Storytelling is usually associated with novels of hundreds of pages, movies lasting two to three hours, television drama series fifty minutes long per episode. In sales in Japan we get a mini window to the buyer that, hopefully, in the first meeting will last an hour. During the second meeting, to present the solution, we will also get around the hour the buyer has allocated for the meeting with us. In both cases, we have to make sure the buyer, rather than us, is doing most of the talking.
That is especially the case in the first meeting, because we don’t actually have any clear, in depth idea about what they need. The time should be spent in two phases – one establishing credibility and trust and the second phase devoted to asking questions to uncover their needs.
The main opportunity for telling micro stories in phase one is around our background and experience. The buyer wants to know who they are dealing with. They want someone who knows what they are doing, someone who can help them and we need to fill in those details for them.
We have all had the experience of buying something, we ask a question and the clerk says, “one moment please” and then disappears to ask someone else the answer. This is never a confidence builder. We immediately recognise we are being served by the clueless. That is the danger for us in sales in B2B situations, where we have to answer their questions without having to get the answer from someone else. We need to tell stories which will assure the buyer we are an expert in this field and we can give them concrete and valuable assistance to solve their complex problems.
Usually, there is a rapport building phase at the start and this is where we can package up a mini-bio of who we are. Remember, we are a stranger to the buyer, yet we expect them to unveil all of their corporate problems and challenges. Recall what your parents told you: “don’t talk to strangers”, yet here we are trying to sell them something and they don’t know who we are.
In Japan, in that rapport building phase, I am often asked about why I came to Japan. I have a plan for that question and so should you. I mention I came for two years to study Japanese at Jochi University as a Japan Education Department scholar and this has turned into 40 years. This gives the listener a lot of confidence that I know Japan and that I am an “insider” not just a gaijin or “outsider”.
I also make a subtle point that actually the real reason I came to Japan was to study traditional Shitoryu karate. This reinforces for the listener that I know Japan at the deepest level having trained in the martial arts here – one of the last bastions of old style traditional culture.
Establishing my Japan credentials isn’t enough though, because the issues at hand are commercial and I need to demonstrate that I know what I am doing so that I can help them. Having a strong brand like Dale Carnegie is helpful because I always mention that we started the training in Japan in 1963. This tells them we have a lot of experience in Japan, so we can understand their problems. I give them a very brief bio of Mr. Mochizuki, who launched Dale Carnegie in Japan, to personalise the point.
In the second meeting, when presenting the solution, it is vital to have stories of how other buyers succeeded with the solution. These don’t have to be long stories, but they need to do three things: one, put flesh on the bone of what the solution does for the buyer in application; two, explain how that buyer was able to adapt the solution to their business specificities; and three, talk about the success they had with it.
We may not be able to mention the name of the other buyer, for confidentality reasons, and we should definitely point that out. No buyer wants to hear all about the juicy details of another company and then hand over the details of their own company to you, knowing you have such a big mouth and will go around telling everyone about their secret business, if they do business with your firm.
We just have to make the point it is a company very similar to the current buyer. We should talk numbers, best expressed as percentages of growth, or speedy turnaround or major cost reductions, etc. Japanese companies rarely want to be the first mover because of their risk aversion. They prefer others to trial it first and then they can study the results to see if it is for them.
We don’t have that much speaking time with the buyer, so we need to have micro stories we can draw on to bolster our credentials as a reliable, trustworthy partner. We also need to allay their fears that what we have won’t work for them, by telling micro stories of where it has worked for other buyers. These stories can’t be just pulled together out of thin air in the moment. We need to have worked these up for meetings with clients before we meet them, so that they are lean and pared down for easy, yet fast retelling. Stories need data and data needs stories in sales. We should never forget this golden rule when selling in Japan.
