Sales is a tough gig. Monthly, Quarterly, Annual quotas dog us every day. The pressure is unrelenting. When you have a good year what happens? The targets go up even higher. In fact, the end of the year is a bit fuzzy as we wait for the final results to be tallied. We often don’t know exactly where we finished. What we do know though is that we are back to zero and we have to start again. Today we look at some antidotes to the annual back to zero blues.
Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"
I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.
Why the Cutting Edge?
In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan. We want to help advance everyone’s thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.
Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.
Japan’s fathers are spending more time with their kids but how do you think about these numbers compared to you own experience? In a recent Bornelund Inc survey of fathers with kindergarten or nursery school children forty two point two of respondents said that fathers play with their children two to three days a week. Fourteen point eight percent play with their kids four to five days a week. Twenty four point two percent play every day. The survey also found that sixty percent of mothers weren’t satisfied with how much their husbands played with the children, with eighty percent saying the fathers preferred to spend the tine on their smart phones. In other news, Japanese consumers are pretty picky. McDonalds was fined by the Consumer Affairs agency for false advertising. The consumers complained because the beef patties in the Tokyo Roast Beef Muffins was made from moulded beef rather than sliced beef as shown in the ads. Finally, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry one out of every seven Japanese sixty five or older is estimated to suffer from dementia. That represented five point two million people in two thousand and fifteen. And this number is expected to grow to seven million by twenty twenty five. That will make it one out of every five seniors. I am already in that age group now, so that’s a worry.
This is episode number ninety two and we are talking about It's a New sales Year And you Are Back to Zero Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.
Sisyphus was banished to Hades for misdeeds in life and spent eternity rolling a large stone to the top of a hill, to just watch it descend again. This is the sales life. Every end of financial year, we are back down at the bottom of the hill. Here we go again, having to push that big rock all the way to the top.
“You are only good as your last deal” is a common refrain in sales. We struggle all year to make our targets and then we go back to zero revenues and start rolling those massive KPI rocks up the hill once more.
Most salespeople struggle to make their targets and the targets are always being raised. The effort to get deals over the line before the cut off, leaves us in a disheveled heap. We go to bed one night utterly exhausted, only to arise the next morning to face an even bigger rock. We are already tired, so how do we motivate ourselves to get in the game again?
Maybe we made your target or maybe we didn’t. It doesn't matter because we are in a new financial year now so we have to start again. So the first thing is to not worry about the past. Draw lessons from it, but don’t allow yesterday’s worry to intimidate today’s attitude.
Fill our mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope. We cannot tolerate a vacuum in our minds, so either the good stuff goes in or we allow the bad stuff to disable us. We should not dwell on the negatives, but concentrate on solution finding for client problems.
Oh no! Our biggest client won’t be buying this year and that is going to leave a massive hole in our numbers. Don’t moan about it. Start work on finding new wonderful clients to replace the lost one. Get on to positive momentum to carry you forward. You have your health and that is critical in sales. It is a stressful occupation, an emotional rollercoaster that can quickly spin out of control. Make sure you maintain your health by adjusting what you eat and drink. We all know what we are supposed to do, we just don’t do it. Well, this year do it!
Expect ingratitude. This way, bad news and bad behavior never catch you mentally unprepared. Your client chooses your competitor and not you, despite the close relationship you have together. You feel like you are dealing with an unfaithful spouse and are burning up with rage. If you assume ingratitude is the usual state of the world, then you just brush it off and move forward. That good client of yours will be back at some point, so don’t blow the relationship for the sake of one deal gone missing.
Find out more when we come back from the break
Welcome backYou might like some information on our sales booster One and Sales booster two programmes. These are modular programs so they can be done in any order. Sales Booster One covers the building of trust with the buyer, designing excellent questions to uncover needs and then presenting the absolute best fit solution for the buyer. This will next run on November 11th. In Sales Booster Two we look at how to handle pushback, objections, hesitations and doubt. We also look at how to ask for the sale without coming across as a pushy salesperson. The next programme will be on August 5th. Details can be found on our web site at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to the show
Count your blessings not your troubles. You are focused on the hill and the rock but not your strengths. You have experience, contacts, track record and a good reputation in the marketplace. You are a professional, who always has the client’s interests as your first priority. You practice your craft and you study to improve even further. There are always more potential clients than time available to service them, so there is no lack of potential. Your competitors are not studying, and don’t have the client’s interests at heart. This gives you an advantage over the long term, as they just flame out and disappear.
Try to profit from your losses. Not every post is a winner despite your best efforts. Analyse what went wrong. Don’t be afraid to ask the client for feedback. Our experience is the sum of our failures. We learn what does work by finding out what doesn’t work. In the startup world they have the mantra of “fail faster”. This is an old idea. Edison applied this same concept to discovering which materials would bridge the gap in his electric bulb.
Create happiness for others. Give something back. Provide advice, volunteer, turn up and help. When we give, we receive much more in return. Our soul is warmed by the act and our spirit is strengthened.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the hill in front of us. Break it down to centimeters and roll that rock a little a day, every day and we will get to the top. Okay, we have to start again but that is the fun of the game. We get to play again and see what we can do this year. See which wonderful new clients we can help. See what creative solutions we can generate. We are an awesomely powerful learning machine and the game is our university of life.
Action Steps
Don’t worry about the past Fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope Expect ingratitude Count your blessings not your troubles Try to profit from your losses Create happiness for othersTHE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show is here to help you succeed in Japan. Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues, become a regular.
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Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Please leave me some feedback on YouTube, I would love to know how this show helped and what other topics you are interested in for me to cover. Remember I am here as a free resource to help you, so just tell me how I can help you best.
You might also enjoy my podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget Sales Booster One on November 11thand Sales Booster Two on August Fifth. Details at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com
In episode Ninety Three we are talking about. Find out more about that next week.
So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show
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