and agree on the issue Sometimes we are arguing about different things under the same banner. By defining the issue in commonly understood words, we are a long way toward achieving better clarity about what is at stake. If the issue is a biggy, then break it down into bits that can be dealt with one by one, in concrete detail. 3. Do your homework Start by taking the other person’s case and building the argument from their perspective. This often opens up gaps in our information or assumptions we are drawing, based on no particular facts. Decide what is our BATNA – the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or our walk away position. Also determine what we can accept, what we can live with and what would be an ideal outcome. 4. Look for shared interests Conflict has a way of magnifying perceived differences and minimizing similarities, so look for common goals and desired outcomes. There may be a common objective but the disagreement is often around the best path toward achieving it. Focusing on the common goal and the desired future, keeps the conversation moving forward. 5. Deal with facts, not emotions Focus on the issue not the messenger. Maintaining a goal oriented rational approach may be difficult, especially when the ego gets in play, but try and de-personalize the conflict and separate the issues from the personalities involved. Instead of being defensive, ask clarifying questions that get them talking and you listening. 6. Present alternatives and provide evidence Create options and alternatives demonstrating your willingness to compromise. Frame options taking into consideration their interests and back up your plans with evidence. 7. End on a good note Shake on it, agree the actions steps and who is accountable for what, by when and how. Tricky personalities and difficult people will never just conveniently go away. Instead, we need to be better prepared in dealing with them. These practical tips will help us on the journey to a less stressful and more rewarding future…
The chances of speaking to a 5000 person business audience happening and happening regularly in Japan are remote for most of us. Nevertheless, in case you find yourself in front of a very large audience, here are a few hints on how to adjust to the increased size of the event. Get there early and go and sit in some of the most far-flung locations. It might be the last row at the back or the rear seats on the elevated third tier of the venue. You realize you will seem like a peanut to audience members seated at the far extremes and so you need to “big up” your presentation to suit the tyranny of distance. Definitely go for the pin microphone, so that you hands will be left free for gestures. These gestures will have to become much larger than anything you have been used to before. Remember you are a peanut waving your arms around to those in the cheap seats at the back. This means go for double handed gestures as much as possible, to fill up more of the stage with your presence. Marshal your ki for the big stage. Ki is the intrinsic energy we possess and it is most famously seen in martial arts. When you are on stage, you have to try and push your energy, your ki, to the very back wall of the hall. You have to mentally project your energy that distance. Your voice helps with this task. You have to be directing your voice all the way to the last rows of seats. Your eyes also come into play here. You need to be breaking the audience up into a baseball diamond. Left, center, right field, inner field and outer field. These six sectors have to be worked hard by your eye contact to be picking out individuals and looking straight at their eyes for six seconds each. Use the left, center and right sides of the stage. However walk slowly to the extreme edges, stop, settle and talk to the audience on that side. Walk back to the center and talk to those located in the center seating, then walk to the right and do the same for that side of the venue. Keep repeating this walk and stop, settle process throughout your talk. For those in the front row, definitely don’t forget to look at them, because you are so close and can have the greatest impact with that group because they feel your presence most immediately. When the venue is really big you have to go even bigger when presenting.…
In sales in Japan we chill, cruise and take the foot off the pedal. We get lazy. We start cutting corners. We get off our game. The temptation is when we get to a certain level of success we think well, we have done enough. We have to facedown “average is good enough” self-talk. We need to make sure we are doing the basics like a demon on fire. The pipeline tells no lies. We need good basics in play to stuff that pipeline full of qualified clients. I should be sifting, hunting and corralling those buyers who need my solution. I should be shelving those who don’t, because time is the main currency of a sales life. There are basics in sales we quickly try to short circuit. We are fooling ourselves. We need to have time allocation every day for prospecting. In the process of doing that, we should be polishing our pitch until it is tight and has a massive hook attached to it. We have to be well schooled in cold calling techniques to be successful in sales in Japan and most salespeople here in this regard are sad, sad, sad. We need to be parsimonious with the words to explain why they need us. We need to be eloquent with the explanation of the hook, as to why the person answering the phone should bother to connect us with the line manager we wish to speak with. At networking events, when people are making their first kinesthetic contact with your meishi or business card and trying to fathom what it is you do, you helpfully jump in and concisely explain how you are saving mankind. You will set up an appointment to meet right there and then. If they don’t agree, go back to the hunt for an actual buyer. We need to treat every lead coming in from our website, be it from an SEO enquiry or a paid click though from our ads like it was on fire. If we don’t get in touch with that potential buyer right now, the lead will combust further and become a burnt, unrecognisable cinder. We have to fight complacency. The enemy of great is good.…
The classic movie half-time locker room Churchillian oratory from the coach, whipping the team into a frenzy for the coming onslaught is now gathering dust in Hollywood’s archives. Today’s most successful coaches are masters of human psychology, combining insight with superb communication skills. What about leaders in business in Japan? In my experience, the Japanese model of sports leadership is antiquated, excelling in only one area - “ gaman ” - perseverance. Japan’s feudal militaristic regimes for leadership spill over into business from the domestic sports world. University “club” members know that age seniority, group dominance, rigid hierarchy and the suppression of the individual are the key leadership lessons learnt at varsity. Not a sparkling sport’s blueprint for leadership in the modern world of business. The lesson for business in Japan is to train our leaders to motivate our teams, one person at a time, based on what that person finds motivational Motivating others requires a good understanding of the interests and aspirations of that person. Communication skills and time invested in getting to know that person are critical. In a time-poor world however, of doing more, faster with less, we are skipping steps and rushing toward the finish line. We just don’t invest enough time in knowing our people. How many business leaders can you think of who are really great communicators or motivators? What about yourself? Let’s all pause, reflect and commit to improve. We need to build business success through our people, individual by individual and the time to start is right now.…
When we stand in front of an audience, we are representing our personal brand and our firm’s brand. People evaluate us and our companies based on how we perform. Think back to the presentations you’ve seen and I’m sure you’ll agree that many speakers are missing passion and commitment to the topic. Don’t be like that. Typically, we speakers enter a room full of pre-occupied people with microscopically short attention spans, distracted before we even start. Our job is to grab their attention away from whatever it was they were doing before we get up to the podium. Our opening needs to be well-planned and attention-grabbing. It must feature a powerful hook to get everyone’s attention. We will have rehearsed our talk at least three times, to make sure it flows well and fits the time slot we have been allocated. The slides will be so clear that our audience can deduce the key point of each slide in two seconds, because of how we are presenting the information. During our presentation, we are eyes-up and making eye contact with members of our audience. Each audience member gets about six seconds of total eye contact concentration each time, as we make our points. They feel we are speaking directly to them and this is a very powerful audience engagement tool. We are backing up our eye contact with our gestures, voice modulation and pauses. Building to a big finish is critical, because here we leave our audience with their final impressions. Rather than gradually fading out at the finish, our presentation should rise to a peak, delivering our call to action and encouraging our audience to metaphorically storm the barricades. We need to bring our energy to the finish and leave a positive memory of our talk.…
Often the first reaction to hearing no from the buyer is for the salesperson to panic and go harder. They somehow imagine they can force the buyer to buy. The immediate impulse is to go straight to the answer to counterpoint the objection. This is mainly an emotional reaction based on the adrenalin flooding the brain with the fight response. We need to stop that process. How do we do that? We need a circuit breaker. We need an interruption between our hearing the word “no” and going in for the rebuttal. That is where the cushion comes in. A cushion is a short sentence which is quite neutral and won’t inflame the situation with the negative buyer. Answering straight away exposes us to a big danger. That occurs because we are possibly not answering the right question. We hear “it is too expensive” but this is a headline. When we hear that headline from the buyer we need to ask why that is a problem. We also cannot just go down one layer. We have to dig right in for the deeper reasons. We also need to get these out and even when we think we have exposed them all we should ask, “are there any other reasons why you wouldn’t go ahead?”. We need to uncover the hidden objections. Once the list is completed we now need to have the buyer prioritise which one is the main deal breaker for them. Once we hear the main reason holding them back we have to check if this is a legitimate objection or not? It might be constructed on false information. If the objection is true, then we should admit it. We can answer the objection, but we need to know we have our ladder up against the right wall before we embark on a reply. We need to have the breaker in there to get us to a series of why questions to dig down to the highest priority item worrying them. If we can solve their objection then fine, if we can’t fine. We just move on a find another client we can serve.…
Bosses are often oblivious to the idea of diversity. I don’t mean diversity as mainly considered in Japan, which is usually about lack of inclusion of women in the workplace. Diversity here means variations amongst the team in terms of communication preferences. Here are two decisions to determine the best communication style to deal with your boss. Picture a horizontal scale of assertion, low on the left and high on the right. Assertion here means to what extent you have a strong opinion on things, state that opinion confidently. Add a vertical scale, where the top has high people orientation and the bottom high task. A “people orientation” signifies care and attention to people around you and how they feel. Task orientation is about outcomes, results, KPIs, getting the job done. We now have four hints to guide our communication. The top right quadrant combines both assertion and a people orientation. Often salespeople, actors, trainers fall into this group – they like people and they are looking to influence those around them. Don’t focus the conversation on gritty detail, move to discussions about big picture issues. Their diagonal opposite loves detail, proof, data and statistics to three decimal places. Talk in terms of micro detail with this crowd, often accountants, technical people, scientists, lawyers. The outcomes focused type in the lower quadrant on the right is assertive and task driven. Often company founders and scary CEOs, with a strong “time is money” mantra. Don’t beat around the bush or waste their time. Be direct, confident, succinct – they won’t mind. Their opposite quadrant are the non-assertive, people oriented, sensitive types. Taking your time, speaking softly, talking about how people will feel about things, attracts this group. We can quickly tell who is which style, by carefully listening to what they say and how they say it. The boss may not be difficult after all, just different. Life gets better when we can get on the other person’s wavelength and surf that wave together.…
The usual frequency for most people for giving formal presentations is once in a blue moon. In other words, we don’t do so many in a year. This presents a problem, because as we know, repetition is key to learning and improvement. Instead of hanging around waiting for someone to invite you to speak, you need to get out there and beat the bushes for opportunities to present. What can you speak about? There will be a natural alignment between your own areas of experience, expertise and knowledge and popular demand, which will determine the types of subjects you will be able to speak upon. If these areas are such that there is a common interest in this subject, you will find there will be groups who will be interested in having you speak. The trick is to let them know you exist as a speaker. How will speech organisers know you exist as a speaker? Investigate what sorts of groups exist in your area who regularly feature speakers. Make a matrix between the subject areas they cover and your own range of interests and capabilities. If there is a match, then contact them and ask if they are looking for future speakers. The person tasked with finding speakers will be very happy to hear from you, because they usually have a difficult job finding good speakers. A simple way to demonstrate your ability is to do speeches on relevant subjects, video them and put them up on YouTube and your website. Once you get a chance to do a formal presentation, to a live audience, make sure you get it on video. You can point the event organizers to the videos, to give them an idea of your ability. After the speech you post the video to a link to your website so that people can see you in action. With all of this content floating around you start to become a known face and people will start contacting you. We get into a virtuous cycle here where success breeds success. This is really great for personal and company brands and that is what we want.…
Buyers should buy and not quibble, hesitate or question. That at least is what salespeople hope for. The reality is we want buyers to object. If we don’t get a commitment to buy right then and there, the next best case is they give us an objection. No objection then no sale. Let me explain why. If we are giving our presentation and at the end the buyer doesn’t have any objections but are also not ready to purchase then we are in trouble. Now if they have no intention to make a purchase there is no point their wasting any energy on the due diligence component. When we get an objection, it indicates interest. Getting very poor questions is also another warning signal. If the sale is expensive or complex, then we want a lot of quality questions. Sometimes the person we are presenting to may not be the final decision maker. The person sitting across from us is a catcher of data and information to relay to others within the system. They will not have many objections, because they are probably not going to be the end user. We need to get feedback from the real decision-makers in the firm on what worries them, so we can address it. Recently, we had a meeting with a large financial institution and the size of the deal was 10x, that means the scope of the solution was probably ten times what they were expecting. The investment amount was in line with that scope and also 10 X what they probably expected to pay. Walking out of the building after the meeting, I noted to my colleague that they didn’t have enough objections. If the scope was that much bigger than they were initially thinking, there should have been more issues raised. We need to get some solid objections if we are going to make this sale. No objections is a bad sign. We haven't shown enough value or time urgency to inspire then to take our offer seriously. So contrary to what we salespeople all want, which is a sale with no objections, in fact we need them to make the sale. So work hard to get objections so you can complete the deal.…
You are at an event, it could be internal presentation or an industry event and you are been chosen for a prize or recognition. Award awarded and now you have to speak. This is where we are genius at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as we make a dog’s breakfast of our remarks. Very depressingly, we go from hero to zero in rapid order. It doesn’t have to be like this if we do a little preparation and some simple planning. Here are five things to work on for your speech. Number One. Expect to win. “Win, what me?”, you might be thinking. That in fact may be very unlikely, but at least prepare in case you do. Think about it - what if you do win? What are you going to do then, with no thought and no preparation, about your remarks? You need to have thought about what you will say and if you wish to avoid public humiliation, you will have rehearsed your remarks before hand. A two minute acceptance speech is very short and that makes it much harder than it looks. It also means laying off the booze at your table before the announcements. You need all your facilities for the big moment. Number Two. Have a plan for the speech. Decide who you want to thank. When talking about your team, add in some human context about certain things they did to make this award possible. For example, Yuki stayed back late in the depths of winter, Taro came up with the marketing plan, etc. Thank their families for all the support they have given to the team. Mention how your company helps organisations and how committed and proud you all are to see your clients succeed. Number Three. Eliminate any hesitations in the form of ums and ahs by having your first sentence ready to go and hit it hard. When you get to the end of the sentence purse your lips together and insert a short pause, and then hit the first words of the next sentence hard too. In this way, you will reduce or banish any ums and ahs when you speak. When you do that, you sound more poised, confident and intelligent. Number Four. Look at your audience, making eye contact the whole time. Select one person at each table and talk directly to them for about six seconds, looking them in the eye. Then move your gaze to another table in random order and speak to that person for six seconds holding their eye contact. In a two minute speech, you will have been able to make direct eye contact with twenty people in your audience. Number Five. Hit key words in your talk for emphasis. No monotone please. Instead pick out words that need greater strength applied. Combine this with your gestures to really support what you are saying. We want the full power of your body language being brought to the fore as well. This will give you the platform to make a powerful, brief, impressive contribution to the proceedings. So we have to remember, One, prepare on the basis you are going to win. Two, plan your thankyous carefully and introduce the human element. Three, speak without hesitation by eliminating ums and ahs. Four, work the room with your eye contact. Five, use voice intonation to stress key words and phrases for maximum impact.…
The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal and professional brand suicide. We are not here to make a sale – we are here to make a re-order and there is a world of difference between the two. There are four key elements of the sales process: Believe in what you sell. Sounds simple enough – how hard can this be? There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe, but keep selling. You don’t have to look far to find them. They are going through the motions, but you never feel they have your best interests at heart. They usually don’t have any other sales process than blarney and BS. We may buy from these people, but we come to bitterly resent being conned and we don’t forgive or forget. Today with social media, your “crime” is soon broadcast far and wide, warning everyone to be very careful when dealing with the likes of you. Having your reputation shredded in the market before your very eyes is a terrifying prospect. Don’t go there no matter how much short term money you can make. Act in haste and repent at leisure as the old saying goes. Sell with enthusiasm.Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. This sounds a bit ridiculous except that many people in sales roles don’t smile easily. They don’t exude warmth, coming across as cold, hard, clinical, mercenary and overly efficient. We all love to buy, but we hate being sold and “super efficient” sales people make us very, very nervous. Be fluent in your communication. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty. This means perfecting what you are going to say when you need to say it. That means practice and lots of it, so that what comes out of your mouth sounds just like the idea popped into your head. Don’t focus solely on the spec and details of the product. Focus first on what the client needs. Astonishingly, despite all we know today, there are still people trying to make careers in sales while wading through minute after minute of the features of the “whatever”. Where are the client questions, the needs understanding, the explanation of the benefits, the application of the benefits, the evidence – the proper sales basics? Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how your solution satisfies their need. Remember to focus on these four takeaways: Believe in what you sell, sell with enthusiasm, be fluent in your communication and don’t focus solely on the spec and details of the product, uncover their needs first.…
Getting the team motivated is hard enough without us screwing it up. Here are seven things we should eliminate: Showing a lack of common courtesy You are a super busy boss. Are you barking out commands like a tyrant, with no thought to say “please” when requesting action or adding a ”thank you” when it is completed? Do you come to work full of worries, with a cartoon rain cloud above your head - black and ominous? Is the pressure making your mood grim and subject to major fluctuations during the day. It is hard to feel motivated working for Grumpy, so just double check you are showing sufficient respect for the team. Possess poor listening skills How long do we usually keep trying to talk to people who don’t want to listen? Once! If that is you, then we keep our best thoughts, ideas, innovations and insights to ourselves, because we know we are wasting our breath. If you to notice that you are the source of all the ideas, that should be a warning signal. Perpetrate the Soul Destroying 3Cs – criticizing, condemning and complaining Many of us have seen demanding leaders explode with rage and disappointment, publically tongue lash the troops and speak ill of individuals to whoever happens to be around. This behavior guarantees fostering no risk taking, slow decision making and sycophants. Maybe you are not that toxic, but putting people down makes it difficult to lift the results, so study how to best deal with your people’s mistakes. Promoting the black arts of cynicism and sarcasm The clumsy sarcastic comments of the leader fillets team motivation. The cynicism of the corner office “prophet of doom” eventually kills all hopes for the future. Your team are certified experts in “boss watching”; they take their lead from you. Want positive outcomes – be positive in verbal and body language, as well as action! Playing favourites Childhood memories of the bitter taste of hopes and aspirations delayed or destroyed by favouritism, pop up in the work place whenever the boss is clearly favouring the few. You may be blissfully and innocently unaware you are even doing this. Remember, your job is to build people and manage processes. If you want to increase motivation, that means build all the people, not just your best buddies. Using secrets as a power play Everyone in the team likes to know what is going on, because we definitely don’t like surprises at work. Obviously keeping secrets, holding closed-door meetings and announcing sudden changes mangles the team commitment. Managers themselves are often greedy to access the information trickle dripping down from above, but are miserly in passing it on. How about you? Lack of interaction Every busy boss is balancing the tradeoff of their own concentrated personal production hours, with spending more time with the team. The question remains though, in a busy life, how do we build common understanding, share ideas, experiences and views? These activities require time. The introverted boss or the selfish “they died taking the hill but I got my promotion ” leader, fails to garner any real engagement. Don’t go that route - communicate, involve, share – these work wonders for team spirit. Get your self-awareness mojo on full blast and check this is not you: Showing a lack of common courtesy, possess poor listening skills, perpetrate the Soul Destroying 3Cs – criticizing, condemning and complaining, promoting the black arts of cynicism and sarcasm, playing favourites, using secrets as a power play and lack of interaction.…
Why are so few business leaders good communicators, given all the education they have received, starting at varsity and then later, through their workplace organisations? Leaders are often told they need to be “authentic”. That means to some, that it is fine to be dull, obtuse, monotone and forgettable. While dramatic oratorical flourishes are not required, congruency is a must. For leaders this means matching the way we communicate with the content of our message. Here are six things to pay attention to, in order to differentiate our leader voice: Don’t speak using a monotone delivery. Our audience start to look for other points of stimulation, such as how we are dressed, our body language, our voice quality – almost everything except the actual key message content. Leaders need to match their vocal variation and facial expression to the message being delivered. Congruency means emphasising key words or phrases, through either adding or subtracting voice projection. Whispering is as powerful as yelling, as long as the message content is aligned with the delivery mechanism. Dialing up and down the energy and speed when speaking, creates the necessary vocal variation. Business leaders are often notable for maintaining the same facial expression throughout their talk. Good, striking, even exceptional news is greeted with the same fixed expression as announcing disaster, doom and gloom. Voice speed can be an indicator of confidence or terror. Most of us, when nervous, tend to speed up and our ideas can rapidly begin to overtake each other. Pausing is needed to allow the audience to process and digest what they have just heard. We can also speak using our eyes. The front, middle, back, the sides – the leader makes eye contact to engage with people in all parts of the room. Eye contact means actual engagement – looking an audience member in the eye and speaking to them for around 6 seconds. Less than that makes for a rather fleeting, perfunctory type of engagement. Locking on to their gaze for too much longer starts to burn into their retina and becomes uncomfortable. With our hands we either overemploy them, so that everything gets the same unbroken level of emphasis or we don’t deploy them at all. Gestures are powerful to emphasise the key points we want our audience to remember. As a general rule, 15 seconds for each gesture allows it to have impact. After that point, the strength subsides and the gesture just becomes annoying. You are the brand and what you say and how you say it matters. We judge the entire organization on you, so how leaders perform in public matters. Be congruent, authentic, be you, but be the best possible you. Remember: always be congruent between our content and our delivery; use vocal tone, facial expression, power and speed to vary the delivery; keep our eyes fixed on our audience the whole time engaging them one by one; work the whole room and not just one side and understand you are the brand…
Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust. The first three to thirty seconds is vital, so what do we need to do? Here are three things we need to get right: Pay attention to our dress and our posture! Looking sharp and stand straight – this communicates confidence. Walk in standing straight and tall, stop and then bow or shake hands depending on the circumstances. If there is a handshake involved then, drop the dead fish (weak strength) grasp or the double hander (gripping the forearm with the other hand). The latter, is the classic insincere politician double hand grip. Some Japanese businesspeople I have met, have become overly Westernised, in that they apply a bone crusher grip when shaking hands. Don’t do that. When you first see the client, make eye contact. Don’t burn a hole in the recipient’s head, but hold eye contact at the start for around 6 seconds and SMILE. This conveys consideration, reliability, confidence – all attributes we are looking for in our business partners. We combine this with the greeting, the usual pleasantries spoken with supreme confidence, “Thank you for seeing me”, “Thank you for your time today”. Now, what comes next is very important. We segue into establishing rapport through initial light conversation. Try and differentiate yourself with something that is not anticipatory or standard. Be careful about complimenting a prominent feature of the lobby, office or the meeting room. Say something unexpected, intelligent and memorable. For example, “Have you found your brand equity with your client’s has improved since moving here?”. This get’s the focus off you the salesperson and on to the client and their business. Having a good stock of conversation starters should be basic for every salesperson. It might mean imparting some startling statistic that they may not have heard. For example, “I read recently that the number of young people aged 15-24 has halved over the last 20 years, are you concerned about future talent retention as demand exceeds supply?”. We might educate the client with some industry information they may not be aware of, but which would be deemed valuable. We face a lot of competition for the mindspace of our prospective clients. To counteract that possible external pre-occupation and to get them back in the room with you, use a question – it works every time. Remember: Refine an image through dress, posture and eye contact that projects confidence; stock your opening comments such that they are really well differentiated from all of your competitors, who have swanned in ahead of you; provide useful business references to introduce something new to the client that gets the attention off you and on to the client’s business…
Speaking in front of others makes many people tongue tied and nervous. They struggle to get through a simple presentation, internally, in front of their colleagues. A public audience is something they would flee from, screaming and waving their hands in the air. Why is that? We all learn how to talk. The presentation is just a talk, so what is the big deal? Yet, it is a barrier to many people who have to navigate this impediment to move up through their careers. If you are in front of the big bosses and you can’t make a competent presentation, kiss your career aspirations goodbye baby. There is very little chance they are going to put you in charge of others. So, if you like what you are doing today, that will be just fine, because you will stay where you are right now for a long, long time. If it is just talking, why do we have such tremor at the prospect. Most of us can talk to our friends, family and colleagues without any problem. In a presentation though the stakes are raised. We are on show, we are singled out for attention, scrutiny and investigation. We become very internally focused. We are oblivious to our audience because all of our attention is on ourselves. All of the pressure is on us too and it is coming from within ourselves. Our self-talk is bad. Our self-regard goes negative. We become plagued with self-doubt, memories of failures, shortcomings, inadequacies and derision. Our playbook is drawing on our failures from the past, not from our potential or even small successes we have had. We go to scale immediately on the negative and obliterate the good bits from our memory. We recall that school play when we forgot our lines and everyone laughed at us. The time at University when our class presentation of our research paper was scoffed at and belittled by some of our classmates. That time in the results meeting, when the big boss berated us for our presentation skill deficit. We are operating from a sense of scarcity of ability, rather than an abundance of opportunity. We have to switch these ideas around. “Fine buddy boy, but if I could do that, I would have done it already”. That is too true and the reason you haven’t done anything better to date is because you don’t have any worthwhile information on what you can an should be doing. When we don’t know how to do something we tend to shy away from it. We do this to protect our public image and our ego. So we have placed ourselves in an internal contradiction where our fear drives our behaviour to never end the fear. We need to recognise that cycle and to determine to break it. The brilliant thing today is that we are awash with so much information on how to give presentations. Shelves groan under the weight of worthy tomes on the subject. YouTube is bursting to seams with instructional videoes. Podcasts aplenty provide hints and tips. TED talks are readily available to see what others are doing and at a high level. Once upon a time, you had to be in the room or specially connected to see the best in action, but today you are a few clicks away from free access. Start by studying. Learn the basics by attending entry level presentation courses. Switch your thinking about how to prepare for talks, by focusing on your rehearsal and not just your materials preparation. Leave you ego at the door and volunteer at every opportunity to present. Repetition is needed and after doing just five presentations, you will feel a lot more comfortable than you did for the first. After twenty, you will be relaxed. After fifty, you will be enjoying it. When you know how to properly structure your talk, you can relax and just help us navigate through it. You will have the slides to support you, which are visual markers as to what comes next. Don’t try to memorise the content or you will blow yourself up. I saw this with a speaker visiting from the USA. She had a grand resume and was going quite well, but she made the fatal error of trying to remember what she wanted to say for each slide, rather than just talking us through what was the point of the slide. She lost control of her breathing because of her mounting, self imposed pressure and actually had to stop the presentation. She eventually completed the task, but she was a mess at the end. Fear of public speaking is often a product of ignorance of what to do, fuelled by wishful thinking that you don’t need to do anything special, like studying the subject. When you get good information and apply it, then the fear fades and with practice comes skill. I avoided speaking for decades because of fear. I finished my first public speech in 1983 in 8 minutes. Unfortunately it was supposed to go for 25 minutes! Today, I have delivered over 500 public speeches and now teach people how to give presentations. The difference came about because I decided to study about how to do it, volunteered to give talks at every chance, got proper training from experts and put myself out there and had a go. The nerves piece disappeared once I slipped my attention from myself, to my audience.…
Most talks and presentations we hear, we cannot recall. Why is that? We were there presumably because we had an interest. Part of the problem is the way people present their information in the first place. The slides are too dense and confusing. The delivery is done in a lethargic manner, devoid of passion, with zero body language backing up the key points. The speaker may also be speaking too fast because they are nervous or may just be a serial mumbler, who is hard to catch. The design of the talk may not flow well, so it is hard to make the mental move from understanding one point to understanding the next. The speaker may decide to improvise and sweep us all off on to a tangent, that has little to do with the main menu. A recent presentation had elements of this. The slides outlining the details of how their software worked were dismal. They were complex and disconnected. It was assaulted by numerous tangents of tangents, totally wrapped up in diversions. The delivery was lifeless and humdrum. If we want to elevate our good name above the rabble, we had better do a splendid job of being clear when presenting. Our slides should be in the ratio of one slide to one idea. The less on the screen the better. The screen and the slides are competitors with our face. We want people looking at us and glancing at the screen, not the other way around. We want to use numbers. There are seven elements or five elements or three element of our main thesis, for example, and so we attach numbers to each. This is a simple, tried and true guidepost system to navigate the audience through the content. We should speak with passion, belief, commitment and enthusiasm about our subject. We want some words being hit hard and some introduced gently – both are powerful mechanisms for emphasis. Don’t mumble. The lack of a rehearsal is the big error to catching problems, before you destroy your public reputation. Rehearse. Listen to how you sound before anyone else has to. Rehearse. Speak to your key points and don’t read us the manuscript please. We all have email by the way, so you can send it to us, rather than read it to us. Being clear when speaking is not such a big deal. People worry about it, but don’t do any work on it before having to speak. They then wonder why the whole thing fell in a heap. A few simple measures will make it perfectly clear to the audience. They will hear you and then the quality of the content will either resonate with them or not. Your chance of being remembered will go right up, if you just do a few things before you unleash yourself on your audience.…
The vast majority of us are amateurs, when it comes to negotiating. Even in business, we would only be involved a few times a year perhaps in a major negotiation. Rather than trying to work it out by ourselves let’s take a look at some guidelines to make the whole process easier. Sadly, not everyone is like us – wonderful, charming, amusing, attractive. Despite our best efforts to be a role model of perfection, setting them a good example, others persist in being a major pain. Here are 7 selective tips on negotiating with the difficult amongst us. Have a positive attitude Sounds like a motherhood statement but deciding to see the negotiation as a learning experience in the real laboratory of life, as a means to enhance our win-win negotiating skills, changes the starting point of the discussion in our favour. Clearly define and agree on the issue Sometimes we are arguing about different things under the same banner. By defining the issue in commonly understood words, we are a long way toward achieving better clarity about what is at stake. If the issue is a biggy, then break it down into bits that can be dealt with one by one, in concrete detail. Do your homework Start by taking the other person’s case and building the argument from their perspective. This often opens up gaps in our information or assumptions we are drawing, based on no particular facts. Decide what is our BATNA – the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or our walk away position. Also determine what we can accept, what we can live with and what would be an ideal outcome. Take an honest inventory of yourself Be more self-aware of aspects of your personality and style which may help or hinder the negotiations. Nominate your “hot buttons”, which if they get pushed, triggers an explosion inside you and decide not to allow yourself to react that way. Watch your language and tone, as these usually go straight to the default mode in arguing and you probably don’t want to go there. Look for shared interests Conflict has a way of magnifying perceived differences and minimizing similarities, so look for common goals and desired outcomes. There may be a common objective but the disagreement is often around the best path toward achieving it. Focusing on the common goal and the desired future, keeps the conversation moving forward. Deal with facts, not emotions Maintaining a goal oriented rational approach may be difficult, especially when the ego gets in play, but try and de-personalize the conflict and separate the issues from the personalities involved. Instead of being defensive, ask clarifying questions that get them talking and you listening. Be an expert communicator Be clear, be clear, be clear. Ask questions, paraphrase for understanding and always check for their understanding of what you are saying. Miscommunication is often the major culprit in conflict. Tricky personalities and difficult people will never just conveniently go away. Instead, we need to be better prepared in dealing with them. We can keep repeating the same procedures and wonder why we never get a better result or we change our approach. Einstein’s definition of being crazy by the way, was to keep doing the same things but expect a different result. Don’t go crazy - these practical tips will help us on the journey to a less stressful and more rewarding future.…
The content was really great and the way the words were put together was quite clever. The speech was a dud. It failed miserably because it was a written speech, read to us. He could have emailed it to all of us and we could have read it for ourselves. The next speaker just spoke. He wasn’t such a fluent talker, sometimes stumbling over some of his words, occasionally stuttering, but he had everyone’s attention because he was authentic. He wasn’t reading to us, he was looking at us and connecting with us. The issue here is how should we reproduce the content we have designed. Do we have to remember it exactly, memorise it so we can be faithful to our speech design and message? Speakers get very hung up on their content. They feel that they have to deliver the perfect coalition of words to get their message across. Our first speaker couldn’t memorise his speech because it was too long. If it is a very short speech, you can try and memorise it, but these are usually very special occasions. Japan is a very formal country, so if you are asked to speak at a friend or subordinate’s wedding here, then there are established protocols and sentences you must use in Japanese. If you greet the Emperor of Japan, then there are set things you must say in Japanese, the specific content will depend on the occasion. Mick Jagger told me not to drop names, but I have done both and I did memorise the content. These were short pieces, so I could can manage them without getting myself into trouble. Please don’t read it to us either, if you can avoid it. If it is a highly technical speech, something with gargantuan legal implications if you get it wrong, a life or death statement to the media or on behalf of your absent big boss, then you may have no choice. If so, then please use as much eye contact with your audience as possible. You can read the words and add in gestures, to emphasis the message. You can stand straight and tall and project confidence, reliability, credibility and trust rather than hunching down over the microphone stand. You can have pauses, to allow the audience to digest the key points. You can hit key words for emphasis and can use voice modulation to bring the text alive. You don’t have to memorise your talk or read it to us or read the slides to us. You can have speaking points and talk to those points. For the vast majority of speeches, a conversational tone of talking to key points will work extremely well. If it is severely formal and you have either memorise it or read it, well go ahead. However if you don’t have that type of caveat, then look at us, talk to us and engage with us. We will forgive any sins of grammar, pronunciation or lack of speaking fluency in the delivery. We will connect with you and we will receive your message and we will regard you highly as an authentic person who spoke from their heart. And we will remember you in a positive vein.…
I was amazed to see one of the captains of industry, a hostage to his adrenaline release. His curriculum vitae was perfect. A Prince of the First Water, yet he would explode with instant white hot rage, when he didn't get the results he wanted, and would viciously tear strips of the offending patsy. We learned to sit on his right or left at the end of a long meeting room table where it was hard to be seen. We observed that the poor saps who sat directly opposite him got it between the eyes every time. I'm sure we all have war stories of demented leaders who couldn't control their emotions, and maybe sometimes, in extremis, we have joined them ourselves. How do we keep the chemical release in check when we are tormented by idiots, and nincompoops who don't do what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it. Here are some steps we can take. One, recognize it is anger, and that it is chemically fueled. When we know we have set off a chain reaction, and the chemicals in the body have now kicked in, we better understand that we have to take action to seize control back from the chems. Two, suspend judgment. Because we may not have enough facts yet, we may have been told a version of events, and there may be certain circumstances that would change our view. Before exploding, seek more data and insight. This will also help us to cool down a bit. Three, don't attack the other person. None of us are perfect. So keep that in mind before we set forth with a tirade about their shortcomings. Remember, every person we meet is carrying a heavy load in their lives, which we don't know about. So who are we to assume we could do any better in their circumstances? Number four, before we launch forth inject a pause, followed by a cushion. A cushion is a short sentence that acts as a chem breaker to allow us to regain control. We might say something innocuous such as, "well, this issue is an important one". We neither agree nor disagree when using the statement, but we buy valuable time to remember to ask more about the problem background, rather than immediately verbally lacerating, our interlocutor. Five, walk away. If you feel uncontrollable, molten larvae about to start erupting out of your mouth, just say, excuse me, and add some physical and temporal distance,to enhance your perspective on the lava trigger. As ancient wisdom says, when faced with a killer issue, how we react is the real problem we need to solve.…
Questions in general are powerful tools for speakers. They bring focus to key points we want to get across. They are particularly useful in getting our audience engaged. They also have a danger within them. Knowing when to use questions and what types of questions to use, are things which must be worked out in the planning of the presentation and shouldn't be done on the fly. If you want to get yourself into trouble, then ask the wrong question, at the wrong time, and then brace yourself for the reaction. Actually audience concentration spans are a nightmare today. They have become so short and everyone has become addicted to multitasking. Even if they are enjoying the presentation, they are scrolling through their screens right in front of you anyway, without any hint of shame. This is the new normal. We'll face this problem forever, and we are never going back to the good old days of people politely listening to us right through our presentations. This is why we need to be switching up the presentation every five minutes or so to keep the audience intrigued with what we are presenting. This is where great information or insights really help. The audience access to something new or valuable will pry them from their screens for a few minutes longer. We will need to be able to be using the full range of our vocal delivery skills to keep them with us. Questions are an additional assist to break through the competing focus for audience attention. By simply asking a well constructed question, we can grab audience attention. When we lob in a question, we magically get all eyes back on us. We've now gotten the audience thinking about the point we have raised. Rhetorical questions are particularly handy. They give us the ability to capture the mental attention of our audience on the topic we are discussing, get them engaged, and we can maintain the control. The key point here is to design the questions into the talk at the start. In those five minute blocks, we need to have little attractions to keep interest. They might be powerful visuals, great storytelling, vocal range for effect, or rhetorical questions. The key is to have variety planned from the start. In a forty minute speech, apart from the opening and the closings, there are going to be five or six chances to grab attention. At the start, we can use vocal range and visuals, but as we get into the middle and toward the end, we need to bring up the bigger guns as people start to fade out. Sprinkling a couple of well constructed rhetorical questions into our presentation will help us to maintain interest, and defeat our screen based social media and internet competition. Get used to this, because this is the future for all of us. As presenters, and we have to lift our game to make sure we are in a position to have a powerful influence with our audiences. The alternative is Speaker Oblivion.…
Dealing With Rejection In Sales. Everyone hates to be rejected, but not many people have this as a fundamental aspect of their work. We ask colleagues for help, and they assist.We ask our bosses for advice, and they provide it. Buyers though are a different case. They can easily find a million reasons not to buy and unashamedly tell us “no”. Rejection itself is not so much the problem, as is how we respond, how we deal with the rejection. Risk aversion is a fundamental part of the fabric of Japan and buyers more than most observe this in distinct detail. They would rather give up on something better if they thought there was a possibility their decision might bring some stain on their record. Failure is hard to recover from in Japan. There are no second chances here. People have learnt the best way to avoid failing is to make as few decisions as possible, especially any decisions, which can be traced back to you. Best to have a group decision, so the blame can be spread around and no one loses their job. Having given the sales presentation, many salespeople in Japan simply don't ask for the order. They get to the end of their spiel and they just leave it there. The buyer has not been asked for a decision. It is left vague on purpose so that there is if there is a “no”, then that will not have to be dealt with directly. The Japanese language is genius for having circles within circles of subtle obfuscation.The end result is a “no”, but nobody has to say it or hear. To get a sale happening, the buyer has to do all the work here in Japan because the sales people don't want tocommit to take the plunge and ask for the order. If they get a “no”, their feelings of self worth are impacted, they feel depressed, that they are failing. Sales though is totally crystal clear about success and failure. It is very hard to argue with numbers. You either made the target or you didn't. You have to up the ante regarding the volume of activity This sounds easy, but it isn't when you are feeling depressed, insecure, and plummeting in confidence. The key is to see sales in a different way. An increase is volume activity will even out the rejections. Rejection isn't about you personally. Buyers don't care that much about salespeople as people. They are rejecting your offer, as it is made today, in this part of the budget process, at this point in economic cycle, in this current construction, at this price and with these terms. We haven't shown enough value yet to get a “yes”. The answer is to see more people. In that way, you can have a better chance of meeting a buyer for whom all the stars align, and they can say, yes. At the same time you need to keep working on getting better at showing more value. We need to harden up and become tougher. Whatever you are selling, you always need to remember your AFTOS mantra. “Ask For The Order Stupid”. Never say no for the buyer and understand that no is never no forever.…
Running the Japan Operation. Running your own business is challenging anywhere, but Japan adds a bit of a spice to the broth. Unlike Western countries where salespeople are prepared to work on a one hundred percent commission basis very few Japanese staff are attracted by that option. Again, this opportunity to move wage costs away from fixed to variable is less available here. This means there must be a base salary plus bonus or commission arrangement, and the base will be relatively high, especially if you are a foreign operation as you need to attract potential employees. Of course, if you are a prestigious mega corporation encapsulated by a powerful brand, this attracting staff challenge may not be such an issue. If you're a small, medium enterprise, an SME, then attracting people becomes more competitive. If your team needs to speak some English, some reasonable level of English, then the wage bill goes up immediately. There is also a limited supply of Japanese who want to work in an international environment and that number is declining rapidly as less and less young people go overseas to study. We are currently in the midst of a real turning point regarding the internationalization of the younger generation. The young don't want to learn English and they don't want to live overseas because everything is so wonderful here in Japan, and it's safe. In the future, they are going to become almost impossible to hire for SMEs, as we are simply outbid by bigger companies. Marketing in Japan, especially in Tokyo is a remorseless pit into which you have to throw lots of money. Cold as opposed to warm approaches are also tricky. Sending a direct mail piece to someone unknown goes straight in the bin. Any email from a nonentity simply gets deleted unread. You can cold call here, but you really need to know the person's name. If you don't, you will usually get blocked at the entry point. You are promised that your message will get passed on and a return call offered, if they are uninterested. You will never hear back from them. There is always the issue of what you're offering, may work overseas, but it won't work here. If you bring global statistics, then there had better be a Japanese component of the survey, or the whole thing is just dismissed as irrelevant. That means you have to pay to run the same survey here to show the significance of your findings for the Japanese market. The good news is that in Japan, you do get paid by clients. Also Japanese companies prefer the devil they know, so if you supply value, then you can expect repeat business. Staff are hardworking and diligent. People are honest, neat, polite, and things work here also. There is also fantastic infrastructure. The rule of law applies here, and legal disputes that have to go to court are few and far between. Japan is still the third largest economy in the world. Many foreign companies have done well here. They have found the formula for success, but few have done that rapidly. Long term planning, patience, grit, and sustainability take on different dimensions here in Japan. All in all, Japan is a land of opportunity. Progress just comes more slowly here, and with great difficulty. But if you stick it out, then it will come. There are plenty of foreigners who have made a success of their businesses here. Adapt some samurai style grit and keep going.…
Zen study is a way to strip out all of the non-essentials in life. As presenters, this is a good metaphor for when we are in front of people speaking. You would think with all those thousands of years of Zen in Japan, the Japanese people would be legends of simplicity and clarity when presenting. Not true! Presenting as an idea only came to Japan around 160 years ago. Fukuzawa Yukichi who founded Keio University launched public speaking in Japan in the Meiji period. Western society plumbs the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, parliaments allowing debate and Hollywood for models on speech giving. Japan has no home grown role model. If the authorities needed you to know anything in old Japan, a notice board would have it written there for you. No shogun oratory from the castle walls to the assembled masses. No slide deck in those days, but Japan certainly was an early adopter of the technology for giving presentations. Any venue you go to in Japan will be bristling with gear. Interestingly, the content on screen will also be bristling. There will be 10 graphs on the one page, lurid diagrams employing 6 or more vivid colours, text so small you could use it for an optometrist’s eyesight test chart. Where has the zen gone? Many speakers are competing for attention with what is being displayed on the screen. I saw Ken Done, a well-known Australian artist, give a talk in Japan many years ago. He has a very unique visual art style and yet he moved around from behind the lectern, stood next to it and just spoke about his art to the audience. It was very engaging because it was so intimate. The Japanese audience loved it. There was only one source of stimulation for the audience and that was Ken Done. Don’t use a slide deck unless there is something in that content and presentation on screen which really helps bring home your argument. If you are there to persuade, then you will be so much more powerful if all the attention is concentrated on one point and that point needs to be you. In this case we have stripped away all the noise, so we have to fill the void with word pictures. We need to be having the audience see what we are talking about in their mind’s eye. We have to transport the audience to a place, time and situation that we are describing in words, in such a way that visually they can imagine it. We don’t always have to have slides or visuals. We are the message, so let’s manufacture the situation so that we are the center piece of the proceedings and all eyes and ears are on us and every word we say. We can Zen our way to speaking success!…
Sales is one of the few things in business you can measure accurately and immediately. Are you getting greater efficiencies from your internal systems? Is the marketing working? Are our team becoming more skillful? These are topics which are super important but also devilish to measure. Sales however is straightforward – how much did you sell? The pressure on salespeople is enormous. There are deadlines for sales, there are accurate measures in place, tracking everything. What was the revenue return relative to the ratio of the salesperson’s total costs. For every yen the salesperson costs how much do they generate in net revenue return. Are they yielding a 3:1 return or is the ratio at 7:1 or better? Because of all of this pressure, salespeople have become masters of excuse making. Having to justify your existence every month creates a tremendous amount of creativity in the excuse field. When you ask salespeople what is holding them back from achieving higher levels of performance, a surprising number of the reasons given are not related to sales activities. External factors are listed up very readily. The organisation needs to be better staffed, the strategy needs more work, the market is shifting, my sales manager is clueless, etc. Many of the problems are located outside the sphere of influence of the salesperson, yet they continue to dwell on these factors as holding them back from achieving their targets. This is the lack of self-awareness. If a salesperson is really doing their job, they ignore all of the external factors they cannot control and instead focus on developing the skills they need to succeed. What would those skills be? Knowing your product is a given. They know the details of the features of what they are selling but they don’t plumb the depths of the benefits of those features. Now the benefits have to be in context. Where does this benefit help the client in the competitive marketplace in which they are operating? How will this give the buyer a differentiable advantage vis-a-vis rivals? Where is the market moving toward and what does the client need to be doing today to anticipate the changes which are coming. This requires study of the client’s situation and industry. Not knowing the client’s world relegates salespeople to transactional sales solutions rather than achieving partnership status. Asking well designed questions is an absolute must but so many salespeople troop into the sales call woefully underprepared. They wing it from start to finish and wonder why they are not seeing any business. The preparation for the sales call is so much easier today because of our access to instant information. Yet, salespeople are not applying themselves to learn about the buyer and their industry before the call. The basics are always current and mastery of the basics is mandatory. Yet, so many salespeople don’t even know what the basics are or if they do, they don’t invest the time to master them. Self-awareness of your skill deficiencies is the first step to fixing them and dwelling on external elements you cannot control is self-delusion.…
Often we will hear a presentation and receive a lot of information from the presenter, but we are not really clear on what is their point of view on this subject. Technically oriented people are particularly prone to understatement. They believe that the data sells itself. This is because often they are very logical types. They didn’t get the email which explained that we all buy on emotion and justify with logic. They need to state their point of view on how great they think this piece of technology or intellectual property or whatever is. If we want the audience to get our message, we have to stand firmly behind what we are suggesting. If we believe there is some imminent change approaching the current state of the market, we should mention that and predict what we think the likely ramifications will be. We may be proven completely incorrect but that doesn’t matter. At that point in time the audience will leave the presentation knowing that you stand for something and there is an internal logic holding that construct together. It may eventually go in a different direction, but there are always so many mitigating factors, it is hard to be held to your incorrect prediction. We want belief to be demonstrated by our speaker and when they have a point of view backed up with a solid structure supporting their proposition, we see that as professional. We may or may not like or agree with what is being said, but we respect the intellect and the delivery. The structure is simple. We explain our point of view, we then spend the next twenty minutes or so, supplying data, examples, facts, testimonials, stories which are the evidence for this point of view. It is all beautifully connected together. We finish by restating our central proposition and call for the audience to agree with this and support that point of view. We now go into Q&A and marshal even more evidence to support what we are saying, this time in the face of people who put up alternative ideas or totally opposite opinions. In the final close we again state our view and call for everyone to support it, this is the last thing ringing in the ears of the audience as they depart the venue. If we want to be remembered then we need to have a point of view, take a stand. If we want people to support our product or service we need to sell them our point of view on why they should buy it. We need to back all of this up with passion, enthusiasm and belief. If we do this then we will be successful as a person of influence.…
There is an abundance of definitions on what is charismatic leadership? The definition proffered during a recent webinar was uncontroversial and acceptable: emotional and intellectual engagement, inspiration to go the extra mile – all quite reasonable elements. Somehow that left me feeling vaguely unfulfilled. Reflecting on charismatic leaders, what was it about them that made them so attractive? Of course they were highly skilled, experienced and professional. Yet their technical knowledge wasn’t the distinguishing feature, because hosts of uncharismatic leaders are equally skilled. Great communicators, they capture the key points, are concise, insightful, engaging. No shortage of would-be charismatic leaders with this resume but no cigar. Optimistic, positive, high energy, fast paced, dynamic – yes all good points, but there was still something missing. I think the missing piece of the puzzle here is the way charismatic leaders make us feel when we are with them. I have heard that in his prime Bill Clinton would speak with you and make you feel like you were the only person in the room, despite being one person in a massive crowd. What are some relevant behaviours we can adopt to make us more charismatic? Begin with praise and honest appreciation. This must be genuine and linked to actual behavior, not vagaries. There isn’t a lot of praise and appreciation floating around in the business everyday, because a lot of leaders are Driver personality styles, who prioritise task completion over building people. We can be different – we can look for the good, the strengths in our people and play to those rather than lurking around the cubicles with our super fault-finder nuclear harpoon at the ready. If we find fault, call attention to it indirectly. We should also use encouragement and make the fault seem easy to correct. Let them save face, don’t create a barrier by lambasting them. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. This means seeing people at their best and treating them that way rather than the opposite. We can ask questions, instead of giving direct orders. Socrates was on to the power of this approach centuries ago, but the typical boss today is still an order dispensing machine. When we tell, we own the task - when we ask, our people own it. We all own the world we help to create, so be the boss who gets help creating that world. Make them feel happy about doing the thing you suggest. Is this easy – no, but if our behavior is the driver then we need to persistently and permanently change our approach.…
Sales people are always under pressure to meet their targets. In high pressure situations, this creates certain behaviours that are not in the client’s best interests. We know we should listen carefully to what the client wants, before we attempt to suggest any solution for the buyer’s needs. We know that by asking well designed questions, we can possibly come up with an insight that triggers a “we hadn’t thought of that” reaction at best and at worst, at least know if we have a solution for them or not. Under pressure though, salespeople can go temporarily deaf. Even assuming they are smart enough to ask questions in the first place, they may fall over when it comes to listening to the buyer’s answers. They are not actually plumbing the depths of what the client is trying to achieve. In fact, they are ignoring the hints and nuances in the sales conversation. What are they doing? They are fixated on their needs, their target achievement, their big bonus, their job security. The client may have outlined what they had in mind, but that won’t scratch because the salesperson needs a bigger sale to make target. They need to expand what the client wants regardless of whether the client needs that solution or not. Upselling and cross selling are legitimate aspects of sales, but the purpose has to be very clear. It is not about making the salesperson more money The client may not have the full view of what is possible, because they will never know the seller’s lineup of solutions as well as the salesperson. They will also not have had deep conversations with their competitors. They won’t have been allowed behind the velvet curtain, to see what their competitors are doing and how they are doing it. They will not have had a broad exposure to what other firms and industries are doing in terms of best practice. This is the value of the salesperson, because they are constantly doing all of these things. They are collectors of stories, problems, breakthroughs, successes and can connect many dots together. In this sense, they can see possibilities the client may not have know exist or may not have thought of. This is where the cross-sell and the up-sell add value, because the salesperson can expand the client’s world and help them to become more successful. That is a long way from ramping up the number value of the sale, to make target. Nevertheless, this is what happens when the focus is on the wrong objective. If salespeople are trying to expand the complexity of the sale, to manufacture a larger sale, at some point the client is going to drop out. Unless they see overwhelming value in increasing the scope, they are well aware that this enlarged project is over budget. Now budget is just a fiction and we all know that. It is an imaginary estimate of where expenses could be allocated and it occupies a cell in a spreadsheet line. Many times we have seen budgets miraculously appear from nowhere, when the perceived value is great. The “Rob Peter To Pay Paul” school of accounting. The point about value comes back to listening skills. If the salesperson is focused on the client’s benefit, then they can rummage through their memory banks for best practices that could be applied to help the client achieve their aim. In the process, this may mean increasing the investment to get a bigger return. If the salesperson is just focused on getting their monthly number, they are not really paying attention to the client’s needs at all. They just start padding the details of the project, so that the numbers are bumped up. Once the client feels they are being ramped up for the salesperson’s benefit, then the trust is gone and the deal won’t happen anyway. Salespeople need to be really listening to the needs of the client and should forget about what they want. As Zig Ziglar said, “if you can help enough other people get what they want, then you will get what you want”. Zig was a great listener!…
Basically your job is toast. There is a machine or there will soon be a machine that can do it faster, better and cheaper than you. Our skill set didn’t change much from the start of agriculture 12,000 years ago until the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century. This last 150 years has been busy. We have created a weapon that can destroy our race. Who thought we would be that stupid? Fifty years ago we didn’t believe machine translation of our complex language skills would get very far. Driving cars and trucks requires us, because it is such a delicate, detailed and difficult set of tasks. What a ridiculous idea to imagine replacing those cantankerous, aging Japanese taxi drivers and punch perm truckers here in Tokyo with a self-driving, self-navigating vehicles. Internet of Things Komatsu tractors ploughing rice fields by themselves, nah, never happen. Apocalypse Now style “death from the air” requires top gun pilots and gum chewing gunners, doesn’t it. Killing each other can’t be delegated to drones. Robot vacuum cleaners, programmable pets, hotty droid receptionists, nimble stair climbing machines, adult men (many with passports) waving light sticks at holograph vocalists (Hatsune Miku) – not possible right? Don’t worry, moral and ethical judgments, “the buck stops here” business decisions, hiring and firing employment protocols, creative brainstorming – there is a long list of actions which will always require people to be involved. We need the human interaction, to hear stories, to share experiences, to be motivated, to aspire together against the rival firm, to set and follow our organisation’s Vision and Mission. We want empathy, collaboration, a sense of ownership, relationships. Geoff Colvin in his book “Humans Are Underrated” references a recent Oxford Economics study asking employers which staff skills they will need the most over the next five to ten years. The top priorities were all right brain - relationship building, teaming, co-creativity, brainstorming, cultural sensitivity and the ability to manage diverse employees. Henry Ford complained that every time he wanted a pair of human hands on his assembly line, he got “a brain attached”. Today, we want that brain that can feel as well as think. We have to be good at being human and good in our interactions with other humans. Colvin noted, “being a great performer is becoming less about what you know and more about what you’re like. Here is the challenge for typical male CEO driver types, who are assertive and task, not people, oriented: how to lead organisations where technical skill is being outsourced to bots and the value of human interaction has become more critical to the success of the organisation?. Do you ignore it or do you decide to change? How do you change?…
My eyes are closing. I am struggling to stay awake. There is something about this presentation that is not working. I thought, it must be me. I must be tired. Later however I realized the problem. I was being lulled into sleep by the monotone delivery of the presenter. The brand by the way is gorgeous. This is seriously high profile, a name that everyone knows and respects. The name alone triggers images that are all first class. The slides and videos he presented were all quality. These people have money and they know about marketing very high end products. Our speaker had all of this powerful support going for him, yet the actual presentation was sleep inducing. Why was that? The brand is a passion brand, but there was no passion. The brand is a great story, but the storytelling was minimal. The delivery was wooden. Measured, but wooden. Fortunately, despite his lifeless delivery, the brand is so powerful it can survive his attempt to murder it. But what a wasted opportunity. It is not as if this brand doesn’t have competitors. He is their guy in Japan, so that is his job, every time, everywhere. It was a good audience too. These are people who appreciate a good brand, who are influencers, who can spread the message. No one will bother though because they were not receiving any energy from this talk. Brands are being recreated every single day. When the product is consumed that is a brand defining moment. If the brand promise is not delivered when the product or service is consumed, then the brand is that much lessened. If this continues, then the brand will disappear, vanquished by its competitors. If our man in Japan had given a high energy presentation, extolling the virtues of the brand, that would have been consistent with the positioning of the brand. If you are representing a funeral home however, that would not be appropriate. So obviously we need to be congruent. This brand case though would be a great platform for enthusiastic storytelling and verbal passion for the brand. Where were the gripping stories of high drama and intrigue, as they duked it out with their competitors across the globe and over the decades? Where were the human dimension stories of the customers who were famous and fans. There was little or nor energy being transmitted to the audience. When we speak we have to radiate that energy to the listeners. We need to invigorate them. We do this through our voice and our body language. It is an inside out process, where the internal belief is so powerful it explodes out to the audience. They see we are convinced, we are believers and they become believers too. Let’s raise our energy levels up when promoting our company in a public presentation. Make sure our voice is using all the range of highs and lows to get full tonal variety. No monotone delivery please. We need to punch out hard certain key words and phrases, like the crescendos in classical music. We need our body language to be backing this up, our gestures in sync with what we are saying. We need to lift the energy of the audience through our personal power.…
Projects have been around for a long time of course and in the modern era we have accumulated a vast amount of best practice on how to manage them. It isn’t usually that we don’t know what to do, it is that we don’t actually do it. We get into trouble when we just leap in and dig straight into the logistical entrails, without giving enough thought to a macro 360 degree view of what is involved. Having a common and clear set of rules helps to ensure we are all approaching the project in the same vein. Here are ten rules for ensuring that what needs to get done is completed on time and to expectations. Mind our business.Keep our eye on the ball, especially defining what is inside and outside the project scope. This often changes mid-steam. Know the customer’s requirements.Double check you have properly understood the detail, document it, and keep checking against that documented record, especially if there are changes needed. Plan well.The plan will cover the scope, schedule, cost, approach etc. Involve task owners to gain buy-in and apply a strong reality check to what you have created. Strangely, the planning value comes from the creation process and not just the project outcome. It forces some hard thinking, tough prioritisations, player commitments, clear controls, smooth coordination and cooperation. Basically the things at which companies are usually rubbish. Build a great team with strong ownership.Motivation of the team is critical, so we need total clarity around the WHY, trust, communication, sufficient resources and mutually agreed deadlines. Track progress.Frequent reviews, wide visibility, broad communication and clear goals are needed. There are hard and soft aspects to most projects, so ensure we don’t overlook the soft skills needed to succeed. Use baseline controls.These are the fundamental building blocks against which we steer the project forward and against which we alter course when needed. Write it, share it, save it.Here is the Holy Grail of project management – write it down - if it isn’t written down it doesn’t exist. Document procedures, plans, evolving designs. Baseline controls are compared against the preserved records. Repeatable projects especially need this record, to which are added the fresh set of insights and learnings. Test it.Jumping into new territories with both feet can be high risk. Better to develop test cases early to help with understanding and verification of what is required to succeed. Resources and time are the most often underestimated elements, so an early testing helps to flush out the gaps. Ensure customer satisfaction.Make the customer’s real needs the prism through which everything is viewed. Undetected changes in customer requirements or not focusing on the customer’s business needs blows up in our face. Be pro-active.Be proactive in applying these principles and in identifying and solving problems as they arise.Review and search for problems, knowing there are people dedicated to hiding issues. Vigilance is a virtue we all need to practice when working on projects, especially anticipating trouble before it arises or becomes too explosive. Stop the same old, same old and take a fresh look at your methodology for approaching projects. You might be surprised at how loose and inefficient it is. We can all do better and these ten rules will help us on that journey.…
Don’t think of a pink elephant. Did you think of one when you read that sentence? It shows how easily we can we swayed by images. If I had said don’t think of the letters p-i-n-k-e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t, you would have been fabulously successful. What is the difference – both refer to the same prohibition? We are very much susceptible to images, yet we rarely use this facility when we are trying to have influence with those around us. We think that force of will, desire, status, oratory, personal power, connections or wealth is how we can have influence with others. In various circumstances, some of these will work, but most are out of reach to the ordinary punter. What else can we do? Well we can “pink elephant” our way to greatness. We can incorporate images into our conversations to persuade others to follow our recommendations. Getting others to follow our ideas is how we have influence and we have all heard that storytelling is a powerful vehicle for explaining recommendations to others. Like with joke telling though, most of us are pretty average at these skill sets. It sounds easy enough – just tell the joke and people laugh, tell the story and people will get in line behind you. Well we know that few are any good at telling jokes or stories. That is mainly down to a total lack of planning. Professional comedians spend an enormous amount of time working on their content and then perfecting the timing and mastery of the delivery. If you ever watch Japanese rakugo comedians for example, you can really understand the work that goes into this line of enterprise. They sit on a cushion, usually hold a fan in their hand and that is it. Everything else is down to what they say and how they say it. They create multiple characters, locations, situations and dialogue out of thin air. On our own part, we normally spend zero time working on our ability to have influence. We don’t craft our story content, nor do we practice the delivery over and over to have the best effect. We just blurt out of our mouth whatever it is we want and then get discouraged when no one could care less about what we want. There is a simple formula that is a powerful engine for gaining influence. It works on the basis that a good idea is a good idea. The reason for that is because the rationale behind the idea is compelling. If your idea doesn’t engage the emotions and logic of the listener, they are unlikely to be convinced of it’s value. It is a subtle appraoach. Ramming our ideas down the throats of others is the usual way people approach conversion to their way of thinking. This widespread habit has spawned a public of doubters, skeptics, nay-sayers, trolls and haters. We have to recognize that this is our potential audience from the start. So don’t tell people what you want up front. “I think we should hire more sales people right now, to expand the revenues”, you say fervently. The immediate reaction to this bold expense plan is to inspire everyone in earshot to get to work on coming up with the thousand good reasons that is nonsense and won’t work. Instead we need to build up some images in our story that lay things out in such a way that the audience leaps ahead of the story. We want them to arrive at their own conclusion, that we should hire more people to raise the revenue. By the time we get to our recommendation at the end of the story they are already there and wondering what took us so long to get to the obvious answer. This is called winning without battle, in this case a battle of wits and intellect. The storytelling should have scenes the listener can see in their mind’s eye. We might say: “Last Friday, I was up on the 44th floor of the headquarters in Akasaka having a coffee with Tanaka san from the CFO’s office, talking about how to achieve the President’s recently announced five year revenue targets. Interestingly, she said that they had just finished a computer simulation analysis of the results from the last five years. They found that sales per salesperson were averaging around 40 million yen per year. I was surprised to hear that even first year newbies like young Suzuki san in the sales team, more than covered their costs in the first year. I always presumed those new hires were a cost to the company. Tanaka san was busy getting ready for another presentation a little later that afternoon, so she walked me over to the gorgeous new dark wood paneled board room on the 47th floor. She booted up her laptop and showed me this line graph on the big 65 inch monitor there, that each year the average increase in salesperson revenue was 50%. I didn’t know that by year three, the salespeople were really starting to pull in sizeable revenue numbers. It was interesting to me that new hires cover their costs and that the real results get going in year three. If we are going to meet our five year targets, we should hire more salespeople right now. If we do that they won’t cost us anything this year and in three years time they will be producing the big numbers we need”. Now that story required a little over one minute to tell. This is not a huge burden on the listener’s patience. I included people, locations, images they could identify with to make it real. At the very end, I made a call for action – “hire” and then finished off with the icing on the cake with the benefit of doing that action – “produce the big numbers we need”. Don’t “free form” when trying to have influence. Carefully plan what you will say, practice it to get it concise and digestible for your audience. If you do that you will have people follow your recommendations and ideas and that is what we all want, isn’t it.…
Time is of the essence. Patience is a virtue. Worthy aims but sometimes we mix these aspirations up in sales. We are not moving quickly enough and miss the chance. At other times , we are impatient and we force the issue when we should be more stoic and considered. We lose on both counts whenever we confuse what we should actually be doing. Being too slow usually relates to making contact or following up, after making the initial contact. We meet people at an event, receive a bunch of meishi business cards and then we get sidetracked by something else. Usually a bright shiny object. Days float by and when we realize we haven’t followed up with the people we met, the best timing window has been missed. There is an advantage in getting back to people we have had a preliminary conversation with fairly promptly, while the occasion is fresh in their mind. As the days drift by, the ease of giving us the bum’s rush increases. They can choose to ignore our contact attempt, be it phone or email. Or they are just genuinely busy, busy, busy and don’t get around to responding. We don’t know which is the case, but we usually assume the former. Once upon a time, it was considered the height of rudeness to not return a phone call. In the early days of email everyone would reply. Not anymore. In Japan, trying to get through on the phone to people is always difficult, because they are always away from their desk and in a meeting. We are reduced to leaving a message. What does that look like at their end. Maybe a nothing, as the person taking the call chooses to do nothing. Maybe a slip of paper is plunked down on their desk, scattered amongst a million other papers, soon to disappear from view and relevance. If the contact is by email, then the tsunami of daily messages pushes our little missive down the chronological chain and we get buried in that great archive called “the lower reaches of inbox”. We get ignored and now face the dilemma of how often to follow up. If we keep pushing we can become annoying. But at precisely which point is that – the second, third or fourth follow up? Maybe the lack of a response is their subtle way of telling us they are not interested. It is easier to ignore supplicants, than telling them to buzz off. Maybe they are just busy – hard to know which is which. In my case I make it three times for follow-up. I always copy the previous email I sent into the new one, to show I reached out to you, but you have not responded. Does it always work? No, but at least I feel I haven’t blotted my copy book by becoming a pushy pain. I have to be patent. I have to play the long game. This sounds easy, but there are weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual targets to meet. There is the ever present urgency of the now. The other danger of patience is not to pair it with a good follow-up system. Today’s lack of response reflects today’s situation, but things change inside markets and companies. We tend though to keep moving. We hit up the next prospect and reignite the process all over again. Those who we met, who didn’t respond, now silently disappear into the morass of the daily grind and get quickly forgotten. If it is a no or a non-response today and if we follow up in a month, their situation probably won’t have changed sufficiently, to yield us a better result. If we leave it for 12 months, there is the danger that our competitor has slipped in there and plumbed the perfect timing to make contact, because the prospects situation has changed. We need to be getting back to them somewhere in that 6-9 months zone. Patience is having a good calendar system to flag that follow-up is needed and when it is needed. We need to be action oriented, but we need to do it in a patient fashion. Saying this sounds so smooth and easy, yet I know myself the discipline to have and maintain the systems to do this are extremely difficult. Especially in a busy life, hounded by targets, milestones and deadlines. In sales we are enthralled by the now. What is happening today takes up all of our attention and time. We are adrenaline junkies, loving the thrill of the deal, the urgency of the action, the vibrant seizing of the moment. By comparison, storing things away for the “distant future” is a rather foreign, unattractive idea. So we need to be better organised to take quick action on the immediate follow-up. If we get no traction, we need to be really well disciplined to get back to the prospect and follow up. Easy to say, but hard to do. Regardless, we have to do better in these two areas if we want to be successful. Remember, if we believe that what we are representing will help the client to grow their business, then we have a strong obligation to keep following up. In these circumstances, we should never be shy about re-contacting the customer. Yes, we are interrupting them, but we are doing it for all the right reasons and in their best interests. So let’s get out there and follow up!…
Beginning your talk in Japan with a series of apologies is standard practice. First apologise for speaking while standing, because you are towering above your audience implying superiority. Next, tell us how nervous you are about speaking to such a distinguished audience. Don't forget to mention you had no time to prepare the talk properly because you have been so busy. If you are sick, it is always good to get that in there too. If you are speaking in English then an apology for your poor English is manadatory. At the end, make sure you apologise for giving such a poor presentation. Why do Japanese speakers go through all of this apologizing. Japanese humility demands a public display of rectitude. Appearing too confident is not appreciated. Seen to be a bit of a smarty pants never goes down well. Especially when most Japanese public speakers are untrained, dreadful, boring and killing us with their monotone it is always good to fit in rather than stand out. So what should Japanese speakers do when they are addressing an audience in English made up of foreigners? What do we foreigners do when we are speaking to a Japanese audience in either Japanese or English? Most talks are not remembered in much detail. What we do remember though is the speaker. We come away with either a positive or negative impression. Linguistic purity is not required in either case. Foreigners are used to non-native speakers giving presentations with accents, grammatical mistakes and unusual vocabulary choices. Japanese are basically convinced that non-Japanese can't speak Japanese so any attempt to do so is greeted with approval, as long as it isn't too perfect. Foreigners speaking perfect Japanese worries some Japanese who seem to think their protective barrier has been penetrated and maybe this foreigner knows a bit too much. A certain degree of ingorance is somehow more comfortable. For Japanese speakers facing a Western audience open with a blockbuster that grabs everyone's attention and cuts through all the competition for the attention of your audience. Have some rhetorical questions at hand to keep the attention of your listeners. The audience should not know if they are going to be required to answer this or not to keep them locked in to th speech. Have a proper close designed, in fact have two ready to go. One for before we get into Q&A and one for after questions. Don't just let the speech fade out, instead we need to leave our audience with a call to action to get them supporting whatever it is we are promulgating. The final close is to take back control of the speech, because questions are random and often can be completely unrelated to what it is we have been talking about. We need to re-state our main message so that this is what is ringing in the ears of our audience as they file from the room at the end. For foreigners, don't copy the Japanese model because you are not Japanese, never will be considered Japanese and are not expected to be Japanese. Give the most professional presentation you can and be another speaker who the Japanese look at and wonder why they don't have those presentation skills.…
Sport is a popular source of inspiration for corporate leadership. Coaches attend off-sites and make good money telling executives how to be better motivators. Sports journalist Simon Kuper made an interesting observation in one of his columns in the Financial Times about famous football coaches falling into decline, supplanted by younger, more innovative rivals. These superstar coaches were the original innovators, but they ran out of gas. Well not all of them. Almost as an aside, he flagged the difference between the shorter longevity of the “innovators” and those more hardy types who excelled at “people management”. This is an interesting observation because often we surge through our careers based on our ideas, innovation or technical expertise. In Kuper’s article, the age of 40 was singled out. The planets start to align and leadership hopefuls begin their move to the very top. In my native Australia, historically, you were not thought to be a real man until you reached the age of 40. At that point you were considered to have amassed the knowledge, experience as well as the physical strength. Kuper notes that at this age, when you get the big promotion or the shot at a significant job, you have probably expended all of the your innovator ammo just getting there and now it is all downhill. What does this mean for those who have risen in the organisation based on their technical knowledge or the strength of their ideas? A lot of firms value those hard skills over the soft skills. The culture is geared that way and so are the promotions. Somewhere along the line the soft skills become more important in practice, but often there is not the organisational recognition that this is the case. Being the smartest person in the room is fine but not much help. Organisations today are more collaborative, require leadership and accountability at all levels and are screaming out for insights into how to beat the competition. Teams need to have good teamwork – that means producing more collectively, than what can be achieved by a couple of superstars. Getting the best ideas out of everyone in the team, ensuring clear, concise communication and a culture of going the extra mile in the plan execution are not driven from the hard skills toolbox. The leader’s soft skills are required and now the gaps arise. Being the best technician runs its race at some point, as we are overtaken by rivals. What will then happen to us for the rest of our worklife? We need to be able to substitute “I do it all” with “we do it all together”. The key question is why would anyone in the team care? They don’t, so we need the communication and motivational soft skills of the leader. Like the most successful sports coaches, we have to learn how to become excellent people leaders. When you get to 40, understand the clock is ticking and start working on your people management capability big time.…
I was at a speech recently, given by a very prominent person, an extremely experienced speaker, to a very prestigious audience. There were two particular problems with the speech. One was it was set for 25 minutes but the speaker finished in 8 minutes. The second problem was that the most interesting part of the speech was not readily accessible for the audience. Both issues stemmed from a lack of homework before giving the speech. Japan is a very formal country. If a speech is scheduled for 25 minutes, it has to last that long or otherwise it upsets the timetable. It creates a gap and organisers here in Japan are not renown for their flexibility and capacity to ad lib. It also sends a subtle negative message to the audience, that they are not worth preparing a 25 minute speech for. It comes off as being disrespectful and flippant. I was sitting in audience listening to the proceedings and was surprised to hear the speaker wrapping things up. Another audience member caught my eye, as we both realised this was coming to an abrupt and rather shocking end. It certainly didn’t leave the right impression with the audience. They felt cheated and that they had not being respected enough, given how self important they are. I have often been asked to speak to Japanese groups from 4.00-6.00pm. It is late in the day, when people are already tired from the morning and early afternoon sessions. The length of a two hour speech is taxing for an audience to stay connected with the subject and with the speaker. I wondered why they would want to put the audience through that ordeal? After doing a number of these long speeches, I eventually realised that I was the filler, between the end of their own programme and the party. The food and drinks were ready for a 6.00pm start and I needed to keep tap dancing until that time So before you speak, carefully check on how long they want you to occupy this part of the programme. The organisers usually have very little interest in the quality end of the experience. They just need the slot filled and you need to understand that is your role. Knowing this will help you in your preparation. Now our big name speaker in my example, actually had some really intriguing photos with him, but he hadn’t thought to put them on slides and show them to everyone. Waving the actual photos around from the podium isn’t quite as exciting, as projecting them up on a huge screen and then telling everyone the back story. The point here is do your homework in Japan before you speak. Check on the logistics, the reasoning behind the schedule, the equipment availability at that venue for what you need. Who will be in my audience, what are they interested in, what is their knowledge of the subject, how can I impress them, will there be consecutive or simultaneous translation going on if you are doing it in English? No one prepares to fail, but we do fail to prepare, don’t we.…
“I gave my liver for my company” is a common refrain amongst Japanese salespeople. The other one is “I gave up my weekends for golf with the client”. What about foreigners selling here? Do we have to donate our liver to the cause and get divorced, because we are never spending any time with the family? There is a difference between bribing the buyer through entertainment and having a business relationship. I think we can provide a quality service and leave it at the professional level. You might be spending your evenings wining and dining the buyer, but every couple of years they rotate positions within the company and your guy has moved on. Also, depending on the sector where you are working, your “guy”, could well be a “gal” these days and being taken out by you, may be of very little interest. Younger people value their private time more than previous generations and don’t necessarily want to be spending it with salespeople. If we concentrate on providing a reliable and quality service, then we can make sales here. We can have a business relationship that doesn’t have to cross the boundaries of bribery to get the business. For many Japanese companies, the good old days of big expense accounts for staff have gone. Golf is also a killer here. The travelling distance to and from the course sucks up time. The game tee off isn’t until 9.00am after you had your obligatory coffee, then there is the hour for lunch, then the obligatory bath afterwards, then dinner together. There goes the whole day and night. It is very hard to justify the time these days, given the demands of business. Yes, it is always pleasant to get out of the city and enjoy some nature, but can we really justify the time anymore? Lunches are a good way to get to know people. Usually, they are booze free or are imbibed in very moderate amounts. The check is often split these days, again because of compliance regulations. Breakfasts are not big with Japanese clients, usually because they are traveling long distances in the morning to get to work. Rather than trying to buy business through entertainment, we can do very well here in Japan, if we concentrate on being the best at satisfying the buyer’s needs. Ultimately the person being entertained has to answer to their boss and the latter is all about results. Their interest in their staff ‘s good times being paid for by us is minimal. Understand the client’s real needs, deliver value, follow up, do what you say you will and clients here will continue to do business with you. Your liver will thank you!…
It sounds so obvious that we should have structures for doing our project planning. However, the project team jumps straight into arranging the details of the project, without giving any thought to how the project should be approached. There are eight steps we can consider when we begin working on a project. Step 1: Define what is the “should be”. This is the project scope and must be in harmony with the project creator’s vision. What will success look like to the project client? Step 2: Analyse where we are with the “as is”. This is our current reality, our circumstances at the start of the project. What is the situation in our broader work demands, beside this new initiative? What resources and time frames have we been given? Step 3: We need to set our goals for the project. Are the goals Specific in terms of processes and resources? Are the Measurable, allowing us objective data to gauge progress? Are the goals Attainable, something the team can be motivated to pursue? Are the goals Relevant to the vision of the project sponsors or are we heading off course? Finally, are they Time-Specific with clear deadlines and milestones with which the check our progress? Step 4: Have we chosen the right “action steps”? In order to achieve the goals we have set, there must be priorities established and flowing from that, the action steps developed. We need to clearly set the requirements of the job, noting who will do which tasks and how the tasks should be completed. We must also think about how we will need to communicate the results on the way through and again at the end. Step 5: What are the costs? People, money and time are the usual resources we are normally short of when trying to do projects. We need to estimate how much of each we will need and do this at the start. Step 6: Timetables are key to checking progress. Clear deadlines, well communicated and understood will be broken out into stages throughout the project. We set them at the beginning. As we move forward, we need to check against the completion of work, compared to the original time estimate to understand our progress. Step 7: Implementation of the plan necessitates that everyone in the team understands their role, the specific goals, the timelines and the WHY we are doing this. This WHY part is often just assumed and not actually communicated. Step 8: Upon completion we need to celebrate, then go back and check the reality against what we presumed would occur. It is time consuming to do this and after the project everyone is usually tired and worrying about their next project. This is such a valuable part of the project structure though, because it produces templates, checklists and insights that make the next project that much easier to do. This eight step progression is not a complex process, but it will save a lot of panic, late-nights, wasted efforts and stress, if we go through it from the start. We can do it the hard way or the easy way, so let’s choose the structured way and make life a bit easier for ourselves.…
Salespeople don't set the price of what they sell. This is usually an obscure outcome decided by someone else inside the machine. It might actually be an elaborate process, where multiple variables are carefully calibrated, mathematical formulae are applied and a price is arrived at. Or, it might be a slightly moist index finger boldly thrust skyward to come up with a number. The latter is often the case when arriving at pricing for services. Regardless, the salespersons task is to sell at that price. This is where we get into trouble. Salespeople are total wimps when it comes to price. We have learnt that getting a sale is what counts and price is an obstacle in that process. If we are on a fixed salary and bonus or base salary and commission, the two usual cases in Japan, we get paid when we make a sale. Do we know the profit margin attached to each sale? Usually no and actually we don't often care either, as long as we get paid. We are just happy to (A) not get rejected by the buyer and (B) get a win, however small. Our self-esteem is totally tied up with getting sales, modest in size or otherwise. The instinct of the salesperson then is to make the price as malleable as possible. Offering a discount seems to get the buyer in a good mood and more likely to give us a yes. This reduced price immediately impacts our commission and if we keep doing this, will also impact our bonus and job security, as we don't bring in enough revenue relative to the target. The key problem is that the salespeople often don't believe in their own product or service. Because of this they can discount with gay abandon. This is a short-term gain for long-term pain. The ability to meet the price requirement is a critical piece of the salesperson’s skill set. Dropping the price may be easy, but we never build the skills to really succeed in this profession. It usually is a path to our removal by the sales manager, who understands we are unable to sell. Amateur salespeople, when they don't believe in the price, start right off the bat with a discounted price. They say stupid things like, “normally the price is x but I am going to offer it to you for y”. Or, “if you buy two, I will drop the price by x”. The client hasn't even requested a discount, begun haggling, attempted to massage the ask and yet lo and behold, a miracle has just popped up without warning. This tactic may be misinterpreted by salespeople, who don’t know what they are doing, as building trust and a good relationship with the client. That is a false dawn of hope on the part of our intrepid hero or heroine. Thanks to volunteering an unprompted price cut, the client now understands that your firm are a bunch of liars who say one thing, but do another. They also know you are a tricky bunch who are trying to snow buyers with your fiction pricing magic. They don't see the gratuitous lower price as a bargain. They see that as the starting point in a negotiation to drive the price even lower. By having a listed price and immediately offering a lesser price, the buyer feels you cannot be trusted because you cannot even defend what you say is the value of your offering. By dropping the price so quickly, the whole question of perceived value is brought into fundamental disrepute. There is no fixed price for this sale and therefore no equivalent particular value attached to it either. We are now in the Wild West of selling, where there the only rule is the right of force and the buyer has the Gatling Gun and we have a water pistol. The salesperson’s job is to pour on the value explanation and show why this pricing is fair and reasonable, fully justified and easily defensible. If they do need to meet the client’s restricted budget or need to allow the buyer to save face with their bosses, then any discounting should in the first instant be attached to volume purchases. If they buy more then the price can be adjusted. The amount reduced should be as smallish amount, as part of the first offer. Remember, we are now off the paved highway and are hacking our way through the dense brush of a negotiated agreement, where there are no maps, no signposts and no 5th Cavalry about to come to the rescue over the sand dunes. If the price point is to be assaulted, then the reductions should be small and fought heroically all the way. Do not go for round number drops or large number drops, go down in dribs and drabs. The client will feel much better knowing that they got a legitimate discount against the usual price, because they extracted that right out of the salesperson’s hide, rather than the salesperson rolled over right from the get go. When that happens, they doubt everything about you and your company because your pricing seems bogus. Never drop your price. Defend your price with value. Resist reductions all the way down and extract some form of quid pro quo against volume purchases. If you buckle, you will be destroying the brand, the brand positioning and the credibility of the firm. You may lose some sales. These are usually people who cannot afford you anyway. If you believe in the value of what you are selling don’t give in, defend, show value, fight, fight, fight. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, THE Sales Japan Series and THE Presentations Japan Series, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.…
Project leadership is a task most leaders are never properly trained to perform and so the results are often underwhelming. Projects are too common. Because of this we take them for granted, seeing them as part of everyday work, but we don’t approach them properly. We usually gather the team together and then dive straight into the details of the project, without really applying a professional approach. We certainly don’t apply as much planning expertise to the task as we should, as we wade straight into the mechanics of the execution. Why is that? Poor leadership and lack of skills make for dangerous dance partners, as the team launches forth rocking and rolling with no strategy and little expertise. Often, there is no existing documented planning process in place. This can be rather ironic because often the projects are repeated or very similar projects are undertaken. The goals of the project are often vague. This is a lack of direction from the top leadership to those tasked with doing the work. The project leader has to push back and manage upwards, seeking clear reasons for the WHY of the project and then make sure everyone involved in the team understands the WHY. Project scope creep is like a cancer that can kill the project, denying it success. Very quickly the additional tasks multiply but the time frame and the resources committed to the project do not change. This never ends well. The implementation strategy regarding roles, budgets, timelines and follow-up is weak or non-existent. Later things go wrong because timelines were not clear nor properly planned. The resources do not turn up at the required timing or the sequencing of the work is found to be skewwhiff, so there are delays you cannot easily cover or resolve. You quickly find that people, rather than logistics, are the trickiest part of project leadership. You may not have been able to match the project team resource with the skill sets required and you have to make do with what you have. The start of the project may be exciting, but over time other tasks start to impede on this project and compete for your people’s time. Their motivation starts to slide. You have to rally them constantly to be enthusiastic and committed to the successful completion of the project. People not completing their tasks on time unleashes issues around trust and reliability. Their excuses are never in short supply, but this is not especially helpful, because your boss won’t be accepting any from you, as project leader. There are seven project evolution steps we should follow: define scope; devise plan; implement; monitor/modify/keep checking; get closure/evaluate and finally celebrate. For each of these steps we need a trained project head, highly skilled in leading people, rather someone we who is ace on creating macros in spreadsheets!…
We all know that consistency is a fundamental requirement if we are going to establish trust with others. We ask buyers to purchase from us on the basis that we will be delivering what we say we will deliver, on time, at the agreed price point and quality. Saying you are reliable and trustworthy is hot air, until you prove it. Obviously once we get the order and deliver we are in a position to walk the talk. What about before that though? How do we have the buyer feel comfortable with our hot air such that they decide to take a risk and buy from us? Being able to quote statistics based on performance is powerful. If we can say that our on-time delivery rate has been running at 97% on average over the last five years that is powerful. Being able to show the dates and times in a format that offer proof is even better. Having testimonials that focus on the reliability factor is also convincing. Most testimonials focus on broad satisfaction and quality, but asking clients to comment on this specific issue is another way to differentiate ourselves from the competition. Controlling expectations is another important factor in underlining our reliability and ability consistency. Under promise and over deliver is an old chestnut but a good one for salespeople. Promise well within your range of possibilities on the first outing with the new client. Deliver exceptionally well and then from there expand the conversation to include other services or products. Don't be in a rush to cram the whole line-up down the throat of the buyer. Bite size pieces is how you eat an elephant and how you best serve each new client. Patience and attention to detail are the primary requirements for success. In Japan especially predictably is valued. Buyers like to be sure of what they are buying and in the first instance they are buying us. We have to create a great first impression and after getting the business we have to create a great second impression and a great third impression, ad infinitum. If we tell the client one thing and later contradict ourselves then the trust is destroyed and it is very hard to get it back. The ability to deliver the same product or service at the agreed level doesn't always happen for a variety of reasons. We had better have a rock solid explanation though as to why this variation occurred and why it won't happen again. Everyone knows that things can go wrong, despite the best planning, so it is the reaction and response that buyers look for. Mealy mouthed arguing the point infuriates clients much more than the fact of an error.…
We can control 100% of our attitude. Yes, but often we don’t. There are few things we can be 100% in control of and our attitude would have to rank at the top of things we really need to control. So you would think we would all be brilliant in this area. We aren’t and so why do we have problems? Part of the issue can be allowing past failures to sap our mental fortitude. We mentally re-run the movie in our minds of things we regret or events we actually don’t want to remember, but do anyway. We seem drawn to flashbacks and re-living the past episodes where we fell short or failed. We are really creative too. We don’t just allow the past to wipe out our positive attitude, we inject the future in there as well. We project forward and start imagining all sorts of failures and issues we will suffer, before they ever even happen or arrive. The combination of past realities and future possibilities can be a powerful mix to drag us into a downward spiral, where the world seems bleak, dark and we are hopeless. What can we do about it? Try to “live in day tight compartments”. This means we focus 100% of our energy and attention on what is facing us today and don’t allow the past and future to impinge on our attitude. Here is the crucial mental shift we have to make – don’t try to block out what happened in the past – we can’t. Instead though, we can recall it but not worry about it. There is the crucial difference – acknowledge it happened, but don’t worry about the past - we can’t go back and change it. Keep the focus totally on today, on what we can control and concentrate our energy and efforts there. The same applies to the future. Of course we should consider what will happen in the future – hopefully we will be spending quite a bit of time there. Again, there is considering the future and preparing for it, but not worrying about it. This difference is huge. When we think about controlling today, what we read and who speak with will have an impact on our attitude. Find positive information in newspapers, magazines, books, articles, Facebook and LinkedIn posts etc., and read that. Be aware of it, but skip the grubby details on everything ugly and negative. That actually means skipping most of the news on television, because you can’t control what is coming up next. At least with written text, on-line or off-line, you can control your intake. Let’s be very picky about what we feed into our minds. People are the other biggie. Reduce the contact and influence of negative people as much as possible. Avoid whiners, complainers and negative mindset types as much as possible. Find people who are positive, upbeat and spend time with them. There are fewer of this variety, but they are around and so soak up and contribute to their positive vibe. Look for organisations where the positive congregate and join the group. The past, the future and the negative erode our positive attitude, so as a priority let’s organise our life to deal with these issues. When we do that, life gets easier, better and happier. “It is all in the mind” is old wisdom, but still true!…
Getting up in front of people is confronting for a lot of speakers. Beady eyes are boring into you, a sea of serious faces is scary, the lights are painfully bright and the pressure feels intense. You studiously avoid confronting eye contact, by staring down at your laptop screen or your notes. Or to leaven things up, you read the screen to the audience. By properly designing your presentation in the first place, you can release yourself from the laptop. The main screen will be composed of little text and mainly images. These are images designed with the object of conveying the key points in two seconds. This means you are replacing text on a screen, with oral word pictures delivered by you. This is so much more powerful. The slide advancer technology is pretty good these days and this frees you from having to be physically chained to the laptop. Now you can move to the audience. Depending on the size of the occasion, the approach will be different. Let’s assume a 30 person plus venue. You divide your audience space into six sectors, like a baseball diamond. Left, Middle, Right Field. You then cut it in half, so you have an Inner Field and an Outer Field. If the audience is smaller than 30 people, then you probably have just left, right, front and back to work with. The point is to “work the room” by engaging with your entire audience. Make around six to eight seconds of eye contact with each individual, in all of those sectors. Do it randomly, unpredictably, to maintain interest. If you do it a predetermined order, the audience will leave you, because they are able to anticipate where your attention is focused. Once they know, they switch off and are easy prey to distractions, like their phone and the internet. In a larger audience, one individual seated toward the back receives your eye contact but the twenty people sitting around them, all think you are making direct eye contact with them. In this way, you can continuously engage the entire group. If the stage area is smaller and the screen occupies a good portion of the real estate, then don’t walk in front of the screen, if there is a projector involved. In very short order, you become the screen and that is totally distracting for an audience. Now you would think this was such an obvious point. However, we have all seen speakers do it. They are not aware of the projector in front of them and they have lost the attention of their audience. In this case, stand on the audience left side of the projector. We read from left to right, so we want people to look at our face first and then look at the screen. Take control of your speaking environment. Get it properly organized beforehand. If you do, your audience will buy your message and they will remember you as a powerful and confident presenter – someone they would like to hear from again in the future. Remember, this is how you build your personal brand.…
Three woeful contributions from salespeople include "we have this widget", "you should have it?" and "we can discount the price". What a mess right there. Yet, left to their own devices, this is the type of nonsense salespeople say to clients. Serving the client's best interests is job one for salespeople, so why aren't they having a proper conversation with the buyer? They are untrained, unprofessional and unskilled. What should they be saying? We don't have anything for the buyer, until we have some idea of what they need. Going through the detail of the latest release, model, new variation etc., is pointless. Ask the buyer about where they are now with their business and then where they want to be? The size of the gap tells the salesperson whether they are the one with the solution to closing that gap or not. If the gap is not so large, better to go and find a buyer who has the opposite situation. Don't waste anyone's time any further. If there is a sizable gap, ask why they haven't filled it in themselves already. What an ace question. Listening to them, we may however discover that we don't have what they need. Get out of there as fast as polite and go find someone who you can provide with a solution. The next question in this escalation is about their why. There are usually four “whys”. There is the unit why, the division why, the company why and then their own personal why. Their personal why is the key driver of buyer behavior, as we are driven by our own best interests. Once we know what success means for them, then we have an idea of how to present the solution at a later stage. Also, who are we talking to? Is this the big picture, macro, company direction, vision realization driven CEO? Or are we talking to detail oriented people like the CFO and the technical buyers, who want three decimal places and all the micro analysis? Are they the user buyer, who is thinking about ease of application, after sales service, guarantees and hand holding if needed? Depending on where they sit in the company our explanation of the suitability of the solution for them will be different. Discounting is the cancer of sales. It is a brand killer, a symbol of low value, a slippery slide for which there is only one direction and that is down. Salespeople are here to provide value. If there is a push for discounting it had better be related to volume purchases. The defense of the brand is critical and price preservation is needed if the organization is to stay in business. This is the salesperson' job - provide value. There are budget limits, policies, stupidities, excuses, justifications a plenty as to why the price has to go down. Salespeople need to defend the price at all costs, including walking away. Remember, if we can help the buyer to grow their business, then the product or service is essentially free. It is paid out of the growth, on the top line, not the bottom line.…
“We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do”. This quote from one of the pioneers of the self-help movement, Dale Carnegie, marked a major change in how people thought about the future. Up until the 1920s, fate and God’s will were the more common explanations for what would become of us. Psychology studies in the USA began to drive the idea that we could control our futures to a much greater degree than we thought, by controlling our thoughts. Not so remarkable today, but this was a brand new idea back then. The problem though is we still haven’t quite found the escape velocity to blast us out of our self-limiting beliefs about ourselves. Covid, war in Europe, supply chain chaos, coming recession - in such a scary world, the idea of peaking out from your Comfort Zone and challenging the new doesn’t look so attractive. We may have had the benefit of decades of the self-improvement industry pushing us all to be better and do better, but the reality is we are not purpose bent on discovering our unheralded possibilities. Instead we are searching for security in a very insecure world. We need to re-immerse ourselves in the world of possibility, to re-read ancient and modern wisdom about our potential. We need to find that escape velocity to project ourselves beyond our Comfort Zone. If we keep doing the same things, in the same way, we will keep getting the same results. Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same things but expecting a different outcome. So staying in our Comfort Zone, but expecting to do better is basically a crazy idea. The problem is how do you get out of your Comfort Zone and find the strength to move forward, especially in this highly uncertain world. Dale Carnegie came up with an answer that works. Through experimentation, observation and adaption he found ways of challenging people, using bite sized pieces, that would gradually expand their Comfort Zone but not blow it up. The process involved taking practical ideas and getting people to act on them immediately. It also involved providing feedback that was only positive and encouraged people to keep pushing forward. We know it works, because we see the growth in the participants once they come out of their Comfort Zone. See if it will work for you too.…
Pricing is usually set by the boss and salespeople are just there to get out and sell at that designation. The trouble though is salespeople are not convinced by any price setting methodology. They only believe in the reality of the market. The way they know the reality is the degree of pushback they get from clients, when they are trying to sell. When you have no belief in the value backing up that price point, your ability to sell at that rate is simply squashed. You default to discounting to get a small piece of something, rather than a very large piece of nothing. The crunch point is the sales price negotiation with the buyer. If you have gotten into the death spiral of last minute discounting, in order to move the product or service, you have now trained the buyer to extract the biggest possible discount every time. Instead, give them an ultimatum on price and a very, very short fixed time to take it or leave it. In the meantime, call another potential buyer. If you have not built up pipeline for your sales, then you are always going to be vulnerable to price collapse. If you discount once and then imagine that by telling the Japanese buyer this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a spectacularly rare alignment of the planets, which will never happen again in their lifetime, a never to be repeated offer, you are kidding yourself. Don’t miss this. In Japan, as soon as you drop the price, you are now locked into that price point with that client forever. It is not impossible to go higher but it is very, very hard to pull that one off. You have to be ready to drop the buyer entirely, to restore your price point validation. The equation here isn’t just with the buyer, it is with the salespeople as well. By dropping the price we tell them that this is all this is worth and they believe it. They cannot push the price back up, because they don’t see it at that level either. The company leadership has to intervene and say “burn that buyer if they won’t accept this price”. Be prepared to lose their business. If we do that, then the salespeople will get religion about the pricing validity. When we are haggling over the price with the buyer and they say that, “this price is too high”, “that is out of our budget”, “we can’t afford it at that level, ”can’t you drop the price”, “we never pay that much”, etc., we are in a bind. We want the sale, so we immediately go into discount mode. This is a big negotiating mistake. Don’t fold on the price pushback. What we should be doing is defending our price. We don’t do that by arguing with the buyer. We don’t do that by force of will. We do it by trying to better understand the client’s situation. Often salespeople stop asking questions at this critical juncture and instead go into high energy “tell mode”. They start telling all the good reasons why the buyer should pay the requested price. This won’t work. Firstly, don’t start your response by arguing with the client. Instead agree with them. We can say, “You are right and I understand it is a considerable investment”. If we disagree with them, they stop listening to us and start thinking about all the reasons their “too high” statement was correct. While we have their attention, we have to transition and question the buyer as to why they made that comment. “You just mentioned the price was too high, may I ask you why you feel that way?”. We avoid arguing and instead of us having to justify the price, we now need to switch it. After you make that comment do not speak. In this process of further explanation by the buyer, we pick up very valuable insights into the client’s situation. Armed with more data and insight, we may be able to come up with a flexible solution that is a win-win for both of us. We may in fact discount the price. We might give them longer payment terms or structure the payments across two quarterly budget periods. We may offer the discount on the basis of a volume purchase. All of this sounds simple enough, but when salespeople hear “the price is too high” they go blank and forget the basics. The job of the salesperson is to serve the client and that means to clearly understand the client’s situation. The only way to do that is to ask questions. It is not to be annoying, pigheaded, stubborn or inflexible. Quite the opposite. We are here to solve the client’s problem and we have to do that in an arrangement, that is a win-win for both of us.…
You have to tell people how it is or you will lose power and authority. If you swallow what you want to say, you will diminish yourself. If you avoid hard conversations, you will have less influence. You need to tell them exactly how you are feeling. This was the tenor of the advice coming from an American communication “guru”. While listening to this, I thought this is absolutely going to fail in Japan, if not everywhere. Dale Carnegie’s human relations principles however work well not only in Japan, they work well everywhere. So rather than trying to ardently assert our rights, telling others how we feel and gaining power through strength of will, let’s try some proven methodologies that actually work. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain The guru gave the example of someone keeping you waiting, suggesting you “respectfully” tell them how you feel about that. Dale Carnegie realised there was no point. Even if you are polite, people become defensive and are irritated to be reminded that they are less than perfect. They were late, you can’t get the time back, so you just have to accept others are not as reliable as you are and move on. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view When we are fixated on what we want, we become inwardly focused. The goal of successful human relations is to be liked and trusted. Selfishness won’t get you there. They are massively late, so what? Are they doing this to annoy us, to punish us, to irritate us? No, there are bound to be any number of things happening in their world which we don’t know about, so let’s not be too hasty to apply “our rights” to the situation. Begin with praise and honest appreciation Rather than launching into the witch hunt of the “crimes’ of the other person, zeroing in on the hard talk topics, build the relationship with praise. Not fake, apple polishing, sycophantic praise. Rather, genuine reflections on their good points, backed up with concrete evidence or examples. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves Few people listen today. Tied up in themselves, in having power or status, they are all about them. They interrupt others when they are talking, they try to display their cleverness by finishing other people’s sentences, they one-up others to be dominant. People however want to be acknowledged, to be heard and our job is to get them talking about themselves. Forget about being powerful through winning at hard talk. People will willingly cooperate with you, if you apply these principles. The ideas are easy to understand, but not so easy to apply.…
We can speak to a group and then there is another level, where we try to captivate our audience. What makes the difference. The content could even be the same but in the hands of one person it is dry and delivered in a boring manner. Someone else can take the same basic materials and really bring it to life. The quality of the argument we are going to present is important. We definitely need to design two powerful closes, one for the end of the speech and an extra one for after the Q&A. Importantly, we start from this point when designing the talk. We work out what is the most compelling message we want to leave with our audience and we start working backwards structuring the speech from here. Once we know what we what to say, we need to be gathering evidence to back up that assertion. In a thirty minute speech, there won’t be so much time, so we might get through three or four of these key points and that is it. Now we make sure that the evidence is super strong, offering really compelling proof, to build credibility for our argument. Next we work on a blockbuster opening. This has to compete with all the things running through the minds of our audience. We have to smash through all that obstruction and clear a path so that they will hear our message. The first words out of our mouth had better be compelling or we will lose the battle for today’s minute attention spans. We want our visuals on screen to be clear and comprehendible within two seconds. Let’s keep the colours to an absolute maximum of three. Photos are great with maybe just one word of text added. If we use graphs, we should have only one per screen wherever possible. Every five minutes we need to be switching the energy levels right up, to keep our audience going with us. Naturally, we have tonal variety right throughout the talk, but we need to be hitting some key messages very hard, around that five minute interval. This needs to be combined with some powerful visuals on screen to drive home the point. We are meticulously sprinkling stories throughout the speech to highlight the evidence we want to provide for our key points. Data by itself is fundamentally dull, but stories fleshing out the data are so much more scintillating. We sketch out physical locations, describe colours, talk about the season, mix in people they may know, explain the why of what is in the story. Our final close after the Q&A has to go out with a bang and not a whimper. We want a strong call to action. We need great structure, evidence, visuals, stories, pacing, energy, passion and belief in our presentation. The delivery is going to rock because we make it rock through rehearsal after rehearsal, until we have refined the whole thing into a symphonic triumph. That is how we need to be thinking to captivate our audience when we start constructing the talk. Begin with audience capture in mind.…
Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service. He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”. I was reminded of Carlson’s insights when I was recently checking into my hotel in Singapore. While going through the check-in process at the hotel, a waiter from the adjoining restaurant approached me bearing an ice-cold glass of freshly squeezed juice. Singapore is very humid and trust me, that ice cold beverage went down very well. I thought this is really well thought through customer service by this Hotel. One of Carlzon’s observations about customer service however was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand. The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer. So back to my story. As I get to my room, in good spirits after unexpectedly receiving my ice-cold juice, I find out the television isn’t working. After a forensic search for the cause, including a few harsh words with the television controller, I discover the power is not on. There is a card slot next to the door that initiates the power supply to the room. Yes, I worked it all out eventually, but the thought occurred to me that the pleasant young woman checking me into the hotel, failed to mention these two facts to me. Sustainability of good service has to be the goal if you want to protect or grow your brand. When you are the leader of your company, you presume that everyone “gets it” about representing the brand and that the whole team delivers consistent levels of service. You expect that your whole team is supporting the marketing department’s efforts to create an excellent image of the organization. After all, you have been spending truckloads of money on that marketing effort, haven’t you? But are all the staff supporting the effort to build the brand? Perhaps they have forgotten what you have said about consistent customer service in the past or they are a new hire or a part-timer who didn’t get properly briefed. As leaders, we should all sit down and draw the spider’s web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with. We should expect that nobody gets it and determine that we have to tell them all again, again and again. First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers. Consistency of good experiences doesn’t happen automatically. We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.…
“Born to lead” is nonsense. Many things shaped that person in order for them to achieve credibility with others. Of course, we can become a “leader” as part of our company designated hierarchy. We sit somewhere in an organizational chart above others, with various reporting lines elevating us above the hoi polloi. We know many people with that august title of “leader”, who we would never willingly follow in a million years – pompous, tiresome, incompetent jerks! Can we become someone who others will follow when all the paraphernalia of leadership pomp and circumstance has been stripped away? How do we become a charismatic leader, whom others willingly wish to follow? The starting point is critical. If your desire for leadership is driven by personal aggrandisement and ego, where all good things must flow to you, this force of will factor is not attractive. Good leadership is differentiated by the followers desire to want to follow, when there is no coercion, structure or impetus to do so. We gravitate to these charismatic leaders because of how they make us feel. Effective leaders are good with people. There are some key principles they embody, which make us like and trust them. This is not artful manipulation, where they fake these principles in a cunning way. That approach exists and will ultimately be revealed as hypocrisy. What we are talking about here is having correct kokorogamae (心構え) - true intentions. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves Bossy people often love to brag. Instead, build the trust by focusing your conversation on them not you. As you stop dominating and start listening, you uncover areas of shared desires, values, interests and experiences which are magnetic in their properties and bind us more closely together. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view Often we are egocentric - it always about me, me, me. Having listened, we uncover the context behind their beliefs and arrive at a greater appreciation for their views and positions. We can more easily get on each other’s wavelengths. When this happens, we become more mutually simpatico, supportive and powerfully bonded. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders The inclusive, humble promotion of self-discovery unleashes powerful forces that encapsulates our shared direction. We become the catalyst for their self-belief. We all want to be around people who make us feel good about our better selves and with whom we share common goals. People will willingly follow us when we apply these principles. We must sincerely switch from a “me” focus to an “our” focus. Change our approach and we change our results. We will become a charismatic leader.…
Sometimes you see a confident leader really bomb their presentation. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does, the contrast is vast. If they are totally hopeless and they bomb, well that is understandable. But a competent leader shouldn’t bomb their presentation. He did and I was wondering why that happened? It was only at the end, when it was too late to do anything about it, that he realised he had bombed completely. The tepid applause reaction was a give away. The lack of questions a more immediate one. The issues were a misreading of the audience and an arrogance. The audience had been lured to the venue with bold promises of goodness and light. The content wasn’t good enough to back up the advertising and the audience spotted the gap straight away. The arrogance was an assumption about the leader’s credibility being sufficient to justify the content of the presentation. When we emphasise our years in business, we are aiming for increased credibility, linked back to our stupendous track record. Our speaker had not properly prepared the presentation. He was a good speaker and a competent presenter. He thought his track record stood for itself. The only problem was the content of the talk was rubbish. We tread a fine line with the longevity thing. Track record, sustained over many, many years is a credible thing for the audience. The only concerns are that the whole affair may be perceived as dated. When we talk about the good old days we like it because we were there, but the audience only cares about what is the relevance for them. We have to be skilled to make it fresh, new and connected to their current business reality. Our speaker failed in that regard. Our pride in our track record can make us blind to the fact that people don’t really care all that much. We like strolling down memory lane, but so what. We arrogantly assume that what we did was important. Where is the link to the audience’s current problem right now? This is the skillset needed in the leader presentation. Getting the audience need properly understood, suspending what we like to talk about and instead focusing on what the audience is keen to know about is our task. I am getting older too, so I took copious notes from this speech on what not to do, if I am ever tempted to talk at length about my good old days. I think we all should avoid that temptation too.…
Pizazz is one of those unusual words, that sounds kind of cool, but is a bit vague. In presenting terms, we are really looking at being more interesting and engaging and doing that in a sparky, non-anticipatory way. A workman like, by the numbers, presentation is fundamentally boring. A recent presenter did a painting by numbers job with his effort. The talk had completed the exercise in the allotted time and he had spoken about a number of key points. The delivery was wooden though, the voice tone was flat, the whole thing was a lifeless shambles really. When you are in a high profile role, like being the CEO, then you simply have to perform. Never forget we judge your whole organisation on you. So engaging your audience is a requirement. This is easy to say, but not so easy to do. Energy is a key component of this process. Somehow we all know that enthusiasm is contagious, but miraculously manage to forget this, when we start speaking in front of groups. If the leader is low energy, we somehow doubt they can do the job properly. With the prevalence of YouTube videos and business social media, presenters are starting to really branch out. This was brought back to me not so long ago, when I saw a video on LinkedIn of someone I know and the delivery was fundamentally funereal. The voice was a monotone, the energy was totally insignificant and the exercise was absolutely dreary, not motivational. Sadly, the message was just destroyed, totally killed by the poor delivery. Now if you are going to put yourself out there, especially in the crowded alleyways of the YouTube video world and broadcast through social media, then you have to step it up. If you want your message to cut through the white noise of a squillion other presenters, then you need to have an attitude that says, “I want to stand out and be heard”. If you want to move into video, then you really need to compete. This is not just you presenting while being recorded. Yes, you can do that, but if you are going to blast yourself around the world via video on social media, then add pizazz to the mix and make it interesting. Be that little bit unexpected, have something that differentiates you from the pack. You don’t have to be handsome, beautiful, deep bass DJ voiced or tall. You just have to be interesting, engaging and relevant. Use voice modulation, tell stories, speak with, not at your audience and bring your full energy to the task. Okay, let’s all go back to the drawing board. Let’s stop doing what we have always done and think about how we could add some pizazz to our presentations and start experimenting, to find what works best for each of us.…
The hero’s journey is for the very, very few. The reality is there are more of us who need the cooperation of others, than those who can succeed despite others. The problem is although we made need the cooperation of others, we are not that good at it. We limit our scope through two key areas – how we communicate and how we react. Reflecting the preferences of others is a veryeffective way of building trust and cooperation. Does this mean being two faced and manipulative? No, it means being flexible and other focused rather than me, me, me focused. When we are speaking with others we notice the way they prefer to communicate. It will vary from very low energy to high output - softly spoken to plain loud. The loud person can’t hear the softly spoken person and feels annoyed, because they have to struggle to hear what they are saying. The softly spoken person is quietly upset, because they don’t like people who are loud and aggressive. The key here is to adjust ourselves to suit the situation and the other person, if we want to gain their cooperation. We will need to increase our energy and volume when we speak with high output people. We may feel like we are screaming, but on their scale all we are doing is communicating normally. The opposite applies, when we have to drop the volume and the strength. We may feel like we are whispering and it is killing us, but the counterparty feels very comfortable chatting with you. Some individuals are really detail oriented, they are constantly seeking data, proof, evidence about what they are being told. When we interact with this group, we notice the micro focus immediately and so we need to start adding a lot more detail to our explanations or recommendations. The opposite preference is for big picture discussions. Don’t worry about the details, the practicality, the roll out - we will get to that later. They want to plot the future direction in broad brush terms. For detail oriented people this is painful, because everything seems fluffy and unrealistic. Don’t fight it – encourage them to go big and go with them. When we hear something we don’t like, we often react first and think later. Bad approach! Instead, bite your tongue and hear them out – don’t jump in over the top of them with your counter idea or cutting comment. Before we comment or attempt to criticise them, we instead ask them why they think that or why they say that. While they are providing some background and context around their position, we are able to bypass our immediate chemical reaction and reach deeper down to our calmer second or even third, considered response. When we do speak we may even accept their position because the context made sense or able to suggest a counter position. We can do this in a calm way that doesn’t lead to an argument and bad feelings. Two actions on our part will build the trust and establish the lines of communication required to convince other to help us on hero team journey. Speak in a reflective manner and don’t react immediately to what you are hearing.…
Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes. This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines. Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued. The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff. Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn’t all that important. The quality of the data or the advice is considered to the key thing, not the delivery. I was reminded of this recently when talking with a very highly skilled technical person. I have actually seen this person present and he has vast amounts of data at his ready command. He is steady, reliable and a bit dull. Normally being a bit dull mightn’t be a problem, except in his profession the competition for advice is fierce. In the course of our conversation I was suggesting that he could do some presentation training and this would help him stand tall amongst the weeds. There was a need but only a low recognition of the advantage that this would give him relative to others, who also claim they have big brains as well. This is a common blindspot for technical professionals. They confuse having the knowledge and big brains with being automatically awarded the business by clients. Today, across all industries, buyers are much better educated and informed. They have access to global information, at a speed unimagined in decades part. “We will gather our big brains together and they will come” did work for the longest time but not anymore. All professionals have to be highly knowledgeable and persuasive. The persuasive part requirement hasn’t been universally grasped by the technical experts as yet. Our reluctant hero asked me what the presentation training would cost and then proceeded to tell me it was too expensive. The actual amount of money was a peanut, in fact, yet he was reluctant to invest in himself to become a dominant player. I was shocked not because of the money involved, but because of his inability to grab the chance to become well recognized as THE expert in his field. Participants leave his current presentations lukewarm. They are not salivating at the prospect of working with him. They are not highly motivated to sign him up as their advisor. They are still guarded and unsure. He could switch that whole thing around easily by investing in himself to extend his abilities. Potential clients are going to his competitors who invested in themselves and became fully rounded professionals. Invest in yourself and learn how to work every audience into a passionate belief that they need you and your services right now.…
Tricky area in sales, showmanship. The word has a certain odor about it that reeks of fake, duplicity, con game, spruker, carnival barker, etc. Yet, like storytelling, this is an important part of the sales professional’s repertoire. Clients are card carrying members of the Great Guild Of Skeptics. They are highly doubtful about salespeople’s claims. We need to bring some powerful persuasion techniques to the fore. Just making a statement is not going to do it. Having a need and doing something about it, are not the same thing for buyers. Clients have to be convinced and how do we convince them? We might offer a trial or a demonstration. We might marshal testimonials from satisfied buyers. We might provide data from independent studies, that back up our claims and assertions. All good stuff, but how do we make sure we can break through the wall of disinterest, doubt and distraction. This is where showmanship comes in. This means using our communication skills to highlight the key points that will persuade the buyer, that what we are offering will help them and is in their best interests. What we say has to be true, but we don’t need to say it in a flat, lifeless, mundane or boring way. When we offer to sell something, it has a cost associated with it. There is a difference between cost and price though, which may not be apparent to the buyer. They use the terms interchangeably. We as sales professionals should never use either word if possible. We should be talking about the investment. If you buy something today with a cheaper price, how do you judge the value when you have to keep replacing it, because of some fault or defect? Showmanship would involve using persuasive word pictures to draw out the scene of the client becoming frustrated when the cheaper model broke down, destroying the moment at hand or the lost opportunity it should have provided. It would include talking about having to lug the item back to where it was purchased and then wasting valuable time hanging around to get served. Maybe describing the annoyance of having to line up to take a number or sit on a hard, uncomfortable bench or getting tired legs, because you have to stand. It would mean describing the opportunity cost of how that irreplaceable time was being spent on a totally unnecessary, useless task, at the expense of higher priority, more valuable items. We should be raising pertinent questions about how costly their time and focus are and mention the complete irritation of the interruption to their day. Showmanship may involve the use of mathematics to reduce a cost down to a comparison where the purchase amount isn’t that substantial, when amortised over time. The price consideration is in the now, but the cost can be strung out across years. This makes the additional cost of our widget seem reasonable and more convincing as a wise decision. Clients can understand investing for the future, but we have to use the right word pictures to draw that out, so that it is pertinent and relevant to the buyer. Our story must help the buyer to see the full ramifications of the decisions they are going to take, both positive and negative. Use very emotive language to drive home the cost of no action. The tone is subdued but still powerful. We need to be looking for ways in which we can contrast the plus of using our solution, against the minus of doing nothing or using our competitor’s solution. Think about what you sell and what are some ways you can illustrate to the buyer that there are opportunity costs to not buying from you and buying now. Look for powerful word pictures to draw this out for the buyer. This is showmanship and we must become masters of communicating value to the client.…
We love acronyms! Our workplaces are thriving with them such that we can hold extended conversations composed entirely of seemingly impenetrable codes. They are handy though and this one REAL is short and serviceable to describe best practice leadership attributes. It always good to have evidence around pontification. This summary of the great and the good tendencies amongst leaders is based on recent survey research we did in the USA, on what respondents thought leaders needed to do to be more successful. We are in the process of rolling this survey out globally. REAL is composed of these key elements – Reliable, Empathetic, Aspirational and Learner. “Reliable” is an obvious choice and though much upheld in principle, tends to break down in practice. “Managing upwards” is a buzzword for describing how to deal with one’s boss. It used to be called “sucking up to the boss” to get ahead. In the latter case, it means taking all the glory for yourself, Teflon-like blaming others for mistakes and stepping on the bodies of your staff, to elevate your own brilliant career. Reliable however is an attribute that leads to trust only when the staff observe that what is said is actually done, that promises are kept and that their own personal development is being given a high priority. “What is in it for me” is a common human frailty. Bosses who keep this in mind when making sure the organisation and individual goals of their staff are aligned, get more loyalty and more accomplished. Misunderstandings arise, usually traced back to poor communication. More work need! “Empathetic” is closely linked to listening skills. Taking the viewpoint of the other person is difficult if we don’t know what that viewpoint is. The Japanese expression kuki wo yomu or summing up the real situation, is a great phrase to explain emphathy. What is being said is important but more often, what isn’t being said is where all the insight is buried. Busy bosses though don’t have much time to get below the surface calm of the workplace. Some don’t care – just get me the numbers – or else! Using our position power works up to a point but we miss out on a lot of creative potential as the opportunity cost. If we want to know what is really going on and what people are really thinking, we have to spend time and work at it. Expressing we actually do care is also another orphan amongst communication skills. Successful bosses have good awareness and confidence to communicate they really do care about their people. “Aspirational” reflects ideas about grasping the bigger picture. Hovering above the melee of the everyday to see the vision being realised far on the horizon. It means communicating beyond this quarter’s goals and placing each individual’s role in terms of their contribution to the bigger goal. The framed glass protects the vision statement, ceremoniously hung on the wall. While it may not fade in the sunlight, it fades in the collective memory. No one can recite it, let along live it, so it is as meaningful as the flower arrangement on the reception desk. Pleasant enough idea but ephemeral. The leader has to inject the ideas and concepts involved into terms that resonate with each person individually. This takes time, which is why so few organisations get any return on their investment in their vision statement. “Learning” gets nods of approval but many executives have had one year of experience thirty times rather than thirty years of experience. Their views are still locked away in a mental vault, for which they have lost the key. Too busy to learn. Busy, busy working in their business, rather than on their business. They are up to date on Facebook but way behind where the industry is headed and where their company needs to go. Well informed yet ignorant, because they lack perspective and acuity. If we aren’t prepared to permanently kill our darlings, our favoured ideas and concepts, we must be prepared to risk falling behind, trampled by our competitors. REAL, another acronym heaven dweller, is easy to remember and that at least is a start to actually realising its power. We know all of these things – we just forget or get too busy to do them. We should change that.…
When you see someone do a very good presentation, your faith in humanity is restored. There are so many poor examples of people killing their personal and professional brands with poor public speaking skills, it is refreshing to see talks done well. The global CEO of a major pharma company jetted into town recently and spoke at a chamber of commerce event. The presentation was well structured and flowed in a way that was easy to follow. The slides were professional and clear. He spoke fluently, wasn’t reading from any script and instead was talking about the key points up on screen. When we got to Q&A, he repeated the question, so that everyone could hear it and then answered it. He did that while addressing the entire audience, rather than just speaking to the inquirer. When he did not have the information referred to in a question, he admitted it straight up, without trying to fudge it. This builds trust and credibility. Could he have done better? Yes, he could have added more stories into the presentation. A few vignettes from the exciting world of white lab coats, where they were developing new medicines to save humanity, would have been good. He could have delivered it with a bit more passion. He was supremely comfortable delivering it and that is one issue we have to be alert to. When we are too comfortable, we can sometimes put ourselves on cruise control. Another function was an industry awards event and the main VIP guest made some remarks before announcing the winners. Humour is very, very hard to get right. When you see it done well, you are impressed. You need to have material that is funny for a start. Then you have to be able to deliver it so that people laugh. This sounds easy, but as professional comedians know, the timing of the delivery is key. So are the pauses and the weighting of certain key words. Getting the facial expressions to match what is being said is also tricky. Where do we acquire this humorous material? We steal it. Our speaker had probably heard those jokes somewhere else before and just topped and tailed them for this event. He made them sound personal, as if they had really happened to him. This is important in order to build a connection with the punters in the audience. So, when you attend an event and you hear someone make a good joke or tell a humorous story, don’t just laugh. Write it down and start using it yourself. Another place where we can find humour is in what we say that makes an audience laugh. When I returned to Japan in 1992, I was called upon to do a lot of public speaking in Japanese. I began with constructing what I thought was humour. This was a pretty bold step because I had no track record in being funny in English, let alone in Japanese. These jokes of my own creation all completely bombed. However, I would say something not meaning to be funny and the Japanese audience would laugh. I took note of that reaction and realised that was a joke. I would incorporate that into my other talks. It was refreshing to see two competent speakers in action recently and it is certainly a skill that all of us can improve in. There are some simple basics of speaking we need to concentrate on - prepare, rehearse, learn – repeat!…
Bullying, humiliation, ridiculous targets, rubbish goods, stress, shame – a toxic cocktail often suffered in the sales environment. We often get into sales by accident. There are no varsity courses in sales. There is training available by companies like ourselves, but often this is not offered by the employer. The assumption is you look after yourself. We won’t invest in you and we will fire you if you can’t make your numbers. “Churn em and burn em” is the dominant ethos. The successful salespeople ride the favourable market through to the inevitable downturn. If they survive that experience, they often wind up being the sales manager. Battlefield commands come on the back of your officer being killed off. There is a high turnover rate in sales both when people fail or succeed. In either case, you are out the door and off to somewhere else. The survivors who don’t want to move on the greener pastures, often become the bosses. They continue the toxic culture regardless of how stupid it is, because that is all they know. The client in all of this is the “mark”, to be harvested, to have their cash extracted and then abandoned to their own devices thereafter. Often in bad sales organisations, area salespeople have to cover big territories. This is because they can only hit that one market once. They are selling a lie. Their product is not matched by quality against price and they have to scarper with the cash and get out of Dodge. They are like sharks, which have to keep swimming around in order to breathe. They move from town to town, fleecing the rubes and riding off into the sunset. They are 100% commission pirates who have allegiance to no flag, except the skull and crossbones of short sighted, selfish salesmanship. The successful move up in the organisation and the rest move on. Who decided it would be like this? Not the salesperson. They join a company and then discover the disconnect between the cost and the value, between the rhetoric and the reality. By this time they have already left their previous job and are treading water to make commission and not drown in debt. They are always just one week from financial oblivion, so they have to keep dancing while the music is playing. The evil ethos is the company’s making and this is where the blame should lie. Bad companies are inevitably run by bad sales managers. The reason is simple – “birds of a feather, flock together”. Good sales managers don’t want to be involved in a business where they have to survive by fleecing the buyers. They see a bigger picture, they have ability and talent and a war chest of funds to offer them choices. Old Japanese saying – “the fish rots from the head”. Consequently your company’s bad sales boss, environment, culture and ethos stinks. If you are a “good” person in sales, swimming in toxic cocktail of sales hell, then get out. You are not in a position to reform that business or management. It didn’t get that way by accident. Now you may not be able to move immediately, but for the sake of your health and mental well-being, don’t put up with crap from idiots. As soon as you can, move. In the interim, educate yourself. There are tonnes of books, free videos and podcasts on how to do a better job serving clients. Access them. Feed your mind with the positive, because for sure you are being killed by the negative environment surrounding you. If you have the funds then get yourself into training. By whatever ethical means, make yourself more skillful and valuable. I often refer to kokorogamae , which I translate in this case as our “true intentions”. Don’t let any toxic environment or people corrupt your true intentions. We should have a very clear guiding light and that should be to serve the best interests of the customer. That means we have their success as the catalyst to our own success. This is not instant and means a different type of client relationship with a longer sales cycle. The share of wallet increases when there is a good track record and strong trust. The lifetime value of the customer becomes an integral part of the equation. This type of sales environment only exists in companies with a correct kokorogamae . If your company is not like that then do not become a lifer pirate, get out and save your career, health and mental well being. Action Steps Decide that your time in this toxic environment must come to an end Study sales diligently while you are arranging your escape Make your kokorogamae a clear vote in favour of serving the client…
I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses. Here are my musings after 51 years of training in traditional Karate. Stepping on to the floor The dojo is the ultimate equalizer. Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks’s mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else. In business we forget this and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities. We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people’s real abilities are recognized and rewarded. Starting The class begins with a short meditation interval. This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what will now come. Next everyone is bowing toward the front. The front of the class represents all who came before us. We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization. By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going. Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion. Finally we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travellers on a journey of self-discovery. How do we start the work day? Is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY we are there. Stretching We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles to be able to operate at a very high level of performance. If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice or are you just practicising on the client? Basics We repeat the same drills over and over, every class. We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution. We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought. A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity? Sparring Free sparring is 100% spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of move and counter move. At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in one minute, but using our techniques with full body commitment. When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker? Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes? Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains over their brawn? Kata These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents. The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection. The form is set and so Zen like releases the mind to go beyond the form. Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected? Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness? Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation? Strengthening and warming down Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance. We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles. Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace? Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people? Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested? Finish We repeat the bowing and this time we add the Creed. Voicing carefully chosen words which represent the value system of that dojo, (e.g. Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect) so that these are the last things setting into our minds, before we go back to our usual routines of life. How do we end the workday? Do we set up for the next day by reviewing what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow? Do we reflect on the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better?…
We have many images of negotiation thanks to the media. Most of these representations however have very little relevance in the real world of business. A lot of the work done on negotiations focuses on “tactics”. This is completely understandable for any transactional based negotiations. Those one off deals where there is no great likelihood of any on-going relationship between buyer and seller. This is false flag. The aim of sales is not a sale. The aim is repeat orders. If you want to be permanently in 100% prospecting mode then transactional selling is fine. The majority of salespeople though are trying to strike up a lifetime relationship with the buyer, so that the orders keep coming rain, hail or shine. The style of negotiations for this play is completely different to the one-off, transactional occasion. In this world “tactics” are only partially relevant. Going one up on the buyer isn’t sustainable in a continuing relationship. They remember and they don’t like it. Technique has a role in the sense that there are certain best practices in negotiating which we should observe. The philosophical starting point is key. What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to build an on-going business relationship where we become the favoured supplier or are we after a one –off smash and grab deal? If you want the lifetime value of the customer to be your main consideration, then you have a lot of commitment to win-win outcomes. The consideration of the communication style of the buyer is another important negotiating consideration. How we communicate with the buyer will vary, if we know what we are doing. Clueless salespeople will have one default mode – the way they personally like to communicate and that is it. Professionals understand that if the buyer is micro focused, we go with them on facts, detail, evidence, testimonials, proof etc. If they are the opposite, then we talk big picture and don’t get bogged down in the smaller details. We describe what success looks like. If they are conservative, self-contained and skeptical we drop the energy level to match theirs. We don’t force the pace, we spend time having a cup of tea to build the trust in the relationship. We mirror what they like. If the buyer is a “time is money” hard driving type, we don’t beat around the bush. We get straight down to business, we lay out the three reasons they should buy and then we get out of their office pronto. With this analysis in mind we prepare for the negotiation by analyzing the buyer’s perspective. We use what we know to build up a picture of what they will need from the deal we are negotiating. We match that with what we can provide and we amplify the value we bring to the equation. We set out our BATNA – the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. This is our walk away position. We have analysed the potential of this client by looking at their lifetime value as a buyer. This can have a big impact on how we see the pricing. In most cases, sales negotiating requires a holistic approach rather than a “mechanical” tactics driven approach. Decide what type of relationship you want with the buyer. If it is win-win, then we are looking at trade offs for pricing against volume and repeat business. Leave all that tricky negotiating palaver to the fantasy world of Hollywood movie scripts. Let’s negotiate in the real world.…
Every performance is better when practiced beforehand and presenting is no different. We are putting ourselves out there when we present, so don’t miss it, there is a lot on the line. We need to ensure we are a triumph rather than a joke. The way to do that is to practice beforehand. How do we do that, what are some best practices to help us? We need to design the whole presentation. We need to start with the close. Yes, we need to plan how will we finish the talk. What is the one key message we want to get across to our listeners. When we distill that one point, it becomes the beacon on the hill around which to arrange the preparation of the data and the flow of the talk. We now design the sections of the talk. What are the key points we will make and what is the evidence we will marshal to sustain the argument in the time allotted to us. Stories are easy to understand and remember, so don’t make our audience work hard, give them the information in story form for maximum effect. So each section has some key point, supporting data, told in a story format. Finally, we design the opening – how can we break through all the competition for the mind space of our audience. How can we grab their complete attention? We should avoid reading the presentation. We are going to be aiming at talking to points on the slides or in bullets format in our text or recalled from memory. Using a mirror, video camera or a coach are good ideas, to get feedback on how we are coming cross both visually and verbally. If we seek feedback from a colleague or a family member only ask for two pieces of feedback – “what am I doing that is good?” and “what can I do to make it better?”. Every five minutes we need a change of tempo to keep our audience interested. We need to switch our energy or speed up or down. We can’t be too strong all the time or we will wear down our audience and lose them. Alternatively, if we are too soft, they are lured away by the internet and are soon gone from us. We must involve eye contact with all in our imaginary audience. We practice looking to the left, center or right, also close and far. We also need to practice the congruency of our gestures with our words. Match a powerful gesture with a point you want to drive home, to give it strength. We need to a full rehearsal from start to finish, at least three times. Don’t forget to practice the Q&A. Remember, the audience can ask us anything, no matter how rude, off topic, irrelevant or impertinent, so we have to be ready to go. We can go from hero to zero quick smart, if we don’t practice answering difficult questions before we go live.…
Cold calling is an unheralded intervention into someone's already packed schedule. They are distracted by the phone from what they were concentrating on, so they are automatically annoyed. They are time conscious because this call was not planned. The person calling them is an unknown quantity, so the trust factor is zero or less. They have been cold called by idiots in the past, who say dumb things like "How are you today" which is an immediate warning bell that we are talking to a nincompoop. So how do we call people in a way that we can add value to their business? Here is how it can go: "Hello, may I speak with Bill please?" This presumes we have a name to ask for. Usually in Japan if you only have a title, you will get killed at the entry point by some lowly minion, whose only joy in life is getting rid of salespeople who call unannounced. Let's continue: "speaking" "Bill my name is Greg Story, I am with Dale Carnegie. Do you have a moment to speak? When I say my name, I slow down and put a little gap between the Greg and the Story, so that they can easily catch my name. I ask for permission to speak with them, respecting their schedule. If they a too busy to speak, it won't matter what I say, I will only be annoying and will blot my copy book for a later call. If they are too busy, I say: "Thank you for letting me know, I will give you a call later in the week". I don't ask for a day or time because they have already told me they are busy and I want to show I respect their schedule. If they say, “Fine", then I know I have their agreed attention. "Bill, thank you. We are in the XYZ business. I have done some research and I see that your company profile fits with what our typical clients looks like. We have been able to improve the results for our clients who fit this profile, because we have ABC. I was just wondering if our ABC were able to grow your business, like it has for our other clients, would getting those sort of outcomes, also be of benefit to your company?" We let them know what business we are in so that they can garner some context for this unexpected call. We mention we have done research and they are not the product of random selection through the phone book, but of some analysis and intelligence. We mention we have had success for people who look like them and not unreasonably wonder if lightening could strike twice for them as well. We ask if they would like to grow their business. It doesn't matter if they say "Yes" or "No" next, because we are ready for both. If they say "Yes" then we say: Thank you. I am not sure if what we have is a perfect fit for you or not but let me swing by and show you what we have and how it works. Then you can make a judgement if it is helpful or not. Would this week or next week better." If they say "no" to wanting to improve the results of their business we say: “Thank you for telling me, may I ask why you say that." And then we shut up and say absolutely nothing. There may a thousand good reasons why they don't want to meet and we should be prepared to accept the referees decision and not try to force the issue. They may say something however which allows us to reframe the value of meeting and we can ask about this week or next week and so on.…
Peter Drucker has this great quote. “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and under performance. Everything else requires leadership”. In this modern day and age, why do still encounter these three horseman of the apocalypse of organizational dis-function? Each signals its own raft of challenges, magnified even further when operating in Japan. Friction is a tricky one in Japan for foreign bosses because so often it is subterranean. Power struggles, factions, proxies, turf, ego all come into play here but not so overtly. Influence is achieved through access to key people more often than over the bodies of enemies. The problem here is getting the issues out on the table for resolution more than anything else. The age old remedy of out of office discussions is usually where the boss finds out what is really going on, as opposed to what was thought to be happening. It is highly unlikely staff will seek the gaijin boss out and download the skullduggery going on, so you have to unearth it yourself. That is only half the battle, now what do you do about it. The typical stance of getting the two people in a room and telling them to sort it out may work in the West, but it won’t work here. We need to really dig out the issues and manage the resolution process, paying careful attention to those spurious “yes” statements, which indicate I heard you, but don’t mean I agree with you. This ensures that the follow up is critically important to make sure that the solution is actually executed and everyone is doing what they said they would do. White-anting, backsliding, artful misinterpreting of what was agreed, untrue communication gap excuses, willful disobedience – expect the whole gamut. Confusion is usually the result of unclear processes and unclear communication. Japanese language is a big culprit, because in the hands of native speakers it is genius at leaving things vague. Having a process and having a common understanding of the process is not the same thing. Expecting the next logical step to be logical to everyone else is too bold. Specify, micro-manage the detail, check back (ad nausium) is often the minimum required. Underperformance is usually a factor of skill or motivation gaps. Skill gaps can generally be closed through proving training, mentoring and coaching. Motivation though is a lot harder. This is often a systemic problem, starting at the top. The senior leaders determine the culture of the organization. If the atmosphere is to defer to seniority by rank and age, then don’t expect too much innovation occurring anytime soon. If middle management only understand the two tools of “what” and “how” and don’t have “why” in their explanation toolbox, expect employee passive compliance. It boils down to “why be creative when you don’t care?”. Latching on to the “why care” drivers is critical if we want to move forward and succeed in the market, the latter brimming with competitors. As Drucker points out leaders need to lead, but often in Japan they often rotate through positions in the organization, never taking any significant decisions, avoiding as many initiatives as possible and keeping their heads down anticipating a cushy retirement. This is why we love working in Japan – never a dull moment.…
How should we reproduce the content we have designed for our talk? Do we have to remember it exactly, memorise it so we can be faithful to our speech design and message? If it is a very short speech, you can try and memorise it, but these are usually very special occasions. Japan is a very formal country, so if you are asked to speak at a friend or subordinate’s wedding here, then there are established protocols and sentences you must use in Japanese. If you greet the Emperor of Japan, then there are set things you must say in Japanese, the specific content will depend on the occasion. Mick Jagger told me not to drop names, but I have done both and I did memorise the content. These were short pieces, so I could can manage them without getting myself into trouble. I did get myself into trouble though, trying to memorise a longer speech. I was the Dean of the Kansai Consular Corps at the time and was asked to speak at the farewell party for China’s Consul General Li, before he left Osaka for America. I had studied Chinese at University and although pretty rusty, thought I could pull off a short speech. Because I am not a fluent speaker of Chinese, having lived here in Japan for over thirty years, I had to memorise the content. The plan was to memorise the first part in Chinese and then switch to Japanese, which is much easier for me. As the Australian Consul General in Osaka at that time, I thought this would be a pretty deft piece of national branding, emphasising Australia’s commitment to Asia. It seemed like a good idea at the time! This is where memorisation can get us into trouble, and this includes trying to do it in your native tongue. Well I wasn’t doing this in English, so it was a high risk strategy. I was doing fine actually, until I got to a quote from the famous poem by Mao Zedong called “Reascending Jinggangshan”. All of the Chinese guests in the audience immediately recognised it and started applauding enthusistically. At this juncture I made a fatal error. After having an internal debate with myself, I decided to wait for the applause to die down and then resume. Because it was a memorised speech and not natural conversation, it was a forced exercise to remember the words. Suddenly my mind went completely blank, a total whiteout. I could not recall which line came next. If you are ever up on a big stage, facing thousands of expectant faces and your mind goes blank, you will find that a solitary microphone stand is not much cover behind which to hide your embarrassment. After about 20 seconds of stone motherless silence, which felt like an eternity, I was somehow miraculously able to pick up the next part and complete the speech, before switching into Japanese. My conclusion is it is probably wiser to avoid memorising your speech.…
It always astonishes me that many salespeople have very little sense of proper timing to start selling their product or service. In the sales call, they are in a rush to get down to business. Japan has mastered the idea of building some rapport before starting the sales conversation. Small talk predominates at the commencement of the meeting and then smoothly glides into the main discussion. Western business people are all "time is money" focused and want to "get straight down to business". They consider that preamble to be a waste of their valuable time. Japan has a preference for the long-term view and business partnerships. The "devil" they know is much preferred to the "angel" they don't, which is why, usually, the same suppliers get called back every year. New leaders, new staff in decision making positions can eject you from the sales supply conveyor belt, but that is usually because they have their own preferred supplier "devil" they know from past dealings. Everywhere in the world I believe people like to do business with people they like. We may be forced to do business with people we don't like, from time to time, but all things considered, we all still like to do business with people we like. That early component of the rapport building stage of the sales conversation about the weather, where is your office, how long have you been in Japan etc., is designed to see if you are someone who is likeable. Trust is the other biggie and the first meeting is mainly geared to determine if the buyer can trust you and your firm in that order. By listening and observing how we behave, the buyer is trying to get a fix on our degrees of reliability. This factor is more important in Japan because of all the tight interlocking relationships in play here. There are many more layers of distribution in Japan, so an error or a problem in any part of the food chain, can have adverse impacts down the line. The last thing a buyer wants is an unhappy buyer of their own products or services down the line of distribution, because of something we did or didn't do. Believing we are saving time by cutting to the chase, getting down to business immediately is actually wasting your time in Japan. It is a waste because the whole sales process is probably de-railing the possibility of a sale at the very start. Another observation I would make is that even those who observe the sales niceties in Japan, get straight into their "pitch" immediately after the small talk is finished. This is a big mistake. The loquacious salesperson is the thing of legend. Talk, talk, talk is the idea, somehow overpowering the buyer's resistance with our onslaught of logic and data. Take your time, concentrate on building rapport and trust. Use the time available in the meeting to let the client do most of the talking and get them speaking about their business, the current market conditions, the relevant timing, their preferences, their frustrations, their experience and their biases. When we know these things, then we have something to talk about, but not before.…
We find it frustrating when we have good ideas or suggestions but all we receive is rejection or even worse criticism of our ideas. Part of it can be the culture of the organization. When someone savages our contribution they cancel our idea creation ticket right there. However my crazy, unworkable, ridiculous, stupid idea might be tweaked by you into something really valuable. Without my nutty offering though, you would not have seen the better possibility. This is the problem with ripping into people for not putting up perfect ideas from the start – they stop starting and remain silent instead. There should be two distinct stages involved in creative idea creation. Green Light thinking is a metaphor for the traffic lights showing green, meaning to proceed. Red Light thinking means to stop. Generating ideas is what we do in the Green Light stage and evaluation is taken care of in the Red Light thinking stage. The important point is to not mix the stages together. Critiquing ideas as they are being formed dampens the amount of involvement and contribution from everyone. Some people are fast and others are slow in how they process ideas. The more considered idea generators see the other contributor’s ideas being flayed alive and they deduce they should just park their idea. They wisely keep it to themselves because they don’t want to go through that indignity. They often have the most valuable ideas because they are deep thinkers, but their ideas never emerge. We need as large a volume of ideas as possible in the Green Light stage. Time is always limited, but the object is to get the ideas out first, with no commentary. Allow people the full freedom to put their ideas forward. Once the ideas have been generated, we should share the content. This is where the magic of cross- pollination occurs and we see one idea trigger something unrelated. We go again and generate further ideas. We need to guarantee the freedom though, to provide that spark, unworkable as it may be in and of itself. It has a different role – it is a catalyst for more creative boundaries to be stretched. Let’s forget mixing Green Light and Red Light thinking and give our team the advantage of creativity that is fully supported and nurtured. Let’s create a dominant culture which is inclusive and welcoming of everyone’s contribution. If we can do this, we will win the innovation contest of who proceeds and who disappears in business.…
Formulistic presentations tick the boxes, but don’t ignite much enthusiasm in the audience. The things that go missing are often passion and commitment about the topic. Additionally, it may be an already low energy, flat delivery is further hindered by a poor structure. We enter a room full of pre-occupied people, with microscopic attention spans, basically entirely distracted before we start. We need to grab their attention away from whatever it was they were doing before we get up to the podium. Our opening needs to be excellently planned. It must be a battering ram to break through the wall of disinterest and skepticism. It must have a powerful hook to keep our attention. So our opening has to instantly grab attention and then we need to lead the flock through the wilderness of our topic, so that they can keep up and understand where we are going. Wrapping it up is a critical component, because this is the final impression for the speaker for the audience. Often, the final words of the talk just fade out as the voice drops away, instead of rising to a crescendo of a powerful hypnotic, embracing call to action to metaphorically storm the barricades. Passion for the topic or the audience is a requirement. This is not an optional extra, a useful add on, we can include or not at will. If we don’t feel something for our topic or our audience then we come across as flat. The audience leaves the venue. The speaker, topic and organisation are immediately forgotten. You may not have great technique, structure, openings or control of Q&A, but at a minimum you should communicate your passion. You really want to share this vital information with others. You really want to help those in the audience who have given up their precious time to hear you out. Enthusiasm is contagious and we will forgive a lot of faults, if we feel your energy for the topic. Just talk to the key points, rather than read it all out from you prepared notes. Yes, your written speech is grammatically perfect, but it is often boring because of the flat way in which it is delivered. The reading cadence doesn’t suit the live speaking situation. You notice that a flat, boring speech can be followed by a very engaging Q&A session. This is because the speaker is now freed from their self-imposed limitations of the speech draft. They start telling us stories of people to illustrate their points. They pepper us with useful information and data that gives us insights. We see some passion in what they are telling us. We all need to be like this in the main body of the speaking time. Be passionate, enthusiastic, well organised, well structured when you speak. If you do, then your audience will recall both you and your firm with positive regard as professionals and isn’t that what we want in business?…
I am a buyer too and am constantly amazed by what some people get up to. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”. You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam ? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. Let’s improve our approach. There is a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え). It can be simply translated as “preparedness” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. I would prefer to translate it as “getting your heart in order”. This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? When you have the client’s best interests in mind, you do all the right things. You ask well designed questions to fully understand how best you can serve the buyer. You present your solution in such a way that the buyer feels this is exactly what I have been looking for. You calmly handle any hesitations or concerns from the client, reassuring them that what you have is exactly what they need. And you are confident to ask for the order. That is the sales professional in action So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of push sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. Change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a power personal brand.…
Sakaiya Taichi, well known author and futurist, made an interesting observation about the current trend of Japanese society. He referred to Japan’s current lack of yoku (desire), yume (dreams) and yaruki (guts). What does this mean for business and for our companies if we are staffed by young people without these three Ys? As leaders, how can we reverse this trend and produce more engaged teams? Is it too late already? Demographics will create more pressure on companies to focus harder on recruiting and retaining their workers, as the supply of young workers steadily reduces. The stimulus to desire and dreaming of a better future will only arise because company leadership recognizes there is an issue in the first place. The expectation that this current generation will fit in like every preceding generation is Leadership Japan’s geriatric illusion. The young will need a lot more conversations about their future prospects inside the company, than their current aging bosses ever received from their superiors. They want praise and feedback to give them the confidence to step up and take responsibility. The old style boss luxury of screaming at staff when they make a mistake will not long be available. The young will simply leave and get a job elsewhere. Not delegating and thereby not enabling them to gain experience, so they can position themselves to step up into higher levels of authority, won’t cut it either. Disorganised, time mismanaging bosses who think it is “easier if I do it myself “ will find it is not easier, as they have to spend time and treasure to replace a more mobile workforce. Coaching and mentoring skills are going to be going at a premium as leaders are sought out who can develop future leaders, retaining the best talent and leveraging the ideas, insights and innovations of those at the bottom – those closest to the action. Apart from the obvious relationship with the immediate supervisor as a key driver of engagement in staff, the other two drivers are belief in the direction senior management are taking the company and pride in the organization. These last two are communication necessities. If current leaders think these are obvious truths, in no need of elucidation, then they are in for a sad business future, as the young depart in droves for competitors. Take a good hard look at your middle managers and senior leaders – do they get it? Are they able to encourage the young to see a future with the firm and to not think they have to leave in order to advance in their career? Are they able to get across the key messages required? If they are not fully capable, we had better get busy re-training them for the brave new world just around the corner. Their Job One is to create a culture of yoku, yume and yaruki inside the organization.…
Listen to our most popular episode in sales for The Japan Business Mastery Show! I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox one morning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care–Anonymous”. Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Here are three things salespeople should be focusing on: Don’t be like some salespeople still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”. Show me you are focused on understanding me. Demonstrating to me that your foremost care is about my benefit? Communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”. Don’t come across with $$$$ signs in your eyes. Focus on your kokorogamae (心構え). This can be simply translated as “preparedness”. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. I would prefer to translate it as “getting your heart in order”. This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what you want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn’t centered on their best interests and therefore they won’t buy from you. So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. Change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a power personal brand. Keep these three things in mind: remember people don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care; show me you are focused on understanding me and focus on your kokorogamae.…
The legal profession is one of the last holdouts, still clinging to the misguided belief that being smart equals getting the client’s business. Big mistake. Lawyers have spent a lot of time studying to pass their bar exams. When they graduate, they are the white collar galley slaves, shackled to legal partner’s teams, doing the grunt work for years, until they can be allowed on deck. As they move up the ranks they begin to interact with clients. After a few more years they actually have to go out and get clients. Lawyers are proud of their achievements, their study, their knowledge of the law, their brains. They want the clients to appreciate all of this and as a consequence, give them work. This is the “I deserve it” school of sales in the law. Knowledge is valuable. I have knowledge therefore you need me to help you sort out these various issues you are facing. Once upon a time that was the way of the legal profession. A bunch of lawyer nerds serving up legal rocket science to companies. Times change and now there are lots and lots of lawyers, all vying for their share of the pie. Faced with such a proliferation of buying choices what do clients do? They do what they do for all the other purchases they make. They apply the “Know, Like and Trust” rule. To know the legal firm, means to have a trusted confidant provide some testimonial style advice on how they performed in the past, how reliable they were and their degree of expertise in this particular area. If there is no track record which the client can judge, then this “know” process is the equivalent of the “cold call” in sales. The “like” part is the legal equivalent of a doctor’s “bedside manner”. This is a great metaphor for the legal profession. The diagnosis component requires two great skills: listening and questioning. Asking well designed questions to uncover the client’s needs. This is Selling 101. The delivery of the solution requires great skill to engage the trust of the client. This is what we call explaining the features of the solution in the sales world. Many lawyers tend to stop there, believing their job is now done, but they are in grave error. Instead, the features of the solution require to have the respective benefits attached to them, the application of those benefits need explaining and so does how they will impact the business. Evidence of where this has worked elsewhere needs to be marshalled to sustain the argument and then we ask for the business, using a trial close. Lawyers are all in sales, they just don’t know it.…
Time is life and time is money – we know this, but do we organize ourselves well enough with this in mind. The disappearance of Executive Assistants and Secretaries reflects the dominance of the keyboard and a DIY approach to work content creation by leaders. Once upon a time, the majority of boss content output was produced by others, a magical time of delegation ruling the world. Today the boss is the one typing content into a computer keyboard, usually destined to appear in an email, a word document, a powerpoint slide or a spreadsheet. The modern normalisation of the sheer volume of communication ensures the secretarial function is only going to be there for the very upper echelons of large organisations. The DIY outcome has had a negative knock-on effect, where leaders who should be delegating, have gotten out of the habit and do work they should be delegating to their staff. The delegate muscle has atrophied and become flabby. Find some handy blunt object and apply it vigorously to your head if you have ever said, “It will be faster if I do it myself”. We all do it, because we are lazy and disorganised. Lazy because we won’t make the effort to set ourselves up for long term success by developing our team members, so that they can step up and take on a higher role. Disorganised because our time management skills are poor and we are unable to schedule the necessary time for the delegation steps, which ultimately will make the process work so well. We are often too busy doing “today” to be able to consider “ultimately”. Worse than that, we have dangerous self-talk such as, “delegation doesn’t work”. Well, we need to smell the coffee, it does work but not if we do it in some half-baked fashion, missing vital inputs and steps. We have the “don’t delegate enough” leader disease, but we are no longer noticing the symptoms because it has become the new normal to do it by yourself. When we sit back and evaluate what we actually do all day, everyday, how much of our work-life is being spent on quality time and how much on low value tasks? If the high quality tasks are an infinitesimally small portion of our total work day, what does that tell us about our actual productivity and the potential we have to do a lot better?…
Highly knowledgeable people are often at a big disadvantage in business. They have expertise and experience. Their opinion is sought after, they have high personal levels of credibility. They often went to prestigious schools, elite universities, completing challenging degrees. They have paid their dues and have worked they way up the greasy pole to the upper reaches. Yet, they have feet of clay when it comes to representing their section, division, department, company or industry. They are a dud when presenting. The education of the highly specialized person means many years of diving deep into the nitty gritty of their area of expertise. This is done at the expense of developing other skills. Sometimes we have high knowledge/low skill/low attitude constructs for some leaders who find they need to present. The low attitude, in this example, doesn’t refer to their commitment, dedication, engagement or enthusiasm for their work. It refers to their dismissal of the importance of presenting, as part of the total professional’s toolbox. They see it as froth on beer, fluff, smoke and mirrors, style with no substance. “Knowledge is all I need” speakers with this mantra don’t get it. It is not enough anymore. We need to be able to communicate with people across all levels of understanding of the subject, with various interests and biases. We need to be memorable, to be building our personal and professional brands. People won’t recall all the detail of the talk but they will walk away with either a positive, negative or non residual impression of our talk. Conviction and confidence sell our messages, build credibility for our argument and convince others of our point of view. In a world awash with information, alternative facts and fake news, being remembered as trustworthy, knowledgeable and reliable is more important than in the past. The trustworthy and reliable bits come from our ability to marshal our knowledge and deliver it in such a way that the audience is attracted to our key messages and to us as speakers. These soft skills are required more than ever. It is time to switch attitudes, add skills and become the complete package as a presenter. This means being knowledgeable, skillful in delivery and having the right attitude toward wanting to win the audience over.…
The morning dark gloom of heavy ponderous rain clouds, piling snow drifts or driving, cutting razor blade sleet can have a serious impact on our sales mood. We may be thinking to ourselves, “what a lousy day to have run around town juggling umbrellas, trains, taxis and bags of samples to visit clients”. The next day, the rains have departed. Brilliant azure blue skies and a friendly warm sun seem to say “what a beautiful day to make sales calls”. Neither comment is acceptable for the pro salesperson, because sales masters are not randomly controlled by the inequities of the weather. These are not the only barbarous mood bear traps we need to look out for. Does your mood of the moment impact completing unpalatable tasks or conversely do they in turn impact your mood? That proposal you have to get out, but don’t want to start because it is time consuming, complex and difficult. You reel back, you move away from the pain, because you may even have to think! Where is your sales discipline for doing all the dull bits of the work? The sales pro doesn’t put the reward first. They put the task completion ahead of the reward. They don’t stand in front of the empty fireplace bellowing about what they want – heat. They put the logs in there first and then they light the fire. They understand the natural order of the sales universe. How about you? Living an intentional life means controlling both the head and the heart. The bigger picture makes the bump and grind of the everyday palatable, because there is a higher purpose in our life. The size of our WHY in the fight makes all the difference. What if we don’t have a strong WHY or a strong enough WHY? Well, that is going to mean trouble. We better deduce, distill, select or create one. No WHY and sales gets real hard, real fast, real often. Sit down and think about what you want to do, what you need to do and what you wish you could do. If we decide we will alone will determine our mood, our feelings, our orientation and not let externalities invade our moods, we can keep doing what we need to be doing, when we need to be doing it. Our mood control in sales is a critical function of our sustained and consistent success. The stronger our WHY the less relevant or impactful our mood cycle.…
We know we should do that project or piece of work but we resist. We may even be bold and get it into our To Do list, maybe even attach a high priority number to it, but still fail to start. Why? We are all pretty clever about avoiding pain and some projects have pain written all over them. Our inner dialogue could also be an issue. We are talking ourselves out of doing the work because of what we are saying to ourselves about the prospect. Here are some ideas on changing the inner conversation to slip the chains of procrastination and assist us to get the hard bits completed. 1.“I need to do it perfectly” We can say instead, “I will get this project started and give myself sufficient time to work on it, so it is done correctly”. 2.“I have to” So let’s take back control and instead say “I choose to”. 3.“This project is overwhelming This is the “eat the elephant” or “eat the live frog” metaphor – we are put off by the size or difficulty of the task at hand. Let’s change our focus from contemplating the project in it’s entirety and say to ourselves “Where is the best place to start”. 4.“I have no time for lunch” Change the language to yourself and say instead, “My work effectiveness will be much, much better after a break, so I will take lunch and then really get into it”. 5.“I’ll never get this finished” Let’s talk ourselves into it, by noting, “I know once I get started, I will be on a roll”. 6.“There is no way I can succeed” Switch gears and use a kaizen thought process, “I will give it my best shot, get it going and work on improving it along the way”. 7.“No one else is working as hard as me” Look at it differently, “This is my chance to take a leadership role and encourage others to swallow their frog”. 8.“I don’t know where to begin” Switch thoughts and say, “Get the hard part done and then the rest will be easy”. 9.“I hate this part of the job” Let’s think, “Once I finish this task, I will reward myself!” Change our inner conversation and we change our productivity. Remember, time is limited and so we can’t do everything, but we can choose to do the most important thing every day. Let’s talk ourselves into it.…
There is a lot to do and once you get to a certain scale you realise you can’t do it all by yourself. This is when you need your staff. That is fine, but they didn’t start the business or if it is an established business, they are not the boss on much better money. How do you get your people to actually really care about the business? There are four things to focus on. This research was completed globally , including in Japan and it showed the same results. Look carefully at your relationship with your direct reports. This is the biggest factor and this is where you may be the source of the disengagement. The simple rule is this: how would you like to treated by the boss? Okay, in this case, you are the boss, but are you reserving one rule for yourself and how you wanted to be treated and a having a different set of rules for your team? Do you know what is going in their lives? Do you understand their motivations, goals, aims, values? If you don’t, then get busy and find out. Do the people at the bottom believe that the people at the top are taking the organisation in the right direction?Often the WHY of what we are doing is not communicated well enough. The senior execs know what it is, because they created it. They just do a poor job of informing everyone down the line about it. You might think, “Hey, I told then the Vision, Mission and Values, so it is done and dusted”. It is not done, because you have to keep telling them and telling them, all the time and forever. Leaders learn this the hard way. You cannot tell them once and expect they get it. Note to self: keep telling them. Are people proud to work in the organisation.If you work for Toyota then it is probably pretty easy to feel pride, because you are Godzilla dominating everyone. If you don’t have gargantuan bulk, a massive brand or world domination going for you, then you have to think about getting pride going in the troops. Punch above your weight, be the speedboat not the oil tanker, monster a niche – find a way to emphasise your mission, differentiation or special juice. The spark, trigger, nitro to light up engagement is the boss making sure the people know the boss cares about them and really values what they do.Sounds tremendously simple, except we find ourselves constantly barking out orders like a mad pirate captain. Really communicating that the work people are doing is highly valued gets their motivation, confidence and engagement going. But are you doing it? If you aren’t, then look for ways to communicate that they and their work are highly valued around here and do it in a genuine way. So the four things to get engagement are ONE. work on your relationship with your direct reports, TWO. explain the WHY, THREE focus on your company’s super power and FOUR tell people they and their work is highly valued by you.…
Cold calling is dead! No cold calling is not dead! Lots of debate and advice on this subject and many a fortune funded as a result no doubt. For Japan it is not dead but it is diabolically hard. We need to select ideal prospects who are not presently clients. We need to list companies up who are look-a-likes for current clients or fit into our sweet spot. We have what they need, they just don’t know it yet. It is our duty to help them solve their problems with our help. Step 1. Expect resistance, barriers, fear, timidity, non-cooperation from the young lady (it is always a young lady!) who has been designated to answer the phone. Her job is to get rid of you and she doesn’t want to get balled out by her boss by letting you slip through the protective wall. You know this, so you must design a killer opening to woo her to let you speak to her boss. Step 2. Introduce your name and company, very, very slowly and tremendously clearly. It doesn’t matter what language you are speaking. All that katakana is a total brain whiteout for her. “This is Greg Story, from Dale Carnegie Training Japan”. She was freaking out from the get go that it was a foreigner calling and all she can think about is that she can’t speak English well and then you hit her with all those unfamiliar strange sounding names. Step 3. Slowly explain what you do and include a massive hook in there to get interest. “We are global experts in corporate soft skills training. We recently worked with XYZ company, your competitor, to increase their revenues by finding new clients. It was a great success and they have seen a 35% jump in new business sales already. Maybe we could do the same for you, I am not sure. Please transfer me through to your Sales Director, so that he can make a judgment about whether this is something your company would like to know more about or whether you are okay for your rival to grab greater market share? If you are not getting the new business, then that will have a big impact on your business survival. I know your Sales Director won’t want to see that happen, so please let me discuss this with him. If you don’t allow me to speak with him, then my next call will be to another one of your competitors and so the problem will just get worse won’t it. We don’t want that do we? Please put me through to him”. Yes it is a bit hard core for Japan you might be thinking, but in cold calling here you need dynamite to blow up that defensive wall. If they won’t put you through, call you back or answer your email, then keep approaching their competitors and one of them will want to hear what you have to say. So the three steps are: One, mentally brace for getting the bum’s rush. Two, introduce your name and company name very slowly and clearly. Three, explain why you can help them and put a big hook in there to get them to bite.…
There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing. We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure. Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only have a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look for the evidence which will persuade our audience. This is where a lot of presentations suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The structure flow is a simple one, the analysis of the occasion is straightforward but at this next stage we can get confused about what we are trying to achieve. We might become so engrossed in the evidence assembly component that we forget the crucial “WHY” aspect of this effort. We are not here to produce mounds of statistics, battalions of bar charts or proffer reams of text on a screen. Technically oriented presenters love to bludgeon their audience with detail, usually in font or scale so small, it is barely visible on screen. No, the WHY is all about persuading the audience of our conclusion or way of thinking, This is communication skill rather than archeological or archival skill. Line charts, pie charts, comparison tables are trotted out to do battle with the perceptions and biases of the audience. The errors though include a presentation style where the actual detail is unapproachable and so is not fully accepted. The tendency to imagine that this quality data will stand by itself and not require the presenter to do much, is another grave error. “I don’t have to be a good speaker, because the quality of my information is so high”, is a typical if somewhat pathetic excuse. Another common error is to invest the vast majority of the time for the presentation preparation on the accompanying slides for the talk. Digging up the data, tweeking the detail, creating the charts, arranging the order. We become quite busy. So busy, in fact, that we forget to practice the delivery of the talk. How should we fix this approach? Some examples of evidence are really powerful when they are numbers but instead of drowning our audience with too many numbers, we can select one and use a very big font to isolate out that one number. We then talk to that number and explain what it means. If we want to use line charts or trend analysis then one chart per slide is a good rule. To improve our communication effectiveness, we go one step further and we tell stories about these numbers. Who was involved, where, when and what happened. We recall stories more easily than masses of data. This helps to get us around to the WHY of our talk, the key point we want the audience to absorb. And we practice the delivery over and over until we are comfortable we have the cadence right.…
Sales cannot run like a manufacturing production line. We are not making industrial cheese here. This is more like an artisanal pursuit, closer to art than science. Yet, every sales force on the planet has targets which are usually uniform. Each month, the sales team has to deliver a specified amount of revenue, rolling up into a pre-determined annual target. The construct may be logical, but sales is far from logical, as it is steeped in emotion, luck and magic. Having said that though, sales is also a numbers game and to some extent pseudo-scientific. There are accepted algorithms which apply. You call a certain number of people, speak to a lesser number, meet a few and from that residual group, you conclude an agreement. There are ratios, which when calculated over time, apply as averages linking activity with results. So we call 100 people, speak to 80, see 20, strike a deal with 5. In this construct, to make one sale, on average we need to call 20 people. With this type of precision available, you would think that we could industrialise the sales process and confidently set annual targets, neatly divided into units of 12, to arrive at a consistent steam of revenue achievement. Sales managers would be multi-tasking, sipping their afternoon martinis, propping their cowboy boots on the desk and carefully calculating their next car upgrade, as the sales team obligingly track to the revenue plan. This is the plunge between sales peaks. It is the lull in the fighting, the quiet before the storm, the brief interlude in the phony war of sales. Salespeople work hard, usually because we are on commission structures which guarantee not very much if we don’t produce. Japan is a little different - basically there is either a base and commission or straight salary and bonuses system. Few sales people in Japan are on 100% commission. Why? Because we don’t have to and the local Japanese preference for risk aversion means forget it! As salespeople we cannot be consistently successful unless we have two great professional skills. We must be machine-like time managers and we must also be highly disciplined. The two interlock. The ebb and flow of sales is based around customer activity. Networking, cold calling, following up with previous clients, chasing leads which come through marketing activities etc., takes time. If we pump out enough client contact activity we will get appointments, sales and therefore generate follow up. Time starts to disappear from the mining activities that made us active in the first place. We can’t do the prospecting work, because we are too busy executing the follow up. Once the fog of being busy clears though, we suddenly see that we have a very pitiful pipeline ahead of us. So we work like a demon again to kick start generating new leads. To avoid this valley phenomenon, we need to make time to keep prospecting every week. Hence the requirement for excellent time management skills and the discipline to make sure we are doing it every week. Otherwise, we find our time for pipeline development is stolen away by client demands, emergencies, mistake correction, more detailed discussions and results follow up with the buyer. Action Steps 1. Adjust sales team targets to account for seasonality of sales to keep their motivation high 2. Know your sales activity ratios required to produce sales revenues 3. Become a maniac about good time management and self discipline 4. Protect time in the schedule for doing prospecting each week…
As professionals how do we grow in our business careers? Academic studies usually form the platform to which are added: on the job experience; books, articles, blogs and websites; mentors showing us the short cuts; cleverer colleagues providing insights and continuing professional development through training are the usual solutions. One of the issues with the training component is the effectiveness of what is being offered. The classic brand name University week long residencies for executives are limited to the chosen few. What about the majority of our teams – how can we get liftoff across the whole organisation? In-house training, either delivered internally or externally and attendance at publically offered training, as well as on-line training, are the main provenance of mass corporate skill building. On-line video training is relatively inexpensive, easily accessible and in most cases rather passive in its approach. The completion rates for this format are also extremely low, at around 10%. Just watching talking heads on a little screen, with a slide deck is pretty boring. Classroom delivery led by instructors is still the main stay for corporate training. Sadly, it is predominantly ineffective. The team are sent off to training, HR ticks the job well done “completed” box and we all move on. What has been retained from the training? Even more importantly, what has been implemented after the training? What are the consequent performance outcomes from the injection of training? John Wanamaker was famously quoted as saying half of his advertising spend was wasted but he didn’t know which half. For training if it was only 50%, we should be popping the corks and celebrating. In most cases training fails at three points. The pre-training briefing between supervisor and staff is a key intervention to set up the learning experience. In Japan this hardly ever occurs, so staff turn up at training venue either bewildered or skeptical, or both. The second breakdown point is the delivery in the training room by the instructor. I will elaborate on the sins of instructors in a moment. The post-training follow up is the third area, where refresh and reinforcement tales place. In Japan, there is usually no follow-up. Instructors in Japan are often not highly skilled. The company internal instructors are usually the worst, because they are not given much opportunity to further develop themselves. The train-the-trainer experience, which supposedly sets them up as professionals, is often a thin and weak gruel. They have a captive audience, so they do not have to face the rigours of the marketplace. Internal politics within the organization are often the biggest factor in determining their career progression. External trainers have to compete in a crowded mart. The barriers to entry, however, to set up your own training shop are basically zero. Anyone can emerge from the chrysalis, butterfly like and become a trainer at whim. For whatever reason, in Japan, there is a bias toward following the university model of instruction, which is to lecture. Consequently, the majority of trainer’s methodology is very much one-way traffic. With the best intentions in the world, they are doing their best but honestly, in this age, it is just not good enough. The BE + DO = GET formula takes a different approach. The “BE” focuses on who we are. This type of training aims at something much more ambitious than is usually offered - it shoots for emotional change in the participant. This is achieved by focusing on our self-awareness about the basis for our thinking, opinions, beliefs, emotions and insights. Once we have established that chemical change in the brain, through our emotional commitment to doing something new or different, we can move to “DO”. The object here is to engender behavior change in the “what we do”. If we keep doing the same things, in the same way, we will get the same results. Behaviour change is easy to say but the post training blues set in and the participants return to their workplace and go back to what they have always done. He reality is that, especially in Japan, there is no behavior change achieved. The reason there is no or little transmission of the new insights into application is because the training did not address the tactical nuclear weapon in the room – breaking out from the Comfort Zone. If all we are receiving is the download of data and information, then typically, it sails through one ear and rapidly out the other. The application stickiness is not there. The course design and the delivery need to have the ability to lift participants out of their Comfort Zone and give them the wherewithal to change their actions, interactions, communication and behavior to something more effective. The “GET” are the results, influence, leadership, deeper relationships, higher engagement – the performance change. Taking the knowledge out of our head and getting it into our bodies through practice and repetition is the key to installing better and permanent methodologies in our teams. Lecture and data dump, can’t deliver these outcomes. The very concept of BE, DO, GET is relatively unknown is a Japan awash in pontification and lecture. Knowing the concept is only the starting point though. The skill of the instructor to create these emotional changes through leading the participants to higher self-awareness and then to drive the implementation of the new insights, requires elaborate skill levels, that few training organisations can understand, let alone aspire to.…
All of our problems walk on two legs and talk back”. I can’t recall when I first came across this expression, but it is true isn’t it. Most business problems can be fixed with more capital, technological breakthroughs, greater efficiencies, patience and time. People problems though are much trickier. An after work drinks session erupts into an alcohol fueled shouting match between two colleagues, that doesn’t end there. The hostilities continue and now the entire work atmosphere is polluted with the bile between them. The discussion about next year’s budget allocation turns nasty, as two strong willed leaders start a very public stoush aiming for some advantage over the other. Frosty relations prevail between these two silos within the firm thereafter and everyone is involved. An innocuous remark by a colleague causes offense and now the boss has to deal with complaints about, “I can’t work with Taro anymore”. Rather than trying to sort out the incidents, the rivalries, the perceived insults etc., wouldn’t it be better if these didn’t arise in the first place. Why do these problems emerge in the first place? When you think about it, people have not been taught any methodology to control their emotions. We had better fix that - here are 6 actions for when you get emotionally charged. Get cerebral: Collect your thoughts and note your emotions. Draft a note or an email, really telling the offending party how it really is and why they are an idiot. Don’t miss anything, make sure you give it to them right between the eyes. Don’t fill in the name in the email address section when writing it and don’t send it. Writing it will get all the anger out, so you can relax now that is done. 2. Ask for input: Run the situation by someone impartial and ask for honest input. We can often fail to see the woods for the trees when we are too deep in the situation. A third party dose of reality can be helpful to improve our perspective on the issue at hand. Even if it doesn’t, just sharing the burden with others gives us some relief. Get physical: No don’t punch them out, but get yourself out of there. Take a power walk or go the gym, hit the heavy bag and burn that anger off baby. Reflect: Look at the situation from their point of view. Think about what you would do if you were under all the pressure they are under or you had to deal with what is facing them. 5. Sleep on it: Review your “I’m angry” notes or email in the morning. Think about all the more important tasks you have that require you at your best and most energetic. Decide if this is just a total waste of your valuable time or not? If it is, then let it go and work on some concrete projects that will positively advance your business. Pick your battles.: Make a balanced, strategic judgment about whether this is worth getting emotionally charged about? Should you metaphorically duke it out with them or is it best to just take the high ground and move on? So when things become highly volatile, don’t spontaneously combust. Pause and run through this list- like an adult!…
How much is enough data in a presentation? How much is too much? Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information. Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness. And you just can’t bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena. You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process. You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience. Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them. They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another. The last one is killed off by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed off by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being flooded, like a raging river spilling its banks. We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want. There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade, to motivate. The majority of business presentations should be to persuade, but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button. This is because the presenter hasn’t realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive. Data, data, data by itself just doesn’t work. At the end of the session the audience is shredded. They cannot remember any of the information, because there was way too much. They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages. They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”. Was this a success? Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking? Did they leave with any valuable takeaways, so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished? We need a good structure to carry the presentation. A blockbuster opening to grab attention. A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted. Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A. We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it. That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore. But this is often what we do, when we lead with data. Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby! You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic. We want to impress the audience, not bury them under detail. Getting the balance is the presenter’s skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good.…
Finding clients is an art and so is building trust and credibility that you can actually help them solve their business problems. We might be very charming when we first meet the client, sending out a competency vibe that the client relates to. They are open to our inquiries into the current state of their business, where the gaps are located and the urgency of filling those gaps. So far so good. We are now working off a trust base sufficiently large enough to allow the client to pull back the velvet curtain and reveal all the difficulties and problem nuances they are currently facing, as opposed to that pristine image their marketing department has been publicly propagating. Presumably you are skilled and have refrained from suggesting any possible solutions, until you have done a proper job of digging deeply into the real issues facing the client. You have not leapt in with your off the shelf product or service, the one size fits all, cure all snake oil. No you are a pro. You have been asking well designed questions, which have been helping the client come to their own conclusion that what you have is the solution to their needs. We need to have our capability statement ready to go. In this statement we clearly explain that we have exactly what the client needs and we have the capacity to deliver it. Now if we don’t, then we should state that plainly, drink our green tea and get out of there pronto. Trying to slam the square peg into the round hole simply because you have invested all this time with this client and you need an outcome to meet your quota is stupid. If they are in fact a match, we unveil our capability statement to communicate we can in fact help them. We show we canmatch our spec with what they need and we do go through the key features. But we don’t just stop there, like the vast majority of amateur salespeople. We take each of those key features and we illustrate how these features bring benefits to the client. We don’t just stop there either, we keep going, we keep climbing higher up the value chain. We take that benefit and then we explain how that benefit when applied in their business will help them to succeed. Now clients are always doubtful about what they hear from salespeople, so there is always going to be some residual scepticism. They have been burnt in the past by idiots in sales, so we have to deal with that negative legacy. After extolling the virtues of the application of the benefits of the features of our solution, we bring forth evidence of where this has worked elsewhere. This is the package we need to be delivering at solution presentation time. Then to test the waters, to see if we have left anything out, not explained everything fully, we ask a trial close question. This might be something as gentle as “how does that sound so far?” When we put all of this together, the client’s “yes” decision is made that much easier for them. That must be our object and we use our sale’s skills to ensure we create the best possible outcome for the client. This is not about getting a single sale, this effort is totally aimed at getting the re-orders. The pro understands the difference and wants to build a lifetime partnership with the buyer. This is what we must be thinking when we get to the solution presentation stage.…
There is a great Simon Sinek video floating around about how companies say employees are important, but don’t really act like it. He lines up the typical CEO hit list of growth, shareholder value, customers and in fourth place, employees. Richard Branson is also a powerful advocate for putting employees first before all else. It makes sense. We want motivated, enthusiastic staff engaging with our customers and going the extra mile. Japan’s Escalator System No Longer Works We can’t rely on the Japanese nenkojoretsu system of steady escalator career advancement based on seniority and age. In a global economy, awash with disruptive and competitive technologies, waiting for the best and brightest to become older in order to be given their leadership shot is an opportunity cost we don’t want to pay. There are 1.4 jobs available for those looking for work to choose from. They have the whip hand here not the bosses. After the Lehman Shock, Japanese companies moved to creating a lower risk work environment by employing more and more people part-time. The thinking was, if the economy tanks again, it will be easier to fire these part-timers than regular employees. This was seen as a positive, a stable buffer against future unknowns. The use by date on this idea however is well and truly over because we are running out of people. Those part-timers are increasingly being absorbed into firms to give them the staff numbers they need, because hiring in people is so fraught. Demographics are the key to the future The reality of less and less young people coming into the workforce is creating labor shortages. Women re-entering the workforce and older workers continuing on working is preferred to the perceived social disruption of having immigrants come in substantial numbers. The recruiting war for talent has been replaced with the recruiting war for anyone with a pulse. Retaining staff will become even harder. Recruiters will have a field day, searching for talent to lift them out of their current firm and place them elsewhere. Automatically, this worker shortage has swung the pendulum to place workers first above shareholder value and customers. However, we are not going back to the cushy old Japan Inc days of “who cares about shareholder value and corporate performance”. People are now at the forefront of company business plans. Do we have a middle management skillset able to retain our most talented people? Are bosses still thinking they can just hire in new staff easily? Have we replaced the elevation by age and stage with performance evaluations which identify, inspire and mobilise the talent. Do we have the right training in place which will actually lift staff productivity. The soft skills are where the big gains will come from, as we better lead our teams, engage them, motivate them and keep them. This time around, the workers can more easily vote with their feet and leave. Already 40% of young staff into their third and fourth year at the firm are heading for greener grass. This situation isn't going to improve. Are our company leaders ready for the revolution?…
Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context. You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don’t have much preparation time up your sleeve. Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events. We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a long presentation. We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage. So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don’t just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case. You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don’t you think.…
Pushy salespeople are very, very annoying. They try to bug you into buying and none of us like it. We may actually buy, but we don’t like them anymore and probably won’t become a repeat buyer. Fair enough, but what about when you are the salesperson? At what point should we give up on convincing the buyer that our solution is the best for them? Having made the presentation, listened carefully to what they want, we go back to the office and put together our proposal. We survey the broad range of possible solutions available, select from that treasure trove and painstakingly assemble a logical, pertinent and high value convincing roadmap for moving forward. This is when the problems start. We go through the detail, answer any questions and the client invariably says, “okay, we will study it”. This is when things can go silent. We hear nothing, so after a week or so, we email a gentle nudge, a reminder to the client. We could phone them, except that today trying to get hold of busy decision-makers is fraught with difficulty. They are permanently in meetings or they are travelling. What do we do? One strategic idea with that previously mentioned first email is to create a thread. Go back to a previous email exchange pre-dating presenting the solution and copy that into this email, so the email trail is there. This implies, “hey, I have been emailing you buddy, but you didn’t respond this time”, without saying it directly. Some clients may genuinely not be interested and prefer silence to end the discussion, rather than having to confront you with a “no”. One of the rule in sales is “never say no for the other guy”, but what are we looking at here? Is this “no interest” or “no relevance” or is it “no time”? We don’t want to be relegated to the annoying, pushy sales guy or gal bin for permanent disposal. We want to preserve our good reputation and personal brand, so we want to avoid becoming a pain. I believe, we should try once more. We should give them a call, knowing the chances of connecting are low to miserable. Next, we should send that email thread again and add to it, asking about the next steps, have they made a decision, what is the current status and asking them to please get back to us? What if they still don’t respond? We are now into the pushy salesperson territory. I recommend we wait for a week. If there is no response, then try to phone again and if that fails, leave another message and send a final email. We may have lost the battle, but we don’t want to lose the war by burning the relationship with the client by being pushy and becoming annoying. Take heart. We need to come back and fight again another day. We need our good name preserved in the market place, when they talk about us to other potential buyers. We need them to feel comfortable to deal with us in the future. We have to develop our patience muscle and play the long game.…
No one wants to be sold, but we love to buy. The difference between these two approaches comes down to the mindset of the salesperson and their sales abilities. The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though isn’t it? Another important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe but keep selling. You don’t have to look far to find them. You might be one of those trapped? These salespeople are going through the motions but as the buyer, you never feel they have your best interests at heart. The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people. They get into sales by accident. They should have been screened out from the start but sadly the world is just not that logical. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. We all love to buy but we hate being sold and “super sharp ” salespeople make us nervous. Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty. A totally canned sales speech is the opposite problem. There are still people trying to make careers in sales while wading through memorized minute after minute of the features of the “whatever”. Where are the client questions, the needs understanding, the explanation of the benefits, the application of the benefits, the evidence – the proper sales basics? Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on three powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how well your solution satisfies their need. If you want your sales to be successful, make sure you get a proper sales process, get certainty, get fluency and get going!…
Trying to explain Japan to your boss back at HQ is a real pain. HQ ideas on solutions for Japan rarely hit the mark. One of the dubious delights of running an international business in Japan is dealing with the Mother Ship or it’s Regional Hub spin off. Trying to explain Japan to those who don’t know Japan, has always proven tremendously character building for me. Having left the corporate treadmill to work for myself, I mistakenly thought I had kissed goodbye to all that pathetic nonsense. Alas, the long arm of Japan ignorance continues to reach out and challenge me. Today, I live the frustration vicariously through my clients here in Japan, who have to deal with their version of hell - HQ or Regional Hub know nothings located outside Japan. So a typical day in the life of the Japan rep is explaining to HQ why the Japan business is not tracking as expected when the distribution agreement was concluded. In one client’s case, the original expectations proved to be a misalignment of skill sets and targets. The Japanese side had the sales force to cover the market but, it proved, not the expertise to cover it appropriately. Sales were uninspiring, compared to the original business plan expectations. What was the Mother Ship solution? Fly in the Americans from HQ to berate the Japanese side at the board meetings about Japan’s poor sales performance. Shame them into action to sell something. The local representative was encouraged to keep the pressure on by using these same name and shame tactics in the interim between board meetings. Training delivered locally to those selected from within the existing sales force, was the better solution. This sounds like a logical step, but convincing HQ to do so was painstaking. The HQ view was to send in trainers from the Regional Hub to do the training. Regional Hubs in APAC usually mean Singapore or Hong Kong. Who do they choose to send to Japan? The HR team is the preferred option, which excitingly, usually means a rapid fire, fast talking Chinese team member to come to Japan and conduct the training in English. English comprehension at between 50%-60% is the maximum we can probably expect up until lunchtime, after which it rapidly spirals down. This is not a very effective way of training local staff in Japan. Delivering the training in the mother tongue, with the cultural understanding is at least the base line. On top of that, having trainers who are highly skilled is where the leverage can really be applied. Headquarters’ whacky ideas are often amusing, at least for the first 15 seconds of hearing them, but the “global” training approach has proven fraught with failure. Globally delivered training in English rarely produces any residual value for companies and you have to wonder why HQ keeps repeating the same mistake? It doesn’t have to be like this. Time for organisations to wise up and listen to the local rep’s advice on what works best in Japan.…
Doing more, better, faster with less, screams out for innovation. This could be a kaizen approach of continuous improvement or it could be breakthrough leaps. . How much scope can we allow in the creative process? At the practical level, this is really asking how many and how huge are the mistakes you will tolerate to achieve good ideas? Leader have an important role to build people with ideas. In any workplace there will be some degree of compliance required around regulations, laws, safety concerns etc. If these are overly tight, then there is usually not a great deal of tolerance for errors. If it is a complete laissez-faire environment, with no controls, then we will wind up in court and possibly in jail. Somewhere between compliance and chaos is the sweet spot of the environment most suitable for our people to develop ideas. How do we encourage people to come up with new and creative ideas? Standing in front of the whiteboard, felt pen at the ready and critiquing the idea flow as it emerges is a guaranteed innovation killer. Take a good look around your own organization and check just how you encourage the pursuit of ideas? Your actual technique may be harming the idea creation environment. In the messy process of innovation there will be mistakes. Accepting this in theory is pretty easy, but what about confronting it in practice when you are responsible? What is the environment for reporting mistakes or problems? A workplace recording many violations of procedure and one reporting few, will be looked at differently on paper back at headquarters. The many incidents location will seem to indicate a poor compliance environment (and by extension your poor leadership). In fact it may be the other way around. The workplace reporting few may be magicians at hiding bad stuff and the other may be one where mistakes are encouraged as part of the learning process. Constantly encouraging ideas and experimentation, but also faithfully recording errors for root cause analysis as part of the creative process, could be seen as failure when judged from the incident numbers. We need to look past the numbers, to what type of environment the leader has created? How we celebrate failure; ride the edge of the blade between compliance and crazy; and how we deal with mistakes is being very carefully observed by the whole team. If there is a trust environment, where mistakes are accepted as part of the process of creative change and ideas are not critiqued as they emerge, then the team will feel safe to suggest their ideas. If you look around you and all you see is a blame culture and rapid retribution for failure, start praying your competitors haven’t worked out the balance needed between handling mistakes and innovation. If they have, over time, they will win and you will lose.…
It is so easy to become “Johnny One Note” when presenting. We get locked into a modality of voice and body language power. We just keep hammering away with that mode throughout the whole talk. That might be fine for us, but for our audience it is killing them If we have a lot of energy, are excited about our topic and eager to share the goodies with our audience, then we can easily find ourselves to talking at our audience, rather than talking with them. The best presentations feel tremendously personal. The speaker has hit on a theme or topic that really resonates with us. The way they deliver it, feels like they are speaking only to us in the room. It is easy to get locked into one mode and difficult to break out of it, to inject some vocal and body language variety. We need that variety to keep our audience engaged and also to cover all the bases with the variety of people sitting in front of us. Being in one mode only means we lose a part of our audience. The secret is in the planning and the rehearsal. Here we hit two major stumbling blocks. Most people do zero planning about the delivery component. They spend all their time putting together the power point visuals. They score another big zero too when it comes to rehearsing. They practice their speech live, for the first time, on their audience. Uh oh! When we are planning, we need to look for which parts of the speech we are going to accentuate with power – including voice, facial expression and body language. We also look at where we are going to drop the energy and voice, to draw our audience into us. The telling of stories in speeches is very powerful. They lend themselves well to harmonizing the ups and downs of the delivery, with the flow of the story. Break the speech into 4-5 minute blocks and see where the tempo needs raising or lowering. Make sure you practice to make the switch, otherwise you will find yourself on one power control point throughout. The result is we can keep the attention of everyone in the audience and get our message across to all.…
Japan is an interesting place. So many things here are ultra modern, high tech, totally nuanced and sophisticated. You take it for granted that your refrigerator door opens from either side and is deathly quiet, that your vacuum cleaner is very light weight and efficient, that your toilet has more control options than most aircraft. So when you hit something out of character you really notice the difference. Presenting skills is the outlier. Watching a very, very innovative, well educated scientist and entrepreneur destroy his presentation really brought home to me the professional gap around presenting in Japan. He is obviously very smart, has become a legend in Japan for innovation and is rightly lauded for the pioneering work he is doing. His content was very, very good but the delivery was very, very bad. The full message was lost because of the way he presented it. He could have been so much more effective by doing one ridiculously simple thing. Presenters in Japan - don’t put everything on the one slide, in multi-colours, creating a screaming screen nightmare. The slide he had up was a massive jumble of ideas that stole from the key point he wanted to get across. Slides are free. We can have as many as we want these days, so why try to cram all on to one screen. He is a very smart guy, so why doesn’t he get such a simple thing right. The issue is that awareness in Japan of how it should be done is so low. There are so few role models here, so everyone winds up copying all the dud examples of presenting duds. If we decide to use slides, then the platinum rule is one idea per slide. That is pretty simple isn’t it. A different slide every couple of seconds may be appropriate, if the idea is we want to reinforce images of the company or the business or tell a story visually. A very limited number of slides may be better, if we want to go very deep into the subject matter. By restricting the number, we force the audience to concentrate on the limited ideas we want to register with them. Sometimes a single image on screen, which we use as a backdrop to what we are going to say, works well. It might have the image and a single word and we elaborate on that word and image. Smart people in Japan, stop doing unnecessary, clueless things with your presentations please.…
We know storytelling is an effective communication medium but so what, are we any good at it. Storytelling in sales is our ability to express ourselves in a way which is engaging and persuasive. We capture the attention of the buyer because we have taken the client to a world unexpected. This might be because the real essence of their problem has just now been revealed to them. The salesperson who can marshal the discussion to bring forth the hidden insights for the client is the storyteller par excellence. The content of the story can also be a description of a better place than where the clients finds themselves today. This discussion shows the path forward for the client to realise their goals. To understand that better place requires the salesperson to set up a dialogue, where the questions asked unveil a story from the client of what success would look like. Employing examples, cases and proof where this solution has worked before, must be brought to life if the storytelling is to have impact. The ability to describe this better place in vivid word pictures is what separates the average salespeople from the master. Often sales people are loquacious, ill-disciplined speakers, who are in love with the beauty of what they are saying. Counter-intuitively, being a skilled storyteller also requires the salesperson’s patience to encourage the client to tell their own story. The words chosen by the salesperson are important. The majority of the conversation with the client should consist of the client talking. The quota of words allowed for the master salesperson are therefore very limited. They only use clear, concise constructs because they know they need to give up the floor to the client as much as possible. Short sentences of inquiry which draw out rich information are the golden path to sales success. It sounds a snap, but to do this takes a lot of practice. There is a natural tendency when salespeople hit resistance to want to pour it on, to overwhelm the client and their objection with a thunderstorm of data, facts and statistics. They want to dominate the discussion through sheer force of personality. This is never going to fly. “A person convinced against their will, is of the same opinion still” is an old saw, we salespeople forget at our peril. Our way of telling the story makes a huge difference. We need to be matching the personality style of the person we are talking to. Their energy level, pacing, the degree of detail they require. All of this must go into the mix of telling the story for the client. If they are a very detailed oriented person, then we need to get with the programme. If they are action orientated, we must become the same. We like to do business with people we like and we like people who are on our wavelength. In sales we need to foster the ability to be on as many wavelengths as possible.…
Leaders are busy people. Phones ring, email floods in without mercy, staff want a piece of you, meetings suck the life force out of your day, business social media beckons with its siren song of “look at me, look at me”, imminent deadlines loom. Consequently, you often look back on the day and are bewildered as to where the time went and become frustrated with how little actually got done. Excluding distractions and focusing on what you need to be doing are learnt skills. It is astonishing to me how few leaders plan their day. It seems to be a general lack of ability to self-organise their day. The first barrier is philosophical – “I don’t want to be locked into a schedule, because mine changes so much throughout the day, there is no point setting priorities which will keep changing”. There is a breakthrough technology for that called the pencil. If your priorities change, then change the order by re-writing to list. The reality is the basic order of priorities will only ever change a few times a day and not every day, so the alteration of the order is no big deal, so get over it. The power of setting priorities, in order, is that you can concentrate on the highest value components of your work. The golden rule of leadership time management is “we can’t do everything, but we can do the most important things”. The most high value tasks are those that only we can do – they are not things we can delegate. The key is to concentrate our mental energy to be “in the moment” to complete those highest value tasks without being distracted or hindered. Therefore time must be allocated for the highest value tasks that we have nominated ahead of all the other many tasks. To allocate the time required for the highest value tasks, we need to create block time. This is cordoned off time, no distractions time, no meetings time, no calls or emails time. We seize the highest priority work to be done and we throw everything we have at it, uninterrupted and unapologetically. Allocate time in our diaries for block time by diarising a meeting with ourselves that is set in stone. If we don’t do that we will never be able to marshal the time we need for the highest value projects we need to be working on. Leaders, let’s stop kidding ourselves - all we have is time and how we spend it determines all. We have to speed up our work days, so that we can get more done.…
Lawyers are smart people, but sometimes do self-defeating things. They are discovering that unlike the “good old days”, there are many service alternatives today facing prospective clients. They know they have to work harder to get and keep clients, but somehow this irks their sense of self-importance. Being very good in the law should be enough, they think. “We are experts and that is all we need to do, as far as attracting clients goes”. Wrong. In any competitive environment standing out amongst a crowded field of competitors is always a challenge. How can you differentiate yourself amongst rivals, especially when there are so many restrictions on how you can promote your legal services? Referrals are the lifeblood of lawyers. This however is a tremendously passive and time consuming approach, more based around luck than good planning. A satisfied client will tell others, but only if they are asked. They are unlikely to go around pro-actively promoting a law firm, even if they were deliriously happy with the service. No, they only react when one of their contacts asks for advice. The other method is to publish and display brainpower and expertise. Are potential clients going to read it or even know it has been published? Again, a bit of a hit and miss approach. Giving seminars is another method of advertising expertise, which sits comfortably within the rules of promotion. Sadly, a tremendous wasted opportunity in most cases. A seminar is a fantastic opportunity to sell the expertise of the firm and the lawyers, but it is not being maximized because lawyers misunderstand what they are doing. They believe they are there to provide high quality information to the prospective clients. Therefore they believe the quality of the information is the key and that is where they focus. Having awesome insights, valid experiences, deep knowledge are not enough if the way the information is imparted is substandard. Clients will never have the level of in depth knowledge of their legal experts but they can discriminate between who they can understand and relate to and those they can’t. Clients want people they can understand, who they can communicate with and who they feel they can trust. Here is how the clients sub consciously think about it: “A lawyer on my wave length gets the business over the lawyer who isn’t”. Having great expertise and communicating that expertise are both important skill sets. Smart lawyers who realise getting the best skills to learn how to impart the knowledge, will win the business over those who don’t get it. Lawyers, yes, you do need excellent presentation skills. You may not think so yet, but your clients will vote with their feet and beat a path to your more skilled competitor’s door. The lesson is simple - we buy you. So get properly trained and stop losing business to others. Especially, when there is absolutely no need to have that happen.…
“We are going to be in your area next week, would you be available on Tuesday or Thursday?”. “Really? Which part of my area will you be in?”. “Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?”. “Wait a minute, you just said you would be in my area, so which part of my area will you be in?” “Akasaka”. “Really that’s interesting. Akasaka is a big place, which part of Akasaka?”. “Are you available on Tuesday or Thursday?”. This was an outbound investment sales call. The object was to sell me on investing my hard earned cash in their company’s investment product. By the way, this conversation carried on far beyond what I have extracted here and became even more ridiculous, if that is actually possible. The essence was that I didn't believe that what they were saying was true. They started with a suggestion that they would be in my area and could just drop by. They say this to appear indirect and less “hard sell”. However, when you push back on the validity of what they are saying, out comes the blatant hard sell - their constant annoying refrain of “Tuesday or Thursday?”. Why would they be doing this, when it is so obviously ridiculous? The answer is lack of sales skills and proper training. There is a set script in place and I departed from the sacred text by challenging what they were saying. I did not believe that they will happen to be in my area and therefore that they could just drop by. It sounded unlikely to me, so I pushed back on their basic assertion. If they wanted to see me, why not just say, “we would love to visit you, would Tuesday suit or how about Thursday?”. Instead they started with a lie or at best, a dubious assertion, that has close to zero credibility. Now this sales call is for an investment offer, where you cannot see, taste, hear, touch or smell the product and you won't know if it is any good for years. The trust factor on this type of sale is huge, yet they start the proceedings with an obvious lie. How could they have done it more professionally? “Hello Dr. Story, we have not met or spoken before, but my name is Taro and I am with xyz company. We exist to serve the interests of highly discerning clients like yourself. Do you have a few moments to speak? Thank you. We offer information, insight and help busy executives like yourself to better manager their wealth. Our clients often tell us they are so busy helping everyone else that they tend to sacrifice devoting enough time to their own personal wealth management. Is this the type of experience you have ever had? We may or may not have something that suits your situation, but the beauty of spending a short meeting with our experts is that they can at least outline some of the most successful portfolio structures that have been working for executives similar to yourself. Are you in a position today to be able to consider investing in products which you might find attractive?”. Instead, all we had here was a hard sell for a Tuesday or Thursday alternative of choice, built off a lie about the fact they would be in my area next week. There is no congruency between what they are selling and how they are selling it. In this modern age, boiler room induced hard sell doesn’t work. The client’s interest has to be paramount. Salespeople who don’t get this basic point are not going to be around very long. Re-design the sales approach and put the client’s success at the center and then you will meet clients and make sales.…
Reputation in business is critical. Being honest, law abiding and treating business partners in a fair manner is the best policy for enhancing our reputation. Japan is a hard place in which to get into trouble, but that doesn’t stop some from trying. No possibility of jail time for me, you say. Hopefully you are correct, but you might be juiced up having a big night on the town celebrating in Roppongi and a fight suddenly erupts with some fellow muscular revelers sporting crew cuts. You jump in to help your mate, things rapidly go south and the cops arrive to clean it up. If the fracas involves locals, then don’t imagine the cops to give any credence to your side of the story (“Hey, they started it!”) and expect the judicial system to take a similarly harsh view of your unseemly behavior. It might be social media that brings your reputation undone. Your good name can be trashed all over the internet very easily and quickly. Recently, I received a broadcast Facebook query looking for help in locating a bad debtor. “Wow, this is going everywhere,” I thought and how damaging that was for the named business partner’s reputation. We are all so interconnected today, one simple posting can be shared and dispersed with speed and breadth. It may or may not be warranted but the damage is done all the same. Retribution for not paying your way can be very expensive. Tokyo is still a small village for foreign businesspeople and everyone knows everyone else, pretty much. Broadcast postings set off concerns about not getting paid which means future potential business evaporates. Another cautionary tale came about from a false Facebook address. If you have really upset someone and they decide to go after you, then the business social media environment is perfect for waging acts of revenge. The Facebook posting looked like it was real, had a really intriguing tag line and took me to the fake site, where the dirt was piled high. This site was bursting with this person’s alleged business skullduggery and their reputation was being shredded on the spot. It took me a moment to work out it was a fake posting, because it was so well done, but the damage to reputation must have been enormous. For a small amount of money, you can command Facebook to send out a promoted post to specific demographics. That provides a lot of scope for little investment. Again, dealing with people honestly and in a straightforward manner, saves a lot of time devoted to damage control and precludes reputation obliteration. So what can we take away from this discussion? As we know, Japan is pretty amae (indulgent) with foreigners, however, let’s not get sucked into a false sense of security. Jailbird time here is no joke, so just don’t take the risk. Treat business partners with respect, pay your bills or come to a mutually acceptable arrangement. Social media is an instant killer of reputations, the stain is semi-permanent and very hard to erase. If you create an adversary on social media, hostilities could continue indefinitely and future business opportunities could close out As the saying goes, “the radius of the circle of karma is shorter than you think”.…
Marketing plays a key role in generating leads. They are trying to maximise the accuracy of the segmentation of the data base, to make offers that resonate specifically with different segments. They are producing content marketing pieces that will spark leads through the SEO route. Buying ad words to get pay per click activation from buyers, who are searching for your specific good or service is another channel. Potential buyers raise their hand when they download a white paper or an eBook from the website or leave an inquiry. However this is never enough from a sales point of view. Salespeople want to fill the top of their funnel of leads. They know they have certain ratios which will unveil the KAIs or Key Activity Indicators. If we try to email or phone a certain number of prospects, then we will get a certain amount of replies or contacts. By tracking how many we make contact with we can get a ratio of our activity relative to our success. The next stage is converting those contacts into face to face or online meetings. In Japan, for the vast majority of B2B sales, face to face has been required, especially if you are a potential new supplier. Online meetings with new clients just pushes the degree of difficulty right up. Regardless, there will be a ratio of success here counting appointments achieved against attempts to get a meeting. Then obviously we can count how many of those meetings led to a deal being done. That is another key ration. We can calculate the value of all the deals we did against the number of deals and work out our average sale value. If our average deal size is 1 million yen and our annual sales target is 30 million yen then we can work backwards and nominate how many original client contacts we need to be making to generate our target number. The problem is very few sales people have any clue what their KAI is and they just ramble around thoroughout the year. When we know our KAI we know we need to put aside what marketing is doing because we can’t control that process. We can control though, how many networking events we go to, how many cold calls we make, how many reactivation calls to orphan clients we need to make. We have a clear idea of what an ideal client looks like. We have clients in an industry who have rivals in the same business. The chances are high that the problems and issues facing one five star hotel in Tokyo will probably be shared by other similar hotels. Our insights derived from dealing with one can provide us with a battering ram to break into the other hotels. Commonly, cold calls fall on stony ground in Japan unless you know the exact name of the person you need to talk to. The lowest placed young woman on the totem pole is always designated to pick up the phone. Despite her tender years she has become a hardened, ego demolishing, expert at keeping her bosses protected against pesky salespeople. “Who are you”, “Why are you calling, “We will call you back”, then crickets is usually how it goes. Most salespeople just ask to speak with the sales manager, false promises are made to get rid of them and deafening silence on the return call front is all they ever experience. The Sales Manager never contacts you and you are never ever confident that young Ms. Call Killer even passed your message on to the boss in the first place. Now, based on our insights gained from working with similar companies in the same industry, we can try a different angle. “Hello, this is Greg Story from Dale Carnegie Training Japan, we are global soft skills training experts. We have been working with your direct competitors here in Japan. What you will find interesting is how we have been having great success helping their sales teams to win new business for their Hotels. These rival sales managers have loved seeing their teams going after new business, succeeding and so substantially expanding their sales. Maybe we could do the same for you. I am not sure. Please allow me to discuss this possibility with your sales manager, to see if we can help your firm achieve similar success. Would you please transfer me to the sales manager?”. Invariably the Sales Manager “isn’t there”, even if they actually are there. At this point Ms. Call Killer often goes stone motherless silent. She will not offer to take a message, as she is hoping you will crack and say “I will call back later”. That makes her feel good about getting rid of you, because experience has taught her that most salespeople don’t try again and she won’t get a call back. She will not tell you the name of the sales manager if you ask. If you don’t give up so easily and you ask to leave a message, she will take down your name and number - maybe. You have to rely on her tender mercies for your message to be passed across. Here is a key tactic. You should keep calling back every few hours, until you get to talk to the sales manager. You have to be that persistent to break through the wall. Making these cold calls needs discipline, guts, a thick hide and time. Every single day you need to make a key appointment. That is the one with yourself, to hive off time to get on the phone and hammer against these protective walls. Think about it. You will always defend the time to meet with a client and you have to apply the same rigour to the time you need to make these calls. Get it into your schedule and BLOCK that time out. This is one way we can take control of our own destiny and make our own leads. It is tough, but persistence and conviction that what you have is what they need and the time to make the calls, are the prerequisites. Block out the time and get on the phone. Take command of your priorities.…
“The Devil Is In The Detail” saying, reflects ancient wisdom about taking careful notice of small things. E-mail surges, flat surfaces groaning under the weight of paper, meetings back to back from dawn to dusk, ring tones, beeps and assorted intrusions from digital devices we carry on our person 24 hours a day - this is the modern life. How easy it is for us to become overwhelmed by all the detail and in the process unknowingly unleash a number of Devils. The best answers to these types of dilemmas is to work on our time management, especially prioritisation and that other partner in crime – delegation. Surprisingly, many of the executives I train or coach do not sufficiently plan their days. They are commencing their days hammering way on whatever random emails landed in their inbox overnight. They troop off to a barrage of meetings and then race back to attack the newer emails which slipped through during their absence or which could not be knocked over, surreptitiously, on their device during the meeting. Stop kidding yourself. “Your time is all you have and time is life”. Set goals, so you have a direction. Set a vision so that you have a philosophy about WHY you are doing it all. Boil both down to tasks to be completed on a daily basis, arranged in a pecking order from most to least important and only start with the number one priority. We can’t do everything each day, but we can do the most important thing. Be adaptable to change the order, as the day unfolds, but stick with the self-designated tasks. Move unfinished tasks to the next day’s list and start again with the application of priorities, as they will vary from day to day. Do this every day and life becomes a lot more productive and the feeling of being in control starts to enter your soul. The other bear trap for executives is delegation - usually poorly understood and even more poorly executed. Delegation is a misnomer for many executives, because the correct word is dumping, not delegation. This means shoveling the “whatever” off your desk on to some poor unsuspecting soul’s work pile. It means no supervision until the date of completion and then the teeth nashing, hand wringing and ear steam come into evidence, as you discover either it is not ready or even worse ready, but the Delegation needs two key steps to be actually worthy of being referred to as delegation. It needs a communication piece with the delegatee, where the purpose of the delegation is explained as being there to help that person’s career, by exposing them to the type of tasks they will need to do, to rise through the ranks. The other discipline is checking on progress. There is a delicate balance to ensure checking doesn’t slip into micro managing, but nevertheless there must be checking. The obvious A to B route for any project sometimes takes a detour in the hands of our subordinates, who decide that A to Q makes more sense to them. We need to pick that up early so we don’t see the task wander off piste. This is all good in theory! Annoyingly, our busy life interferes with the checking component and we easily stray into dumping territory. Often, we later find projects or tasks have gone awry and serious amounts of effort are then need to be devoted to their recovery. Creating templates for follow up can help. Rather than relying on memory (an increasingly unreliable ally as we get busier) we have a series of templates for meetings. The template nominates what needs to be addressed in the conversation, so that nothing gets missed. Subordinates get consistency of management and realise the boss is not dropping the ball, so no shortcuts or deviations will be slipping though unnoticed. We usually only need to make the templates once. Keep them handy and life gets better very quickly.…
When presenting and you can’t back up who you say you are with the goods, credibility declines rapidly and in fact dissipates. Seriously sad really. Our speaker had some excellent points to convey, but due to silly basic errors, killed his organisation’s messages and brand. The impressive thing was our speaker was delivering the talk in English, when that was not his native language. Actually, the level of English fluency was singularly impressive. He came with a grand resume, part of the elite of the land, a well educated, international, urbane, sophisticated, senior guy. This was game, set and match to be a triumph of positive messaging and salesmanship. It was a fizzer. I approached him after it was all over. I thought our speaker would benefit from a bit of friendly, helpful, positive feedback on how he could help his organisation to do better. He wasn’t buying any of that and asked me for one example. I asked for the first slide to be brought back up. A confusing coat of many, many colours, seriously impenetrable, dense with data, totally impervious to easy understanding – a roiling florid mess in other words. They were all like this. Data was simply killing the key messages. The other issue was the delivery. Mysteriously, our speaker chose to stand right in front of the monitor and read to us what was on the screen, while having his back to the audience for most of the presentation. He allowed the slide deck to become the centerpiece of the presentation, instead of making his messages the key. Here lies a mighty lesson for all of us. We should all carefully cull our ideas and distill the talk down to only the most powerful and important elements. We should present only one idea per slide, restrict the colour palette to two colours for contrast and try to keep it zen-like simple. Here is Dr. Story’s iron rule for slides - if our audience cannot grasp the key point of any slide within two seconds, then it needs more paring back. Graphs are great visual prompts and the temptation is to use them as unassailable evidence. This usually means trying to pack the graph slide with as much information as possible, showing long periods of comparison and multiple data points for edification, usually anointed with microscopic fonts. Instead think of them like screen wallpaper. They form a visual background. We can then go to another slide showing a turning point in splendid isolation for clarity or we can have an overlay pop up, with a key number, emphasised in very large font. We also need to learn some very basic logistics about presenting. Try to stand on the audience left of the screen. We read from left to right, so we want them to look at our face first and then read the screen. We want to face our audience and if anyone drops the lights so that your screen is easier to see, stop everything right there and ask for the lights to be brought back up. We need the lights on in order that we can see our audience’s faces. We can then gauge if they are with us or resisting our messages. Changing the slides and the delivery would have made the speaker’s messages clearer and more attractive. None of the things I have suggested to him are complex or difficult. Why then are we still assailed with unprofessional presentations from smart people? People will judge us on what they see. In the event notice they will note our grand resume, they will hear the MC’s complimentary introduction, but they will make up their minds based on what we present and the way we present it. Let’s get it right everytime.…
Salespeople are very busy, rushing around finding new clients, developing leads, networking, cold calling, attending client meetings, getting stuck into preparing proposals and later executing the follow through on what has been promised. Somewhere in this process some key basics start to go missing. One of those basics is the proper preparation for client meetings. Listed client companies very conveniently include their financial details, strategies, corporate officer information, etc., in their annual reports on their web sites. Invariably, we will see a modern besuited business Titan posing in the plush corporate corner office. In addition to the PR division’s photographic efforts, there will be a substantial article or interview with the CEO, outlining the way forward for the company. The key organisation goals and milestones are on display for all to see. The financial section will also tell us how the entity is tracking against it’s declared goals. It may even get down to a breakdown at the divisional or country level, which is pure gold to someone about to meet a decision-maker from that firm. Talking about your contribution to their ROI is of great interest to someone in that company, who has responsibility to deliver the goals established by senior management. So rather than talking about what you want – to sell something – the discussion is better focused around how you can help them achieve their goals. We should be coming into that meeting talking about the most relevant issues facing the team we are meeting. We might say: “I notice that your company President has made it a clear goal to grow the business by 12% over this next year. Given the current business climate, that sounds pretty tough. Is that also the commitment you need to deliver from the Japan business?” This is a great question because we have indicated we have done our homework on the firm, we are aware of their goals and we are empathetic. We are also checking if the local business has the same issues or not. If they answer that the local unit has to grow by 30%, then that sets us up for a very interesting conversation about how they are going to achieve that and why their local goal is so much larger. If they are really suffering from having such a large target, then perhaps we may be the solution and they will be all ears to hear how we can help. If we are able to lead the conversation into a deeper stage quickly, the more likely we are to find out if we have a new client here or not. Apart from the information on the firm, there is also information we will find on the individuals we will meet from the firm. They will probably have a Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube presence. A quick search on their name will turn up useful background information, which may allow us to draw out some connections we share in common. If you both studied at the same university or previously both worked in the same industry or lived in the same location (state or town) or have the same hobbies, these are speedy connectors between two total strangers. Yes there are unlisted companies and yes, not so many Japanese business people use LinkedIn as yet. However, there are plenty of companies though who are listed and plenty of Japanese people on Facebook etc., so we should make the effort to do our homework on the client before we meet. In this Internet age there really are no excuses. This is the age of readily available and free information. We need to differentiate ourselves from every other salesperson out there. A simple way to do that is to spend some time researching the company and the individuals. When we have these insights we ask better designed questions, we uncover more key information more quickly and we provide great context for our conversation with the buyer.…
We need “good hustle” from our salespeople. Not “hustle” in the sense of tricking clients into arrangements to secure a big commission or a fat bonus. “Good hustle” is about focus on getting commitments from buyers to proceed, that will benefit the buyer, because it will improve their business. This is usually not about long-term massive interventions but about the practical improvements that can be executed quickly, that produce an immediate outcome. Getting the client to that point of agreement requires energy, lots of energy. That energy is needed to make the phone calls to follow up on leads which come through to the website, from advertising, ad word campaigns, social media outreach etc. Also, contacting potential clients we have met at networking events, seeking referral clients and selecting prospective clients to be contacted through cold calling. What is needed is meet, propose, meet, follow up, meet, gain commitment, follow up, follow up and further follow up. Clients need more consulting skills from salespeople than ever before and that requires intelligence, analytic ability and clarity. The reality is we need smart people who can hustle. They are motivated to serve the client and are equally motivated to sift through a lot of potential clients, until they find a good match for the client need with their company’s services. Sales demands a huge amount of internal motivation and hustle energy. You cannot inject the latter into staff; they have to produce it themselves. Dilettante as a descriptor has come to have a pejorative nuance to it, but it does describe a lot of smart people in sales. They are cultivating an area of interest in sales without the real commitment. They typically seek the big transaction, the killer deal that breaks all the records. They want to start at the top and work their way up from there. It is a dilemma – balancing the needs of smart people with the reality that unglamorous work is the core basis for sales success. If we get it wrong, we pay a double penalty – they don’t produce fast enough and when they leave in frustration, we have to start again and find their replacement. So when selecting sales people for the team, it is absolutely necessary that we find that right balance between big strategic thinking and “good hustle”, between macro and micro skill sets and between textbook smart and street smart.…
Evidence is good and lot of evidence can be even better, depending on how we present it. Blasting our audience with data is boring. Telling gripping stories highlighting the data is much better. Your presentation needs both good content and good delivery. If either is missing then the talk will be a dud. The idea that the telling isn’t as important as the showing of the evidence of what you are saying is a fatal error in being persuasive. There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing. We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure. Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only have a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look for the evidence which will persuade our audience. This is where a lot of presentations suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The structure flow is a simple one, the analysis of the occasion is straightforward but at this next stage we can get confused about what we are trying to achieve. We might become so engrossed in the evidence assembly component that we forget the crucial “WHY” aspect of this effort. Technically oriented presenters love to bludgeon their audience with detail, usually in font or scale so small, it is barely visible on screen. No, the WHY is all about persuading the audience of our conclusion or way of thinking. Line charts, pie charts, comparison tables are trotted out to do battle with the perceptions and biases of the audience. The tendency to imagine that this quality data will stand by itself and not require the presenter to do much, is a grave error. “I don’t have to be a good speaker, because the quality of my information is so high”, is a typical, if somewhat pathetic excuse. Another common error is to invest the vast majority of the time for the presentation preparation on the accompanying slides for the talk. We become quite busy. So busy, in fact, that we forget to practice the delivery of the talk. We find ourselves presenting the content for the first time up at the podium, peering down at our audience. How should we fix this approach? Some examples of evidence are really powerful when they are numbers but instead of drowning our audience with too many numbers, we can select one and use a very big font to isolate out that one number. We then talk to that number and explain what it means. If we want to use line charts or trend analysis then one chart per slide is a good rule. We don’t split the visual concentration of our audience. We speak to the significance of the trend knowing that our audience can see the trend line for themselves. To improve our communication effectiveness, we go one step further and we tell stories about these numbers. Who was involved, where, when and what happened. We recall stories more easily than masses of data. This helps to get us around to the WHY of our talk, the key point we want the audience to absorb. And we practice the delivery over and over until we are comfortable we have the cadence right. We need to produce evidence to back up what we are saying. What we don’t want though is for that evidence to blur the key message. We want it to be aligned with what we are saying. We want to tell the audience in a way that they resonate with and have the evidence to support what we are saying. When both aspects are working well and in harmony we are unbeatable.…
Proper follow through after the sale is critical. The difficulty of gaining a sale is hard enough, but the real difficulty is in the followup, to get the re-order. This is where we should all be very finely focused. Rather than approaching a potential client with a sale in mind, what if we set off with the idea of the re-order firmly entrenched in our brain? This simple switching of gears completely changes the conversation, the goals and the execution of the sale follow through. What often happens though in a busy life is we have more than one client on the go. As we are completing one sale, we have other sales coming to fruition. The concentration on the imminent future sales, suck up all the energy and time that should be available to do a proper job of the follow through. If we are over extending ourselves we don’t get to the follow through in a timely manner. One key thing we need to check with the clients, is what are their expectations on the follow through, be they someone to meet after the networking event or actual clients who have just purchased from us. Let’s make sure we set up the proper expectations for our follow through. If we are going to be busy, then we should say: “Is it okay if I get back to you in a week or so, regarding scheduling our follow up meeting?” If we have had the meeting, gone through our offer and have promised to send a proposal with pricing, then again we need to consider what is the time frame which will allow us to remain in control and project the best image of trustworthiness and reliability. We could say: “Thank you for the meeting today, would you mind if I shoot the proposal out to you in two weeks time?” If we have just made the sale, then we could looking at conditioning the follow through, by saying: “Would it be too much trouble if I sent you the necessary materials you have requested, in about two weeks time?” So the first step is to condition the client’s expectations as you end the meeting about what will happen next and when it will happen. Give yourself time because you want to reinforce trust, credibility and reliability. Remember to the client, the things you promised in the meeting are just so much hot air coming from a salesperson. The real test is when we get down to the follow through. How do you want to be perceived when it’s show time? Having set the time frames in a reasonable way, so you don’t blow yourself up, you now have to really ensure you deliver what was promised, on time, or even slightly ahead of time. Not too early though, because it will seem you were just sandbagging them on your turnaround times and certainly do not deliver anything after the agreed deadline. The terms of the deal will have certain specifications and these must be met. If you unilaterally decide to alter them and then announce the fact as a fait accompli to the client, expect trouble. Flexibility is not a widespread trait here in business in Japan, so expect a possible client meltdown. There are so many human relations complexities in play here in Japan, because the people we are talking to have promised something specific to others. If we don’t fulfill our side of the bargain, then our clients lose face with their buyers. This is the modern commercial equivalent of seppuku (suicide) in Japan. The clients are more concerned about their long-term position in the market, based on established trust, than they are about saving a few pennies on the pound. They will never deal with you again, because the risk is too high against the potential reward. You don’t want that reputation – it will always come back to bite you when you can least afford it. In this social media world we now live in, bad news travels vast distances and at light speed.…
How to best tap into the idea potential of our work teams? We know that the success of the organisation will be determined by the quality of the ideas we generate and the capacity to execute those excellent insights. Gathering folk around the white board and having a free form pitchfest of ideas is more often destructive than creative. Dominant personalities always hog the white board content. There is usually only one speed of idea creation being employed – fast, which is the easiest but most lightweight. Researchers are questioning whether the group idea creation model actually works best at all, so how should we involve the team when producing ideas? Here are the steps: ensure there is a facilitator to run the activity so the process is followed correctly. Use Green Light/Red Light thinking to maximise the opportunity to build up our idea bench strength. In the Green Light phase we promote idea free flow without impediment. This means no critiquing of ideas as they emerge. Green Light thinking moves through seven stages. Stage One - SILENCE. We ask that each person sit quietly and think. As they capture an idea, they write it clearly on a Post It note. The individuals in the team attach their Post It notes to the whiteboard, again in total silence. We are seeking quantity not quality of ideas at this stage Stage Two - the team go through the Post It notes on the white board together and rearrange them into columns of similar topics. The column is given a topic name and this is written at the top of the column. Stage Three - each of the teams share what they have come up with and present their columns and ideas. Clarification questions are allowed but no evaluation, just cross-pollination of ideas between the groups. Stage Four - the groups go back to their seats and more time is given again for individual silent thoughts of potential ideas, based on the stimulation of other’s ideas and the fact of more time to go deeper. As ideas emerge these are added to the whiteboard. Stage Five - the team members share their newest ideas with each other, place them into the existing columns or create new ones and then present them to the other groups, as before. Stage Six - more time is given to work independently, again stimulated by the ideas generated by the other teams. The final group of Post Its are attached to the whiteboard, the ideas are explained and then categorized into the existing columns or new columns are created. Stage Seven - the team members present their newest ideas to the other groups as before. Stage Eight - Now is time to start Red Light thinking and decide which ideas have the most high priority to take forward and so we need to make some judgements at this point. The keys to success are removing hierarchy and criticism from the idea generation process. Once generated, the selection of highest priority items provides the final approver with the richest possible harvest of ideas from the total group.…
We know that first impressions really count and we have planned the start. We contacted the organisers well before the talk to get a sense of who has signed up for the talk and what their main interests are. We got to the venue early and checked on all the logistics. We have been speaking with some of the early arrivals to get a sense of why they are attending and to know their name. We reference their name as we start to connect with the audience and remove the barriers between speaker and the gathered masses. We are also fully primed for the end, with both our first summation and our final close. We know we need two closes, one for the immediate end of the talk and another one for after the Q&A. We have prepared both. We know how to properly handle questions – repeating, if not hostile or paraphrasing if a veiled or direct attack upon us. In this way, we can make sure everyone heard the question and that any invective in a question has been properly neutered. What about the middle bit of the speech? How we do we keep attention from start to finish when we have an entire audience fully tooled up with their escape vehicles, their mobile phones, firmly clasped in their hands. The next time, you are at a presentation look around after the first 10 minutes and see what the audience are doing. Many will be surreptitiously scrolling through their Facebook or Line feed or whatever, multi-tasking, rather than giving the speaker their full attention. How to not become that speaker who has lost the opportunity to get their key message across to the audience? Every five minutes we need to switch the pace. We need to be presenting something that grabs the attention of the masses. We need an example, a story, demonstration, audience involvement, etc. We need to use pace – fast and slow, strength – loud and soft, vocal intonation – up and down. Japanese native speakers have a disadvantage on the up and down front, because Japanese is monotone delivery language. No problem, just work on the pace and strength variables and you will gain enough variety in the delivery to keep your audience’s attention. Story telling is so powerful and so under used. So tell your disasters, your fails, your hard won lessons, your triumphs. Come up with pithy quotes that are referencing well known legends like JFK or Churchill etc. The key here is the planning and then the practice. What is written down sounds a bit clumsy sometimes when we say it out loud. This is where rehearsal comes in. Go through the presentation and work on the cadence of the delivery. Make sure that every 5 minutes you are switching gears and giving your audience something to do, like raise their hand (don’t overdo this, it is annoying) or ponder, or laugh at, or nod to knowingly. We cannot let our audience escape and lose the benefit of hearing our valuable message to the idiocies of whatever is trending on social media.…
Service provision should be linear but it isn’t. We receive great service followed by bas service. Why is that and how do eliminate the inconsistencies revealed? Salespeople are always trying to assure their buyers that they and their firm are trustworthy and reliable. The follow through component of the sales process is when these two claims are tested. The salesperson can be doing a splendid job, but what about the rest of the support team? Are they backing up the salesperson’s efforts with their protection of the brand and are they bolstering the salesperson’s strong customer focus? Jan Carlzon many years ago published a tremendous guide to customer service. He had the job of turning around SAS airlines and captured that experience in his book “Moments Of Truth”. I was reminded of Carlzon’s insights when I was checking into my hotel in Singapore. One of Carlzon’s observations about customer service was the importance of consistency of delivery. For example, visualise the telephone receptionist answers your call in a pleasant helpful manner and you are uplifted by your exposure to the brand. The next staff member receiving the transferred call however, is grumpy and unfriendly. Now both your mood and positive impression plummet. You are suddenly irritated by this company, who have just damaged their brand by their lack of an ability to sustain good service across only two consecutive touch points with the customer. Let me mention a customer service breakdown I particularly dislike here in Japan. You call just about any organization and you will get a very flat voice answering the phone saying in Japanese “XYZ company here”. You ask to speak with that very excellent and impressive member of staff, Ms. Suzuki whom you met recently at a networking event. The flat uninterested voice tells you that she “is not at her desk right now” and then stone cold silence. The “may I take down your name and phone number so that she can call you back” bit is rarely offered. Instead, you are left hanging on the phone. The inference of the silence is that if Ms. Suzuki is not around, that is your problem and you should call back later, rather than expect a return call. Again, to Carlzon’s point, these inconsistencies of customer service directly damage the brand. In this example, when I had previously met Ms. Suzuki, I was impressed by her and had a good impression of the whole organisation. The person taking the call has just put that positive image to the sword. This is what happens to us in sales. We do the right thing but elsewhere in the organization, someone else is sabotaging our good efforts. We should all sit down and draw the spider’s web of how customers interact with us and who they interact with. We should expect that we all need reminding of the importance of good customer service for the image and credibility of the company. First impressions count, but so do all the follow-up impressions, if we want to build a sustainable, consistent positive image with our customers. Consistency of good experiences doesn’t happen automatically. We have to look again at all of our touch points with our customers and ensure that everyone in the team understands their place in maintaining the excellent brand we have built up.…
Complex subjects are usually presented by technical experts. It is rare to find one done well though. How can this be, these are very smart people? Technical experts love their specialty. Usually, they have studied hard and long to get into their profession and there is also substantial on-going professional development required to stay current. They are analytical types who thrive on the detail. When they present technical subjects to business people who are not experts, they can run into trouble. The slide deck will be vast and detailed. There is a lot of information to get through and so the slides can be dense. The subject matter, being technical, is a serious business and that is how they approach their delivery. Somber, low energy, no gestures, monotone delivery are all de rigeur for our self assured, serious experts. The pace is slow, large numbers of the slides are read to the audience. The entire atmosphere is funereal. Is there a contradiction between the subject matter and presentation delivery skills.? If the matter is technical shouldn’t the material speak for itself. Isn’t the presenter just a simple conduit of information? Yes, you could do it that way, if you want to be completely forgettable, have no interest in establishing a powerful personal brand and become the go to person on the subject. For many technical people that would be just fine, because they don’t enjoy the limelight, they don’t really want to meet new people and would rather be immersed in their specialty. If the firm is happy for them to be nobodies in a crowded field of similar experts all vying for the same client business, then that monk like approach is a good outcome. If however, you want your firm to stand out above the din, to become famous for the quality of your team and for your professional bedside manner with non-specialists, then a re-think is in order. Let’s start with the deck, because this is the holy grail for specialists and this is where all the preparation time is sucked up, with iteration after iteration. Slides can be printed out and distributed after the presentation. There may be one or two sheets where the detail is so dense, say numbers on spread sheets, that it is impossible to read on screen and these could be handed out at the start. Storytelling is mainly absent from the repertoire of technical presenters but these are the things the audience will remember after the talk. They also make the detail more interesting because they are usually dealing with things at the application rather than the theoretical stage. When speaking not every word needs to have the same value. This is the monotone delivery approach, which quickly puts everyone to sleep. Instead, we can select out key words for additional emphasis and hit those words harder when we deliver them. We can use gestures to back up our words, again these bring energy to key points in a way that adds credibility to the content. Our passion for the subject should shine through. The specialist though often believes that their subject matter should be unemotional and delivered in a bland way, that is not controversial. We don’t have to be outrageous to make a connection with the audience. We don’t have to be dull either. We can take highly technical subjects and humanize them, tell stories, inject situations and people into them to bring them to life. We just need to change our mindset about what we are actually doing here. Are we simply going through the motions or are we trying to communicate our key messages to our audience? That decision makes the path forward very clear.…
Motivation is simple. It comes from within. If you don’t believe me, try yelling to your staff member “be motivated, be motivated, be motivated” over and over and you will soon see how ridiculous the idea is. The boss’s job is to create the environment where the self-motivated can excel. “Motivate me” must be one of the saddest requests a leader can receive. The request may not be so bluntly articulated, but the underlying assumption that the boss is there to motivate the staff seems to linger. The search for salvation located in the responsibility of others is a big fail. Motivation, loyalty, accountability, effort, responsibility, engagement – probably every boss is expecting these from their staff. They are all outcomes of inputs. Inputs from both the boss side and the staff side. We know what level of staff motivation we want as leaders, but how do we achieve it? Some favourite leader methodologies are yelling, threatening, instilling fear of loss, shaming and humiliating. Steve Jobs ticked the box on quite a few of these in his early days as a leader. He has become a halo encrusted, saint like figure nowadays because he took Apple away from the brink of self immolation and gave it a second life through his leadership. He was however a flawed leader who, at various times, resorted to these methods. His later success does not validate these bully boy favourites. We need to look at the opportunity cost of what he could have achieved, had he been a better people leader. Getting massive compliance will not get you enough creative innovation. He could have done more, much much more, if he had played to his people’s strengths rather than abusing their weaknesses. Strong leaders often work off the assumption that what made them successful is the model for everyone else to follow. Oh, if it were only that easy! Unfortunately, few people are ever going to be like you. You realise this as you go through life, when trying to deal with various others, but mysteriously, we tend to forget this fact when at work. Personality styles are often broken out into four boxes and by definition we tend to suit one box over the others. Hence three quarters of the population are automatically not on our wave-length. So how can we motivate the people who are not like us – probably the majority of staff. By the way, if your staff are all the same personality style as you, because that is how you have tweaked the recruiting system, settle back for disaster ahead. Your flagrant cult of your personality type and lack of diversity will bubble up so much group think, you will assure yourselves you are correct all the way along, as you speed lemming-like, straight off the cliff. Let’s assume that is not the case and you have a typically diverse work group with people with various preferred personality styles. Do yourself a big favour and start communicating with the team, as they prefer. This is beyond the Golden Rule, on toward the Platinum Rule of “treating everyone, as they wish to be treated”. That means knowing what is self-motivating for each person and counter-intuitively, aligning that with the organisation’s goals, rather than the other way around. Communication skills, one of the most important soft skills, are key to success here. What we say is important, but how we say it is more important. Let’s be clear - we can’t motivate anyone but ourselves. However, as the leader, we can create an ecosystem where the team are encouraged to motivate themselves. Mirroring their preferred communication style when speaking means better understanding. Talking in terms of the other person’s interests, rather than are own, is more likely to be motivating for them. The trick is you have to spend time with your team to know what their individual interests are. We loop back to the soft skills of good communication. The boss’s barked order generates docile compliance. The alignment of staff self-motivation with the direction of the organisations’s strategy, coupled with the right communications skills, get’s our people going the extra mile. That is a good goal - Platinum Rule turbo charged self-motivation.…
Japan is a male dominated society, especially in business. If you are a female presenter in business, the chances are high there will be a majority of men in the audience. I attend a lot of events in Tokyo and I have noticed a few commonalities amongst the most successful women presenters in this male dominated environment here in Japan. Here is what I have seen work well for businesswomen when speaking in public to male audiences. Confidence is the overwhelming positive first impression. This is communicated in a number of ways. The voice is strong and clear. Even relatively soft female voices can become powerful enough, through using the microphone technology available today, so there is no excuse for letting a weak voice derail the presentation. They get there early and check the equipment, especially making sure the microphone is working properly. Speakers who tap the microphone and ask their audience if they can hear them at the back, come across as disorganised amateurs. Eye contact is another useful tool. Looking at the audience allows us to connect with them. This might sound obvious, but sometimes looking at the many faces in the crowd peering wistfully back at us may suddenly trigger nervousness and self-doubt. The successful women I have seen in action pick out members of the audience, look straight at them and speak directly to them. They are constantly doing this throughout their entire talk. They are only holding the gaze for about 6 seconds, so it is neither too short nor too intrusive. They are carefully watching the audience to ascertain whether they are buying what they are selling or not. Studying the audience member’s body language and faces helps us to read how they are doing with our audience. Are they following the speaker, are they bored, are they in rabid disagreement? Speakers need to know so they can adjust their delivery accordingly. The successful women presenters want to use all of their body language to assist their communication, so they are not trapped behind the podium. They always arrive early to check the speaking stage environment. If they are going to use the podium and find it is too high, they ask for small platform to stand on, to give themselves some air space. They don’t apply a vice like grip to the podium, negating their ability to use gestures to emphasis key points they want to make. They also know that standing apart from the podium, to the side or in front of it also works very well. Powerful female presenters don’t pace across the stage, backward and forward, showing possible nervousness. They usually stand to the left side of the screen, so that the audience will look at their face, listen to their voice and then read the screen left to right. They are communicating “look at me, now look at the screen”. In this way they dominate the screen, rather than the other way around. What they put up on the screen follows the “less is more principle”. Think Zen temple garden here rather than baroque palace. They see the value in having more images than text. They have one graph per screen not four and they don’t go crazy with more than two colours. They make themselves the centerpiece of the presentation, not what is put up on the screen. Persuasive women demonstrate their confidence by NEVER EVER apologizing for their state of health, degree of nervousness, lack of preparation or any other excuses. They know most men in the audience couldn’t care less about their health status. They don’t seek sympathy by telling us: “I am sorry, I have a cold today” or “I didn’t have enough time to put this together”, “I have just flown in overnight and feel jet lagged and exhausted”. Basically the majority of men don’t care all that much for that type of detail and there is no particular empathy for these types of excuses. If these successful women presenters are ever feeling anxious, they make sure not to show it. Consequently, they are taken at face value by the men in the audience and get full credit for being a business expert in their area of expertise. There are plenty of professional, competent female speakers in Japan, so ladies, please take note of what is working for them and join their ranks.…
The facts, data and details of our solution are addictive. So addictive, we want to start telling the prospective client all about how great they are. We are getting ahead of ourselves though, because how do we know they are the right solution for that buyer? This is where we have to change our mindset and think about how we can identify the need before we launch forth with the solution. He slid effortlessly into the chair and before I knew it, he had popped open the oyster shell of his laptop and was pointing his screen menacingly in my direction. Uh oh! Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me. After 20 minutes he stopped the torture. “Wow”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting”. His business card announced he was the Sales Director. The irony of this poor sales presentation was that I had requested it. I was in fact, a hot prospect. I had heard his President at a function talking about the new whizbang service their firm offered and I was intrigued. So intrigued, I approached the speaker and asked that he send one of his crew over to see me. After a near death experience of a thousand powerpoints, I miraculously revived and questioned the Sales Director. Why? Well despite his incompetence, I still had a need. In the end though, I was not a buyer. What could he have done with me to improve his chances of making a sale? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. He could have holstered his weapon before drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the “hotties”. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to revenue for his company. Here is a simple questioning step formula that will help you to get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”. By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Clients are never on the salesperson’s schedule and will take no action, unless they clearly understand there is a benefit to doing so. Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already. This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot. Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff? They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators. Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant. If my sales Powerpoint maestro had applied some of these basics, he may have had a sale that day. He was in his forties, so one can expect that he has probably been repeating this same flawed performance for decades. Adding it all up, the total amount of lost sales over that period would be mindboggling. Such a shame really and so unnecessary. If you want to see revenues go up, start asking clients well designed questions, before you mention anything else. Do this one simple thing and watch the difference.…
To be successful in business today, we need to be able to access the full capability of our team. The boss can’t do it all by themselves and they don’t want to have to be the brains of the outfit, constantly having to tell people what to do and how to do it. We need to tap into the creativity of our people and that makes all the difference. The tried and true leadership model of “do what I say or else” is a personal favourite of people who actually can’t lead. This is the military model, which works when the bullets fly and your death is a requirement to achieve the broader objective. This is a ridiculous model for business and yet it lingers on. Leaders and managers have different roles. Managers are there to manage the processes of the organization, to make sure what needs to be done is completed, in a timely fashion and correctly. Leaders do all of that too, but they have an additional roles of setting strategy and developing people. This is where the “my way or the highway” breaks down. We respect knowledge and ability more than we respect position power, degrees or degrees of self-aggrandisement. The thing we respect most though is how much interest the boss has in helping me to grow in my career. How much sympathy and understanding has the boss for my personal situation at home, because of my aging parents requiring care or my marriage is hitting a rocky patch, or my kid is having problems, etc. Persuading people of the “why” is leading today, not just pointing out the “what” or the “how”. Apart from professional salespeople who move up into management, there are probably few leaders who are any good at persuading anyone of anything. They are usually poor presenters, especially the technically oriented types. They are working off the old paradigm of “I am smarter than you, that is why I am the leader and so do what I say”. If we want our organisations to be powered by just the brains and experience of these few leaders that is fine. If we want to bring the entire power of our teams to the battle front line with our competitors, it is not sufficient. We need as many engaged brains as possible assembled and working on the problems facing us. The spark of creativity is not solely located in the leader’s brain. The youngest, newest employee may have keen insights and openness to new possibilities that the leaders who have moved far from the frontline cannot even recognise any more. The point is how to persuade our staff to think, to be creative, motivated, to come up with better ideas than our rivals. The issue is how to get them to engaged completely rather than simply working at a mediocre rate, collecting their pay and then switching on their brains as they hit the building exit. The technical person who as leader gets a rush of blood to the head and starts telling the why will sometimes assume that having told the team the why, they are good to go. One of the surprising things about leadership is that you have to keep telling your people the same things over and over again and you cannot assume they ever fully get it. So we need to make time available to explain the why to people, keep repeating it and to find ways to tap into the full power of the brains populating our organisation. Drop the “I know everything, now do this” approach and take on the “what do you think” alternative instead. If you can make the switch you will have more success, because you are able to out think the opposition.…
Audiences are so impatient today. Worse still, they have a powerful weapon of escape from us in their hand held devices. They observe the first few minutes of our presentation to decide if they will keep paying attention or whether they will escape to the delights of the internet. How long does it take you on average to form a first impression? My presentation skills students tell me two seconds. Wow. What does this mean for the speaker? It could be in the boardroom, at the networking event or at the pitch to the client. Regardless of the location, one thing is sure – everyone is a seasoned critic. Think back to the last time you saw someone present. Did the speaker get right into it or was there some logistical finessing of the laptop, the lapel microphone or their wad of notes sitting on the rostrum? Was the speaker looking at the audience, up at the huge screen behind them or down at their laptop? Did we have some good old microphone thumping to see if it was working properly? If there were any such diversions, then our two seconds have come and gone completely. What would help us to maximize the two second window? Getting straight into the content without any distractions, allows us to set the tone for the occasion. We could start by telling an episode, an incident, a story. We love listening to interesting stories involving real life and real people, because we can easily identify with the content. We could refer to a member of the audience we met earlier, immediately shattering the mental barrier between speaker and audience. “Anne Smith from XYZ and I were chatting earlier and she made a very good observation about….” After having launched into proceedings, we can now backtrack and use the laptop, our notes, the spreadsheets or whatever we need to explain the content. Rather than wasting our initial two second window on these adjustments, we instead capture the attention of our audience from the very start. Once captured let’s keep them so. Another powerful tool, left in pristine condition through underuse is voice quality. That means speaking clearly, with sufficient volume, so that you can easily be heard. Use the microphone properly, by holding it just under your chin and speaking across the mesh. Have some variation in the delivery so it is not totally predictable. Hit key words with a roar or a whisper to highlight them. At the start, go for the roar rather than the whisper. Show confidence through voice power. Slowing the words down for emphasis is equally powerful. For example, “This----is----the----moment” and delivered slowly with a dramatic pause after each word. Our attention is all yours and we are bursting to know where you are going with this talk. Eye power is a must. I recommend holding the gaze of one audience member for six seconds, as this allows for engagement without generating fear of radiation burn. Spend the entire talk selecting one person after another, randomly selected for six seconds each. Keep your eyes glued on your audience. This means carefully instructing the venue organisers beforehand to not drop the lights on the audience or yourself. You want to be able to see them clearly so you can read their faces for confirmation that they are with you. We also want them to be able to see us clearly too, rather than disappearing into the shadows on stage. Own the first impression and enjoy the success glide to the finish.…
Having a code in sales is critical. How do we keep an even keel in a profession which is continuously buffeting us with ups and downs? We need a set of guidelines to help us become the trusted partner of our clients. Today we are going explore some human relations principles which will help us do that. There are thirty human relations principles for helping us all to become friendlier with our clients. We need to build rapport and have the client know, like and trust us. These principles are a great guiding light on how to become very skilled in dealing with all variety of people. These are not tricks. These are fundamental mindset and behavior changes we need to make if we want to be successful with others. Today let’s look at two of those thirty principles. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests Salespeople have a nasty habit of selective listening and selective conversation around what they want to talk about. Their kokorogamae or intention is centered around their interests and the buyer’s interests are secondary. Sales talk is a misnomer - there is no sales talk. There are well designed questions and there are carefully crafted explanations around solution delivery, which are tightly tied to what the buyer is interested in. Questions uncover interests and with laser beam focus, that is the only thing we talk about. Sounds simple, but salespeople love to talk, they love the sound of their own voice and they become deaf to the client, often without even realising it. Check yourself during your next client conversation – imagine we were to create a transcript of your words, would they be 100% addressed to the buyer’s interests. If not, then stop blathering and start talking in terms of their interests. By the way, Japanese buyers are rarely uncomfortable with silence, so don’t feel pressured to fill the conversation gaps with pap! Arouse in the other person an eager want This is not huckster, fake, carnival barker manipulation. This is becoming a great communicator, someone who can arouse passion and enthusiasm in others. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, based on the salesperson’s belief in the “righteousness” of doing good, through supplying offerings that really help the buyer and their business. One of the biggest barriers to success in sales is client inertia. They keep doing what they have always done, in the same way and get the same results. Our job is to shake that equation up and help them to get a better result, through doing something new – buying our product or service. We have to help them overcome their fears and persuade them to take action. In Japan there is a penalty for action if something fails and less of a penalty associated with inaction, so the bias here is to do nothing. Having a need and taking immediate action are not connected in the client’s mind, until we connect them. We have to fully explain the opportunity cost of no decision, no action or no response to our proposal. We achieve all of this by using well thought out questions, which lead the buyer to draw the same conclusion that we have come to – that our offering is what they need and that they need it right now. This Socratic method of asking questions works because it helps to clarify the buyer’s own thinking. Most salespeople don’t ask any enough questions, because they are too busy talking about the features of their widget. We can arouse an eager want if we frame the questions well.…
Time is spelt L-I-F-E. We will use time everyday, but how well will we use it. Let’s get some ideas in today’s show on wat we can do with the time we have. Leaders are busy people and it is difficult to find time during the day to be “in the moment”. Phones ring, email floods in without mercy, staff want a piece of you, meetings suck the life force out of your day, business social media beckons with its siren song of “look at me, look at me”, imminent deadlines loom. Consequently, you often look back on the day and are bewildered as to where the time went and become frustrated with how little actually got done. Excluding distractions and focusing on what you need to be doing are learnt skills. It is astonishing to me how few leaders plan their day. Are they lacking the mental strength to be able to organize themselves? I don’t think that is the issue. It seems to be a general lack of ability to self-organise their day. The first barrier is philosophical – “I don’t want to be locked into a schedule, because mine changes so much throughout the day, there is no point setting priorities which will keep changing”. There is a breakthrough technology for that called the pencil. If your priorities change, then change the order by re-writing to list. “I can’t be bothered doing that burdensome task”. Well if that erase and re-write construct is too much for you, then we have to wonder why you are being put in charge of people and budgets in the first place. The reality is the basic order of priorities will only ever change a few times a day and not every day, so the alteration of the order is no big deal. The power of setting priorities, in order, is that you can concentrate on the highest value components of your work. The golden rule of leadership time management is “we can’t do everything, but we can do the most important things”. The most high value tasks are those that only we can do – they are not things we can delegate. The key is to concentrate our mental energy to be “in the moment” to complete those highest value tasks without being distracted or hindered. Therefore time must be allocated for the highest value tasks that we have nominated ahead of all the other many tasks. The latter are the lower value tasks, which is where those without a prioritised list, spend the majority of their working lives and are left wondering why they can’t get enough done. To allocate the time required for the highest value tasks, we need to create block time. This is cordoned off time, no distractions time, no meetings time, no calls or emails time. We seize the highest priority work to be done and we throw everything we have at it, uninterrupted and unapologetically. Allocate time in our diaries for block time by diarising a meeting with ourselves that is set in stone. If we don’t do that we will never be able to marshal the time we need for the highest value projects we need to be working on. Leaders, all we have is time and how we spend it determines all.…
What are the key things we should be concentrating on to make sure we are clear to our audience? The most common request, from both Japanese and English speakers in our classes is to “be clear when presenting”. The speakers want their message to get across to the audience, to be easy to follow, to have some impact from their efforts to get up in front of others and speak. Firstly, we should decide what is the purpose of our talk? Is it to Entertain people, so they leave feeling warm and fuzzy about us and our organization? Is it to Convince them or to Impress them that our organization is reliable and trustworthy? Is it to Persuade or Inspire them to take some action that we are recommending? Is it to just Inform them of some recent data or information that is relevant to their industry? Secondly, we need to thoroughly investigate beforehand just who will we be talking to? What is the generational mix, the age demographic, the male/female split? Are they experts, amateurs, dilettantes, critics, supporters, potential clients, etc.? We need to gauge our listener’s level of comprehension and make sure we are talking to them at their level of expertise. Thirdly, we should rehearse our talk before we give it. If we prepare the talk in writing, we may find the cadence is different to when we say the words out loud, compared to when we silently read it on a page. We also may find we have misjudged the time completely and be too long or too short. We need to start singling out key words we want to hit harder than others for emphasis. Some Japanese speakers have complained to me that they are at a permanent disadvantage with public speaking, because the Japanese language is a monotone, non-tonal language. Apply pace to speed up or slooow right down. Another variation is to add more power to a word or phrase or to speak in an audible whisper, removing the power altogether. Fourthly, get the mechanics of delivery right. The message cannot stand by itself; the quality of the content is not enough; the supreme value of the data is insufficient - if people can’t hear you. Yes, physically they can hear you are speaking, but when the content and the delivery are not in harmony, only 7% of the message is actually getting through to the audience. When the message content is not congruent with the way you deliver the message, we get distracted by how you are dressed, by your body language, by the tone of your voice. Engage your audience by using eye contact and keep each person’s gaze for around 6 seconds to make the eye contact meaningful, without it becoming intrusive. Also, get you face involved! If it is good news, then smile; if you suggest doubt, have a quizzical expression on your face; if the information is surprising, have an expression of wonder; if it is bad news look unhappy or concerned. A well placed pause is a brilliant way to get the audience focused on what we have just said. Often when we are nervous, we speed up and start jumbling the run of the ideas together. A pause also gives us time to regroup our thoughts and calm down a bit, if we found we were getting a bit too fast in our delivery. Throw in some gestures to add power to the words, but don’t maintain the same gesture for longer than 15 seconds. The gestures should be natural and not Shakespearian or pseudo thespian. Leave acting to the experts, be natural, be your “professional” self. When we know why and who we are speaking to; when we get voice, face and hands working in unison to add strength to what we are saying, we get 100% of the audience to clearly absorb our message. It is quite clear what we have to do isn’t it! Action Steps: Define the purpose of the talk Analyse who were are going to be taking to Rehearse Master the mechanics of delivery…
Success is replicable but only if we know what has worked well for others. Here are some common characteristics of the most successful negotiators. Being successful, doesn't mean being cunning, tricky, transactional, thinking win/lose. It also doesn’t mean being impervious to the impact the way you conduct a negotiation will have on both your current reputation and longevity in the marketplace. Good reputation with good intentions People may forget the finer points of the negotiation but they will remember how we treat them. Burning people, being too sharp, too cunning creates a negative reputation for fair dealing. Respectful, trusting and trustworthy Getting to a mutually satisfactory and beneficial outcome is the goal. Along the way, we treat the counter party with respect and they feel it. This adds to our own commercial history as someone you can trust in business and that is worth a lot more than the contents of one transaction. Confident and positive Having the right intentions gives us strength to find a solution that will be well regarded. We are constantly looking for a way through the difficulties, seeking to find a solution to the other party’s issues. Well prepared Knowing the facts, the background, the individuals, the market situation are all elements we can and should prepare prior to having any discussions with the counterparty. Being able to quickly source key information, as negotiations get underway, is a tremendous booster to finding a successful outcome. Composed Calm and considered is a good philosophical position to adopt in negotiations. Emotional control is a prerequisite for success in life and especially in business. Effective communicator This idea often suggests being a good talker when in actual fact being a good listener is often more important. Asking excellent questions and listening for what is not being said is an approach that will yield rewards. People skills Helping people to relax, finding common ground, getting on their wave length are all people skills. We like to do business with people who are like us and that is where the person with people skills really shines. Open-minded Flexibility is a source of strength in a fluid, shifting activity like negotiating. Rigidity can lock us in to a position which precludes a mutually beneficial agreement, usually because we have let our own ego get in the way. Creative We are sometimes captives to our limited knowledge and experiences and so the world of possibilities seems small. Finding a tangential solution through a creative approach can produce surprising breakthroughs, when everything seems to be heading toward a train wreck in the negotiations. A risk taker In finding agreement there is always an element of risk. Caution, timidity, fear drive us into corners from which it is sometimes difficult to emerge. Having a capacity to take a risk because you have thought through how to minimise that risk once taken, is a big advantage when it comes to finding creative solutions to end an impasse.…
Everyone is a critic today, holding their firm opinion, swanning around full of biases and prejudices. We better know how to state our conclusion in a way which avoids all of those minefields. Avoid this Business School advice at all costs, “State your conclusion first and then explain the reasoning behind it”. The “conclusion first” advice is a reaction to lengthy diatribes, wandering aimlessly around business subjects, driving bosses crazy. The senior leadership are thinking, “I wish they would get to the point”. So the standard advice is state your conclusion up front and then add the evidence. This sounds quite logical and reasonable, except it doesn’t work very well when it comes to persuading an audience. If we put up our action recommendation, before the evidence, we are asking for trouble. When there is no context, the audience cannot judge fairly. Your bold, naked conclusion instantly comes under silent assault from a room full of armchair critics and skeptics. They now tune you out. They are totally focused on why what you just said is rubbish and won’t work. They are no longer listening to you and are concentrating solely on negatives. Start with evidence, proof, facts, data, expert opinion but wrap it up in a short story. This story should have a few defining guideposts – time, place, people and emotion. We try to capture our audience’s attention by helping them to see the scene in their mind’s eye. For example, “I caught up with our client CEO Ken Tanaka in Toranomon Hills last week. We were meeting in their wood paneled boardroom, on the 36th floor, listening to feedback on the programme and I was getting nervous”. That introduction takes about ten seconds. No one is going to stop us and say, “Will you get to the point”. We have mentally pulled them into the story, taking them to a place they either already know or can easily imagine. They can visualise the people and the scene. They are also hooked by curiosity – why was I getting nervous, what happened next, etc? We now have their complete attention, as we explain the problem or issue at hand. We bring in strong evidence with context and state the action step we recommend. This is done in one brief sentence and we immediately tag on the benefit of taking the action. The chances are high that the listeners, hearing the facts and context we have introduced, will jump right ahead of us. They will race to the same conclusion we have reached, before we even have a chance to articulate it. This approach allows us to more easily persuade others to take the action we are proposing. This is the real world of business not B-School. Try and it and enjoy the results.…
The competition to grasp and then hold the attention of our audiences is becoming more and more fierce. We have all become fervent multi-taskers, listening to someone speak while surreptitiously scrolling through our email feed, Facebook or LinkedIn or all three! Having our listener follow what we are saying, digest it and agree with it, must be the goal. Otherwise, why are we bothering? Many people imagine that the content of their talk will be sufficient to carry the day with their presentation and that emphasising delivery skills is simply dabbling in verbal voodoo. Such beliefs are often firmly held by technically oriented people, for whom proof, evidence, statistics and data are sacrosanct, solid and sacred. The weight of the evidence is all we need to persuade others. Not true! “If your evidence was compelling, but nobody was paying close attention, would it matter?”. The answer is obviously “Yes, it matters”. Let’s presume that the presentation’s opening has been well designed and is successful in grabbing the attention of even the most distracted audience. Before we get to the wrap up and call for Q & A, we have our main points to present. This number will probably range between three and five brackets. We can take a bracket of 5 to 6 minutes as our framework for the speech. Every bracket needs to have a change of pace to keep our audience’s attention. Even within the same topic or sub-topic, we need to switch gears and vary the delivery. We might introduce a powerful visual effect be it on screen or in the room using a prop. I used a rolled up Japanese scroll to great effect in a speech. On the scroll was written “DatsuO NyuA” (脱欧入亜), which was a play on words reversing a Meiji era slogan of Japan turning away from Asia and going toward European civilization. I was making the point that my country of Australia was moving away from Europe toward Asia. I could have just said so in words, but the scroll was much more powerful. On another occasion, I was making the point about Australia being as safe a Japan, because of the similar strict gun control laws. Hidden in my suit jacket I had a plastic replica Magnum 38 handgun, which Clint Eastwood made so famous in his Dirty Harry movies. It has a very long barrel and is a physically big gun, so even when viewed at a distance, it has visual impact. I slowly pulled the gun out and held it in profile view to the audience, high above my head, saying “This is illegal in Australia, the same as in Japan”, to make my argument about the safety of sending their children to study in Australia. Now our speech cannot become littered with too many such devices every five minutes, because we will be exhausting our audience. It might be a powerful quotation, a joke or a visual on a slide that grabs our attention. We are going for the mental equivalent of an audience stretch break every five minutes or so. The key is to plan the speech this way from the beginning, if we want our message to be heard.…
The client has a problem and we fix it, our goods or services are delivered, outcomes are achieved and everybody wins. Problems and issues are a bit like icebergs though – there is a lot more going on below the surface than can be spotted from the captain’s bridge. The salesperson’s role is to go after the whole iceberg and not just the obvious bit floating above the waterline. The standard sales interview is based on two models comprising the outer circles surrounding a bull’s-eye. The extreme periphery is the “telling is selling” model. The second model, the inner circle adjoining the bull’s-eye, is the solution model of providing outcomes that best serve the client, based on what the client has understood is their problem. Aligning the fix with the client need in the solution model is the mark of the semi-professional. There is nothing wrong with this model but what are the rockstar sales masters doing? Through their questioning skills, they are on a mission to try and find what nobody else is seeing, including the client. A truly magical client statement would be: “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that or allowed for it!”. Now that is the bull’s-eye we want right there. The salesperson who can provide that type of perspective, alerting clients to over-the-horizon issues, provides such value, that they quickly become the client’s trusted business partner. When salespeople pick up vital strategic and tactical commercial intelligence. Researching various client’s problems, experiences, triumphs and disasters is valuable – but only if you know how to process the detail. It is very rare for company personnel to do study tours of totally unrelated businesses. Salespeople however are floating around businesses and therefore able to see options hidden to others. The ability to select and apply a particularly successful solution in a different context is a commercially valuable skill. How can salespeople get that skill? Take what you have seen working elsewhere for one client, in a different company or industry and then apply it for your current client. Another way to get that skill is to do practical research. Based on what you already know, build up a point of view on an industry, check it against what your clients are telling you (or conduct company surveys). We won’t always be able to conjure up a bull’s-eye. However, in trying to do so, our aspirations, general direction and thinking will be correct. In sales, the inner-most circle, the big red bull’s-eye, leads straight to the winner’s circle and that is where we must be. Let’s make “insight” our springboard to success.…
We all know a little knowledge is dangerous. I have witnessed this many times when it comes to some advice being pandered by so called experts about public speaking. Let’s dodge the fake news and learn what we should be worrying about in our presentation. Professor Albert Mehrabian’s 1967 study of communication concluded that 55% of the presenter’s message was received visually, 38% from voice tone and only 7% through the words. A number of gurus and pseudo experts have built businesses around emphasising the importance of how we look when we present. So, according to this misplaced logic, how we look accounts for over half of the impression of how we come across, so pay careful attention to dress etc. Professor Mehrabian nearly 50 years ago, flagged an issue that has reached epidemic proportions today – audience distraction. In his day, he was worried about factors that might compete with the key point we were trying to get across. His research showed that this 55/38/7 split only applied under one very critical condition. When what we are saying is not congruent with how we are saying it, the audience leaves us. They go off message and get distracted by our dress and appearance in 55% of the cases. Others are no longer listening to what we are saying, but to how we are saying it. So 38% are focused on how we sound, our voice qualities, our accent, our pronunciation, etc. When we are incongruent between what we are saying and the delivery, only 7% of the words are registering with our audience. When we say “incongruent” what do we mean by this. Mehrabian’s work tells us that when we don’t match what we say with how we say it, we lose our audience. Wooden faces, devoid of expression are precisely the target for Mehrabian’s research results. These are often the experts in their fields who rely on their reputation and authority to carry the day. They are heavyweights and their faces are ever serious, never smiling. The problem is they are only able to manage one facial expression throughout their presentation, regardless of the content. Not every sentence in a presentation is of such heavy weight seriousness. Consequently, the audience leaves their message. We need to have highs and lows in our presentations. Serious and light moments, complex and simple components of the message. Each of these requires a face and voice of its own, that is in synch with the content. If the topic is serious, be serious but be prepared to ease off the pressure from the constant seriousness. It is exhausting for an audience, they need a break or we will lose them. If we are flippant and light all the time, we will not be providing enough variety for our audience at the other end of the scale. If we focus on being congruent when we speak, then we will be more successful in getting our message across to our audience. That 7% number will flip to become close to 100% and that is what we want.…
How do we think about our customers? How authentic are our communications as a result? Are we telling enough stories about them? In this week’s show, we will see how a master of communication does it. I am sure you have you seen notices explaining that this location is going to close while the building is being reconstructed and that it will reopen at a specified day in the future? One notice however has become much talked about locally amongst Japanese retailers. Toraya are a famous traditional Japanese sweets manufacturer and retailer. Mr. Mitsuhiro Kurokawa is the 17th generation of his family to lead the business and his “we are rebuilding” notice is considered outstanding, even in a country where omotenashi or unparalleled service is renowned. Most such notices tell facts, supply relevant data, maps and provide the obligatory greetings about serving us again when they reopen. Kurokawa san did all of that but much more. He put the current change in historical perspective, noting the business started in Kyoto in 1586, moving to Tokyo in 1869 and to this location in 1964. By doing this he is assuring us of their long traditions, longevity and capacity to change with the times when needed. He then started to tell some stories about the customers they have had at this shop on Aoyama Street in Akasaka, over the last 51 years. What stories are you currently telling to your clients? He mentioned that every three days, a male customer visited the shop to enjoy oshiruko (bean paste sweet soup with grilled mochi). Another customer, a kindergarten aged boy came with his mother to the shop every day and bought a bite sized yookan (sweet bean paste block). A 100 year old lady regularly came by wheelchair to the shop. She later became hospitalized and her family came to buy namagashi (fresh Japanese sweets) and higashi (a dried sugar sweet), to take to the hospital for her. Even after she couldn't eat anything anymore, they found if they crushed the dried sugar sweet she could still enjoy it. He mentioned that he couldn’t include all of the episodes they have shared over these 51 years with their customers, but he said he and the staff keep them, one by one, in their hearts forever. Telling customer stories is powerful. Kurokawa san made the customers experiences come alive and he subtly linked them to the products they enjoyed. The feeling of the notice is that there is a special bond they feel with all of their customers and even though they won’t reopen on that site for another three years, they won’t have forgotten them and look forward to serving them forever. Are we communicating we feel a special bond with our customers? Are we weaving enough customer stories into our communications? Kurokawa san’s notice gets attention in Japan because of the sincerity in the message. He is regarded as really epitomising the spirit of a family that has served customers for 17 generations. We may not be the 17th generation in our business, but we can bring more heart into the service we provide our customers. Action Steps Are we really thinking about creating an emotional connection with our clients Are we telling enough happy client stories in our communications Are we fully aware of the content of all the touch points we have with our buyers Are we serving from the heart or just the head Are we instilling the right frame of reference into our staff, regarding how to properly serve the client.…
Conflict happens in organisations. We can’t stop that, but we can control how we react to others when disagreements and arguments arise. You know you are not perfect, but some of those around you are a real pain to deal with. Why are they so difficult to get on with? Who knows, but the easiest way forward is to reduce the stress to a minimum by avoiding them or minimizing any interactions. That may be true, but in fact unresolved conflicts, miscommunication and diminished information exchange, leads to even greater time wastage, morale hits and the bottom line of lost productivity. Can we control other people, especially those we deem difficult? Good luck on that one! We can however control ourselves in any situation or relationship. Past situation analysis is a handy tool to plumb the depths of our unhappiness with others. What was the trigger point for you or them? Is it possible you contributed to the explosion of emotions? A handy helper in the tool box of dealing with the difficult is “the benefit of the doubt”. This means suspending the attractive beliefs that you are right, they are wrong, you are perfect and they are an idiot. What do you know about this person that might be triggering their behavior that you find upsetting or at the least plain annoying? Is there some historical context operating here around the way they were raised, the life experiences they have had and the influences they have absorbed? Is this a communication issue because neither of you are a native speaker of the same language. Is there some situational context in play here. Have they scratched the duco on their new car that morning, had a fight with their partner at home, just been royally chewed out by their boss, etc? There are some useful human relations principles we can apply to move us into a positive mental framework. Instead of telling others what they need to do to fly straight, we can swap in some questions instead. What led them to reach that conclusion? What experience has led them to believe their idea is the best solution? Letting them save face is a handy idea. Our egos can lock us into positions we don’t fully hold, because we don’t want to be seen to be backing down. We can take the ego bit out of the equation by how we communicate during the interaction. Being polite, reasonable and open goes a long way to reaching a resolution. We might even disarm them with praise and honest appreciation for raising their countervailing views with us. When they know there is likely to be a disagreement, they mentally gear up for battle. By not providing a target there is no battle. We could thank them for being forthright and candid. Hard core difficult types may still try to get a rise out of us, because they need to have a fight, but let’s not fall for that one. Instead get them talking about the way they came to their conclusion and where they have seen this work well in the past. Smiling silence is our best defence, as we get them to do the talking. Difficult people are only difficult if we allow them to annoy us. When we take the high road, they often just run out of gas because we are not supplying the fuel for the fight. Superior human relations skills are a powerful ally in dealing with the difficult, but they need practice and discipline. Try using these ideas and life will get a whole lot easier!…
Many people don't start out with a design for their talk. They launch straight into the details, especially working with the slides. The lack of design shows as the structure isn't tight enough, the points are nor clear enough and mostly the talk is totally forgettable. Designing our presentation is a critical stage. We have identified our target audience for our key messages. We have selected the title to really engage our audience. We know the purpose of the exercise - inform, persuade, entertain, motivate to action. Designing the conclusion is always a good place to start. The conclusion is really the summary of the key message we want to get across. Having boiled all of the various things we could say down to the one most important thing, we can now work backward and think about how we can get our audience to agree with our conclusion. Usually three key points is easy for an audience to follow, but if the subject matter is complex or if you have been given a longer time to speak then five may be needed. There are a number of structures for how you present the individual ideas. It could be a result/problem/ solution structure or you may switch the problem to the start and then outline the solution and the consequent result. The key is that the structure flows logically to make it as easy as possible to follow. Having derived the key points we are going to make, we go back and design two closes. One is for the very end of the speech. Having designed that close, we now design a different one to follow the Q & A session. We need this second close, so that we can keep the whole proceedings on track. We need to wrap it up in a way that the audience have our key point ringing in their ears as they leave the venue. Finally we design the opening. The opening is the opportunity to break through all the audience noise - all their screaming monkeys running around inside their brains. This should be designed with great precision and delivered the same way. Don't digress or comment on something that has happened in the lead up, get straight into the opening and grab the audience. Here are some ideas: Questions are very powerful for grabbing attention. Statistics are excellent because they are hard evidence and tell the audience this is going to be a fact based presentation and not just opinion. Something shocking is a good way to wake the audience up, so make a provocative statement and then explain what you mean. We can always flag our central conclusion at the start and then spend the rest of the time justifying our interpretation. The key point is don’t even go near the slide deck until you have done the plan of attack. Adapting a Japanese proverb, “more sweat in planning, less blood in battle”…
Clever, shallow, smooth as silk, glib, “rat with a gold tooth” salespeople are the scourge of the earth. There are no barriers to entry or qualifications to enter this field of sales work. Riff raff need not apply but quite often they do. Some will tell you anything, they live for today and like a shark, are constantly moving around in order to feed. So, how do honest salespeople get anywhere when the image of the profession is so negative. The key point to differentiate yourself from the shady carnival barker type, sales pond scum and assorted lowlifes giving the rest of us a bad name, is to stop focusing on sales. Instead focus on the re-orders. This mental shift is fundamental. A sale can be a one-time thing, a transient satisfaction of a temporary itch. The re-order concept is totally relationship based and is linked to the idea of the lifetime value of the buyer. In business, your true intention is to be a long-term partner in achieving the client’s success, on the basis that the more successful they become, the more goods or services you will need to provide them, as they grow and expand their operation. If your true intention is to build trust, then there will be no attempt to snow the client at the first meeting, to lure them into a false sense of security and scamper off with their money. Rather you ask questions enabling you to best analyse whether you in fact have a suitable solution or not, for the client’s issue. If you don’t have it, you say so immediately - you don’t prevaricate or equivocate. What you do after the sale tells the client everything and this determines whether this will be a long-term partnership or not. If something goes wrong you fix it immediately, you don’t become mealy-mouthed about what was happened and you hand back the money without hesitation. No trust or no value – then no re-orders. It is simple and complex at the same time. The salesperson’s job is to demonstrate the trust and supply the value. Ask yourself, are you really doing that? Are you actually on top of it? Action Steps Think lifetime value of the client Focus on the re-orders rather than just a sale Have a correct intention and be a long-term partner to grow the client’s business Use questions to properly understand the client’s business Don’t argue with the client, be accountable and fix problems immediately…
We judge you by how well you can speak. Do you mumble, lurch from on random thought to another, or are you clear, concise and convincing. We not only judge you, we base our impression of your entire organization on you. Given this is important you would think we all would really work on communication skills. We can but we don’t. Find out about altering ypur mindset in order to master this critical professional kill. Our mental approach to our activities determines our success. We know this in sports and in business, but when it comes to speaking in public, we somehow manage to forget this vital point. In fact, when it comes to presenting in front of other people we often have a negative mindset about the activity. We may be reliving humiliations from elementary school or high school, when we had to make a presentation and were teased about it. As we get older and advance in our careers, we cannot avoid public speaking and giving presentations, whether we like doing them or not. We know we have to make a presentation, the date has been set and there is no escape. How do we approach it? We get straight into the details, mechanics and logistics, without spending even a moment on our proper mindset for the activity. The mindset game is a critical one, especially if we are nervous about giving presentations. Confidence is paired with credibility in the presentation game and we have to exude both. We may be very unsure, nervous, even petrified but we must never show that side to our audience. Hesitation kills the message delivery and therefore the impact. Often when we are anticipating the presentation, we imagine that our wondrous content will carry the day. We justify our ineptitude by that presuming that we can be hopeless presenters, but somehow because of the quality of our material, it won't matter. This is pretty delusional and basically it is folly. Normally, we are competing for the attention of our audience. Social media has made a hell for presenters, because within two seconds our audience can escape to any number of other more interesting worlds. We need to have a powerful presentation and speaking faculty to compete with the wonders of the Internet. A big part of our appeal is our message’s worth and the delivery of that worth. We need to understand that both are required. To get the right combination, we need to sell that we are confident in what we're saying and that our content is valuable. Start with a powerful opening, including the key message captured in your conclusion. Isolate out 3-5 key points so make your argument and support them with evidence. Design both your first close and your second close for after the Q&A. In the weeks leading up to the talk we are the thinking about what we want to say and how we might say it, we are combing the media and books for juicy quotes and examples to back up what we are saying. We are playing it out in our mind's eye. During this mental imagining, we see ourselves as very confident and successful - we are predicting our success by seeing it before we even do it. We are seeing the audience nodding and agreeing with what we say. We can see ourselves enjoying the moment and feel in full control. When we have rehearsed, we know the timing, the cadence of the talk. We know where to pause, which words to hit harder than other to emphasize our key points. We are confident on the flow of our talk and with this knowledge we can now relax and enjoy the process rather than dreading it. We have to work on our mindset toward what we are doing. We have to change our self-talk around how we approach the talk. We have to focus on the benefits of building our personal and professional brands. We have to look for every opportunity to talk, because that is how we become better and better. If we can change our mindset, we can change our starting point and that will bring the results we know we need to generate.…
First impressions are everything. If we get that wrong, then we won’t be selling anything to that buyer. Today we will review some of the things we should be paying careful attention to, in order to help us build the trust with the client. As a buyer of products and services here in Japan, as someone who teaches sales and employs salespeople, it has always been astonishing to me how hopeless many salespeople are in Japan. We are in the market everyday, because we also buy services and products ourselves and so are actively on the receiving end of the sales process. Well actually that is a blatant exaggeration. There are almost no salespeople operating in Japan using a sales process. But there are millions of them just winging it (badly). Why? On The Job Training (OJT) is the main training pedagogical system in Japan for training the new salesperson. This works well if your boss has a clue and knows about selling. We like to buy, but few of us want to be sold. We like to do business with people we like and trust. We will do business with people we don’t like and very, very rarely with people we don’t trust. Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust. So what do we need to do? Strangely, we need to pay attention to our posture! Huh? It is common sense really - standing up straight communicates confidence. Also, bowing from a half leaning forward posture, especially while we are still on the move, makes us look weak, uncertain and unconvincing. If there is a handshake involved then, at least when dealing with foreigners, drop the dead fish (weak strength) grasp or the double hander (gripping the forearm with the other hand). When you first see the client, make eye contact. Don’t burn a hole in the recipient’s head, but hold eye contact at the start for around 6 seconds and SMILE. This conveys consideration, reliability, confidence – all attributes we are looking for in our business partners. We segue into establishing rapport through initial light conversation. Try and differentiate yourself with something that is not anticipatory, predictable or standard. Also be careful about complimenting a prominent feature of the lobby, office or the meeting room. As professional salespeople we need to say something unexpected, intelligent and memorable. We can say “Have you found that team motivation has lifted since you moved to this impressive new office?”. This get’s the focus off you the salesperson and on to the client and their business. Having a good stock of conversation starters should be basic for every salesperson. For example, “I read recently that the number of young people aged 15-24 has halved over the last 20 years, are you concerned about future talent retention as demand exceeds supply?”. We might educate the client with some industry information they may not be aware of but which would be deemed valuable. We salespeople face a lot of competition for the mindspace of our prospective clients. Questions are powerful disrupters of pre-occupation and we should have stock of little beauties we can wheel out when needed. The very first seconds of meeting someone are vital to building the right start to the business relationship. In modern commerce, we are all so judgmental and quick to make assumptions. Let’s get the sales basics right and make sure we totally nail that first impression.…
Procrastination is the bane of efficiency. Actually we all know well what we should be doing, but we just keep putting it off. Today we will look at some practical steps to get us better organized and become able to move forward and make progress. Paper piled high on all flat surfaces, email in-boxes bursting at the seams, project and completion deadlines menacing your normal calm equilibrium. Days fly by punctuated by too many meetings, the quality of which are usually abysmal, and the entertainment factor zero. Keeping up to date with your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Line, Instagram, accounts saps your mind and body. The black, oily tsunami of stuff just keeps coming, no matter what you do. How do you grow when you are constantly being pushed backward, fighting for survival, swimming against a roiling sea of stuff? Here are some ideas on how to create interrupt in your life and master the daily turmoil: Take stock of the issues and create some clarity about the field of battle confronting you. List up the offending items that are overwhelming you, “speak their name” to make them visible and less daunting. We cannot do everything, but we can do the most important thing, so start by deciding which nightmare is the highest priority. Create “block times” in your schedule, which are appointments with yourself and recorded in your diary. For that period of protected time attack the offending item with gusto, starting by deleting all the backlog of stuff whose use by date has passed. If it is paper, throw it out and file the rest into one file, arranged in priority order for the next assault. If it is email, select alphabetic filtering, so you dismiss masses of emails at one go. With the remainder, move items into new folders called Priority 1, Priority 2, Priority 3. For projects, stop the bees buzzing in your head, by writing them all down on a long list and then attach priorities to them. Start working on the main priority projects first. Meetings are tricky, because often we have little in the way of choice and few options. Consider your compulsory attendance character building – “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. For business social media, face the fact that you have become a heinous glutton, and have seriously over indulged. Be violent toward non-essentials. Truncate the deluge, sort, prioritise and curate.…
There is almost a checklist for things to pay attention to in getting ready for our talk. Things we should anticipate and plan for. In today’s show we will go through the most important aspects of preparation. Before jumping straight into the slides to build your presentation, identify your likely audience. It might be an internal meeting report to your team, a presentation to your immediate boss or to the senior executives of the firm. It might be a public talk. How knowledgeable are the attendees on the subject matter? Are you facing a room full of experts or are they amateurs or a mixture of both? What are the age ranges and the gender mix? Next, consider what is the purpose of the speech? Are you there to pass on relevant information, to inform your audience of some facts and figures? Are you there to entertain them, to make people laugh, to boost morale? Is persuasion your objective, to sell them on your vision, idea, product or proposition? Are you trying to motivate them to take action, to rally behind your flag? How long do we have to speak? Many may think that a short speech is easier than a longer one. Depending on the objective, the degree of difficulty may be higher with the shorter speech. Trying to persuade others or to motivate others, usually requires solid evidence to bring the audience around to our way of thinking. In a shorter speech there is less opportunity to pour on the evidence. What time of the day will we speak. After lunch and after dinner are two tough slots. Consuming meals and alcohol will sap the audience’s energy and attention. If it is an evening affair, where everyone is standing around and your speech is all that separates the masses from the food and drink, expect they will be distracted. In Japan, in such cases, audiences are usually merciless about chit chatting right through your speech. There is that low roar of an ascending passenger jet coming from the back of the room. How will you dress for success? All eyes will be on you. Given we absorb a good deal of your message through body language, how you present yourself makes a big difference. In Japan, it is rare to be overdressed for the occasion. Usually it is better to be more formal in dress than casual. Be careful that your tie, pocketchief or scarf does not compete with your face for the attention of the audience. Where will you stand or will you sit down? If you are using a screen, stand to the “audience left” of the screen. We want the audience to look at our face and then look at the screen. We read left to right, so your face first, then the screen is the natural order. It is better if you can stand, simply because you are more easily seen by your audience, especially those seated at the rear. You can use all of your body language to bolster the points you are making. If, you are forced to sit then sit forward, as high as possible in the seat and use voice modulation, gestures and facial expressions to help convey your message. What will you do to control your nerves before you speak? You will be somewhere in a holding position either seated in the same room, behind a curtain or to the side of the room. While waiting your pulse will start to race, you will likely begin to perspire and the “fight or flight” chemical cocktail in your body will now start to kick in. If you have some space where you cannot be seen, then striding around burning off that nervousness will harmonise your energy control. Following this, deep, slow, breaths from your lower diaphragm will help reduce your pulse rate. In the hours prior to you speech, try to drink water to get fluids into your system. Also make sure there is some room temperature water, without ice, prepared for you during the talk. Iced water constricts the throat, so we don’t want that when talking. Select a title for the talk that creates curiosity. Isolate out the key points you want to make in the talk, between three and five points. Think of a strong opening that will grab everyone’s attention. People are easily distracted, so you have to break through with a grabber start. Come up with two closes for your speech. One for the end of your talk and a second one for after the Q&A. We don’t want the randomness of the last question to define the final impression of our talk. We want to end on a strong message for our audience, which we control.…
When is enough enough with bad actors? What do you do when they are the buyer’s representative? How much crap should we be prepared to take from nasty people just because they are the client? The customer is kamisama (God) in sales. We hear this a lot in Japan across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up? Actually no! Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices. If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment. Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills. If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge. Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society. When the company President tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson, then you might be thinking, this is looking good. Not necessarily. What often surprises me about section managers in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want. Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to quote on a product or service, but there is no intention to buy from you. This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens. We were contacted by a large company asking for a quote on a particular piece of training. Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the quote, it will be fine (!). This is a tricky one, because you don’t know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help. To test the system in these cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the quote. Sounds like a very poor sales effort and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers. If they are really interested, then they will get back with either more questions or an order. If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor’s sales effort. That is a double ouch isn’t it! These things happen in business, but the key point is do not take it personally. Sales is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and your emotions are always under attack. Accept that sometimes you will get played by the buyer, but keep a record of the incident. Every six months give that company a call to see if your nefarious counterpart is still working there. People are becoming much more mobile in Japan, compared to many years ago and there is a good chance the puppeteer or bad actor has moved on. We should not deal with that individual buyer again, but we can try to deal with the company. There are usually many buyers in your market and many who you have had no contact with as yet, so there is little need to deal with bad buyer behavior. As the old saying goes “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault”.…
Busy bosses have the whole coaching thing taken care of – they don’t do any, because they are too frantic. Not a good approach is it, because we know we need to develop our people. No one will get promoted unless there is a willing and able replacement ready to step up. Coaching is how we get them ready and today we look at how to coach people properly. A consistent issue our clients raise with us concerns effective coaching. Becoming a leader is usually the result of demonstrating your own ability to get results. We promote the performers in the hope some of the pixie dust will get sprinkled around. The outcomes are often underwhelming. For the organization to grow, it needs talent to be fostered right throughout the whole organization. The natural owners of that fostering effort are the leaders. Here is a 7 step process which will vastly improve the coaching outcomes. Identify Opportunities For busy leaders, selecting who to coach is a critical decision. The staff with the most untapped potential are probably the most attractive candidates. You can’t do everything at once, so start with the option that will create the most value. Picture The Desired Outcome The Coach must work with the staff member to arrive at a clear vision of what the improved state will look like. It is hard to hit a target you haven’t nominated. Creating a word picture of the desired outcome helps to keep the efforts focused, especially when the chaos of everyday seems to conspire to ensure you get distracted. Establish The Right Attitude We need to know our people in order to understand how to communicate the change need in a way that resonates with them and they want to be part of it. Learning to talk in terms of the individuals’s personal motivations is powerful Provide The Resources The most expensive and highest value resource is your time to devote to coaching. It also requires a sincere personal commitment to see the person being coached succeed. People develop in different ways and at different times, so making ourselves the only metric of success is folly. Practice And Skill Development Make the time, identify the correct skill set needed, explain it, demonstrate it, then let them practice it. There is a balancing act going on here, where we need to let go, but keep monitoring without micromanaging them. Reinforce Progress Knowing and doing are sometimes related. Don’t expect because they have learnt it, they are automatically doing it. Check that there is no slipping back into the cuddly Comfort Zone, as people revert to their old, better established habits Reward What we reward gets repeated and what gets repeated becomes a new habit. Give praise which is specific, explaining exactly what they are doing that is good, rather than obtuse general statements of approbation. None of this is complicated. Common sense though is not always common practice. Executing these steps takes commitment but the rewards are enormous. If your leadership team is coaching your key people using a solid process and your rival leaders are not, expect to win the war. Action Steps Identify Opportunities Picture The Desired Outcome Establish The Right Attitude Provide The Resources Practice And Skill Development Reinforce Progress Reward…
We want profile. We want respect. We want plaudits. We want recognition. The problem is often we are totally unprepared for these things in a public arena. Consequently, when we are recognized for our achievements we destroy our credibility and we self immolate our personal brand. Don’t do that and find out in this episode what you can do instead. The hush has now swept across the room. All eyes are fixed on the MC, breaths are being held, awaiting the announcement of this year’s winner. Amazingly, it registers that it is your name they are calling to the stage. Emotion wells up. Your team join you for handshaking, shoulder hugs, high fives and backslapping. The prize is now firmly ensconced in your hand and you are beckoned to the microphone. What happens next? Do you find your mind is experiencing whiteout and goes blank. Do your nerves suddenly kick in when facing a sea of faces with thousands of eyes boring into yours? Do your knees mysteriously seem to have been drained of all their sinuous strength? Do you launch forth into a raging torrent of Ums and Ahs, followed by indiscriminate rambling, punctuated with pathetic apologies for your inability to string two words together? Are you having an out of body experience watching yourself have a public meltdown of stupendous scale. Seeing yourself trash your company and personal brands simultaneously, because you are demonstrating to all that you are a total dud as a professional? What would have been a better approach? Expecting to win is a good place to start. From that thought flows a stream of things that must be done, just in case lightening does strike, unlikely as that may have seemed at application time. What will be the content, how will you start, how will you end? It could go like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, let me say thank you to the judging panel for selecting us. I am sure it was a very demanding job for you and the organisers of today’s competition. On behalf of all the candidates, allow me to say thank you one and all for your efforts. Inside our company, Taro and his team regularly took the last train home in the coldest, darkest depths of winter and were back early the next day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, to get the Z project completed. Thank you all for going the extra mile, for your loyalty, commitment and perseverance, when so many doubted we could do it. We would not be standing up here tonight, if it wasn’t for Tanaka san at XYZ company. She gave us a chance to demonstrate we could deliver on schedule, on budget and at the right quality. I know that she had to weather some particularly tough internal meetings with her Directors last fall, but she went to bat for us. So we all say a very big “Thank you” to her and we are delighted she can be with us tonight. As we all know, we often spend more hours working with our colleagues than we spend with our own family. When we get home, exhausted, we unburden ourselves and share our concerns and worries. We need to set the ledger right and also share in the good times and tonight is just that occasion. I would like to thank my own family for their total support, which keeps me going. I would also like to recognise all the families of our team members who equally are giving their support. We know it is a sacrifice and we appreciate that you make that on the company’s behalf. So this prize tonight goes to all the angels at home who keep us going and make it all worthwhile. Finally, I would like to say how proud I am of our widget. We are committed to making the lives of our clients and their clients easier and more effective. We are on a mission to serve as many people as we can, because we know we are bringing value and growth to their businesses. Entwined inside their growth and success is our success and that thought drives us each and every day to do our best. Thank you!” That is two minutes. We have managed to say a lot in two minutes and we will leave a very positive impression with the audience hearing that speech. What if you go to all this trouble and you don’t win. You have definitely improved your speech making skill and you have put yourself out of harm’s way. Both are major wins, even if the big prize eluded you this time. There is always next year, the next occasion and your speech is ready to rock. You have positioned yourself in a good place from every angle.…
The first sale is to yourself regarding what it is you are selling. If you are not sold, then get out of that sales job and go find something you can believe in to sell. In Japan, you won’t find any other car brands in the Toyota carpark for a reason. The hardest sales job in the world is selling something you don’t believe in yourself. The acid test is would you sell this “whatever” to your grandmother? If the answer is no, then get out of there right now! It is rarely that clear cut though. The more important test is whether what you are selling solves the client’s problem or not. Selling clients on things that are not in their best interests is a formula for long-term failure and personal brand suicide. There are elements of the sales process which are so fundamental, you wonder why I would even bring them up. For example, believing in what you sell. There are lots of salespeople though, trapped in jobs where they don’t believe but keep selling. The more common problem is that they actually do believe in what they sell but they are not professional enough to be convincing in the sales conversation. They often have a sales personality deficiency, where they are not good with people or not good with different types of people. When I joined Shinsei’s retail bank, I recognised immediately that 70% of the salespeople should never have been given a sales role. My brief was “we have 300 salespeople and we are not getting anywhere – come in and fix it”. The vast majority of people in the role of convincing wealthy Japanese customers to buy our financial products were really suffering. They lacked the communication skills, the people skills, the persuasion power, the warmth, the concern for the customer, etc., which they needed to be successful. As Shinsei, we worked out who was best suited for a sales role and gave those people the proper training to equip them for success. The remainder were given a role elsewhere in the bank. What training did we give them? The ability to ask good questions, to fully understand wealthy customer’s needs. At Dale Carnegie we do a lot of sales training and we see the same client issues come up continuously. Certainty around the thing being sold must be in evidence. Selling is the transfer of your enthusiasm for the product or service to the buyer. Your body language must naturally exude belief. Your face needs to be friendly. Fluency in communication is critical. Be it Japanese or English, a lot of “filler words” like Eeto, Anou , Um, Ah, etc., might help you to think of what you want to say next, but you come across as if you are not sure or convinced about what you are saying or proposing. We definitely don’t buy sales person uncertainty. Success in sales is based on following a sales process. That process is based on three powerful foundations – your belief in what you are selling, your ability to fluently articulate back to the buyer what you heard they need and how your solution satisfies their need. If you want your sales team to be successful, make sure they get a proper sales process, get certainty, get fluency and get going!…
There are 15 public holidays a year in Japan plus some accepted company holidays as well. However there are other factors which impact work capability in Japan, that we need to be aware of and adjust our expectations accordingly. A boss grasp of these sensitivities will be well noted and much appreciated. There are specific work rhythms for Japan. Spring is hopeless because of all the different types of kafunsho (allergies) killing our concentration. Everyone is adjusting to the start of the new financial year in April and many are struggling with their new environments and situations. How can you get any work done in that situation, I ask you? May is no good because of gogatusbyo (May miasma). Also, after the Golden Week break, people are exhausted from the crowded train, plane and road travel and from all the family activities which take place during that time. Summer in July and August is also bad because the heat makes us feel supremely drowsy (natsubate). Of course we also have tsuyubyo or summer sickness thanks to the endless rain, high humidity and associated joint pain. The August Obon season is no better because you have to travel back to your hometown to worship at the ancestor’s grave and the roads are clogged and the railways packed. Recently, we have added a couple of new ones - akibate or Autumn drowsiness - to our woes. Plus we get to reprise our kafunsho allergy season, this time in Autumn, thanks to all the grasses flowering at that time. November onwards means we face those long dark days of winter are seriously depressing and the bitter cold seeps into your bones, tiring you out every day. We have to be careful not to break something, if we fall down on those black ice pathways It is hard to be an idea genius when you are tired every single day of your work life. Innovation rarely surfaces amongst the exhausted. Yet we expect results, innovation, creativity, high work productivity and happy staff. You need to be well rested and in good condition to operate at a high level How many foreign bosses adjust their high powered expectations and allow for the different rhythms here though? Probably zero. In a globally connected 24/7 world, there is no modern tolerance for differences in rhythms. Matrix organisations stretching across vast time zones can’t even schedule meeting times with any rationale thought for those joining in from distant climes. If they are that insensitive to local conditions, how can they possibility gauge the local working conditions described earlier around the different seasons in japan. Counsel the team about the importance of getting enough sleep, to rest before they get tired and to take breaks at work, so that they are fresher and therefore less likely to make mistakes though tiredness. Remind them that the fresher team will beat the tired team, and so let’s change the dynamic at work and win. Tired people rarely have enough bandwidth to come up with really great ideas and innovation is the key to out performing the competition. We want to put ourselves in a winning position and getting more sleep is one simple, low cost way of doing that.…
This is the hardest time ever for presenters. We are already in the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism and then we add alcohol to the mix – what could possibly go wrong with audience attention to our message? Find out here to be heard when all the odds are against you. The Master of Ceremony (MC) goes to the microphone to get the programme underway but the audience are oblivious, caught up in their own riveting conversations. The situation is much worse at receptions where alcohol is already flowing and the people down the back are generating a roar that drowns out the speakers. Here are some ideas that will shut down the noisy rabble and provide a proper platform for the speaker to be heard. Make sure to turn off the background music well before you are ready to start. Surprisingly, this is often forgotten by the organisers. Preferably always have someone else introduce you. Their job is to quiet the room in preparation for your presentation. This doesn't always go to plan though, because it can be a lucky draw on who introduces you. If you worry about speaking behind high podiums and appearing to your audience as a stylish coiffure just peaking above the water line, always arrive early and have the event staff provide a small raised dais for you Even better, dismiss the podium altogether, because now we can use our body language to maximum effect. Today’s microphone technology is very good, so you don’t need to have a stentorian voice to be heard. However, placing the microphone too close to your mouth creates dissonance, making it harder to hear you. When you face a challenging noisy crowd, make sure to hit the first few words very hard. To get things going, start with a strong “Ladies and Gentleman” with power invested into the first word and remember to draw that first word out slightly (Ladieeeeees) – elongate it for effect . Now include a small pause before a strong finish to the phrase. This will generally shut the room down and gather everyone’s focus on the speaker. If it doesn’t produce that “hear a pin drop” silence, then go again with strong voicing of the next phrase, “May I have your attention please”. I have seen speakers using assorted cutlery to bang on a glass, to create a chime that signals it is time to “shut up everyone and listen”. It works, however, one word of warning - don’t speak while pounding. Let the chime effect work for you and when the peer pressure builds to a point where you have achieved silence, put the glass down, pause and then start. Why pause? This builds anticipation and curiosity, both of which work in our favour when trying to get attention to what we are saying. Similarly, you can also use powerful music to drown out the crowd’s babble and make them listen to what is coming next. Just a short piece will do, as it signals action is about to commence and people will switch their gaze to you at the front of the room. After the music ends, again use a slight pause and then start. We can’t be effective communicators if people are not listening, so our first task is to quiet the room. Using these techniques will produce the right break in the chaos for your message to be heard.…
Cold calling is a nightmare at the best of times and even much worse when we don’t know what we are doing. Today we will look at some real life examples of what we need to be saying. 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 these 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 be able to speak to the person who has the diary spot you want a piece of. 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. This phone conversation might sound like this: “Thank you for your time on the phone, I know you are super busy. We have just received the results of our global survey into the buying perspectives of your buyers. It was a global comparison that included Japan and the results are quite striking, especially for what are the key motivators for making purchasing decisions in Japan. It also investigated where the buyers believe the industry is moving and this insight is very valuable to make sure we are always keeping in lockstep with the buyers, given business conditions constantly change. I can take you through the results, would this week suit or is next week better?”. Or you might mention that you recently came across some ideas that seem to be working extremely well for others in their industry. For example, “Thank you for you time today, especially when you are so very busy. In our work, we are speaking with a wide variety of companies in many businesses. As a result we are constantly picking up industry insights and perspectives, which are not widely known or shared. I came across some information recently on key emerging trends, which have the potential to really make a difference in your industry. The three companies I met have adopted some new approaches which have grown their collective market share by a factor of three times in the last six months. I can see why this is working so well for them and I thought this type of insight might also be of assistance for your business. The early movers are clearly going to take the lions share of the market as the industry changes. On the other hand, it looks like those late to the changes needed to be made will suffer. Is this week open or shall we meet next week?” 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 we always have in our mind that “inside the client’s success is wrapped my own success” then we will be able to build trust and credibility. What we say and how we say it will be congruent with putting the client’s success ahead of our own.…
Ever heard that a training course changed somebody's life? "It was good", "I enjoyed it", “I learnt something new”, maybe. Warren Buffett, the famous American billionaire investor is a huge Dale Carnegie fan and often mentions in TV interviews how the Dale Carnegie course changed his life. Being in Japan, it is great to hear a leading local businessman like Mr. Masami Atarashi say the very same thing. He is very well known in Japan and spends his time writing, adding to the 40 plus books he has already published and giving public speeches as well as training to executives. Previously he headed up Johnson & Johnson, Philips, and Hallmark in Japan as President. I asked him how the course impacted him, "The Dale Carnegie Course changed my life. When I was asked to make a speech to an audience or to a customer etc., I trembled with fear and I was a lousy speaker, not so much technically but mentally. Half way through the Dale Carnegie Course I found myself beginning to enjoy talking, that's one significant visible change which occurred to me. And overall I began to look at things in a positive way. Instead of saying we can't do it, I start looking at how we can do it. The whole mind set changed and that happened when I was 32." We determine trust through listening to what is said and how it is said. Everyone puts their best face forward, but we are trying to get behind the superficial to the reality. We are racing around in business, with our antennae on full throttle, trying to dodge the dodgy types and find some trustworthy keepers. Yet, people say the dumbest things to us, ruining their credibility. We see people who are quite clever, scoring "own goals" all of the time because they can't control what comes out of their mouth or because their self-awareness level is hovering somewhere around zero. The Japanese call it KY, an acronym using English to abbreviate “kuki wo yomenai” or can’t read the air or no sense of occasion, as possible translations. Business is too complex for us to do it all by ourselves anymore - the day of the hero is over. Today we need the hero team. To get things done requires more and more specialisation but with that often comes a poverty of skills in other key areas. Persuading people rather than trying to order them. Getting willing cooperation instead of whipping them into a frenzy of reluctance and resistance. Having technical skills but little common sense doesn’t help. Being smart is good, but it isn't enough. We need to be better communicators, better with people, better with diversity, more capable with complexity. Buffett and Atarashi both discovered that the Dale Carnegie course was a source of answers to a lot of the business challenges they faced to be successful through other people. There is a good reason this course is still around for over 100 years. It works. That is why it is paid the ultimate compliment of having changed their lives.…
Memorizing speeches and reading them are both bad ideas. Okay. Then what are we supposed to do? Find out in this weeks show. The content was really great and the way the words were put together was quite clever. Obviously a tremendous amount of work had gone into this piece. The speaker had a previous professional journalistic background and the careful selection of just the right vocabulary and the descriptive flourishes were excellent. The speech was a dud. It failed miserably because it was a written speech, read to us. The next speaker just spoke. He wasn’t such a fluent talker, sometimes stumbling over some of his words, occasionally stuttering, but he had everyone’s attention because he was authentic. The issue here is how should we reproduce the content we have designed. Do we have to remember it exactly, memorise it so we can be faithful to our speech design and message? If it is a very short speech, you can try and memorise it, but these are usually very special occasions. Don’t read it to us, if you can avoid it. If it is a highly technical speech, something with gargantuan legal implications if you get it wrong, a life or death statement to the media or on behalf of your absent big boss, then you may have no choice. If so, then please use as much eye contact with your audience as possible. You can study the text, such that you really know the content. You can read the first part of the sentence, then voice the last section while looking at your audience and still remain perfectly faithful to the sacred text. You can read the words and add in gestures, to emphasis the message. You can stand straight and tall and project confidence, reliability, credibility and trust rather than hunching down over the microphone stand. You can have pauses, to allow the audience to digest the key points. You can hit key words for emphasis and can use voice modulation to bring the text alive. Do not have your head down, eyes glued to the text and cut yourself off from your audience. Even better, read your audience not your text. Observe if they are buying what you are saying, see if they are understanding the point. You don’t have to memorise your talk or read it to us or read the slides to us. You can have speaking points and talk to those points. For the vast majority of speeches, a conversational tone of talking to key points will work extremely well. If it is severely formal and you have either memorise it or read it, well go ahead. However if you don’t have that type of caveat, then look at us, talk to us and engage with us. We will forgive any sins of grammar, pronunciation or lack of speaking fluency in the delivery. We will connect with you and we will receive your message and we will regard you highly as an authentic person who spoke from their heart. And we will remember you in a positive vein.…
People enter sales with no thought. They find it is tough and leave or are fired. How about basing your sales career on having your own point of view, your own philosophy about what you are doing? Today we look at precisely how to do that. Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care –Anonymous”. Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam ? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”. I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs? The quote at the beginning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care” reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え). It can be simply translated as “true intention” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? Single transaction orientated salespeople are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand. If you want a successful career in sales, change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a powerful personal brand. If you want to stay in sales, then create your own philosophy of what that means as a profession. Decide to be the very best that you can be. Decide what your personal kokorogamae of sales will be. So, no more hesitation, let’s commit and get on to it! Action Steps Decide why you are in sales in the first place? Choose sales as a career and create your own philosophy to guide you through the peaks and troughs, the good times and the scary times If you are working for or with people who have the wrong approach, the incorrect kokorogamae , then get out of there as soon as possible Make the client’s interests your interest and you will do well in sales.…
Bad habits feed off laziness and inflexibility. Good habits need discipline, work, consistency. Which is precisely why we prefer to stick with our bad habits. Find out how to turn that around this week. We are all the product of our habits. What we do regularly defines our level of success. Bad habits, good habits are all the same, in terms of the production of results, so the input point not the process, becomes very interesting for those wanting to succeed. How do we ensure that we are adding good habits and eliminating bad habits? Part of the input process is selection of priorities. Going to the gym rather than the sports bar is a choice. Eating that donut rather than an apple is a choice. Doing specific things at the precise same time, in the same way without variation instills habits. Doing things that must be done, regardless of how you feel about wanting to do them, instills disciplines, which become habits. Our biggest successes come from our ability to work with other people. We pick up bad habits that damage our ability to garner that input, cooperation and collaboration. Here are some good habits to cultivate if we want a smoother path to success. Don’t make it your habit to complain to or about others. When others complain about us to others and we hear about it, what is the usual reaction? Generally not good and animosities arise and can linger for many years, as the result of what is considered an unwarranted assault on our good name. So if you want to create a blood feud, then start publicly whining about your colleagues. If the chances of success in complaining are so low, then why do people persist in thinking they can right the world by drawing other’s attention to their failings? Habit and a major lack of self-awareness are culprits. Call out the error indirectly. Make this your habit rather than a preemptive first strike. Help others to want what you want and make that style of communication your habit When we are direct and assertive, it comes across like giving orders and few people like being told what to do. Be a more skilled communicator and look for ways to stimulate self-discovery on their part, that leads them to see the wisdom of the solution, that we have identified as the best way forward. Make it a habit to be a good listener, you will become more persuasive as a result. It sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it, listening rather than telling your way to success. We uncover their desires, thoughts, attitudes, hot buttons, beliefs, fears, interests etc. By knowing each other better, we can become closer through improved communication around points of agreement and shared interests. Craft the appreciation habit Flattery is not appreciation. It is a lie that is revealed pretty quickly. Honest and sincere appreciation is what resonates with us. Tell them exactly what they did that was good and it will be real. Appreciate people as a habit and do it in some detail that makes it credible. We are the sum of our habits and that sum determines our success with others. Habits can be learnt and cultivated at any stage in life. Some actions items going forward for good habit cultivation: Don’t complain to or about others Help others to want what you want Become persuasive by being a good listener Give honest, sincere appreciation…
Idiots believe content quality and value trumps delivery. Limited concentration spans in this Age of distraction have made presenting harder than any time in history. If you are not on top of your game, no one will be listening to your genius high value content. Can we be successful as a presenter if we don't connect with our audience? Many presenters believe this simply is not needed. This connecting lark is rather fluffy and irrelevant for them because the content is king. The delivery is a sideshow, a trifle, a distraction from the main game. Solid high value information, backed up with verifiable data is the mother lode. Actually that is not true. Solid, verifiable data delivered in a monotone, presented looking down to the reams of notes on the podium, in a disinterested manner is a communication killer. No matter how good the "goods" are, it is not much help if no one if getting your message. Why aren't they getting it? They are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Line instead. We cannot be so arrogant as to imagine our content can carry the day in this age of distraction. If you are looking down at your notes when speaking then the most valuable data is being withheld from you. Watch your audience like a hawk. If you see them disappear under the desk scrolling with their device, then you can kiss your message goodbye. Look them right in the eye. And do it for six seconds. Why six? Less is not giving us time enough to connect and any longer becomes intrusive - we start giving them sunburn from our intensity. So the maths on that calculation are pretty simple. Six seconds means ten people per minute. A 40 minute speech means we are constantly using our eye contact to connect with 400 faces. In a large audience, we may think we cannot connect with everyone but we can. Those seated far from us will imagine we are looking at them. The actual person we are looking at and the twenty people sitting around them, all believe we are talking directly to them. Divide the audience up into six sectors, depending on the size. A smaller audience might become just three sectors. The point is to ensure we visually rove across the audience and speak to every single person, no matter where they are seated. We are circulating in a random fashion around the audience, trying to draw them into the web of our message. We can read their faces for reaction to what we are saying. This allows us to respond by varying our delivery, by using voice tone, questions and silence to keep them in the room with us. If we have their attention then we have a chance of getting our message across. Even if they cannot remember all that we say, they will never forget us. Getting both would be a wonderful result, getting one is better than being totally forgettable like most speakers.…
We think sales is tough and we are sick of clients saying no. We want to quit. When you consider this story of Toshiya Kakiuchi, you will realise you have nothing to complain about. Salespeople are world class whiners and whingers. They are the most creative group amongst all professions for coming up with excuses about why they can’t meet their targets. Salespeople everywhere are delicate blossoms. They get a rocket from their boss about their poor results and try to cold call potential clients over the phone. They get total, irreversible rejection and quit phoning after the third call. There is a variety of cold calling which is even more debilitating and that is tobikomi eigyo (飛び込み営業). The tobikomi eigyo salesperson, is someone who just drops by unannounced and devoid of an appointment, always unceremoniously shown the door. Imagine if you were so short, that the receptionist can’t even see you unless she stands up and peers well over the counter. Or, that the typical unmanned reception phone and organisational chart are at such a height and depth, that you can’t even use them. This presumes you can even get into the building, in the first place. Toshiya Kakiuchi was born with a brittle bone crippling disease that confined him to a wheelchair. He applied for jobs, found the going tough, then one day a firm which built websites, accepted him as an employee. His boss told him to head off to the sales department. “You have to get out there and cold call offices door to door, tobikomi eigyo style, looking for companies who need a website”. Seated in his wheel chair, he was only 106 centimeters tall, found that most buildings were difficult to access because of vertiginous stairs. His sales comrades were seeing 40 or 50 companies a day and he was only seeing 5, if he was lucky. Yet, in a short space of time, he became the top salesperson in that company. I asked him about how he managed it. With only a limited number of calls he could make in a day, he had to really make every post a winner. He found a way to turn his disadvantage into an advantage. Kakiuchi san was definitely memorable, distinct, differentiated. You are not going to forget him turning up to you office. So, for all those able bodied salespeople out there whining in their suds about how tough sales is, stop it right now – you have nothing to complain about. Kakiuchi san found a way through by differentiating himself, by having grit and stick-ability to keep going back despite being constantly rejected. He was physically weak but mentally tough. How about you?…
Being too clever by half is never a good idea for a presenter. We are here to make our points crystal clear to our audience, not to impress them with our own brilliance. Personal and professional brands get torn asunder when we get this wrong. Find out how to avoid that fate in today’s show. We are all assembled in a luxury hotel’s gorgeous function room. The big brand name, the resplendent silver mane, the speaker’s resume and abundant confidence all speak to a brilliant talk coming up. The keynote starts well but gradually we start to lose connection with the speaker’s message. The talk is full of supple subtleties. The main point becomes fuzzy, distant, unapproachable and impenetrable. We sit there wondering are we all stupid, because we can’t grasp the speaker’s nuanced argument or is the speaker simply rambling and incoherent? Actually, it doesn’t matter which of us is stupid, because the talk has failed. The speaker has not been able to get the message across in a way that resounds with the audience. We have to know who is in our audience, their level of understanding of the subject and their capacity to be challenged. We need to be able to communicate, which means the listeners can understand and follow what we are saying, rather than trying to impress with our own brilliance. Structure helps to guide the audience through the proceedings. This speech, if it had a structure, it was obscure, vague and puzzling. A heavy mist rolled in on this speech after about the first ten minutes and engulfed us all in such a way, that we struggled to follow where this meandering was going. What was the point being made here? Where are we going with these stories? What is the key argument being made? The use of slides on this occasion was minimal. In many cases this is a blessing, but not this one. We needed some more form to follow the speaker’s points. We were lost. We could have found a path, if there had been some visual guideposts for us. Maybe a fellow genius, if indeed our speaker was a genius, may have been simpatico with our speaker’s intent and understood the thesis. Alas we were just ordinary punters, turned out in the hope of a nice lunch and some enlightenment from this font of knowledge. As speakers we have to make it easy for our audience to understand us. If we are going to be clever and tangential, we run the risk of losing people. If we are fixated on subtlety, we can be too opaque for the troops and they just get lost. We were all crime scene witnesses to the merciless murder of a major brand that day. When the big cheese fails like that, we doubt the whole organisation. Our faith in the firm has completely subsided. Apart from the damage to the company, the individual’s personal brand is shredded, torn and tattered. The stakes are high when you are a presenter, so mastering the ability to connect with your audience is critical. Don’t over complicate the exercise. Have a clear structure, be easy to follow as you navigate your way around your talk and pitch it at the right level for your audience. Do that and your personal and professional brands will be enhanced, appreciated and working for you, not against you.…
Being influential and persuasive are professional skills. Salespeople need both but often are not trained in either. Let’s look at some new habits which will make all the difference. Being persuasive is a must when convincing buyers to give up their security (money) in exchange for the promise of higher value. Surprisingly, very few salespeople have ever had any presentation training whatsoever. The basics of presenting to an audience or a buyer are the same. It could be one to one or one to many, but there are common skills that are needed. Let’s start with the Six Impact Points of Persuasive Presentations. Eyes If we are talking to a buyer group, a board or a few representatives from a department within the client company, we need to engage each of them with eye contact. Holding someone’s gaze for around 6 seconds allows us to make our point with becoming too intrusive. Japanese buyers in particular can feel oppressed by prolonged strong eye contact. You should still make eye contact with them, but do it more sparingly. Face Our face, when animated, lends powerful support to our message. When something is great for the client, smile and show pleasure. When something is bad for the client (like taking no action and not buying) show some downheartedness at the thought of the client not getting the wonderful benefits of your solution. Voice Monotone sounds put us to sleep. Our voice tonal modulation is a fantastic instrument. Classical music is full of lulls in the storm and crashing crescendos. Their opposite natures makes the contrast so much more powerful. Slowing words down for emphasis works in any language. Speeding them up also works well to set what we are saying apart from all the other words surrounding that phrase. Injecting power when we say something or taking the power down to almost a whisper, is also a clever variation in tonal delivery. Gestures Gestures come more easily when we are standing rather than seated. Most business meetings I ever attend are seated. However, if you ever have to present something, then stand up and do it. This could be using a whiteboard, flip chart or a slide deck on a screen. Even if you have no visual aids to support you when presenting, if it is a formal presentation like a pitch, still stand up and give your report. When standing, we can make more use of our body language, can make full use of our hands for gestures, we are more visible to all members of the audience no matter where they are seated and we are more relaxed. When we are doing our gestures, we can also do them from a seated position and we should do so. Don’t allow the seating arrangements to constrict you. Use your hands to emphasis a point in coordination with you voice and facial expression. This troika is a powerful weapon in the persuasion war. Standing or seated, only ever maintain the one gesture for a maximum of 15 seconds. When teaching presentation skills, I notice some people never use any gestures but others use the same one right throughout. If we hold that position for longer than 15 seconds, the power of that gesture dies and then just becomes annoying to the audience. Pause We want the client to do most of the talking, guided by our well designed questions. We need to introduce conversation gaps through pauses, because the client must absorb what we have said. This means they shouldn’t have to listen to anything we are saying now in competition with what we have just said. Pause, remain quiet and let your key points sink in before continuing. Embrace the beauty of the pause. Posture If seated, sit tall. We are here to convey reliability, trust, consistency and attention to detail. A slob collapsed in the chair opposite, isn’t likely to succeed on that front. Japanese culture dictates that you sit ramrod straight and off the backrest of the chair. If standing, then stand tall. When standing, that means both legs are kept straight and perpendicular to the floor. Spreading your weight across your legs 60/40 or 70/30, looks far too casual and relaxed for a business meeting, especially when you are the supplicant salesperson.…
First impressions are vital in business and in life, yet so many companies get this simple thing wrong. How about your company? Let’s look at what people are getting wrong and see how to fix it. You appreciate Japan when you leave it and meet grumpy, angry looking, unfriendly customer facing staff overseas. Dale Carnegie's Human Relation's Principle Number Five is "SMILE". It may sound a bit simplistic but actually the idea is very profound and has a lot of depth. You would never guess that this idea to smile when you meet people, especially when in a customer facing roles, had been around since "How To Win Friends And Influence People" was first published in 1936. Buying food, checking in for your flight, or entering the airport lounge, unsmiling, unfriendly staff assault your senses. No smiling, not even one of those pathetic fake jobs. To top it off, they then produce a section from the manual and say "have a nice day/flight/whatever”. The incongruency of greeting you with a "I don't care" attitude and their final words, has obviously not been explored yet. Giving your instructions to the cabbie or the serving staff and being greeted with total silence is a bit disconcerting. Do they know what I want, are we clear about what needs to happen next? Why is there no acknowledgement of what you want? These abysmal service interactions are a simple failure of leadership. The companies employing these staff have poor leadership, because the people destroying their brand are not being trained properly. What a fantastic opportunity for companies to win in the marketplace. The cost of a genuine smile is obviously too expensive for these failing companies. Imagine though, that properly led staff were being trained on just one thing - smile when you meet your customer. Teaching our teams to smile at the first interaction with the customer, sets up a chemical reaction that will create the right momentum, to create an experience that adds to the value of the brand and to the revenues of the organization. To do this we need to properly train our leaders to make sure their staff get it. The lack of congruency is costing firms money. The up-sell, the cross-sell missed opportunities are frankly scary, pathetic and unnecessary. Listen to how your staff answer the phone. Do they say the name of the organization, their own name and do it with a smile in their voice. Observe the customer facing interactions and see if the genuine smile is there or not. As company leaders, I don't think we should be satisfied with anything less than excellent smiles as the first point of contact. If we can get a smile going at the outset a lot of good things will follow and Principle Number Five “SMILE” can be the catalyst to success. Action Steps Call your own organization at different times of the day to check how clients are being handled. Ensure leaders are explaining to staff that they represent the brand and how they interact with clients makes all the difference to how the brand is regarded. Select customer facing staff who smile naturally. Practice Dale Carnegie’s Principle Number Five - Smile…
Breathing is such a natural act and normally, we don’t pay it much attention. Somehow though, when we are giving a presentation, our breath control becomes a factor of success. One component is our nerves, which are driving the chemical surge through the body, making our heart rate skyrocket, which speeds up our breathing pattern. If we are not breathing properly, we can have mental white outs of the brain, because we are not getting enough oxygen. We can’t remember what it is we are supposed to say. We get lost, become panicky and come across as disorganized, unconfident and flakey. Voice is driven on the winds of breath exhalation and lack of breath power impacts audibility. If we don’t have good breath control, we can find ourselves squeaking out to the audience in this little voice that says, “I am not confident. I am not confident, I am not confident!”. We might find that our lack of breath control results in our final words of our sentences just dropping away to nothing. We often see speakers kill their key messages, by not supporting the key points with their words voiced with power and conviction. There is no opportunity to punch out a strong message, because we are just vocally doing a disappearing act in front of the audience. It could also be that we are becoming very breathy when we speak. It sounds similar to people who have respiratory illnesses. They always seem to be gasping for breath. Actually they are and so are speakers with no breath control. They simply can’t pull in enough oxygen. The lack of breath control gets transmitted to our cadence of when we speak. A lack of air means we are confined to short breathy sentences and the lungs are only being filled in a very shallow fashion just from the top portion. So how do we stop this and better instruct our instrument – our wonderful speaking voice? I am going to pass on what I have learnt from nearly 50 years of karate training, where breath control is absolutely vital. It is the same method used by singers. Controlling our nerves is a key part of breath control, because if we don’t, we are working at cross purposes with ourselves. One of the techniques for controlling our nervousness is to go through some deep breathing exercises, before we go on stage in front of the audience. We can do these seated or standing and they don’t take very long. Place both hands on your tummy and just touch lightly. As you breath in, imagine you need to fill the lungs from the bottom most part of the diaphragm. To help us do this we breath slowly and deeply and we can see if we are succeeding, because the hands on our tummy are starting to move forward. This pushing out of the tummy is a good sign, it means we are doing the deep breath sequence correctly. We reverse the process and slowly exhale and the hands are slowly drawn back in. We need to do this slowly, because a bit too much force and speed here and we can become dizzy, as the flood of oxygen to the brain makes us feel lightheaded. Correct breath control gives us the ability to make the tonal variations which keep command of our audience. We can bring power to words and build to crescendos, when we want to emphasis particular key points. It also helps us to relax and look super composed when we are standing in front of people. That confidence is contagious and our audience buys what we are saying. And that is what we want isn’t it. Action Steps Get to the venue early and find a quiet, private place to do some breathing exercises Place the hands over the tummy and check if we are breathing from the lower diaphragm or not Make this method your default method of breathing from now on If you start to feel yourself lacking air, then re-set and concentrate on breathing from the lower diaphragm.…
If we are presenting a brochure, flyer, price list, hard copy slide deck or any other typical collateral item, then we should adopt best practice for greatest success. Have two copies always, one for you to read and one for the client, unless you are a genius of reading upside down (which by the way seems to include all Japanese!). At the start, put your copy to the side for later if you need it and turn the client’s copy around to face them. Then proceed to physically control the page changes of the document. Don’t just hand it over, if you can avoid it. You want to walk them through the pages, under your strict supervision. There is usually a lot of information involved and we only want to draw attention to the key points. We don’t receive unlimited buyer time, so we have to plan well. You don’t want them flicking through the pages at the back and you are still explaining something up the front By the way, don’t place any collateral pieces in view of the client at the start of the meeting. Keep them unseen on the chair next to you or in your bag. Why? We want to spend the first part of the meeting asking solid questions to uncover their needs. Don’t distract the buyer from answering your questions – this is vital to understanding their business and their needs. As we hear their answers we set off a chain reaction. We mentally scan the solution library in our brain and start lining up products for them. The details will be in a brochure or a flyer etc., but by showing them at the start we will distract the client. It also implies I am here to sell you something. What is our mantra? Everyone loves to buy but nobody wants to be sold. Keep the sales materials out of sight, until you absolutely know what you will need. If we hand over the sales materials at the start, they will be reading something on page five and you will still be focused on page one. If you allow this to happen, control of the sales conversation has been lost. The salesperson’s key job is to keep control of the sale’s talk direction, from beginning to end. If you can’t do that, then selling is going to be a tough employ for you. After placing the document in front of them, facing them, pick up your nice pen and use it to show them where to look. There are many distractions on any single page, so we need to keep the show on the road and them focused on the key items. Our pen is our navigator. Know where the items of most interest in your materials are located, based on what you heard earlier and skip pages that are not as relevant. Do not go through the whole thing, from beginning to end. You want them focused only on the most relevant and interesting elements of your presentation. Also you have to narrows things down, because you just don’t have that much time available to you. Action Steps Control the reading flow of the presentation document Use you pen as the navigator through written materials Only show the materials after you have had your questions answered and know what they want…
Kids today! Each generation struggles to understand why their successors are so different (and usually, by definition, “useless”). The Millennial cohort are those born between 1982 and 2000. This is a key group, especially in Japan, because they are not making enough of them any more. Over the last 20 years, the population of 15-24 years olds has halved. Recruiting and retaining young staff has become a big pain for all of us. The war for talent means we have to learn quickly how to understand them and what they want. To those firms who just don’t get it, a big Arigatoo! Please keep training these Millennials so we can poach them. Dale Carnegie and MSWOARS have done research on engaging employees and have specifically focused on Millennials. The overall results showed that 30% of Millennials are fully engaged, another 56% are partially engaged and 14% are disengaged. So what? Well, engaged staff are more likely to stay. What do Millennials want? The study threw up three areas where we need to focus. Their personal life, the work environment and attitudes to organization leadership. These are big topics, so today we will focus on the “me” factor. The survey showed that in their personal life, Millennials wanted a good work/life balance. In particular, having flexible hours, so they can pursue personal responsibilities , ranked highest. Post Covid these issues will re-appear. In Japan, one in six of workers never take any annual leave and of those working over 60 hours a week, over one quarter take no holidays. Not a lot of work/life balance going on there. Japanese staff are generally apologetic about asking for leave. Yes, this is cultural and that is why the majority of Japanese staff finish the year with excess leave days. This means the workplace culture is one where work, work, work is good and seeking flexibility about work hours is stepping out from the norm. Not a trait welcomed here. In Japan, 92% of workers start after 8.00am (compared to Germany at 47%), explaining why your train will be packed again after Covid. Not a lot of flexibility there either. Wanting to start early and finish early is a struggle in a late start/late finish work culture. So, how flexible is it going to be down at your shop when we get back to normal? Millennials want their immediate supervisor to care about their personal life and the effects it has on their job. For Boomers this is sheer gobbledegook. There has always been a clear separation of private and work life for this generation. How much do your supervisors actually know or care about the private lives of your Millennial staff? This requires a substantial mind shift toward a more holistic approach to dealing with the younger generation. It may feel it is a bit like prying into their private lives, but they don’t see it that way, if the intention is to be 360 degree supportive. Millennials are in short supply, so we better get clued in fast on how to engage and retain them. This is a zero sum game we don’t want to lose.…
Usually this isn’t even a question for most presenters, because the organisers have already set up the room when you arrive. Our speaking spot has been designated for us. But have we been designated a spot by experts in public speaking or by the venue crew who usually just haul chairs, lug tables around and set up the stage? Sadly the coalescence between expertise in public speaking and membership of the logistics team is rare. So where should we stand? This will depend on the venue size, the illumination of the room, the size of the audience, the layout of the stage, where the screens are located and what you want to achieve. If we are using a screen, then is it hoisted high above us, are there two giant screens on the left and right or is it at our height in the center of the stage? In smaller venues, the screen is normally at our height and usually set up such that the podium is on the audience right of the stage. No particular thought has gone into this location and the choice is purely random, often linked more closely to power outlets and cabling considerations, than the speaker’s effectiveness. Stand on the audience left of the screen, so that the audience can read your facial expression and body language and then move their eyes right to read text or images on the screen. We read left to right, so this is a natural progression. We always want the screen to be subordinate to us. So set the proceedings up such that they have to look at you first, rather than at the slides on the screen. Our face is a trillion times more powerful as a communication tool, than anything that is on that screen. If there are giant screens above, then the chances are the venue is pretty large and the stage will be quite wide. Rather than being stuck in one place, work the stage area. I don’t mean nervous, fidgety, random pacing across the stage as I have seen done by many amateur presenters. I mean move right to the very apron of the stage and to the extremes of left and right to engage with all of your audience. Start in the middle of a large stage, as close as you can get to your audience. Remember, that to those seated at the back or up on the first, second or third tiers of seating, you are the size of a peanut. Yes, they have the giant screens but try to bring your physical presence as close to your audience as you can, to create a closer connection. Move slowly to the extreme left and then stop. Now we can engage everyone on this side of the room. After a few minutes move slowly back to the center and stop. Now move slowly across to the extreme right and stop. Then slowly back to the center, by which time it will be getting very close to your peroration. To be an effective speaker, we need to include consideration of the best logistics needed to support our efforts. Don’t rely on the clueless to prepare the venue properly, instead have a clue ourselves and always be in command of our environment.…
Price is always a big issue for salespeople. Sales Managers know that sales people are very happy to drop the price, because they see this as the easy route forward with the client. Whenever there is a price increase, sales people immediately whine about it, because they see this as making their task more difficult. They are permanently happy to discount, in order to win the business, even when their commissions at stake are tied to the size of the sale. The problem is they are totally focused on the wrong thing. What they should be focused on is not pricing. They need to do a better job of listening to their clients, to really, deeply understand what that business needs to succeed. Rather than carrying around a bunch of screaming monkeys in their head all fighting about price, commission size, boss anger, mortgage payments, personal status, which new car, etc., they should be 100% concentrated on the client’s problems, not their own. While the way to the client’s agreement is through listening, just what should salespeople be listening for? Certainly not what the client decides to talk about. The client isn’t there to do all the work and run the sales meeting. The salesperson’s responsibility however is to ask intelligent questions which will uncover the client’s needs. They need to keep the sales conversation on track – find out the needs, deal with any concerns or hesitations and then get the buyer’s agreement to do business together. Rather than going into a discussion about what price they can get the client to agree to, they would do much better to join the conversation going on in the mind of the buyer. The customer has goals and aspirations and our job is to help them to be realised. In their success is our own success. In fact, the cost of our product or service is free to the client. It is free because it is paid out of the additional growth we bring to the client’s business, rather than a subtraction from what they have today. When you think in terms of paying for your contribution from the increase in the revenues or costs savings for the client, then your whole mental framework shifts and so does the conversation. A focus on repeat orders rather than this one transaction is also a powerful mindset shift for salespeople when engaging with clients. The salesperson’s kokorogamae or true intention is the key. Who are they really serving – themselves or the client? The pressure for results, to make budget, to hit the target drives salespeople to short-term thinking. Clients are not stupid, they can recognize desperation or sales push very quickly. There is a great aphorism: “everyone loves to buy but nobody likes to be sold”. Precisely! We want to be shown the value of giving up our currently available cash flow to build a better future. So, how do we get the salespeople better able to have the proper approach to clients. We need to set down what is our attitude to our clients and how we do business around here. We need to explain we are building lifetime client value, our brand, our reputation and we are playing the long game.…
Sakaiya Taichi, a well known author and futurist, made some interesting observations about trends in Japanese youth society. He referred to young Japan’s current lack of yoku (desire), yume (dreams) and yaruki (guts). What does this mean for business and for our companies if we are staffed by young people without these three Ys? The triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown in 2011 underlined Japan’s fragility. The social contract was broken and companies preferred to hire part-timers, to enjoy the greatest flexibility to respond to future downturns. Many company’s profits have been soaring but employee wages have not been moving. Covid-19 has seen companies rescind employment offers to new graduates, unemployment is rocketing and the economy is in bad shape. Demographics has been exerting more pressure on companies to focus harder on recruiting and retaining their workers, as the supply of young workers steadily reduces. It is not such an easy transition though. The expectation that this current generation will fit in like every preceding generations is Japan Inc’s geriatric illusion. What is the reality? The young will need a lot more conversations about their future prospects inside the company, than their current aging bosses ever received from their superiors. They want praise and feedback to give them the confidence to step up and take responsibility. Not delegating and thereby not enabling them to gain experience, so they can position themselves to step up into higher levels of authority, won’t cut it either. Coaching and mentoring skills are going to be going at a premium as leaders are sought out who can develop future leaders, retaining the best talent and leveraging the ideas, insights and innovations of those at the bottom – those closest to the action. Apart from the obvious relationship with the immediate supervisor as a key driver of engagement in staff, the other two drivers are belief in the direction senior management are taking the company and pride in the organization. These last two are communication necessities. Take a good hard look at your middle managers and senior leaders – do they get it? Are they able to encourage the young to see a future with the firm and to not think they have to leave in order to advance in their career? Are they able to get across the key messages required?…
It is a big crowd, yet the conversation suddenly dies and a hushed silence now sweeps through the room. All eyes are fixed forward, as the MC tears at the envelope and announces the award winner. Receiving the prize, obediently posing for the photographer, our winner turns and begins to move gingerly towards the mike. In front of everyone, personal and organisational brands now begin to disintegrate. What does come out of their mouths are pathetic Ums and Ahs. There are particularly strained and embarrassing silences as they obviously struggle, thinking about what they want to say. Their speech is incoherent, nervous, unconvincing and clearly killing them. In one minute they have gone from hero to zero in front of their industry peers. We are talking about a one minute acceptance speech here. An opportunity to promote your organization, promote yourself, thank the troops, etc. Why are so many people so poorly prepared to represent their organization in a public setting, where there is no excuse and every likelihood that you will have to get up and speak? The most telling point was the majority of speakers had obviously done zero preparation. Actually, a short one or two minute speech is probably the most difficult talk we will ever give. It is so brief, we have to really plan it well. There are only a few points we can make when forced to be so brief, so we have to select the most powerful messages and dump the rest - there is no time for dross. It is a good practice to hit the first word we speak hard, to eliminate any hesitancy. With that good energy level established , we should maintain our voice power, to project confidence to everyone in the room that we deserve to be up here, getting this award. When speaking to the audience, our eyes should be singling out specific individuals at each table to speak to directly, as if we were having a friendly chat over the backyard fence. We are only speaking to them for about six seconds though. We also won’t waste our chance in the limelight by applying a vice-like grip on the lectern. In fact don’t even touch it. Instead we are going to free up our hands for gestures. If there is even the remotest chance you will have to get up and speak, be prepared, be “A Game” ready, be organised and be great. Don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on the awards dais. Make it a triumph instead.…
What we say and how we say it matters. It matters in life, in families and in business- especially in sales. Sale’s talk is very semantics driven. Japan presents a challenge with developing salespeople. Invariably, they are the undereducated graduates of OJT or On-the-Job Training. If your boss is a great salesperson and a great coach, then well done you. In Japan, that combination is a rare bird. Attempts by foreign corporates to rectify this OJT problem for developing salespeople are often laughable. Bosses who don’t speak Japanese or don’t have a sales background or even worse lack both, send in the English speaking instructors from the corporate APAC hub, to dole out the sales medicine. Sales training for salespeople must be based on the reality of selling to clients in the client’s native language. You can explain the theory perhaps in English, but where is the coaching of the role play, the examples, the finer points of nuance? There are more than enough of other sales fails anyway. The first big fail is lack of preparation and anticipation of the issues facing the client. Because of this the language being used by the sales person is vague and often meandering. Salespeople should complete a mini-SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis on the industry and the company, to flag potential problems requiring solutions and direct the discussion to the elements of the greatest interest to the buyer. Blocker words are another killer of sales success. This is directly related to a lack of discipline on the part of the salesperson. What are these notorious blocker words – some common ones include: “sort of”, “a few”, “kinda”, “sometimes”, “more or less”, “about”, “some”. Words like “price”, “cost”, “contract” are also poor selections. These words create an image of money going out like a flood from the client, but no value coming back in. We should only be speaking of “value” and “investment” instead. Salespeople often talk too much. They love people and they love to chat. Too many words begin to pop up into the conversation, which add no value to the sales process. Getting people to hand over their hard earned cash is hard enough and using poor communication skills makes it even harder. We need to train people properly and monitor their sales conversations to make sure they are achieving the maximum success possible. Action Steps Train your salespeople in the language of the client Don’t allow laxity of word usage because semantics matter in sales Be super concise and clear in your verbal sales communication Bring evidence to back up your big words and glowing pronouncements Explain the value of your solution at length first, rather than diving into the nitty gritty of the detail Bring insights to the buyer, based on your analysis of their industry and your experiences with other similar clients…
We are all pretty average on recalling events, people’s names, locations, sequences, inanimate objects, etc., but we are geniuses on remembering feelings. We are especially good on how people made us feel and what super memories we have developed in this particular department. Business is deemed to be logical – cool, balanced, unswerving on the road to greater efficiencies. Ironically, we are such emotional beings trying to be detached, but we are usually not very good at it though. Ever find yourself still chewing over some ancient injustice? Something doesn’t arrive on time or in the right format and we have that chemical reaction that is triggered by the emotions of anger, disappointment, fear or frustration. People say something trying to be funny or witty but we take it badly. We instantly feel insulted, embarrassed, hurt, mortified or humiliated. There are some basic principles of successful human relations we forget at our peril. “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain” is an all weather wonder. Let’s resist the urge to correct others, to tell them off, to bring their personal failings to their attention immediately. It is not a cure that works well and in fact just builds pig-headed resistance, as the guilty party seeks to justify their dubious actions. “Let the other person save face” is a handy principle to keep in mind in public situations. Not everyone is quick, elegant or urbane and some people seem to invite correction, but let’s resist that urge. Just because they may not obviously react should be cold comfort. Remember to beware the dog that doesn’t bark. “Show respect for the other person’s opinion. Never say you are wrong”. Even if you feel they are so totally incorrect it is barely fathomable. Restrain yourself from leaping in and pointing out they are an idiot. “The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it”. Incredibly, even people in sales forget this sage advice and want to argue with the client. We might win the battle over the point of contention, but we will lose the war over the long term. Maya Angelou summed it up brilliantly: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. So how do you make people feel? Apply these principles and let life get easier.…
Before jumping straight into the slides to build your presentation, identify your likely audience. How knowledgeable are the attendees on the subject matter? Are you facing a room full of experts or are they amateurs or a mixture of both? What are the age ranges and the gender mix? Next, consider what is the purpose of the speech? Are you there to pass on relevant information, to inform your audience of some facts and figures? Are you there to entertain them, to make people laugh, to boost morale? Is persuasion your objective, to sell them on your vision, idea, product or proposition? Are you trying to motivate them to take action, to rally behind your flag? How long do we have to speak? Many may think that a short speech is easier than a longer one. Depending on the objective, the degree of difficulty may be higher with the shorter speech. Trying to persuade others or to motivate others, usually requires solid evidence to bring the audience around to our way of thinking. In a shorter speech there is less opportunity to pour on the evidence. What time of the day will we speak. After lunch and after dinner are two tough slots. Consuming meals and alcohol will sap the audience’s energy and attention. If it is an evening affair, where everyone is standing around and your speech is all that separates the masses from the food and drink, expect they will be distracted. How will you dress for success?. Given we absorb a good deal of your message through body language, how you present yourself makes a big difference. In Japan it is better to be more formal in dress than casual. If you are using a screen, stand to the “audience left” of the screen. We want the audience to look at our face and then look at the screen. We read left to right, so your face first, then the screen is the natural order. Japan loves to have the speaker sit down at a table with a microphone stand, so you can drone on and on, like all the other speakers. t is better if you can stand, simply because you are more easily seen by your audience, especially those seated at the rear. You can use all of your body language to bolster the points you are making. What will you do to control your nerves before you speak? If you have some space where you cannot be seen, then striding around burning off that nervousness will harmonise your energy control. Following this, deep, slow, breaths from your lower diaphragm will help reduce your pulse rate. In the hours prior to you speech, try to drink water to get fluids into your system. Also make sure there is some room temperature water, without ice, prepared for you during the talk. Iced water constricts the throat, so we don’t want that when talking. Select a title for the talk that creates curiosity. Isolate out the key points you want to make in the talk, between three and five points. Think of a strong opening that will grab everyone’s attention. People are easily distracted, so you have to break through with a grabber start. Come up with two closes for your speech. One for the end of your talk and a second one for after the Q&A. We don’t want the randomness of the last question to define the final impression of our talk. We want to end on a strong message for our audience, which we control.…
“Winning is not a sometime thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all of the time”. This is a great quote from the famous American football coach Vince Lombardi and we can apply this idea directly to negotiations. Any business undertaking does better when there is a structure, a process that is capable of creating consistent outcomes. There are many tactics, strategies, feints, bombast, illusions, delusions, egomania, tricks and skullduggery associated with negotiating. Our recommendation is to play the long game. Don’t win the battle to only lose the final outcome. We are looking for a sustained business career and that means our reputation in the market is like gold. Always fair is always fair, whether a transactional one night stand or otherwise. Being a known entity gives others confidence to deal with you – we are all trying to reduce risk and look for people we can trust. Japan is a highly risk averse culture and business environment and they always prefer the devil they know to the angel they don’t. Part of being consistent is value driven and another big component is how we organise ourselves for the negotiation. There are four stages of the negotiation we should prepare for: Analysis We need to identify possible alternatives available to us in reaching an agreement. We need to see the negotiation from the point of view of our counterparty. For this we need information and perspective before we even get to the negotiating table. Getting good information and intelligence is that bit harder in Japan, but if you have a good network that can help a lot to short circuit the research process. We need to reframe the conversation to avoid confrontation. This means we are looking for words and deeds that speak to a win-win outcome. Presentation We should rehearse the other side’s presentation, as well as our own. By actually doing a dry run of their presentation, as we imagine it, we throw up insights and ideas which are very helpful for ourselves. For our presentation, we should frame it in the language of the interests and needs of the counterparty. Talking about what we want doesn’t move us toward an agreement. Speaking their language, contemplating solutions to their issues positions us all on the same side of the negotiating table and leads to better outcomes, much faster than otherwise. Bargaining We must clearly fix our BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) at the start. This is our fall back or even walk away position. It should be realistic and as close to the ideal outcome as we can manage. We should always be prepared to take a break from the negotiating process if we feel we are becoming too emotional. In our presentation we have tried to make it easy to agree to our proposal and hard to disagree. We shouldn’t make the other party work hard to reach an agreement. It is hard to make a good deal with bad guys and why would we want to work with bad guys in the first place? Life is short. Agreement We should make certain we specify all points that are agreed. Things which need to be fixed at the point of signing, should not be left floating around. This is the time to fix them. There will be milestones for execution of the agreement and these need to be specified. There will be a schedule for fulfillment of the agreement and this needs to be detailed in scope. A signed agreement in Japan is a lot more flexible than in the West. The Japanese view is that while there is good will on the part of each side and the conditions for success still apply, then the deal makes sense. If that is no longer the case or if the situation has changed substantially since the agreement signing, then the deal doesn’t make sense anymore and should be voluntarily terminated. From a Japanese viewpoint the relationship is the key point and the one deal is just the one deal. They want to keep the relationship, but don’t want to suffer under the terms of the agreement, if the situation has changed so much that is no longer works for them. The deal ends, but the door is open to future deals. Does everyone in Japan play by these quid pro quo rules? No, of course not. Are they as flexible with you as they expect you to be with them? Not necessarily. One thing about Japan though, everyone is very good at keeping well maintained records about who you can’t trust and who you should never deal with. They share this information amongst their circles. Negotiations in Japan will have their own flavor and we have to be cognisant of the different expectations which apply. Regardless, we do better when we have a framework to guide us and this simple four step process will assist us in preparing for the discussion with the counterparty. We don’t need to complicate things, but we do need to have a structure to help us break down the complications into bite size pieces we can tackle when they arise.…
The confidence of the people sitting in your office is up against the confidence of your competitor’s people, sitting somewhere else in a similar building. Are you arming them to win in the market place by instilling greater amounts of confidence in them? Or are you allowing your rivals to beat you by developing more confident people? Find out why having confident people allows your organisation to win over the competitors. Are you confident? If the answer is “no”, then how can you become more confident? If the answer is “yes”, does that extend to areas where you lack existing expertise and experience? Generally speaking, we are all confident while operating within our Comfort Zone. How do we either gain confidence in the first place or how do we extend the scope of our confidence? The work environment has a huge impact on how we grow our confidence. If we work with or for people who are supportive, we can try, fail and grow. If our boss or teammates deride us for making mistakes, we learn to avoid doing anything new. If we offer up an idea or suggestion and are met with rebuke, derision, sarcasm or mock, we learn very quickly to never repeat that humiliation. On the other hand, if we are supported when we make mistakes and they are treated as a vital part of our professional growth, then we expand our range further and further. We are also more likely to come up with insights, ideas and proffer innovations. Let’s take a quick reality check: if we are not getting sufficient innovation in our organisation, it might not just be the lack of a good idea creation framework. It might be our toxic environment toward the new and different, that is overwhelming the creative process. The boss stands in front of the whiteboard, black marker pen in hand and commands ideas from the team. Any ideas which are not perfectly formed are critiqued right there and then. The idea exponents are left in no doubt they are idiots for coming up with such a useless suggestion and the next idea is called for. A few rounds of this “fillet the idiot” game and the same three people put up their thoughts while the rest of the team sink a bit more deeply into their chairs, silently disappearing into the background. Leading the most self-motivated 5% of any group is pretty easy, because they don’t need us in the first instance anyway. The tricky part is leading the people who are not like us. If our whole organisation can become more confident than our competitors, we will do much better. How much does it cost to achieve that? How about nothing! Our leaders determine the work environment, the ethos, the vibe. If we understand how to grow people in confidence, then the organisation moves forward, because more people are able to come out of their Comfort Zones and grow. If we had “build confidence in our people” as a performance measure, we would start a virtuous circle, creating organisation wide progress. Take a cold hard look at the environment our organisation’s leaders are creating. Are we leaving money on the table because we are not getting as much from our team as we should? Are we focused enough on expanding confidence and Comfort Zones? If we aren’t, then it is probably time to reexamine the education of the leadership group and turn that around.…
The hush has now swept across the room. All eyes are fixed on the MC, breaths are being held, awaiting the announcement of this year’s winner. Amazingly, it registers that it is your name they are calling to the stage. Emotion wells up. Do you find your mind is experiencing whiteout and goes blank. Do your nerves suddenly kick in when facing a sea of faces with thousands of eyes boring into yours? Do your knees mysteriously seem to have been drained of all their sinuous strength? Do you launch forth into a raging torrent of Ums and Ahs, followed by indiscriminate rambling, punctuated with pathetic apologies for your inability to string two words together? Are you having an out of body experience watching yourself have a public meltdown of stupendous scale. Seeing yourself trash your company and personal brands simultaneously, because you are demonstrating to all that you are a total dud as a professional? How could it come to this, to have capitulation snatched from the jaws of triumph? Simple really. You didn’t prepare properly. What would have been a better approach? Expecting to win is a good place to start. From that thought flows a stream of things that must be done, just in case lightening does strike, unlikely as that may have seemed at application time. What will be the content, how will you start, how will you end? Find out how much time you will have available. You will want to thank the judging panel for selecting you and the organisers for putting on the event. That is polite and a set piece. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me say thank you to the judging panel for selecting us. I am sure it was a very demanding job for you and the organisers of today’s competition. On behalf of all the candidates, allow me to say thank you one and all for your efforts”. You will have others you want to recognise, such as colleagues, clients and family. Think of a short story for each group, that connects their support with this win. Story telling is powerful, because it creates context and draws your audience into the mental picture you are drawing. For clients, you might select an episode of some consequence. “We would not be standing up here tonight, if it wasn’t for Tanaka san at XYZ company. She gave us a chance to demonstrate we could deliver on schedule, on budget and at the right quality. I know that she had to weather some particularly tough internal meetings with her Directors last fall, but she went to bat for us. So we all say a very big “Thank you” to her and we are delighted she can be with us tonight”. For family, you could note, “As we all know, we often spend more hours working with our colleagues than we spend with our own family. When we get home, exhausted, we unburden ourselves and share our concerns and worries. We need to set the ledger right and also share in the good times and tonight is just that occasion. I would like to thank my own family for their total support, which keeps me going. I would also like to recognise all the families of our team members who equally are giving their support. We know it is a sacrifice and we appreciate that you make that on the company’s behalf. So this prize tonight goes to all the angels at home who keep us going and make it all worthwhile”. How do you wrap it up. You could say, “Finally, I would like to say how proud I am of our widget. We are committed to making the lives of our clients and their clients easier and more effective. We are on a mission to serve as many people as we can, because we know we are bringing value and growth to their businesses. Entwined inside their growth and success is our success and that thought drives us each and every day to do our best. Thank you!” This is the time to differentiate your company and personal brand, so make the time and put in the effort. What if you go to all this trouble and you don’t win. You have definitely improved your speech making skill and you have put yourself well out of harm’s way.…
We can’t control the issues which arise during a negotiation or the attitude of the buyer, but we can control our own skill level and approach. The more we understand and manage our own behavior, the greater the influence we will have with others. To be successful we need to behave in a way which influences the interaction by moving it along a collaborative continuum. Good reputation with good intentions People may forget the finer points of the negotiation but they will remember how we treat them. Burning people, being too sharp, too cunning creates a negative reputation for fair dealing. The aim is to win in business and one deal is only one deal. Winning the battle and losing the war is for short-term transactional types. Respectful, trusting and trustworthy Getting to a mutually satisfactory and beneficial outcome is the goal. Along the way, we treat the counter party with respect and they feel it. This adds to our own commercial history as someone you can trust in business and that is worth a lot more than the contents of one transaction. Confident and positive Having the right intentions gives us strength to find a solution that will be well regarded. We are constantly looking for a way through the difficulties, seeking to find a solution to the other party’s issues. Well prepared Knowing the facts, the background, the individuals, the market situation are all elements we can and should prepare prior to having any discussions with the counterparty Composed Calm and considered is a good philosophical position to adopt in negotiations. Emotional control is a prerequisite for success. Effective communicator This idea often suggests being a good talker when in actual fact being a good listener is often more important. Asking excellent questions and listening for what is not being said is an approach that will yield rewards. People skills Helping people to relax, finding common ground, getting on their wave length are all people skills. Being able to remove barriers and reduce inflammation points, through how we treat others, makes the negotiation discussion proceed in a smooth fashion. We like to do business with people who are like us and that is where the person with people skills really shines. Open-minded Flexibility is a source of strength in a fluid, shifting activity like negotiating. Rigidity can lock us in to a position which precludes a mutually beneficial agreement, usually because we have let our own ego get in the way. Creative We are sometimes captives to our limited knowledge and experiences and so the world of possibilities seems small. Finding a tangential solution through a creative approach can produce surprising breakthroughs, when everything seems to be heading toward a train wreck in the negotiations. A risk taker In finding agreement there is always an element of risk. Caution, timidity, fear drive us into corners from which it is sometimes difficult to emerge. Having a capacity to take a risk because you have thought through how to minimise that risk once taken, is a big advantage when it comes to finding creative solutions to end an impasse. Business is not a one time thing, so how we treat others and especially the way we do business marks us out in the community. Bad news always traveled fast and far, but today with business social media being so prevalent, we are talking another level of transparency. Successful negotiators know this and never let their reputation become sullied for a small tricky gain. They play the long game and seek to permanently increase their influence.…
Dale Carnegie Training conducted a global survey to examine what are the key people issues organisations are facing. The research identified three common macro trend areas: Leadership Development, Succession Planning and Employee Engagement. Leadership Development ideas have been overtaken by the democratisation of innovation through the internet. Leaders no longer have a clear monopoly on information, so where to locate their authority to lead? The concept of “only leaders lead” is being challenged by new business demands, where all must lead, regardless of status or operational level within the organisation. Consequently, there is more demand for staff to develop personal leadership skills, set and manage goals, control emotions, increase productivity and improve internal and external relationships. Is your organization doing this? Leaders are being driven to find improvements in the way they supervise and manage others, as well as how they influence and collaborate across teams. Organisations are looking for greater communication expertise in aligning others around a clear strategy. Are your leaders skilled in communication? Succession Planning highlighted preparing for future talent readiness both for growing and declining workforces. Succession planning has taken on a more comprehensive, holistic need. Reactive approaches are being challenged by demands for better, earlier planning for unexpected turnover or absences. Most advanced economies are facing shortages of younger people, so attracting, retaining and developing staff takes on more urgency. For the most part, people leave bosses not companies, so the leader’s role becomes critical in securing talent. Osmotic adaption to change is seen as too slow. Organisations however, are struggling to create consistent, robust processes, as opposed to being satisfied with heroic, but episodic efforts. The leader cadre’s ability to stretch and coach talent are even more critical than before. Is this what your leaders are capable of doing and are they doing it? Employee Engagement survey scores get measured regularly, but they don’t tell much about how to accelerate the drivers of attitude change. Human beings are driven by relationships and emotions. Members of a team are more productive, harmonious and committed if they feel an emotional connection to colleagues, the organisation’s leadership and the direction for the team. The research found that at the core, people need to feel valued. When they feel valued, they are more confident, which leads them to be more inspired, empowered and enthusiastic. These outcomes create the emotional connection to work that is called engagement. Are you making sure your people feel valued?…
Hands and legs quivering, knees knocking together, face turning red, pulse racing, mind whiting out – this is stage fright. Our work responsibilities are rewarded with a salary increase but also the obligation to give reports or speeches. We are innocently beavering away at our jobs, are recognised for doing well and given promotions or more responsibility. Tetsuya Miyaki is a typical example. He was a low level bureaucrat in a municipal government office. Promoted to become the head of a department, he suddenly found himself having to give public presentations, including to the municipal assembly. When he became the mayor of a city ward, the speech requirement exploded, and so did his stress. This is what happens to us. With no thought for the future, we plough along working hard, looking for the rewards but forgetting the escalation of expectations that go together with that. I was the same. I had no vision of what the future would require. Eventually, I gave my first public speech. It was in Tokyo in late 1983, in Japanese and it was horrible. I was supposed to talk for 30 minutes but I finished in about 8 minutes. My nerves were severely ramping up my speaking speed. I read the whole thing, never looked up at my victims, didn’t smile, had no pauses, no gestures, no animation except high blood pressure giving me a big red face like a warning beacon. When I took the High Impact Presentation Course with Dale Carnegie it was such a revelation. I just kicked myself for all of the opportunity costs I paid by not doing this when I was younger. I was an idiot. I could have spent decades polishing my speaking skills, growing my potential rather than hiding from the opportunity. I could have ramped up my personal brand big time, if I had been even half smart and gotten the training. Don’t be stupid like me – get the training. If you are going to get anywhere in your career, you will need this facility to not just speak competently in front of an audience, but to speak persuasively. It is not a matter of if, only a matter of when.…
I am sure you have you seen notices explaining that this location is going to close while the building is being reconstructed. One notice however has become much talked about amongst Japanese retailers. Toraya are a famous traditional Japanese sweets manufacturer and retailer. Mr. Mitsuhiro Kurokawa is the 17th generation of his family to lead the business and his “we are rebuilding” notice is considered outstanding, even in a country where omotenashi is renowned. Most such notices tell facts, supply relevant data and provide the obligatory greetings about serving us again when they reopen. Kurokawa san did all of that but much more. He put the current change in historical perspective, noting the business started in Kyoto in 1586, moving to Tokyo in 1869 and to this location in 1964. He then started to tell some stories about the customers they have had at this shop on Aoyama Street in Akasaka, over the last 50 plus years. He mentioned that every three days, a male customer visited the shop to enjoy oshiroko (bean paste sweet soup with grilled mochi). Another customer, a kindergarten aged boy came with his mother to the shop every day and bought a bite sized yookan (sweet bean paste block). A 100 year old lady regularly came by wheelchair to the shop. She later became hospitalized and her family came to buy namagashi (fresh Japanese sweets) and higashi (a dried sugar sweet), to take to the hospital for her. Telling customer stories is powerful. Kurokawa san made the customers experiences come alive and he linked them to the products they enjoyed. The feeling of the notice is that there is a special bond they feel with all of their customers. Are we communicating we feel a special bond with our customers? Are we weaving enough customer stories into our communications, real episodes that the reader can visualise in their mind’s eye? We know the human touch is so important but often we can get tied up with the spec, the data, the details and lose sight of how we can differentiate ourselves in the market. Is your communication all about you and what you can do and nothing about your customers? We may not be the 17th generation in our business, but we can bring more heart into the service we provide our customers. We can start right now with the service we provide and how we communicate that service.…
Japan is entering a scary world of work. The tried and true assimilation methods of the past, for injecting youth talent into firms, are starting to falter. Every generation feels a gap with its successor, but the size of the impending chasm in Japan is generating fresh challenges. Millennials, defined as those becoming adults around 2000. At different times, it has been poor pickings for Varsity graduates in Japan to find a full time job. This year, Covid-19 has put the brakes on hiring graduates. But the demographics are clear. There are now half the number of 14-24 years olds in Japan, than there were 20 years ago. You don’t have to be a genius to see what is coming around the corner – the war for recruiting and keeping youth is going to hot up. A smaller pool of available hires and a new found freedom to jump out, without any social stigma, is empowering this Millennial generation in new ways. The issue is going to be how to attract these Millennials to your company and how to keep them happy enough to stay with you? There are thirty human relations principles outlined in the book, “How To Win Friends and Influence People” and they seem tailor made for dealing with Millennials. Sage advice like “Don’t Criticise, Condemn or Complain” will perfectly address delicate youth sensitivities. Remember we don’t leave companies, we leave bosses. Principles such as “Talk in Terms of the Other Person’s Interests”; “Be a Good Listener - Encourage Others to Talk About Themselves”; “By Sympathetic With The Other Person’s Ideas and Desires” will be a challenge for supervisors who like to do all the talking and directing. Companies are well advised to re-train their leaders to deal with this hotly contested youth worker supply problem. Otherwise, they may find they cannot engage or keep this next generation, so vital to fulfilling their firm’s succession planning. Organisations will also be more attractive in recruiting and keeping Millennials, if they have more relevant training on offer for them. They lack experience, so they want practical information, not lecture or theory. They want concrete skills to make them more successful and they want them now. Prepare your organisation for this brave new world of Japanese Millennials or brace yourself for the unfolding nightmare. Action Items Recognise the demographic trend is not in your favour Educate your leaders to become better communicators Embed Dale Carnegie’s Thirty Principles of human relations into your company culture Provide practical skill training for the Millennials…
Seriously sad really. Our speaker had some excellent points to convey but due to silly basic errors, killed his organisation’s messages. Today there is so much information available, so many role models, so much video instruction, so much access to insight, so much training, you really have to wonder how some organisations can do such a poor job. I approached him after it was all over. Being the eternal Aussie optimist from the land of vast horizons, blue skies and wonderful sunshine, I thought our speaker would benefit from a bit of friendly, positive feedback on how he could help his organisation to do better. He wasn’t buying that and asked me for one example. I asked for the first slide to be brought back up. A confusing coat of many, many colours, seriously dense with data, totally impervious to easy understanding – a florid mess in other words. When I suggested the slides were perhaps attempting to put too much on the screen at the one time, he said I was looking at the cleaned up version. The other issue was the delivery. Our speaker chose to stand in front of the monitor and read to us what was on the screen, while having his back to us for most of the presentation. What could our hero have done? He made the slide deck the centerpiece of the presentation, instead of making his messages the key. We should present only one idea per slide, restrict the colour palette to two colours for contrast and try to keep it zen-like simple. If our audience cannot grasp the key point of any slide in two seconds, then it needs more paring back. Graphs are great visual prompts and the temptation is to use them as unassailable evidence. This usually means trying to pack the graph with as much information as possible, showing long periods of comparison and multiple data points for edification. Trying to pack it all on one screen is a formula for persuasion suicide. We need to learn some very basic logistics about presenting. Try to stand on the audience left of the screen. We read from left to right, so we want them to look at our face first and then read the screen. We want to face our audience and if anyone drops the lights so your screen is easier to see, stop everything and ask for the lights to be brought back up. We need the lights on in order that we can see our audience’s faces. We can then gauge if they are with us or resisting our messages. Changing the slides and the delivery would have made the speaker’s messages clearer and more attractive. None of the things I have suggested to him are complex or difficult. He remained resistant, so I saw him riding off into the sunset on his quixotic quest to convert others to his organisation’s point of view. Good luck with that one buddy! Action Steps Make yourself not the slides the centerpiece of your presentation Don’t bombard your audience with a visual multi-coloured extravaganza – go for zen when designing your slide deck Don’t put too many graphs on one slide – two at most is a good rule Try to position yourself facing your audience to the audience left of the screen Keep the light up, so you can see and be seen…
The customer is Kamisama (God) in sales in Japan. We hear this a lot here across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an Oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople. Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up? Actually no! Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices. If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment. Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills. If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge. The Japan winner of the worst sales environment is the pharmaceutical industry selling to doctors. Unlike the rest of the advanced world, where patients use the internet to educate themselves about medical conditions, before they see the doctor, Japan is still stuck in the pre-1990s. Japanese doctors consequently, still consider themselves vastly superior to everyone else, from patients on down. At the absolute bottom of the pile are drug salespeople. Being forced to wait around for hours, fawning over the doctor, being spoken to like dirt, cleaning their Mercedes, arranging all types of incentives to get them to buy your drugs, have been the fodder for legendary poor buyer behavior forever. Conflicts of interest have emerged recently as a concern and there are many more restrictions now on entertaining doctors. The flow of goodies is being restricted and so the salesperson doesn’t have as much in the way of ame (sweets) to offer anymore. They still get plenty of muchi (whip) from the buyer though. Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society. You have been busily networking, creating new opportunities. The company President you have just met tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson. You might be thinking, this is looking good. Not necessarily. What often surprises me about HR people and other underlings in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want. Recently, I had lunch with a multi-national company President here running the Japan operation. The President is dynamic, articulate and a great presenter. After the lunch, as promised, the President sent an email to the HR person instructing them to get together with me to discuss training for their company. I follow up with the HR person many, many times, but never get an answer. It has become obvious they do not care what the President said, they have their own views on how to run the training and we are not going to fit into that plan. On another occasion, I had met the Japanese President at a networking event, followed up, got a meeting and in the process he introduced me to the HR people. In the meeting, the President suggested they take a look at what we offer. Many, many emails and attempted contacts later, no response from the HR team for follow-up meeting. Going back and telling the President who introduced you that, in fact, they have no power within their own organization is a bit of a delicate conversation. Even if you raise it, you have just said that the Emperor has no clothes. They do not thank you for pointing out their underlings are in rebellion and they themselves are impotent. I am still working on a solution for this contradiction. Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to put together a proposal and quote on a product or service, but there is absolutely no intention to buy from you. This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens and the compliance box is ticked. We were contacted by a large company recently asking for a proposal on a particular piece of training. Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the proposal, it will be fine (!). This is a tricky one, because you don’t know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help. To test the system in these specific doubtful and dubious cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the proposal. I know, I know. This sounds like a very bad sales effort on my part and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers. If they are really interested, then they will get back to me with either more questions or an order. If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor’s sales effort. That is a double ouch right there, isn’t it! It is not always black and white though. In another case the President was a graduate of our programme and told his HR Director to get us to put together a proposal on some training. This is exciting and you think “we are looking good”. The President knows the quality and the results from first hand experience and has the authority to make this happen. Or so it seems. In this example, I actually get to meet the HR people and their internal client. I followed up to present the proposal to them. “No, we are very busy, just send it”. Warning signal right there. I pushed back, “actually I need to explain it for you”. Further stalling, “No, just send it”. The pricing by the way, was very close to their indication. Eventually you send it, but now you begin to suspect this is revenge on the President for daring to enter their world of authority. What looked like an inside track to a positive decision, gets derailed as the internal buying entity flexes muscle to show their independence. Applying my standard rule, I do not follow up further and just wait to see what happens. There was no response from their side, so again few options available, other than to tough it out. These things happen in business, but the key point is do not take it personally. Sales is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and your emotions are always under attack. Accept that sometimes you will get played by the buyer, but keep a record of the incident. Every six months give that company a call to see if your nefarious counterpart is still working there. People are much more mobile in Japan, compared to many years ago and there is a good chance the evil, malicious puppeteer has moved on. We should not deal with that particular buyer again, but we can try to deal with the company. There are usually many buyers in your market and many who you have had no contact with as yet, so there is little need to deal with bad buyer behavior. As the old saying goes “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault”. Action Steps if you are in an industry where buyers habitually treat salespeople very badly then switch industries Just because the people at the top like you, don’t think that means anything in Japan. Keep working on those who actually execute the work. If the buyer just says “send it to me” get worried, you may be the patsy for unknowingly assisting a rival’s offer Keep in touch with the company, the “problem child” may have moved on Never forget “fool me once it’s your fault, fool me twice it’s my fault” Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.…
In most Western economies, a colleague’s farewell is no big deal, just a part of the tapestry of business. Managers applying a typical Western business approach to departures in Japan however, may skip the need to communicate with those left behind. Most Western enterprises are “Dry” rather than “Wet” ecosystems. Dry meaning logical, ordered, efficient, unemotional, competitive and oriented around the survival of the fittest. Wet on the other hand is more emotional, nuanced, interdependent, harmonious, inefficient and more forgiving of human frailties. Japan much prefers Wet to Dry work environments. The unexpected announcement of the coming disappearance of a workmate can cause a degree of consternation amongst the troops, that is probably not anticipated or even sensed by Western trained managers. Ambushing the quickly gathered Japanese staff one morning and announcing the existing boss is being demoted and introducing the new boss, a total outsider shuffled in from abroad the night before, is the Dry approach. The Finance industry is notorious for rapidly relieving staff of their building access cards, providing a thin plastic garbage bin liner for their personal paraphernalia and a phalanx of buffed security types to shunt them out the door. Voluntary departures should not be ignored as chances to direct the communication amongst the team. Just because staff departures are no big deal to you, the Japanese staff don’t necessarily share your Dry view of the working world. Don’t let the rumour mill crank up and the information vacuum be filled by negative messaging. If the departure is voluntary, don’t assume there is no assurance needed for those who remain to know that everything is still stable, safe and predictable. Always advertise the fact you are “expanding”, to prevent any type of negative scuttlebutt. Explaining to each person what is going on is the leader’s job. The team want the assurance that they are not also going to be shown the door. They may wonder that the departing colleagues are bailing out early, because they know something the others don’t. Assure them that there are still oodles of opportunity to advance in their careers or your might see good staff leave. If there has been a poor performance issue that is driving the team member’s departure, those staying need to hear the survivors are valued and why the person’s departure is the best thing for the organization. In Japan, the group not the individual, is key. Leaders, have an important role to play. They need to explain the Why of what is going on. Three factors determine employee engagement levels in companies – our relationship with our immediate supervisor; our belief in the direction being taken by senior management and our pride in the organization. Departures, when not properly handled, negatively impact all three. The key emotional trigger to getting higher levels of engagement is feeling valued. Those who are left behind need that conversation with their boss that they are valued. Bone Dry leaders won’t get it or won’t bother. They will subsequently wonder why the levels of engagement, commitment, innovation and motivation are so low in their team. To successfully lead in Japan and beat the competition, you need a more highly engaged team. Action Steps Stop the rumour mill by having a strategy in place for when there is turnover Coach leaders on the need to communicate the WHY with team members when there are departures Assure those left behind they are valued…
How long does it take on average to form a first impression? My students tell me two seconds. Wow. What does this mean for the speaker? It could be in the boardroom, at the networking event or at the pitch to the client. Regardless of the location, one thing is sure – everyone is a critic. Think back to the last time you saw someone present. Did the speaker get right into it or was there some logistical finessing of the laptop, the lapel mike or the notes sitting on the rostrum? Was the speaker looking at the audience, up at the huge screen behind or down at the laptop? Did we have some good old hand mike thumping to see if it was working properly? If there were any such diversions, then our two seconds have come and gone completely. What would help us to maximize the two second window? Getting straight into the content without any distractions, allows us to set the tone for the occasion. Traditionally we could thank the organisers for the opportunity to present. Doing this with a huge smile would be a good use of the two seconds. Even if nature has not blessed you with a killer smile, give us the best you can do. We could start telling an episode, an incident, a story. We love listening to interesting stories involving real life and real people, because we can easily identify with the content. We could refer to a member of the audience, immediately shattering the mental barrier between speaker and audience. “Anne Smith from XYZ and I were chatting earlier and she made a very good observation about….” After having launched into proceedings we can now backtrack and use the laptop, our notes, the spreadsheets or whatever we need to explain the content. Rather than wasting our initial two second window on these adjustments, we instead capture the attention of our audience from the very start. Once captured keep them so. Another powerful tool, left in pristine condition through underuse is voice quality. Again nature may not have blessed you with a deep throated baritone or mellifluous instrument that harkens the angels, but no matter, do the best with what you have. That means speak clearly, with sufficient volume, so that you can easily be heard. Use the microphone properly by holding it just under your chin and speaking across the mesh. Have some variation in the delivery so it is not totally predictable. Hit key words with a roar or a whisper to highlight them. At the start, go for the roar rather than the whisper. Show confidence through voice power. Slowing the words down for emphasis is equally powerful. For example, “This--is--the--moment” and delivered slowly with a dramatic pause after each word. Our attention is all yours and we are bursting to know where you are going with this talk. Eye power is a must. Pick a single person about half way down the middle of the venue and start by speaking directly to them. Look them in the eye. We have now personalised our interaction in that first few seconds and created a connection with the audience. I recommend holding the gaze for six seconds, as this allows for engagement without generating fear of radiation burn. Spend the entire talk selecting one person after another, randomly selected and speak to them without allowing your sight lines to stray to the floor, ceiling or the back wall. Keep your eyes glued on your audience. Own the first impression and enjoy the glide to the finish. Action Steps Realise you only have two seconds, so plan accordingly Get straight into your talk with no interruption or delay Start with an episode, incident or story Highlight keys words by using vocal variation Keep eye contact with your audience throughout…
Four Steps To Understand Buyer’s Needs Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After 20 minutes he stopped the torture. “Wow”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting”. What could he have done with me? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything, instead of only those things I needed to know, to make a buying decision. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”. By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already.This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves. Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff?They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators. Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant. Don’t overload the buyer with too much information. To filter out what information you should be showing them, ask questions first to understand their needs.…
In the war for talent, high potential employees are one of any organisation's most valuable resources. They have what it takes to succeed, tackle difficult projects, and eventually function as a leader within your organisation. However, if they are not engaged or properly motivated, they will often times leave in search of more challenging or fulfilling opportunities. What we don’t want to see are our highly trained people going across to our competitors. The dainishinsotsu phenomenon, where new employees out of university are departing 3-4 years into the job, will potentially grow to epidemic proportions Let’s explore five ways to keep your high potentials engaged and productive. Throw down a challenge. High potential employees are personally motivated to be better and they need to be continuously challenged. More importantly, they want to be actively involved in decisions that impact the success of the organisation. We all own the world we help to create, so let them be part of that construction team. High potentials embrace challenges and are ready to take them on in order to make a positive difference. Channel their natural abilities and deputise them to take the lead on difficult projects. Don’t forget to give them praise and recognition. Often, they are highly independent and self-motivated and we think “Oh, they don’t need praise”. They don’t need it, but they want to hear it. High potentials learn most effectively by doing, and this will ensure they retain the information and skills they learned. We need to transfer knowledge and insight into results. So, linking the learning process with the production process is a win-win for everyone. The team feel they are making progress, as they see the fruit of their input implemented, as they learn new skills and the organisation benefits because we are growing the team’s full power. Promote collaboration. Create a series of "innovation team projects" comprised entirely of high potentials and assign members to have the opportunity to lead one of the teams. Set the expectation that each high potential innovation team leader will facilitate the discussions and that their teams will offer at least one new idea, process improvement, or recommendation. Offer rotational assignments. Enable your high potentials to gain functional experience across a wide range of areas within your organisation. Allow them to learn a variety of different skills and see how each contributes to the success of the organisation. Challenge them to report at the end of their rotation, what they will do differently now, as a result of that learning experience. Provide virtual learning options. By bringing a dispersed group of high potentials together through technology, they are able to collaborate to work on critical projects. Create opportunities for them to work with each other and get face time with executives to maximize productivity and engagement. Create connections between leaders within your organization, regardless of distance, and track their progress on challenging projects or problems.…
Six Ways Leaders Can Find Their Voice Why are so few business leaders good communicators, given all the education they have received, starting at varsity and then later, through their organisations? Here are six things to work on. When we speak using a monotone delivery, placing equal stress on each word, regretably, our audience just tunes us out.They start to look for other points of stimulation, such as how we are dressed, our body language, our voice quality – almost everything except the actual key message content. Leaders need to match their vocal variation and facial expression to the message being delivered. Congruency means emphasising key words or phrases, through either adding or subtracting voice projection. Whispering is as powerful as yelling, as long as the message content is aligned with the delivery mechanism. Leaders are often notable for speaking while exhibiting a “wooden face”, meaning they maintain the same facial expression throughout their talk. Good, striking, even exceptional news is greeted with the same expression as announcing disaster, doom and gloom. The simple rule is, if it is good news, let your face know and smile or show happiness. If it is bad news, look serious, worried, upset or fearful depending on the content and context. Voice speed can be an indicator of confidence or terror. Most of us, when nervous, tend to speed up and our ideas can rapidly begin to overtake each other. Pausing is needed to allow the audience to process what they have just heard. We can also speak using our body. The turn of our head allows us to become inclusive and capture all of our audience, no matter where they are seated. The front, middle, back, the sides – the leader makes eye contact to engage with people in all parts of the room. Eye contact means actual engagement – looking an audience member in the eye and speaking to them for around 6 seconds. Less than that makes for a rather fleeting perfunctory type of engagement. Locking on to their gaze for much longer starts to burn into their retina and becomes uncomfortable. Pointing our feet straight forward using only our neck to swivel our head and engage the audience is projecting confidence, credibility and solidity. Often times, speakers are unconsciously facing their feet such that they are favouring only one side of the room. Slouching, standing off balance or nervously striding about the stage may not be projecting the professional image leader’s desire. We either overemploy our gestures or we don’t deploy them at all.Behind our back, resting on our hips, thrust deeply into trouser pockets, held protectively in front of our body are the usual suspects in the crime of neglect of our hand’s communication strength when speaking. Leaders need their own voice to fully reach their audience, to persuade, to inspire, to be credible and memorable. You are the brand and what you say and how you say it matters. Be congruent, authentic and be the professional you.…
It has always been astonishing to me how hopeless salespeople are in Japan. Over the last 20 years, I have been through thousands of job interviews with salespeople. We teach sales for our clients and so we see a very broad gamut of salespeople. We also buy services and products and so are actively on the receiving end of the sales process. Well actually that is a blatant exaggeration. There are almost no salespeople operating in japan using a sales process. But there are millions of them just winging it (badly). On The Job Training (OJT) is the main training pedagogical system in Japan for training the new salesperson. This works well if your boss has a clue and knows about selling. Sadly, here are few sales leaders like that populating the Japan horizon. So what you get is hand-me-down “techniques” that are ineffective and then these techniques are poorly executed in the hands of the newbies. We like to buy, but few of us want to be sold. We like to do business with people we like and trust. We will do business with people we don’t like and very, very rarely with people we don’t trust. Neither is our preference though. The million dollar question is, “what makes YOU likeable and trustworthy?’ Building rapport in the first meeting with a prospective client is a critical make or break for establishing likeability or trust. When you think about it, this is just the same as in a job interview. In both cases we enter an unfamiliar environment and greet strangers who are brimming over with doubt, uncertainty and skepticism. If a sales person can’t handle a job interview and build rapport straight away, then it is unlikely they are doing much better out in the field. So what do we need to do? Strangely, we need to pay attention to our posture! Huh? Standing up straight communicates confidence. Also, bowing from a half leaning posture, especially while still on the move, we look weak and unconvincing. So walk in standing straight and tall, stop and then bow or shake hands depending on the circumstances. If there is a handshake involved then, at least when dealing with foreigners, drop the dead fish (weak strength) grasp or the double hander (gripping the forearm with the other hand). The latter, is the classic insincere politician double hand grip. Some Japanese have become overly Westernised, in that they apply a bone crusher grip when shaking hands. Teach your Japanese team how to shake hands properly. Too weak or too strong are unforced errors which impinge on building that all important first impression. By the way, we have a maximum of 7-10 seconds to get that first impression correct, so very second counts. When you first see the client, make eye contact. Don’t burn a hole in the recipient’s head, but hold eye contact at the start for around 6 seconds and SMILE. This conveys consideration, reliability, confidence – all attributes we are looking for in our business partners. We combine this with the greeting, the usual pleasantries – “Thank you for seeing me”, “Thank you for your time today”. Now, what comes next is very important. We segue into establishing rapport through initial light conversation. Japan has some fairly unremarkable evergreens in this regard – usually talking about the weather or about the distance you have travelled to get here, etc etc. Don’t go for these bromides. Try and differentiate yourself with something that is not anticipatory and standard. Also be careful about commenting on a prominent feature of the lobby, office or the meeting room. I was in a brand new office the other day and they have a really impressive moss wall in the lobby. I will guarantee that my hosts have heard obvious comments about the moss wall from every visitor who has preceded me. “Wow, what an impressive moss wall ” or “Wow, that is a spectacular entry feature”. Boring! Teach your salespeople to say something unexpected, intelligent and memorable. In this example, “Have you found that team motivation has lifted since you moved to this impressive new office?”, “Have you found your brand equity with your client’s has improved since moving here?”. This get’s the focus off you the salesperson and on to the client and their business. For example, if you are a training company like us, you definitely want to know how the team motivation is going, as you may have a solution for them. The very first seconds of meeting someone are vital to building the right start to the business relationship. Simple errors in posture, greetings and conversation can be our undoing. Let’s get the basics right and make sure we totally own that first impression.…
It's inevitable - at some point disagreements are going to come up in the workplace. Power struggles, political plays, sectionalism, siloism – the list goes on regarding sources of organizational conflict. As we all know, disagreements can get heated quickly and it can be difficult to put aside our opinions and biases in order to handle the situation diplomatically. Powerfully motivated people often have powerful egos and when conflicts arise, teamwork can be compromised. Positive collaboration is a product of the culture created in the organization and needs to be built and rebuilt all the time. It doesn’t have to be a “winner takes all” and the losers are vanquished in a battle of wills and egos. There are several tried and true methods to "disagree agreeably” with colleagues and get the issues out on the table, but still preserve the teamwork. Read on to learn how to navigate a disagreement in an empathetic manner while presenting your point of view. Give the benefit of the doubt. Don't immediately jump to conclusions even if you disagree with someone. Hear them out, you may have more in common than you initially thought.We are not perfect, we don’t have all of the possible information or all of the possible angles to view an issue. Instead of concentrating on defending what we think, we should start with an open mind that there are many paths to the mountain top. Listen to learn and understand. Be an engaged listener, make sure you are listening on an empathetic level instead of just pretending to listen. By gathering all the facts about the other person's point of view, you will be able to deliver your counterpoint in a diplomatic manner.We are often notorious interrupters, jumping in finishing other’s sentences, or just talking over the top of them to thrust our opinion forward. We have trouble maintaining our listening capability when our brain is awash with what we want to say. Our own internal conversation is all encompassing, roaring and it is effectively drowning out the points being made by the other person. Use a cushion. Acknowledge the other person's point of view and relate to their emotions through empathetic listening. Use cushion statements such as "I hear what you're saying and what you're saying is important" or "I understand your point of view" to demonstrate that you understand and care about their feelings.It is important to wait until they have finished speaking before we respond. This might feel absolutely painful and excruciating but do it! Having exercised some patience, now we bring in the cushion, which is a great little interregnum to allow us some thinking time before we go into our response. Our immediate first response is usually not our most considered or best response. It can often be an emotional response as well. Cushion, then respond – the results are enormously different. Never use "but" or "however." No matter how much you empathize with someone, if you follow up your cushion statement with words like "but" or "however," it will negate everything prior. You lose credibility and the person you're disagreeing with is unlikely to take your thoughts seriously from this point on. We are all trained like hawks to watch for body language guiding us as to whether they agree with what we are saying.So we have to make sure we are not giving off a negative vibe without even being aware of it. We are also trained to listen for key words that tell us whether we have an argument on our hands or not and so “but” etc., set off alarms in our heads. Instead of words that contradict your original statement, use words like "and" or insert a pause instead. State your opinion with evidence. Opinions are easy to refute, but facts are difficult to argue with. By backing up your point of view with evidence, you come across as more credible and can gain valuable leverage in a disagreement. By utilizing evidence, you may even be able to bring someone over to your line of thinking.It is also a smart move to bring in the facts in a subtle way. Rather than using facts as a mallet to belt them with, offer some consideration such as “I may not have all the facts but I was aware that this….was the case, how does that correspond with your experience?” Always be aware too that people don’t like to lose face, be embarrassed, be humiliated or to feel slighted. Ramming facts down their throat may mean you are correct and may make you feel good, but you create an enemy for life nevertheless, if the message is delivered in the wrong way.…
Seven Key Things For The Start Of Your Presentation Question: how long does it take you on average to form a first impression of someone? My presentation training participants tell me “two seconds”. I was thinking, “what does this mean for the speaker?”. It could be in the boardroom, the meeting room, at the networking event, a public presentation or at the pitch to the client. Regardless of the occasion, one thing is sure – everyone is a critic. Think back to the last time you saw someone present, did the speaker get right into it or was there some logistical finessing of the laptop, the lapel mic or the notes being shuffled on the rostrum? If there were any such diversions, then our two second window for the first impression has come and gone completely. What would help us to maximize this incredibly brief two second window we have been given? Getting straight into the content without any distractions, is so important because it allows us to set the tone for the occasion. Here is how we can do that: Traditionally, we could thank the organisers for the opportunity to present. Doing this with a huge, warm smile would be a good use of the two seconds. We could start by telling an episode, an incident, a story.We love listening to interesting stories involving real life and real people, because we can easily identify with the content. We could refer to a member of the audience, immediately shattering the mental barrier separating speaker and audience. “Anne Smith from XYZ and I were chatting earlier and she made a very good observation about….”. We are now one unit – audience and speaker. After having launched into proceedings, we can now backtrack and use the laptop, our notes, the spreadsheets or whatever we need to explain the content. Rather than wasting our initial two second window on these adjustments, we instead get right into it and capture the attention of our audience from the very start. Another powerful tool is voice quality. Nature may not have blessed you with a deep throated baritone or mellifluous instrument that harkens the angels, but no matter, do the best with what you have. That means speak clearly, with sufficient volume, so that you can easily be heard. Use the microphone properly by holding it just under your chin and speaking across the mesh. Have some variation in the delivery so it is not totally predictable. Hit key words with a roar or a whisper to highlight them. At the start, go for the roar rather than the whisper. Show confidence through voice power. Slowing the words down for emphasis is equally powerful. For example, “This--is--the--moment” and delivered slowly with a dramatic pause after each word. Eye power is a must. Pick a single person about half way down the middle of the venue and start by speaking directly to them. Smile and look them in the eye. We have now personalised our interaction in that first few seconds and created a connection with the audience. I recommend holding the person’s gaze for around six seconds, as this allows for engagement without generating fear of retina radiation burn. Spend the entire talk selecting one person after another, randomly selected and speak to them maintaining eye contact. This means carefully instructing the venue organisers beforehand to not drop the lights on the audience or yourself. You want to be able to read their faces for confirmation they are with you. Remember to: start with a big smile; open up with a story or reference a conversation with someone in the audience; go to our notes or the screen after we have captured the attention of the audience; use voice modulation and eye contact and make sure to keep the lights up the whole time.…
What To Do & Not To Do In Sales He slid effortlessly into the chair and before I knew it, he had popped open the oyster shell of his laptop and was pointing his screen menacingly in my direction. Uh oh! Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After 20 minutes he stopped the torture. “Wow”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting”. How does he know what I want? What could he have done with me? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in. He could have holstered his weapon before drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the “hotties”. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything, instead of only those things I needed to know, to make a buying decision. Here is a simple questioning step formula that will help you get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client. Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”. By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already.This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves. Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff? They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators. Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant. Remember to: stop getting into telling from the start and instead go into questioning mode; use a simple questioning model of “as is” and “should be”; check on barriers stopping them fixing their own issues and ask them the payoff question – what is in it for them if this works well?…
Nine Leadership Lessons For Executives In Japan As the leader are you coaching your people? I mean really coaching them, not giving orders or balling people out if they come up short or make mistakes. Do you have a methodology for your coaching or are you just thrashing around totally winging it? We are going to look at a structure for coaching your people and add in some human relations principles you can use, to get effective results. Identify The Opportunity To Coach The Person Where can we see some critical factor, that if improved, would really help this member of staff get a tremendous lift in their productivity and outcomes. What is it we should be focusing on? Decide What Is The Desired Outcome Do we know what success looks like? Do we have a clear vision of the goal once achieved? We need to nail down what the outcome of the coaching will be, so that we can work toward achieving that. Establish The Right Attitude Trust on the employees' part that the boss is really trying to help them is important. We should be playing to three things: what are they doing now that is good; what they can do to become even better and relate the business relevance to the improvements we will bring. Give Them The Resources Usually the most expensive resource is boss time. We have to be willing to give them time out of our busy day to help them build their career. Easier said than done, which is why most bosses are not actually coaching anyone Practice and Skill Development If they have never done it before, or if it is complex, we show them, they do it, we give them feedback, we cut them loose on their own, we circle back regularly to make sure they are on track. Where appropriate though, we ask their opinion on how to do it. We want them to own it. Reinforce Our feedback helps them to grow, so we are constantly looking for opportunities to feed in positive feedback. When they have done something well, we recognise that through very specific praise breaking down in detail the exact thing they did well. The more specific the better. Also we praise on the way through and not just at the end. Reward This might be praise, a lunch, a dinner, a promotion or a pay rise. Any number of ways are available to us to recognise their progress, to encourage them to keep it up and to aim even higher. Principle #25 In addition to this coaching structure, Human Relations Principles are also a very rich source of information for bosses who are coaching their staff. Principle Number 25 is to ask questions rather than give direct orders. Yes, we must tell them the WHY, but make sure to get their input and ideas on the HOW. Usually we don't tell them anything about the WHY, because we assume they already know it. We don't ask for their input on how to do it, because we are too busy telling them what to do. If they miss important bits of the process, then we prompt their thinking to consider what to do about those particular issues as well. Again, we are not suggesting answers, we are just raising things for them to consider from their side. Principle #30 Make people happy to do the thing you want them to do. This is a key boss skill. It all comes down to what we say and how we say it. People are usually strongly motivated by self interest, so we work with that preference not against it. Time poor, busy, busy, busy bosses easily forget to do this. Yelling our orders is much faster and easier. Don't forget to communicate the WHY of how this helps this person go forward in their career. We have to tie this into their best interests, so that they are happy to make the changes being suggested. Bosses forget to explain the "what's in it for you" bit of the work. When coaching, we are asking people to change and change resistance is pretty staunch. To get people to move, we have to overcome the inertia of doing nothing different. No change is the easiest default position. Japan is also highly risk averse. Steel like barriers pop up at the first inkling of change. Everyone is a critic opposed to the initiative because they resist change. We need an "inside out" solution - they change because they have bought in to change. They see it suits their best self-interests. If you think you can drive change from the "outside in", let me know how that is working out for you in Japan!…
Three Super Fast Ways To Market Yourself When Networking Meeting new business contacts, expanding personal networks, promoting a reliable, trustworthy “Brand You” are the basics of business. Now given our first interactions with strangers are so important, are we getting the best result for ourselves and organisation? When we are out there representing our company and someone asks us, can we succinctly explain what we do, in a clear, informative, impressive and memorable manner? An excellent formula is called the Wow & How. When we meet someone for the first time, after examining their business card, we should get the ball rolling and ask them about their business. We can really get things moving by using a three step approach: We start with a proposition that they can easily agree with. For example, in the case of my business: “You know how companies often really struggle with training their staff. They get really frustrated that the training doesn’t produce the results they require” . The listener by this time is nodding and silently voicing their agreement, because they can mentally picture the problem. We embed a pregnant pause, then add the mega attention grabber, almost as a throw away line - “Well, we fix that completely”. At this point, we become as silent as the tomb and do not utter any follow up to our bold statement. Their immediate internal mental reaction is “Wow, that sounds amazing” . Then their buyer supreme skepticism kicks in and they ask, “Oh yeah, so How do you do that?”. They have asked the question from their side now, so this allows us to subtly lead with our differentiable advantage in the marketplace. This is brilliant, because we are responding to their request for more information and unlike everyone else, we are not pushing our unique selling points down their throats. Importantly, our answer is more about the What we do, rather than the How we do it. We do this on purpose, because we want to explain the precise How in detail later, in the comfort of their office, rather than in short form at a noisy, distracting and crowded networking event. So our answer would go like this: “Dale Carnegie has been around for a long time, so we have proven methods which trigger the behavior change needed to get the staff to produce outperformance” Remember the steps: start with a proposition that they can easily agree with; add the mega attention grabber; let their buyer supreme skepticism kick in.…
Three Important Things to Focus On In Sales I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox one morning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care –Anonymous”. Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Here are three things salespeople should be focusing on: Don’t be like some salespeople still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam ? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”. Show me you are focused on understanding me. Demonstrating to me that your foremost care is about my benefit? Communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”. Don’t come across with $$$$ signs in your eyes. Focus on your kokorogamae (心構え). This can be simply translated as “preparedness”. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term. I would prefer to translate it as “getting your heart in order”. This means to really hark back to your most basic principles of true intention. What we can call True North – the purity of our intention. What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what you want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction? Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention. Why do I recommend searching your heart? Because clients can sense your motivation isn’t centered on their best interests and therefore they won’t buy from you. So let’s ignore the outliers, those riff raff of sales and come back to the vast majority of salespeople who are not evil, just inept. Change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a power personal brand. Keep these three things in mind: remember people don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care; show me you are focused on understanding me and Focus on your kokorogamae.…
Eight Ways to Deal With Workplace Idiots Why, why, why isn’t common sense common? We deal with people in our work lives who do dumb things. They make stupid decisions which fly full in the face of common sense. It is such a puzzle. Why don’t they get it, why can’t they see the obvious logical answer? Here are eight considerations for dealing with idiots at work: The first decision is, are we the idiot who is the cause of the problem? What if we have not properly trained these people. What if they are actually “the uninformed” masquerading as “idiots” because we are at fault by not having invested in them sufficiently? What if we have been too busy with our own work to explain the finer points of various tasks? Are you a perfectionist? Are you the type of person for whom there is only the “right way” of doing things? Does your logic rule and allow no other possibilities for task completion? If the “idiot” does it differently to you, is that incorrect or just different? Maybe we need to consider there might be equally valid solutions to the same problem, including those we haven’t even contemplated or thought about. If we are going to empower people, we have to empower them to screw things up as well.We ask them to take a risk with the unknown the unfamiliar, to step up to greater accountability. When we whack them because they made an idiotic mistake, we are in danger. We are double-crossing the person, because we asked them to go into this area of weakness in the first place and then we belt them for it when they get it wrong. We need to provide a Reasonable Allowable Margin of Error (RAME) for the task. We need to be checking progress without buying back the delegation, we need to make sure errors are picked up early (before they blow us all up) and we need to be coaching their progress. A great start is to set the control limits for the task. This will allow the person completing the task to know where the boundaries are from the get go. When the error surfaces, how do we handle it? Often we hear from someone else about the error, rather than the individual in question. This is a danger point, because our attitude and judgment can be clouded by the messenger. Approach the situation as an objective research project – “Just the facts!” Begin with rapport, something to open the discussion, which will help them to relax. They are feeling guilty, embarrassed, nervous, uncertain, fragile, defensive. Remove the personalities from the discussion. “You” must become “We” in your new lexicon and “We” are all about fixing the issue not crucifying the fallen one. We focus on the action not the person. We want to hear their views on what went wrong. For the employee who fesses up, accepts responsibility and wants to recover, get them involved in the decision-making about the solution. Reassure them they have a place here, they have an important role here, that they can make a significant positive contribution here. What if they don’t fess up, what if they stay in denial, engage in passive/aggressive behavior, stay locked into a defensive mindset? Take a break from proceedings, give them time to think about what you have said and then try again. If at this further point there is still no change, then they need to be changed. Remember to: ensure we are properly explaining what we expect; accept there are multiple possible solutions not just our own; decide the Reasonable Allowable Margin of Error to apply; when things go wrong, ignore hearsay and get the concrete facts; focus on the issue not the person; involve them in finding the solution; reassure them the mistake isn’t fatal and remove resisters who won’t accept their responsibility…
Five Steps To Great Storytelling Best intentions, higher callings, righteousness – all good stuff but without good communication, our efforts fail. Instinctively, we all know storytelling is a great communication tool, but the word itself is a problem. We associate it with bedtime stories and therefore the idea sounds a bit childish. The other problem with storytelling is that we are not very good at it. It is too simple, so we gravitate to more complex solutions – frameworks, theories, models, four box quadrants, pyramids, Venn diagrams – anything to appear more convoluted and pseudo-intelligent. If we present something complex, we must be smart. On the other hand, anyone can tell a story. Ah…but can they? How many really good stories have you heard told in business lately? Have you been captured by the speaker, as they have taken you into a story that has you emotionally and logically involved? We might tell this story from the point of view of our own experience in the first person or we may refer to the adventures of someone else, told in the third person. The Five Step Storytelling process focuses on moving people to action. Step 1. We begin by clarifying the “Why” it matters. The story draws out the immediacy and relevance for the audience of the problem or issue. This is critical step, because everyone is surfing through hundreds of emails, Facebook and Twitter posts, LinkedIn updates, Instagram messages, etc. They are dealing with family, work, financial and health issues. There is a tremendous competition for the mind space of our audience and we have to smash through to be heard. If we don’t have a powerful “Why”, game over right there. Step 2. The next step is to tell them the “What” – the information they need to know, which they don’t already have or have not focused on sufficiently enough as yet. This will bring forth data or perspectives which are pertinent, immediate and grip the attention of our audience. Imparting key points linked with evidence is essential because we are all skeptics today. There is so much false information floating around, we are permanently on guard against feeling cheated or foolish. We must communicate to the audience what they need to do, to overcome the problem we have highlighted. Step 3. Having isolated out the issue, imparted some evidence to provide more compelling reasons to take this issue seriously, we now tell the “How” to move forward. This will explain in some detail, what needs to be done, so that the listener can take action immediately. Step 4. To deal with any potential doubts or concerns, we tackle them head on by exploring the “What Ifs”. We join the listener in the conversation going on in their mind about the fears they might have about what is being suggested. We address these in the story, so that there are no barriers to taking action. Step 5. Finally, we repeat the “Action Steps” we recommend, succinctly and clearly, so that these stay fresh in the mind. Like this piece, compressing the steps into numbers like three, five or seven work best, as they tend to be easily recalled. Keep it short, keep it memorable. Remember to keep these five steps to great storytelling in mind: clarify the “Why” it matters; tell them the “What” - the information they need to know; tell them the “How” to move forward; explore the “What Ifs” and repeat the “Action Steps” we recommend.…
The Five Keys To Creating The Ideal Sales Workplace Every work environment has elements that drive success and others that hinder progress. Here are the success drivers; Best Our Rivals Sales can become very internally focused. The constant review of sales numbers and focus on existing clients draws us into a web of self-absorption. Shifting the world into “us” and “them” can be great for focus and encouragement. Intense rivalry is a motivator and beating the other sales team is a worthy goal that appeals to the competitive nature of sales people, so focus them outward. High Income Factory Having no limits on sales people’s earnings motivates. Rather than thinking how to reduce commissions, employ a no-ceiling attraction there to drive results and create a win-win for everyone. Keeping the unlimited income prospect in everyone’s sights is good business. The more salespeople succeed, the more attractive you are to the quality talent you want to attract and retain. Focus On Personal Development The basics of sales can’t be neglected or truncated. Every high performance athlete or sports team goes back to the basics at the start of every season. Sales people are no different – back to basics on a regular basis eliminates or confines bad habits. Short cuts emerge, best practices are trimmed, inconsistencies pop up, complacency arises when sales people, even the good ones, find themselves immersed in routine. Stimulation to vary the presentation or to inject some fresh ideas into the sales conversation is needed. Training, attending sales rallies, industry related conferences and events, support for reading and on-line courses, are all magic stimuli for sales people. Self Directed The best sale culture is one of accountability for production , independence and a will to achieve. Organised tenacity, creativity, freedom, success orientation - should be the dominant attributes. Make it clear at the hiring point that “this is how we roll here”, because sales is a brutally honest results culture. High Praise & Recognition Culture It may be thought that self-directed sales people don’t need praise or approbation. They want it anyway. Don’t ever underestimate the competitive nature of sales people and their appetite for having their egos stroked! Successful sales leadership builds people and manages processes. Paying attention to the macro-environment, as well as the gritty detail, will help build a sustainable, high performance culture in your sales organisation. Is what I have outlined here doing a good job in describing your current work environment? If not, take some initiative and push hard to change it to a success model, rather than let it continue as a blame model. If you can’t change it, then get out. Good salespeople are welcome everywhere and life is too short to work for idiots.…
Seven Checkpoints To Cool Down Your Anger With Idiots People skills are really one of the key basics of leadership. Fortunately, leading is easy. Getting others to follow us is the tricky bit. I hope this isn’t new information, but not everyone is like you, so how do you get the team to follow you? Especially how to get others, who are so totally different from you, who are “difficult”, to follow you or support you? Central to working well with difficult people is understanding ourselves. Yes, they are difficult, but why do we think so? Isolating out the annoyance factors helps us to pinpoint how to handle situations where we react or possibly overreact. Here are seven checkpoints we can employ. Reflect on the past occasions when we have found difficulty with others is a good reality check. Here is a hint on how to do that – think of someone you consider difficult to work with, see that individual in your mind’s eye. Now ask yourself two simple questions – what is it about them precisely, that makes me see them as difficult? Second question – how have I typically reacted when dealing with this person, and what have been the consequences of those reactions? Take a pass on the psychobabble, but consider that this exercise offers up some critical insights into ourselves. Want change – start with you! Ask yourself, are there particular “hot buttons” that trigger a strong reaction, like being told “no” to something you seek. Do you notice that you quickly become defensive, take things personally or do you find yourself exemplifying “the best defense is attack” principle? Double check if your body language is screaming at that person, without you being completely aware of it? Presume everybody you meet in life is carrying a heavy load. Think about your own troubles – perfection doesn’t last all that long and before you know it, stress begins to well up. They are probably the same. Asking questions instead of giving direct orders works well, because you invite them to have some influence and ownership over the decision. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.This is useful because it precludes people becoming defensive and locking themselves into inflexible positions to save their face. Letting the other person save face is good plain advice.Don’t win the battle and humiliate the other party. They won’t forget or forgive and you may lose the war over the longer game. Making the other person happy about doing what you suggest is not so easy.However, if we really analyse that person and the personality drivers in play within them, we can find some common ground that will appeal to their self-interest and we can unite behind that to go forward. Before you blow up, quickly run this checklist through your mind: Reflect on the past occasions when we have found difficulty with others, ask yourself, are there particular “hot buttons” that trigger a strong reaction, always presume everybody you meet in life is carrying a heavy load, ask questions instead of giving direct orders, call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly, let the other person save face, make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.…
There are a number of common structures for giving presentations and one of the most popular is the opening-key points/evidence-closing. We consider the length of the presentation, the audience, the purpose of our talk and then we pour the contents into this structure. Generally, in a 30 minute speech we can only have a few key points we can cover, so we select the most powerful and then look for the evidence which will persuade our audience. This is where a lot of presentations suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The structure flow is a simple one, the analysis of the occasion is straightforward but at this next stage we can get confused about what we are trying to achieve. We might become so engrossed in the evidence assembly component that we forget the crucial “WHY” aspect of this effort. We are not here to produce mounds of statistics, battalions of bar charts or proffer reams of text on a screen. Technically oriented presenters love to bludgeon their audience with detail, usually in font or scale so small, it is barely visible on screen. No, the WHY is all about persuading the audience of our conclusion or way of thinking, This is communication skill rather than archeological or archival skill. Line charts, pie charts, comparison tables are trotted out to do battle with the perceptions and biases of the audience. The errors though include a presentation style where the actual detail is unapproachable and so is not fully accepted. The tendency to imagine that this quality data will stand by itself and not require the presenter to do much, is another grave error. “I don’t have to be a good speaker, because the quality of my information is so high”, is a typical if somewhat pathetic excuse. Another common error is to invest the vast majority of the time for the presentation preparation on the accompanying slides for the talk. Digging up the data, tweeking the detail, creating the charts, arranging the order. We become quite busy. So busy, in fact, that we forget to practice the delivery of the talk. How should we fix this approach? Some examples of evidence are really powerful when they are numbers but instead of drowning our audience with too many numbers, we can select one and use a very big font to isolate out that one number. We then talk to that number and explain what it means. If we want to use line charts or trend analysis then one chart per slide is a good rule. To improve our communication effectiveness, we go one step further and we tell stories about these numbers. Who was involved, where, when and what happened. We recall stories more easily than masses of data. This helps to get us around to the WHY of our talk, the key point we want the audience to absorb. And we practice the delivery over and over until we are comfortable we have the cadence right.…
Sales cannot run like a manufacturing production line. We are not making industrial cheese here. This is more like an artisanal pursuit, closer to art than science. Yet, every sales force on the planet has targets which are usually uniform. Each month, the sales team has to deliver a specified amount of revenue, rolling up into a pre-determined annual target. The construct may be logical, but sales is far from logical, as it is steeped in emotion, luck and magic. Having said that though, sales is also a numbers game and to some extent pseudo-scientific. There are accepted algorithms which apply. You call a certain number of people, speak to a lesser number, meet a few and from that residual group, you conclude an agreement. There are ratios, which when calculated over time, apply as averages linking activity with results. So we call 100 people, speak to 80, see 20, strike a deal with 5. In this construct, to make one sale, on average we need to call 20 people. With this type of precision available, you would think that we could industrialise the sales process and confidently set annual targets, neatly divided into units of 12, to arrive at a consistent steam of revenue achievement. Sales managers would be multi-tasking, sipping their afternoon martinis, propping their cowboy boots on the desk and carefully calculating their next car upgrade, as the sales team obligingly track to the revenue plan. This is the plunge between sales peaks. It is the lull in the fighting, the quiet before the storm, the brief interlude in the phony war of sales. Salespeople work hard, usually because we are on commission structures which guarantee not very much if we don’t produce. Japan is a little different - basically there is either a base and commission or straight salary and bonuses system. Few sales people in Japan are on 100% commission. Why? Because we don’t have to and the local Japanese preference for risk aversion means forget it! As salespeople we cannot be consistently successful unless we have two great professional skills. We must be machine-like time managers and we must also be highly disciplined. The two interlock. The ebb and flow of sales is based around customer activity. Networking, cold calling, following up with previous clients, chasing leads which come through marketing activities etc., takes time. If we pump out enough client contact activity we will get appointments, sales and therefore generate follow up. Time starts to disappear from the mining activities that made us active in the first place. We can’t do the prospecting work, because we are too busy executing the follow up. Once the fog of being busy clears though, we suddenly see that we have a very pitiful pipeline ahead of us. So we work like a demon again to kick start generating new leads. To avoid this valley phenomenon, we need to make time to keep prospecting every week. Hence the requirement for excellent time management skills and the discipline to make sure we are doing it every week. Otherwise, we find our time for pipeline development is stolen away by client demands, emergencies, mistake correction, more detailed discussions and results follow up with the buyer. Action Steps Adjust sales team targets to account for seasonality of sales to keep their motivation high Know your sales activity ratios required to produce sales revenues Become a maniac about good time management and self discipline Protect time in the schedule for doing prospecting each week…
Sale’s solutions are what make the business world thrive. The client has a problem and we fix it, our goods or services are delivered, outcomes are achieved and everybody wins. In a lot of cases however these are only partial wins. Problems and issues are a bit like icebergs – there is a lot more going on below the surface than can be spotted from the captain’s bridge. The salesperson’s role is to go after the whole iceberg and not just the obvious bit floating above the waterline. The standard sales interview is based on two models comprising the outer circles surrounding a bull’s-eye. The extreme periphery is the “telling is selling” model. The second model, the inner circle adjoining the bull’s-eye, is the solution model of providing outcomes that best serve the client, based on what the client has understood is their problem. Mentally picture our big red bull’s-eye at the center of a series of concentric circles. Stating the features of a product or service is the first level, the very outer circle. Our solutions constructed around what the client knows already is the next inner circle. The highest level is providing solutions for problems that the client isn’t even aware of yet. A truly magical client statement would be: “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that or allowed for it!”. Anytime we have been a buyer and have uttered those words to ourselves, as a result of insight from the salesperson, we have experienced a major breakthrough in our world view. A salesperson has an outside perspective, untainted and pure. There is no inner veil obscuring the view, no preconceived notions or ironclad assumptions clouding judgment. Ignorance allows us to question orthodoxy in a way that insiders can’t because of inertia, groupthink, company culture or the internal politics of the organization. When salespeople serve numerous clients, be it in the same industry or across industries, they pick up vital strategic and tactical commercial intelligence. Researching various client’s problems, experiences, triumphs and disasters is valuable – but only if you know how to process the detail. How can salespeople get that skill? Some ways salespeople can provide over-the-horizon value include being highly observant. Take what you have seen working elsewhere for one client, in a different company or industry and then apply it for your current client Another way to get that skill is to do practical research. Based on what you already know, build up a point of view on an industry, check it against what your clients are telling you (or conduct company surveys). Action Steps Look for what is working for one client to apply to clients in another industry Keep good records of insights so you can deploy them when needed Don’t be afraid to ask “stupid” questions Look for every opportunity to differentiate yourself by providing unmatched value through insights…
Here are some working habits that we can adopt to minimize worry, fatigue and potential stress induced ill health: Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand. The reason we have all that paper around us is we are filing it on our desk. TRAF it instead. Toss it away. Whenever I look in my physical files, I always notice that there is a lot of paper which I never look at and never need. Years go by and I never needed it. In fact, I have usually completely forgotten I even had it in the first place. So let’s toss it out early rather than later. Refer it to someone else for action. This is Delegation 101, but most of us are weak on the delegation front, mainly because we don’t do it the right way. Normally, we say dumb things like, “It will be quicker if I do it myself”. Instead, we need to have a proper conversation with the delegatee on why doing this task is in their interest and map out the follow-up process. We need that conversation so we get their buy-in. If we get that ownership, then we can hand over responsibility, lighten our load and move to a “monitor only” mode. Action it. Either we knock it off right there and then, if we can do it in under two minutes or we should park it and add it to our To Do list, prioritized for a later time. To do it later, go to your diary, find the day when you will be able to do it and make an appointment on that day with yourself, to devote to completing that task. File. Before you take the plunge and file it, ask yourself if you really, really need this information? Maybe you only need a small part of it, in which case take a photo of it or get that bit into Evernote or some similar alternative. You might scan the document and file it electronically and eliminate the physical record completely. Do things in the order of their importance. Major insight - not all bits of paper have the same value!!! Prioritising work is a must. We can’t do everything but we can do the most important things. We just need to decide what they are and start there. We keep moving the paper around our desk, as we grapple with what to do with it all. The sheer volume starts to weigh on us and we have trouble sorting the numerous sheaves littering our desk. A quick sort into two piles of high and low priority will soon having your eyes occupied with only the most important items rather than drowning in paper. Learn to organize and delegate responsibility. This is similar to Refer except that with expert delegation the task never arrives on your desk in the first place! You head it off at the pass, and make sure it is re-routed to the delegate first. Our job is to discuss the task with the delegatee before they start work on it. Monitor their work to make sure they are on track and then let them do it – don’t buy it back under any circumstances. We also need to inform others in the team, that from now on the delegate and not you, need to see all the information on the topic. Get helpful team members to stop copying you in on every related email (and all the other irrelevant emails they copy you on in as well!). Don't keep putting off problems. Having said that though, there is both positive and negative procrastination. Deciding not to do something now may be the best choice. We just need to be aware that this is what we are deciding. Negative procrastination is not doing something we should, when we should be doing it, because we are immobilized through fear of making a decision. When you have a problem, solve it then and there, if you have the facts necessary to make a decision. As the saying goes, “if you have to swallow a frog, do it in one gulp!”. None of these ideas will be news to any of us. We know all of this, but we just don’t do it. We understand the concepts but we don’t apply. We get it, but we do nothing about it! Simple works best, so let’s get started with some simple solutions to our work overload situation. Some key learnings: TRAF our way into better productivity Prioritise Delegate Swallow our frog in one gulp…
When we feel fear, our psychological fight or flight response provides energy to our major muscle groups in the chest, arms and legs. This is great energy to tap, in order to bring our belief and our passion to our messages. Speakers who look tired, bored or uninterested, are not going to be persuading anyone of anything, ever. So we should accept that fear is part of the process of public speaking. I read that Frank Sinatra felt fear every time before he performed. He always worried that the first note would not be there. Once he got going however, he could relax and enjoy the process. That applies to us as well – we have to get that first couple of minutes settled down and then we can relax and enjoy the opportunity to help the audience through providing our message or our valuable information. Fine, but just how do we do that? Here are some do’s and don’ts. Don’t put unbelievable pressure on yourself by trying to memorise your talk.Do have some key points you can elaborate on though and have them in a logical sequence, that will be easy for an audience to follow. Don’t spend all of your preparation time putting together the slide deck.Do allocate time for rehearsal. The amount of time spent before our speech is the key to success. Incredibly, most people spend no time rehearsing and wonder why presenting is stressful. Ideally, watch yourself on video if possible, if not then use a mirror and record the audio on your phone, so you can review how you sound. Rehearse as you will give it, looking at all parts of the room, gesturing, using voice modulation, inserting pauses etc., while talking to your imaginary listeners. Don’t look down at your notes or laptop screen for too long though.Do look at the people in your audience and make eye contact with individuals, one by one, so you can speak directly to as many people as possible. Don’t do that though with audience members who are scowling, doubtful, unhappy, angry, negative, cynical or sneering. Do ignore them completely and look for the audience members who are nodding, smiling, agreeing and look either supportive or at least neutral. This will help to maintain your confidence and equilibrium. Don’t be thrown by anything unexpected - the show must go on.So unless it is an emergency and we have to leave the building, keep going no matter what. Tap into your energy and work with it, rather than try and fight it.…
Here are four principles for helping us all to become better with our clients. Become genuinely interested in other people Our buyers are actually more interested in what we know about what they want, than in what we know about our product or service. It is a common mistake though to be wrapped up in the features of our offering and lose focus on the person buying it and what they want. The key word in this principle is ”genuine”. Having a correct kokorogamae or true intention, means we will be honestly focused on understanding the client so that we can really serve them and build a partnership. We must be fully focused on their success, because wrapped up inside that outcome is our own success. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests Salespeople have a nasty habit of selective listening and selective conversation around what they want to talk about. Their kokorogamae is centered around their interests and the buyer’s interests are secondary. Sales talk is a misnomer - there is no sales talk. There are well designed questions and there are carefully crafted explanations around solution delivery, which are tightly tied to what the buyer is interested in. Salespeople love to talk, they love the sound of their own voice and they become deaf to the client, often without even realising it. Be a good listener. Encourage the other person to talk about themselves Good listening means listening for what is not being said, as well as what we are hearing. It means not pretending to be listening, while we secretly think of our soon to be unveiled brilliant response. It means not getting sidetracked by a single piece of key information, but taking in the whole of what is being conveyed. It means listening with your eyes – reading the body language and checking it against the words being offered. Talkative salespeople miss so much key client information and then scratch their heads as to why they can’t be more successful in selling. Well designed questions from the salesperson keeps the whole thing on track and allows the client to speak about themselves at length. In those offerings from the buyer we learn so much about their values, interests, absolute must haves, their desirables, their primary interests and their dominant buying motives. Arouse in the other person an eager want This is not huckster, carnival barker manipulation. This is becoming a great communicator, someone who can arouse passion and enthusiasm in others. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, based on the salesperson’s belief in the “righteousness” of doing good, through supplying offerings that really help the buyer and their business. One of the biggest barriers to success in sales is client inertia. They keep doing what they have always done, in the same way and get the same results. We have to help them overcome their fears and persuade them to take action. In Japan there is a penalty for action if something fails and less of a penalty associated with inaction, so the bias here is to do nothing. Having a need and taking immediate action are not connected in the client’s mind, until we connect them. We have to fully explain the opportunity cost of no decision, no action or no response to our proposal. We achieve all of this by using well thought out questions, which lead the buyer to draw the same conclusion that we have come to – that our offering is what they need and that they need it right now.…
Your team’s introverts never fight for the brainstorming blue marker pen. They leave it to the extroverts to occupy the white board, the ideas, the airwaves and the debate. Consequently, we wind up with a shallower harvest of ideas for the organisation. How do we unleash the full power of these introvert types, who don’t bark and don’t bite? This is especially important in Japan where the culture drives modesty, anonymity and a teishisei (低姿勢)or low profile. “Think and Write” is a great tool to tone down the airwavesInstead of sponsoring a streetfight shoutfest of ideas, like the old style stock exchange floor brokers bellowing orders to chalkies, we start with stone silence. On adhesive notes, have everyone write down one idea at a time on the topic, and encourage them to pump those babies out like confetti, as many as possible in the time allotted. The extroverts, the Type A personalities and the senior managers in the room are reduced in power, as we create space for ideas from all. Having done some thinking on the subject, we might call on specific individuals to nominate their ideas and then transfer these to a whiteboard, so everyone can follow the idea milieu. It is a good approach to start the ball rolling with the introverts. They have nowhere to hide now, because they have written something down and are not going to be embarrassed by a poverty of input. The extroverts can bring up the idea rearguard and add any points that have been missed. Pre-meeting detailed agendas are also a great aid to idea generation.Turning up at the brainstorming session and being brilliant may be a bit tricky, if you have never dwelled deeply on the topic or tried to plumb the depths of a fussy business conundrum. A bit of context around the problem always helps, as does an indication of what we are trying to achieve from the exercise. With this agenda distributed well beforehand, everyone will have had time to gather thoughts. Try to schedule brainwork for the mornings.The vast majority of people are fresher in the morning that in the afternoon, especially after lunch (also a good idea is to provide lunch and make it light). Don’t always assume you have to swallow the whole innovation exercise in one gulp. A rolling feast of idea generation sessions may work very well, as the team cooks the ideas slowly and more thoughtfully. Small group work can also sort out the rowdy redwoods in the room and allow some sunlight to fall on the introvert undergrowth.If we appoint a facilitator to each small group and make it their job is to get ideas out from all, then we will see more participation by the shyer team members. Idea creation and public announcement speed differs because some people are internalisers carefully analysing, sifting, sorting, and shaping before they offer up their thought morsel to the masses. Provide plenty of time for the brain digestive process to run its course. Importantly, allow no criticism of ideas in the idea generation stage.If you want to silence an introvert forever, just say their idea is “rubbish”. You cancel their idea ticket right there, because they (and all their introvert buddies who are watching), will withdraw from the fray and leave the spoils to the extroverts. We want as many crazy ideas as possible in stage one. My dumb idea might trigger a brilliant idea by you. We need that trigger though. Marshall the full brainstorming power of the team by planning for it. Unleash the introverts, the shy and the timid by providing an innovation path for them to tread. Key points from today: Use think and write to get the ideas out Use pre-meeting agendas to have everyone thinking before meeting Schedule brainstorming in the mornings Small groups encourage participation Don’t judge ideas during the idea generation stage…
The presentations world is still a male bastion in Nippon. Here are some tips and what I have seen work well for businesswomen when speaking in public in Japan. Confidence is the overwhelming positive first impression.The voice is strong and clear. Even relatively soft female voices can become powerful enough, through using the microphone technology available today, so there is no excuse for letting a weak voice derail the presentation. Also, consider a lapel microphone or a hand microphone, as good options for mobility during your presentation. If you are using a hand microphone and you discover your hands are shaking furiously through nervousness, then simply hold it to your chest, so it can’t fly around. Eye contact is another powerful tool of skilled female speakers. Looking at our audience allows us to connect with them.The successful women I have seen in action, pick out individual members of the audience, look straight at them and speak directly to them. They are constantly doing this throughout their entire talk. Importantly, they are only holding the gaze for about 6 seconds, so it is neither too short nor too intrusive. We need to see whether the audience are buying what we are selling or not. The successful presenters want to use all of their body language to assist their communication, so they are not trapped behind the podium.Podiums can sometimes be a challenge for shorter ladies. Trust me, having seen this a number of times, your carefully arranged coiffure bobbing just above the waterline of the top of the podium is not the best look. If the podium is too high, ask for small platform to stand on, to give yourself some air space. Don’t apply a vice like grip to the podium, this looks nervous and negates your ability to use gestures to emphasis key points you want to make. Standing apart from the podium, to the side or in front of it, also works very well. Freeing ourselves from the podium is good however, powerful female presenters don’t then pace across the stage, left and right, showing possible stress and anxiety. They usually stand to the left side of the screen, so that the audience will look at their face, listen to their voice and then read the screen from left to right. What they put up on the screen follows the “less is more principle”.Think Zen garden here rather than Times Square neon heaven. They see the value in having more images than text. They have one graph per screen not four and they don’t go crazy with more than two colours. They make themselves the centerpiece of the presentation, not what is put up on the screen. Persuasive women demonstrate their confidence by NEVER EVER apologizing for their state of health, degree of nervousness, lack of preparation, jet lag or any other excuses.I doubt very many men care about the speaker’s health status or any other excuses from any presenter. They don’t seek sympathy by telling us: “I am sorry, I have a cold today” or “I didn’t have enough time to put this together”. In my experience, men don’t care all that much for that type of detail and there is no particular empathy for these types of excuses. So don’t do it. If these successful women presenters are ever feeling anxious, they make sure not to show it. Consequently, they are taken at face value by the men in the audience and get full credit for being a business expert in their area of expertise. Generally, we men are not that smart or sensitive, so we will never know you are nervous unless you tell us. Action Steps Know who will be your audience and prepare accordingly Master the microphone technology before the audience arrives Speak to your audience while looking at them, make eye contact Free yourself from the podium trap by standing apart from it Dominate the screen, don’t let it dominate you Apply “less is more” to the on-screen content Never make excuses for your presentation Never show us you are nervous…
Uh oh! Powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide bombarded me with detailed data, specs, diagrams and text information. After 20 minutes the salesperson stopped the torture. “Wow”, I thought, “he hasn’t managed to ask me even one teensy question during this session of our first meeting”. What could he have done with me, rather than telling me all about his product? He could have asked me a few questions to ascertain what I was interested in.He could have holstered his weapon before drilling me with detail, dross and pap. Of the ten functionalities of the whizbang, there were only two or three that were of any match with what I needed. We could have dispensed with all the irrelevant detail and gone straight to the finish line with the “hotties”. We could have spent the bulk of our time talking about the aspects which were most likely to lead to a sale. We had limited time and he limited his own chances of gaining a new client by telling me everything, instead of only those things I needed to know, to make a buying decision. If you are a “teller”, then here is a simple questioning step formula that will help you get to the heart of the matter and uncover where you can be of the most assistance to the client.Start with either where the client is now or where they want to be – it doesn’t really matter which one you ask first. This is because what we are trying to understand is how big is the gap between “As Is” and “Should Be”. By the way, unless the sense of immediacy about closing that gap is there, then there will probably be “no sale” today. Clients are never on the our salesperson schedule and will take no action, unless they clearly understand there is a benefit to doing so. Having plumbed the parameters of the current and ideal situation, next enquire about why they haven’t fixed the issue already.This is an excellent Barrier Question and depending on the answer, you might be the solution to fix what they cannot do by themselves. Finally, check on how this would help them personally – what is the Payoff?They may need this fix to keep their job, hit their targets, get a bonus, get a promotion, feel job satisfaction, rally the troops – there are a myriad of potential motivators. Why would that particular question be important? When we come to explain the solution to the problem, being able to address their closely held personal win, helps to make the solution conversation more real and relevant.…
There is a tremendous amount of noise buzzing around in the world of business today. The noisiest portion is the bit going on between our ears, inside our brains. We are so busy, so immersed in what we are doing, we are forgetting some of the basics. We are running our lives as a meeting conveyor belt, moving from one topic to the next, multi-tasking like demons on speed. The upshot is that we are no longer really concentrating on what is happening around us, as we totally self absorb. We go through the motions of pretending to listen, but we are only involved in partial listening. Even worse, we are mainly specializing in selective listening. Seeking the content we agree with, we filter out the delivery and all the hidden codes therein. We are also so quick. We are second guessing the conversation and rapidly forming our next intervention, well before the speaker has gotten to the point of the story. We are also pretty deadly when it comes to cutting off the story, as we believe we have cleverly guessed where the speaker was going with it, even if that is not the case. If we are habitual interrupters, we may be breezing through life existing on half conversations and never really plumbing the depths of what others are trying to convey to us. Reflecting on these observations, do you feel you are a good listener, a gold medal winning listener? Here are some simple guides on how to better at the art of conversation by being a better listener. Stay focused. Minimize external distractions and pay close attention to what others say. A classic example is the fact that we are often guilty of complaining we can’t remember the names of people we have just met. Part of the reason for that is we probably did not focus well enough to clearly catch the name in the first pace. If we can’t even get their name right we are at a big disadvantage. We need to really focus on the person and get their name right as a starting point of business discipline. Staying focused also means suspending the desire to say anything and just let the other person speak. Everyone loves to talk, especially about themselves, so let them. Focus on them and they will appreciate it. Interpret both words and emotions. The words people use are just one part of what they're saying. You can capture the whole message by also paying attention to the emotions behind the words. Japan is particularly challenging in this regard. The suppression of emotions or the disguising of the real emotion is well entrenched in the culture, so it can be very hard to gauge what is really behind the words. This distilling of what is behind the words requires full power of concentration on that person and a total visual interrogation of every morsel of body language and voice inflection that we can muster. 3. Do not interrupt. Interruptions decrease effective communication. We assume we are smarter than the person speaking, because we have super powers that allow us to anticipate where the conversation is headed, even before it gets there. Maybe we should be more humble and polite and let them finish. Resist filtering. Be open-minded; don't judge what someone says by your values only. Offense is often taken in error. We attach a certain interpretation to something said which was never thought or intended. This does not stop us though from reacting and reacting quickly. We get ourselves into knots and lots of trouble because of this tendency. 4. Pathetic attempts at humour or sardonic wit can also become socially combustible when they are way short of the mark or the cultural differences are too great to understand the joke. Very few Japanese ever get the sardonic, ironic, self flagellating style of humour, because the cultural context is missing or because the comedian is fundamentally hopeless in the first place. Summarize the message. Be sure you've heard something correctly by offering a quick summary of what the other person has said. This need not apply to all parts of a conversation or to all conversations, but when we are getting down to it, this is the time to clearly indicate you have fully understood what you are being told. Try not to jump in too soon with your own opinion. Be sure to “wait your turn” to speak. Japanese is a great language for teaching us to be patient and wait until the punch line. In Japanese grammar, the verb comes at the end of the sentence, so as we are listening, we don’t know if the statement is going to be positive or negative, past, present or future. No point jumping in and cutting someone off when speaking Japanese, because you have no clue where they are going with the story. The lost art of listening needs to make a comeback and we need to be the poster children for the revolution. Let’s get back to business basics and listen our way to great success.…
It is rare to see a presentation completed well, be it inside the organisation, to the client or to a larger audience. The energy often drops away, the voice gradually fades out and there is no clear signal that this is the end. The narrative arc seems to go missing in action at the final stage and the subsequent silence becomes strained. It sometimes reminds me of classical music performances, when I am not sure if this is the time to applaud or not. First and last impressions are critical in business and in life, so why leave these to random chance? We need to strategise how we will end, how we will ensure our key messages linger in the minds of the listeners and how we will have the audience firmly enthralled, as our permanent fan base. Endings are critical pieces of the presentation puzzle and usually that means two endings not just one. These days, it is rare that we don’t go straight into some form of Q&A session, once the main body of the talk has been completed. So we need an ending for the presentation just given and we another ending after the Q&A. Why the second one, why not just let it end with the final question? The members of the audience are able to ask rude, indignant questions, challenging everything you hold to be true. They can denounce you as a charlatan, scoundrel, dilettante and unabashed poseur. Sometimes, they even launch forth into their own mini-speech, usually unrelated to whatever it was you were talking about. Or they move the conversation off to a new place, which has nothing to do with your key points. The topic of your talk is now a distant memory. That is why the pros ensure they bring it all back together with a final close to the proceedings. The last word is now with the speaker, not some anarchist provocateur who happened to turn up. There are a number of ways of bringing the speech home. In the first close, before the Q&A, we might harken back to something we said in our opening, to neatly tie the beginning and end together. Or we might restate the key message we wish to get across. Another alternative is a summary of the key points to refresh everyone’s recollection of what we were saying. At the end of the final sentence we need to hit the power button and finish with a rising crescendo to really put the passion behind our position. Many speakers allow their voice and energy to trail off into oblivion. Instead, we need to bring energy to our final words. We then add a small pause and move smoothly into inviting audience Q&A. Don’t miss this key point: always specify the time available for Q&A at the start – never, ever leave it open ended. Why not? If you find are facing a rabid gathering of foes and you want to get out of there, mentioning the time is up, allows you to depart with your dignity intact, as opposed to looking like an wimp scurrying out the door, because you can’t take the heat. The second close can be very similar to the first. This is also the point to use a pertinent quotation to leave a rousing call to action in the minds of your audience. Again, the voice rises in strength at the end of the final sentence. When you get the ending right, you can thank your audience, relax and bask in their warm applause. Action Steps Strategise the ending rather than leave it to random chance Loop back to the beginning, hit the key message again or summarise some key points Always nominate a time limit for Q&A Prepare two closes – one each for before and after Q&A…
In 1936 an unknown author, despite many frustrating years of writing and receiving rejections, finally managed to get his manuscript taken up by a major publishing house. That book became a classic in the pantheon of self-help books – “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Surprisingly, many people in sales have never read this work. Dale Carnegie has definitely joined the circle of established thinkers, who offer wisdom and valuable ideas. His aim was to help all of us be better with each other, particularly in a business context. He did this by laying down some principles, which will make us more successful in dealing with others, especially those people not like us. Here are four principles for helping us all to become friendlier with our clients. Become genuinely interested in other people Our buyers are actually more interested in what we know about what they want, than in what we know about our product or service. It is a common mistake though to be wrapped up in the features of our offering and lose focus on the person buying it and what they want. At the extreme, transactional thinking means you don’t care about the individual, you only care about their money from the sale. That is the hyper short career in sales option. For a long career, we better get busy really understanding our clients. The key word in this principle is ”genuine”. Having a correct kokorogamae or true intention, means we will be honestly focused on understanding the client so that we can really serve them and build a partnership. We must be fully focused on their success, because wrapped up inside that outcome is our own success. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests Salespeople have a nasty habit of selective listening and selective conversation around what they want to talk about. Their kokorogamae is centered around their interests and the buyer’s interests are secondary. Sales talk is a misnomer - there is no sales talk. There are well designed questions and there are carefully crafted explanations around solution delivery, which are tightly tied to what the buyer is interested in. Questions uncover interests and with laser beam focus, that is the only thing we talk about. Sounds simple, but salespeople love to talk, they love the sound of their own voice and they become deaf to the client, often without even realising it. Check yourself during your next client conversation – imagine we were to create a transcript of your words, would they be 100% addressed to the buyer’s interests. If not, then stop blathering and start talking in terms of their interests. By the way, Japanese buyers are rarely uncomfortable with silence, so don’t feel pressured to fill the conversation gaps with pap! Be a good listener. Encourage the other person to talk about themselves Good listening means listening for what is not being said, as well as what we are hearing. It means not pretending to be listening, while we secretly think of our soon to be unveiled brilliant response. It means not getting sidetracked by a single piece of key information, but taking in the whole of what is being conveyed. It means listening with your eyes – reading the body language and checking it against the words being offered. Talkative salespeople miss so much key client information and then scratch their heads as to why they can’t be more successful in selling. The client doesn’t have the sales handbook, where the questioning sequences are nicely aligned and arranged for maximum efficiency. Instead the client conversation wanders all over the place, lurching from one topic to another, without any compunction. I am just like that as a buyer. I have so many interests and will happily digress on the digressions of the digressions! Well designed questions from the salesperson keeps the whole thing on track and allows the client to speak about themselves at length. In those offerings from the buyer we learn so much about their values, interests, absolute must haves, their desirables, their primary interests and their dominant buying motives. Japanese buyers usually need a level of trust to be developed, before they may open up and talk about themselves. It is exceedingly rare to wrap up an agreement in Japan with just one meeting. So salespeople, play the long game here and don’t be in a rush. We are limbering up for a marathon, not a sprint in Japan. Arouse in the other person an eager want This is not huckster, carnival barker manipulation. This is becoming a great communicator, someone who can arouse passion and enthusiasm in others. Sales is the transfer of enthusiasm, based on the salesperson’s belief in the “righteousness” of doing good, through supplying offerings that really help the buyer and their business. One of the biggest barriers to success in sales is client inertia. They keep doing what they have always done, in the same way and get the same results. Our job is to shake that equation up and help them to get a better result, through doing something new – buying our product or service. We have to help them overcome their fears and persuade them to take action. In Japan there is a penalty for action if something fails and less of a penalty associated with inaction, so the bias here is to do nothing. Having a need and taking immediate action are not connected in the client’s mind, until we connect them. We have to fully explain the opportunity cost of no decision, no action or no response to our proposal. We achieve all of this by using well thought out questions, which lead the buyer to draw the same conclusion that we have come to – that our offering is what they need and that they need it right now. This Socratic method of asking questions works because it helps to clarify the buyer’s own thinking. Most salespeople don’t ask any enough questions, because they are too busy talking about the features of their widget. We can arouse an eager want if we frame the questions well.…
We want people to fail! That’s right, because we all know that we are the product today of all of our accumulated failures. We have learnt what works and does not work by trying something, failing and then adjusting the way we do things. Lee Iacocca is famous for how he treated a multi million dollar failure, by one of his marketing executives at Chrysler. It was no small change and the executive in question presumed he was being called to the boss’s office to be given his marching orders. Upon entering the office he said, “I suppose you are going to fire me”. Iacocca said. “Fire you! We just spent millions educating you”. Is that how you see you own mistakes – part of your education or do you beat yourself up? Here are 5 ways to shake off your mistakes and move forward to success. Brush it off No one is perfect. Once in a while everyone makes mistakes, it’s going to happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it, cooperate with the inevitable and focus on what you are doing. This is how we learn, so see a mistake as a stage in your education. In high tech environments the mantra is “fail faster”, because they know how important it is to try new things when seeking breakthroughs. Analysing the reason for the mistake, it is often because we are dealing with permanent overload and are always rushing. We don’t take the time to check because were are too wrapped up in production mode. Count mistakes as a cost of business and try to move ahead and reduce that cost factor. Don’t fuss about trifles Forget the small stuff. Perfecting something pointless or of low value makes no sense and adds little to the organisation’s efforts. If you can mentally stop obsessing about the smaller mistakes, you’ll be more focused and catch the larger ones before they happen. Accuracy is a key thing, in some areas, so we need to flick the switch to know when we are entering a key area. When we get there we need to slow down and go for perfection for a few minutes in the day. We don’t have to be like this the whole day and beat ourselves up if we aren’t. Don’t worry about the past Shake off your mistakes and move on. Don’t live in yesterday (or tomorrow for that matter). Forget about what happened, no matter how silly or embarrassing. By letting go of the past it will help you focus on your current task. “Mistakes are building blocks for enlightenment” – think of them that way, get on the front foot and start pushing forward. Everyone is so tied up in themselves, they soon forget about you and refocus on themselves again. We might have provided some inadvertent mild relief but it doesn’t dwell in their minds. Like bad news in the media, the next day the newspaper is embracing the fish bones, vegetable peels and other garbage. The world has moved on and so should we. Profit from your mistakes So you’ve made a mistake, now figure out why you made the mistake, make a note and move on. Making even a mental note will help remind you to be more careful next time the situation comes up. Ironically, some of the greatest breakthroughs in science and technology have come from mistakes rather than intention. In brainstorming sessions, the ridiculous ideas spark the genius ideas. You might not have gotten one without the other. See your own mistakes as sparks and catalysts to a better future. Rest before you get tired Many times silly mistakes are made simply because you are tired. Tiredness combined with making too much haste makes for a nasty combination. When we are tired, errors will pop up like weeds after rain. Make sure that you get enough sleep and sometimes it is better to tell yourself “go slower!” or “time for a break”. Understand your best work rhythm. Winston Churchill did his best writing in the early hours of the morning after midnight, propped up with cigars and whisky. Others are at their most creative in the early part of the day up until lunchtime. If you know that about yourself, hive off that Golden Time and devote it to the creative work you need to be doing. So key points to dealing with our mistakes: Brush it off Don’t fuss about trifles Don’t worry about the past Profit from your mistakes Rest before you get tired…
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