Business is brutal and sometimes clients have received incorrect information about our companies from competitors or the media. When I was selling on behalf of Australian exporters in Nagoya, I remember a client telling me that our competitors had said the Aussie company was verging on bankruptcy and was about to go under. You can easily imagine what effect that had on business for that exporter. There was a very famous case of national brand damage, through linguistic imperfection.
In 1985, the national broadcaster NHK’s announcer said in a nightly news programme that Australian winemakers were involved in a scandal, adding diethylene glycol to their wines, to make them sweeter and give them more body. In Japanese, the pronunciation of the names for Australia and Austria are very similar. Each Embassy regular receives phone calls for the other country by mistake. That wine scandal actually happened in Austria, not Australia. The Australian wine industry was immediately wiped out in Japan and it took twenty years for it to recover. So nasty stuff happens folks and we have to be ready for these types of dirty tricks and negative fake news.
There is no point explaining all the attributes of your wonderful offer, if the client doubts your company in the first place. The most worrying thing is that there may be misperceptions, but they are hidden. That Nagoya client happened to share what was being said behind our backs with me, because the trust was there. When the relationship hasn’t been solidified, perhaps they hear this type of damaging talk from rivals, but never mention it to us. We blithely traipse along, totally unaware of what is really going on.
We shouldn’t assume the client has a positive view of us, as we begin the business meeting. That would be way too optimistic and too ambitious. We should ask very sweetly, “so what are your perceptions about our organisation?”. After asking this question we shouldn’t say another word. We have to sit there in silence without adding, clarifying or explaining what we just said. If this question uncovers some incorrect information or a degree of bias, we need to deal with that.
Jumping in and arguing the point with the client however, isn’t the way to move the discussion forward. Our defensive counter actions can lead to the mouth outpacing the brain and we say the wrong thing. Instead, we need to insert a cushion. A neutral statement which doesn’t agree or disagree with whatever negative comment the client has made. The cushion is a device to give us some thinking time. It helps to break the habit of immediately wanting to argue with the client and tell them why they are wrong. Don’t do that. There are better alternatives available to us.
Depending on what they have said, we immediately may go one of three ways.
Agree: We may agree with them to a certain extent, but we clarify the new situation in a way which they may not be aware of. For example, “Yes, that has been said about our company in the past, but we have been able to eliminate that concern since we upgraded our systems”.
Dissociate: We make the point that many companies have been working with us and we have been able to gain great results for them. The inference is that whatever has been worrying this buyer, hasn’t worried other clients. They have been able to get the results they needed by working with us.
Correct: If the information is factually incorrect, then we need to supply hard evidence to get rid of that concern.
The next stage takes us into positive territory, using two techniques.
Highlight Our USPs: We reinforce with the buyer why we are the best partner for them. We do this by restating our strongest USP, showing our differentiation from our competitors. This USP has to be highly relevant to the client. We need to have done our research and have carefully selected the USP with the best fit for the buyer’s circumstances. We have many USPs, but limited facing time with the buyer, so we always bring out the big guns when it comes to reinforcing or establishing credibility.
Expand On Our Strengths: We don’t make it a sales pitch, but we flesh out the full strength of our organization and introduce elements which they may not be aware of or fully appreciate. Often clients will pigeonhole us into a very narrow band and we have show the full scope of our capacity to serve them.
We should not be naïve about the rough and tumble of business in Japan and we should be ready to handle any negativity. Rather than the client thinking it, but not saying anything,we are better to draw it out, face it head on and then deal with it.
