Podcasts about cutting edge japan business show

The release of 5G or fifth generation mobile networks was launched in Japan in March 2020. Our old phones ran on a 4G standard and 5G faster is significantly faster than 4G.  So what does that mean for salespeople across all industries? The capacity to upload heavier files, to be sent at lightening speed, grabs your attention.  What are some of the heaviest files at the moment?  Video!  YouTube is already the second largest search engine after Google.  It is true too.  I have noticed myself that I prefer going straight to YouTube to find out how to do something, rather than wading through all the links and ads on Google.  The union of content marketing with blinding connection speeds, means the search function for YouTube will overtake Google in the next few years.  AI will probably overtake everything for search in the future.  Nevertheless, are you prepared to be found by buyers as the star of your own video? Now this is not to say that the importance of audio is going away.  Podcasts are also a key way of getting value by turning up in front of buyers.  That is why I am releasing six ever week.  People are multitasking these days like they have been possessed by demons. They want to listen to audio, while they are at the gym or walking the dog.  Don't miss the implications of audio access to our information from all of these devices like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Home, etc.  We will be tapping into information through audio, to a greater extent than now, but today I want to feature more on video and 5G and what it means for us in sales.  Producing video content and uploading that to YouTube will become a more important aspect of “know, like and trust”.  Video gives a very strong impression about us.  How we look?  How we sound?  Are we trustworthy? How we relate to the audience? Are we authentic? As some of my friends have unkindly remarked, “Greg, you have a good head for radio”, meaning I am not very photogenic.  True. Consequently, we may be shy to video ourselves, thinking that we are not handsome or beautiful enough, or smooth enough in front of the camera, or attractive enough on tape when a microphone is involved. Forget all of that.  This will be the age of discovery by buyers, before they ever meet us.  This is how they will be searching for experts to bring solutions for the problems they face.  They will be able to “try us before they buy us” by watching our video, to see if we have the goods or not.  What if we are not attractive enough for video, won't that work against us?  Well, I wish I was more handsome, but there is not much I can do about that.  My parent's DNA contribution has spoken.  I have to go with what I have got and so do you.  I am releasing three video shows every week. I don't have a great sounding voice either, because it sounds husky, from all that shouting or kiai I did, in my 53 years of karate training. Can't do too much about that either.  One of our Dale Carnegie trainers in America is DJ Thatcher, who has a voice you would die for.  Very deep and melodic.  I can't become DJ Thatcher, but I can control what comes out of my own mouth. So despite how we look and how we sound, are we providing actual value?  Our videos have to show we know something special about our subject and that we can be useful to the buyer.  Don't think you have to hold the “best bits” back either and keep them secret.  You have to go the other way and provide strong expert authority in this environment and do it for free.  Put your best stuff out there. You might sorry, “won't my buyers become sated on my free video offerings and not need more from me?”.  I don't think this is a concern.  When they need more than what they can get from a video, you are the one they will select over everyone else you are competing with.  By the way, if a video can fix their issue that simply, then there probably wasn't a substantial engagement involved anyway. Won't my competitors steal all my best ideas?  The old style control function of buyers by suppliers, through exclusive, high value, proprietary knowledge, still exists, but only just these days.  Almost everything is out there today.  I remember in karate training, that the Sensei had the secret knowledge of the kata and we could only learn it from him. It was a control mechanism to keep us in line.  Today, you can learn the most amazing kata via YouTube. That secrets era has passed and there are not many secrets left anymore.  You have to jump in because everyone else is.  There is a safety factor though. They can copy you, but they can't be you.  I could order a big truck right now and send all of our training manuals to my competitors, but it wouldn't help them.  They don't know how to deliver it the way we do, so all they get is an empty shell.  This is the same with your competitors.  They can't replicate who you are, your company culture, your approach to clients, quality, reliability, plus all the human interaction pieces which are the sum of all that you are, down at your firm.    As an example, I recently did the recordings for the audio version of my book Japan Sales Mastery.  Anyone could have read the text, but no one would emphasised key words the way I did.  This is because I wrote it, I know what I want to say and how I want to say it.  We cannot be copied.  Get busy and get your stuff out there in the public domain. So let's start working on video of you for your newsletters, video email messages, website, YouTube channel and then push it out through social media so that it can be easily found.  These days you have so many choices.  You can do it through various live broadcast functions as well. You just pick up your phone and away you go.   Although, as I found live broadcasting is like walking on the high wire between two skyscrapers, with a strong wind blowing and no safety net for beginners.  If you screw it up in the first forays, like I did (!), you are very visible to lots and lots of folks.  Oops.  I am your typical male who never reads the manual.  I found out later there is a function you can select where only you can see the video, which is probably a good precaution when you are starting.  Hey, I should have done that! You can go for weekly YouTube TV shows like I have, with The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show or The Japan Business Mastery Show.  High quality camera, lighting soft boxes, serious audio recording technology, a set, editing suite, green screen, etc.  Or you can shoot something on the move with a mobile phone, or a tablet, as the camera quality is so good today.  Just add an external microphone, stand close to the camera and away you go.  It can be edited later, so you can correct any problems.  I have a number of videos on our Japan Dale Carnegie TV channel on YouTube which were shot on my iPad with an external mic.  Very low cost and time effective for the quality.  The audio is key though, so I suggest you make an effort to get that to be the best you can arrange. What about appearing in front of the camera?  My recommendation is to do our High Impact Presentations Training course. I don't say this because it is Dale Carnegie, I say it because it is such an awesome course. This will give you the supreme confidence and skills to master the lens.  That is what I did and you can check out the results in my videos!  I reckon if I can do it with how I look and how I sound, you can do it and probably do it much better.  You will now see AI technology rolling over the top of you or you can start surfing down the face of the wave.  The technology is here now and time waits for no salesperson.   Action Steps 1.  Read up on the technical innovations underway and what it will mean for you 2.  Understand the power of the YouTube search function with buyers 3.  Get over your inhibitions about being video and voice recorded, no one cares, as long as you are bringing value 4.  Be prepared to share your best stuff for free, because your competition will be doing that 5.  Start, review, improve, continue, master

I teach presentation skills to businesspeople.  In the first class they do a simple self-introduction and this is where we instructors can tell the skill level of the people in the class.  A recent class had quite competent people and I am sure they would have been seen as already quite good by their peers and bosses.  At the end of the class on the next day, they were transformed into a completely different, highly persuasive and skilled presenter.  I was thinking what was the difference?  They were by all measures fairly good when they arrived into the class.  The obvious answer was the coaching they received, but why did that make such a major difference and can we get better at presenting by ourselves without coaching?   There are books on presenting and I have written one called “Japan Presentation's Mastery” and there are millions of others.  There are tons of videos on presenting and I release two a week, one called “The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show” which covers leadership, sales and presenting.  The other show is called the “Japan Business Mastery Show” and it covers the same content, but in a more abbreviated version for people with no time.  There are no doubt a lot of podcasts on the subject and I release this one “The Presentations Japan Series” every week.  What I am saying is there are no shortage of resources on how to become a better presenter and I am doing my best to create content for Japan as my niche.   If you absorb all the content available there is no doubt you will become a better presenter.  But will it make you a great presenter?  To become great, I believe you need two things – lots of presenting opportunities and quality coaching from experts.  I forget which Tony Robbins book it was I was reading, but I remember he made the conscious decision to do as much presenting as he could, in order to master the art.  I thought that made sense and I certainly grabbed every opportunity after I came back to Japan to work in 1992 to give presentations.    Things have gone quiet since Covid, as there were no events, but still I am up to presentation number 548.  I tried to incorporate what I was studying into my talks and also to note what was working for me and what was not.  Over three decades I have built up the experience now to be very comfortable speaking and presenting.  My TED talk last year did push me though, because it is very short at 13 minutes and the video goes global. If you are doing a poor job, a lot of people know about it. I also don't count my presentations given as a corporate trainer, because that is not a public speech style presentation and has a different goal and cadence.  It is still standing up in front of people and commanding the room though, but it is different, so I don't count the many thousands of those facilitations.   What about the coaching aspect?  The coach provides options.  We know what we know, but the coach can see more than what we can see.  When you think about it you are facing the audience and looking at them and you cannot see yourself, unless you are videoing the talk (and I strongly recommend you do that every possible chance).  The coach can see the impact we are having and can help us to ramp that up.   It might be more voice variety and modulation.  It might be larger gestures.  I might be to start moving around or to stand on the one spot and not move.  It might be to get us working on engaging our audience members through using eye contact and holding their gaze as we speak to them.    It might be to inject pauses to slow things down.  If we are nervous or even if we are on a roll, we might be speeding up.  When this happens, each successive wave of ideas wipes out the previous one and the audience can get a bit lost trying to keep up.  The pauses allow them to digest what we are saying and get them ready for the next pearls of wisdom.  They also allow us to adjust our speaking speed and slow down.    The coach can mention to us that we have a very serious look on our face, because we are concentrating so hard and it comes across as aggressive or angry and that isn't the image we want to project.  We don't notice we are doing that because we are consumed with the message and the delivery and are oblivious to the how we look to the audience.   The coach can also encourage us to take some risks.  They can suggest things which are outside our usual gamut, but which when incorporated will enable us to lift our presentation to a higher height than we could imagine by ourselves.  Sometimes we need to stretch ourselves so that we can make a bigger action in the talk and have it within the bounds of business relevancy.  The coach can help us to escape from our Comfort Zone and challenge us to be more and be better.   My recommendation is to absorb as much knowledge and information as you can about presenting, get as much frequent practice as you can manage and get a quality coach.  That is the winning combination.  Remember we are all putting out personal and professional brands out there every time we open our mouths to speak.  Do we want to be perceived as true professionals and in that way build trust and credibility?  Of course we do, so that is why this trifecta is such a winner.

In the good old days we could have multiple public personas in sales.  We could be the professional salesperson, but that image was entirely separate to our family life.  We could enjoy boozy celebrations and getting off our face with relative anonymity.  We could accumulate customer complaints and deal with them in private.  We could rely on word of mouth from within a limited circle of acquaintances.  When we met people for the first time, they basically knew almost nothing about us, except the name of our company and any reputation that brand name had in the market.   Times have changed haven't they.  I was reminded of this fact recently.  I host a weekly podcast called Japan's Top Business Interviews where I interview leaders about one topic – leading in Japan.  Through a mutual contact, a young man about to graduate from Temple University sought my advice on his speech at the Commencement Ceremony as the student body representative.  In the course of that conversation with him he told me he had already chosen a prominent American insurance company to work for, entirely based of the interview I did with the CEO.  Separately, two other leaders here mentioned to me that when they were interviewing people to work at their companies, the candidates mentioned they had listened to their interviews with me before the job interview.  Potential clients reach out to me, because I am producing a prodigious amount of content spread across the six podcasts and three TV shows I release each week.   My point is never before have salespeople had the opportunity or the risk of having everything out there in social media about them, quite easily discoverable, before meeting with the prospective client.  Buyers do check us out, in the same way that we check them out.  Naturally they are looking for red flags and we are looking for commonalities, so that we can create solid connections with them.   This means we need to carefully curate our social media information and image.  There are plenty of occasions where I have been out on the booze with mates or clients, but you won't find any of that on social media.  Of course, I can control a great deal of what goes up on social media, but when someone else is taking and uploading the photos of the debacle, it gets a bit trickier.  Nevertheless, when we are in sales, we need to be very much aware that these occurrences will be seen by potential buyers.  I suggest you be the demure one in the photo, while your colleagues in the shot are completely off their faces.   If buyers do a search on you, what will they find?  If you don't know, then I suggest you get busy and start doing a forensic analysis of what they will find.  Better you know before they know. If they find nothing, that is a problem in itself.  If they do find content, what will they discover about you?  Originally, I was scared and doubtful of social media.  In 2011, I attended the Dale Carnegie International Convention in San Diego and well known sales instructor Jeffrey Gitomor was a guest speaker.  He told us he has 30,000 followers on Twitter and asked how many we had.  I had zero because I wasn't on any social media.    After I got back to Japan, I took my first tentative steps to build a social media profile and a following.  Today I have 26,000 followers on LinkedIn.  The good thing about a late start was I could be very scrupulous about what I posted. I avoid politics and religion as topics and stick to business content.  I had previously been writing articles for the different Chamber of Commerce magazines, so I started uploading these to the social media.    In 2012, I started podcasting and also loaded that content up to social media.  LinkedIn tells me I have 2700 articles posted on LinkedIn.  These will be around 800 words long and will have been multi-purposed into audio and in some cases video, to extend the reach.  Around 2018 I started releasing my own TV shows on YouTube. There is no swearing or bad language in any of these posts or shows, despite how popular this has become.  Am I a prude?  No, I am a typical Aussie male with a fulsome vocabulary of colourful expressions, but I know there will be members of my audience who don't appreciate that degree of authenticity, so I restrain myself.  My rule is, if my mother was still alive, would she want to hear this type of language in public from me?   Today my weekly shows have grown.  The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show which goes out as video, audio and text is up to 245 episodes, 8th year.  Both the Presentations Japan Series and Sales Japan Series podcasts go out as audio and text and are up to 299 episodes, 6th year.  The Leadership Japan Series podcast is both audio and text and we are up to 473 episodes, 10th year.  The Japan Business Mastery Show is video, audio and text and we are up to episode number 145, 3rd year.  The Japan's Top Business Interviews show is video, audio and text and we are up to 112 episodes, 3rd year.    Okay, I am bragging, because who else do you know in sales who produces this much regular weekly, consistent free content? Nobody.  This is part of my brand though and I am trying to catch as many potential clients in my social media web as possible.  Over the years we have upped the production and editing values and now produce and release very professional work.  Could we do more?  Yes, we could, but there is a limit on time and money to be spent on free content.   When clients look for me on social media, or through Google or YouTube searches, they are hit with this carefully curated tsunami of content, all aimed at proving I am an expert in these areas and suggesting they should use us for their training.  There is no propaganda though.  I am avoiding this type of content because it is a turn off to buyers. Do you need to do this much content?  No, but you need to be putting out some regular, current, high quality content.  Avoid high jacking someone else's content and putting your cameo intro to the post.  Produce your own original work, because this has value and clients can gauge whether you are the real deal or not. Avoid shots of you smashed out of your mind at some boozer with your mates and make sure there are plenty of professional shots of you suited and booted for work. Buyers will judge you before they meet you, whether you agree with it or like it or not.  Make sure they find what you determine they will find.

Listen to our most popular episode in presentations for The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show!   Formulistic presentations may tick the boxes, but definitely don't ignite much enthusiasm in the audience.  Yes, the key points were covered, the time was consumed, people heard the presentation matching the topic previously promulgated, but so what?  When we attend a mediocre or even bad presentation, we are reminded that a great opportunity has gone begging.  When it is our turn and we stand in front of an audience, we are representing our personal brand and our firm's brand.  People will evaluate our company on how we perform.  So our job is to perform well and really build fans for our business and ourselves.   Yes, a 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.  Have you ever noticed that a flat, deadly boring speech can be followed by a very engaging Q&A session led by the speaker? This is because the speaker is now freed from their self-imposed limitations of reading the speech.  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.   Observing a lot of speakers, I have noticed that the things that often go missing most are their passion and commitment for   the topic.  Additionally, it may be that 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 even start.  We need to grab their attention away from whatever it was they were thinking about before we get up to the podium.   An excellent opening needs considerable planning.  It must be a battering ram to break through the wall of audience disinterest and skepticism.  It must have a powerful hook in there to keep our attention.  Remember, this is how we in the audience are trained.  Headlines, the opening stanzas of newspaper and magazine articles, book titles, talk shows, the nightly news programming, television dramas, movies, etc., are all carefully designed and scripted to grab and keep our attention.  This is what we, as speakers, are competing with – a professional class of smart, well paid, attention monopolizing experts.   So our opening has to instantly grab attention.   Next we need to lead our flock through the intricacies of our topic, so that they can keep up and understand where we are going.  If we have key points, then give them numbers, because we more easily follow number sequences.  Just don't make it too many numbers.  Keeping up with the thirty three key points of any topic, delivered in a thirty minute speech, is a nightmare the audience doesn't need.   Wrapping it all up at the end is a critical component too, because this is the speaker's final impression with the audience.  Have you noticed how often the final words of the talk just fade out.   The speaker's voice strength just drops away altogether at the end.  What we really want is passion backing up the conclusion.  The voice tone should rise to a crescendo.  The talk completes with a powerful hypnotic, all embracing call to action.  We want everyone, metaphorically, to join us and storm the barricades.    Instead we get that limping, low energy fade out, as the ineffective speaker just bumbles their way into Q&A.  Typically, they don't have any strategy to control the flow of Q&A either.  Because of this, they lose control of the proceedings.  They have committed a fatal mistake and allowed the final question to completely determine the final impression of the talk with the audience.  How many times have you heard a question raised which was completely off topic?  Unfortunately this happens quite often, so the danger here is that the questioner highjacks our speech.  Their topic is the last item ringing in the ears of the audience rather than what we were there to talk about.  Do not let that happen!  We need two powerful, passionate closes – one for the end of our speech and one for the end of Q&A.   Passion for the topic and the audience are requirements.  These are not optional extras, useful additions, that we can include or not at our leisure.  If we don't feel passion for our topic and our audience, then we come across as flat, perfunctory, formulistic.  In these cases, when the audience leaves the venue, the speaker, topic and their organisation are immediately forgotten.  With that type of result, we have to ask, “well just what was the point?”.  The residual impression is negative.  The listeners feel that their time was wasted and no great value was imparted. They leave determined that if that same speaker ever pops up again in the future, they won't bother to attend.

“Greg, you are everywhere!”.  I am often told this by business people here in Tokyo.  What they mean is that I am prolific on social media, video and audio.  Well, if you are in sales today and you are not prolific in promoting yourself, then what are you doing with your time?  It is an old saw in sales that “it doesn't matter how many people you know, it is more important how many people want to know you”.  Fine, but how do you get that to work?  Afterall, there are only so many people we can meet in a month and naturally, we want all of them to want to know us.  The democratisation of social media and the free nature of the medium has changed many things in getting our reputation in front of many more people than we could ever physically meet in a month.   I was always wary of social media.  I didn't trust the platforms, so I avoided them until December 2011.  That year I made my first visit to San Diego in California to attend the Dale Carnegie International Convention.  One of the speakers was Jeffrey Gitomer, published author and sales training guru.  He was quite a character.  He was wearing a bright red shirt that from memory had his name” Jeffrey” and “Sales Dept” embroidered on it.  He was dressed like some guy who would be working at a gas stand pumping petrol.  Dale Carnegie is a pretty conservative organisation, so he had been told to tone down the profanity, but what he said was shocking to me.   He asked the one thousand plus attendees “how many twitter followers do you have?”.  At that point he had over 30,000 and I had none.   On the plane back to Tokyo, I was thinking about what he said, so I made my first sceptical foray into the social media platforms. I found Twitter didn't suit me as much as Facebook and Linkedin, so I tended to concentrate there.  I don't post any personal stuff on these platforms. It is all business and I make sure none of it is controversial or embarrassing.   Around 2012 I started publishing blogs on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and I am still doing that.  I was also publishing articles in the American Chamber Journal and the Acumen magazine every month.  The American Chamber Journal editor Roberto de Vido suggested to me that I should do a podcast.  I asked him “what is a podcast?  I can't remember how, but I discovered this other American guy, Gary Vaynerchuk, popularly known as Gary Vee.  Another character and this time plenty of profanity from Gary. He was interesting because he was combining reality TV, education and motivation together and was pumping out massive amounts of content.  He taught me to multi-purpose my content.  I could use the content for my blogs for the magazines to become the content for my podcasts.    The first blog was published as a podcast called The Japan Leadership Series on August 2nd, 2014 on the topic “Flexible Japan-Stop Dreaming”. I was covering leadership, sales and presentations content in that one podcast.  I started hearing that going deeper into niches was important, so I created two more podcasts called The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan Series and started publishing podcasts on those specialities from November 3, 2016.   In mid-2018 I read that Google would start using audio for search in addition to text.  In the text world I was competing with millions, maybe billions of blogs.  The audio podcast world was a bit less competitive. I already had three podcasts by that time, but I decided to strip out the audio from two of my YouTube TVs shows, The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show and the Japan Business Mastery Show and create podcasts. The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show first episode was on “Not Meeting the Leadership Challenge Is Quietly Killing Us” on August 18, 2019. The Japan Business Mastery Show came out on October 4th, 2019 on “Five Deadly and Dastardly Leader Misperceptions”. The next year I launched a new show called Japan's Top Business Interviews where I interview CEOs and we talk about one topic – leading in Japan.  The first episode was on June 6th, 2020 with Yasuaki Mori then CEO of Infinion Technologies Japan.   What has been the upshot of all this effort and time?  My personal branding has skyrocketed and I have a core of true fans who regularly follow the content.  Because I am posting fresh and different content Monday to Saturday on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook I get people contacting me about training in Japan.  I don't do any paid promotion and just rely on organic search to find me. Yes, I get a lot of people trying to sell me sex, dodgy investments, various products and services too, but I just ignore those.  For those who are genuinely interested in business in Japan, then they can judge the quality of what I offer by accessing my oeuvre.  They can try before they buy.   So are you having a Jeffrey Gitomer moment like I had in 2011?  By the way, Jeffrey has 67,000 followers on LinkedIn and I have 26,000, so I am only 40% as good as he is, but for my niche, how many people have more than I do?  How many people are accessing audio search on Google as well as I am?  I have no idea, but what I do know is if you are in sales, your biggest problem is getting found.  The text blog world is competitive and that means you are competing with seven million blogs a day.  Podcasts are said to be over two million in number.  I publish my podcasts using LibSyn and their numbers show the biggest group of podcasts are published on Apple Podcasts and that Japan originated podcasts are only about 1% of their total. If you broke that down to English language podcasts, the numbers could get very interesting.  My point is I am punching way above my weight here and it is working.  If you are in sales, what are you doing about being found?

Yasuaki Mori Ex-CEO Of Infineon Technologies Japan: EPISODE #1 Japan's Top Business Interviews Yasuaki Mori is a European, Asia and North American technology growth executive in the disruptive mobility, automotive, IIoT and cyber security markets.  He has grown businesses from $200 to $700M and scaled organization from 100 to 200+ people, developed go-to market strategies and rebuilt, converted, strengthened organizations in sales, marketing, channel, system/application engineering, product quality, HR, finance. marcom, logistics and government affairs. He is a multi-lingual & multi-cultural executive (French, Japanese, English) with professional networks in Europe, US and Asia. Summary Points  Joint venture sales are tough because both parties are in the same market with a focus on synergies but occasionally you end up in a competitive situation. When the joint venture parties are from different cultures, e.g. Japanese and German, you need trust and understanding, however both are exercised differently in the different countries. For example, in Japan, harmony is exercised through Honne (real truth) and Tatemae (façade), but in Germany it is exercised by people giving their true opinion, so it can be tough for employees and clients to deal with. We used to have meetings where only the leadership spoke. After the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan several years ago, we held daily meetings in order to keep operations moving, and as things calmed down, we cut the meetings down to once a week and then once a month. However, when we tried to cut the meetings out altogether, the employees asked for it to be kept on as a standard part of our procedures. It become a town hall meeting where people, not just the leadership contributed. Unofficial communication in Japan is superb and it would be good to be able to tap into that to make it more corporate and help shake off the communication silos. Middle management is what tends to the blockage point, not because they wanted to block things, but because we as senior management were not paying enough attention to what feedback they were giving about our discussions about strategy etc.  What a strategy means for senior management has a totally different meaning for the lower ranks and middle management needs to be engaged and coached on how to spread the message. Push out as much information as possible unless it is strictly confidential, since unless you tell people what and why things are happening in understandable terms, it is never effective. Japanese employees traditionally ask their bosses for instructions, but I think its better to know what your value is in the company, and where you are adding value to the whole chain of the company, then you should know what you need to do – then you don`t need to ask your boss about what you should do. And by adding value to yourself, you are making yourself more valuable to the external market. Japan still works from a top-down method whereas foreign companies work in a matrix. Executives are expensive with limited time frames like 3-4 years, and because they have to get used to Japan at the beginning and settle their families, and then towards the end of their term, they need to look for a job back home, they are really only effective for 1-2 years so that is one of the problems you face by sending a novice to Japan. A good element of Japan is limited corporate greed in comparison to other countries.  Honesty is a key strength in Japan that is a good foundation to help build a business on. Although I`m not sure how it equates to taking more risk for innovation.  Big data and good data analytics can relieve many efficiency and quality problems but there is limited understanding in traditional management style Japanese companies of how to use AI because it is not just about technology, its about organizational change. Japan is very weak in terms of making deliberate organizational change to suit the technology.  There is a reluctance to go digital because the Gemba (factory floor) is so strong, but people are getting older and there are fewer and fewer workers so digitization needs to happen. But this needs fast decisions and these are not a strength of traditional corporate Japanese cultures. 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.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our 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 Your Corporate Coaching And Training Guy President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of “Japan Sales Mastery”, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.   He is also the author of the new book “Japan Business Mastery” aimed at business people who are new to Japan and want to know more about how things work here. 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 plus veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, he publishes articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, and daily releases his videos and podcasts.   For podcasts and videos:  Mondays THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show podcast & THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show video Tuesday THE Leadership Japan Series Wednesday THE Sales Japan series Thursday THE Presentations Japan Series"   Friday THE Japan Business Mastery Show & THE Japan Business Mastery Show video.   Saturday Japan's Top Business Interviews Show podcast and Japan's Top Business Interviews Show video 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. #DCTakeCommand

Start  In today's show we are looking at how fragile our leader brand is when we don't know how to present properly and what we can do about it. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show".  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number six  and we are talking about Six Ways To Accentuate Your Authentic Leader Voice       Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor…. Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Six Ways To Accentuate Your Authentic Leader Voice 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 Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode seven we are talking about The Seven Deadly Sins Killing Your Team's Motivation Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show  

Start  In today's show we are looking at how to be differentiated from our rivals and be the consumate professional when we first meet the client. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show".  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number five  and we are talking about  Use These Three Sales Amplifiers In The First Thirty Seconds      Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor….   Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Use These Three Powerful Sales Amplifiers In The First Thirty Seconds   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 Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode six we are talking about Six Ways To Accentuate Your Authentic Leader Voice Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show   

Episode #105 Success Formula for Leading Project Teams Take One   Leading projects can be tricky.  Often the enthusiasm for the detail overrides the brain and the team are leaping into the minutia of the details without planning the project from a holistic viewpoint.  The other penchants of the misguided are looking for cool tech solutions when the biggest issues are always people issues.  Having a tracking tool is good except when the people involved don't have sufficient accountability to either use it.  Today we will dig deep into what we need to do to be a successful team leader for any projects.   Welcome back to this weekly edition every Monday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and my new book Japan Business 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 has the lowest ratio of people of working age to those aged sixty five or over according to a UN report.  Japan has only one point eight people aged twenty five to sixty four, for each person aged sixty five or older. By comparison the ratio in Australia and New Zealand was three point three and three in Europe and North America.  In other news, cash settles eighty percent of the transaction sin japan, with the rest done by credit cards, mobile payments and prepaid swipe cards.  That is the second highest cash usage in the world after Germany. According to Nomura research Institute cashless payments increase per customer sales by one point six percent.  Finally, according to the Research Institute of Japan Finance Corporation the average age of people who started a business in two thousand and eighteen was forty three years of age.  The proportion of people older than fifty rose to twenty six percent.  The research also showed that sixty eight percent of those starting a business were able to do so with less than ten million yen or ninety three thousand dollars. This is episode number #105    and we are talking about  Success Formula for Leading Project teams     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.  Templates and structure are missing so everyone just wings it, making it up as they go along, re-inventing the wheel.   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.  The project begins with vague boundaries around what is to be done.  In quick order, either external parties or the team themselves, become like Emus and are attracted by bright shiny objects.  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.  Well, when you are having fun and winging it, you are super busy getting on with the actual work, so no strategy needed.  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.  There may be incompatible working styles in the team and you are now chief psychologist, in addition to team project leader, spending a lot of time and energy dealing with staff or division conflicts. Welcome back 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.  This is when you discover your communication and persuasion skills are rubbish and you are getting nowhere with them.  This becomes magnified when there are critical issues of internal and external cooperation required.  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.    Because you have never been trained on how to delegate properly, you either don't do it at all or you give it a shot, it fails and you wind up doing most of the work.  This would be fine if you had nothing else to do and could devote your time to just this one project.  Strangely enough the organization has bigger plans for you and they involve a whole slather of other work to be done as well.   The answer is fairly simple.  Train people properly on how to lead projects.  Projects are always going to occur and we should have our own organisation's way of doing them.  This would be developed through long periods of hands on experience and constantly updated to reflect best practice discoveries made along the journey.    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! THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Fridays, I release my other TV show The Japan Business Mastery Show on YouTube.   In episode #106 Don't tell Me, Show me 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!  

Start  In today's show we are looking at the importance of the boss care factor about staff, the power of the WHY and where pride in the organisation plays a role in getting our people engaged.   INTRO  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show".  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number  4 and we are talking about Four Vital Ways To Get Your People More Engaged       Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor…. Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Four Vital Ways To Get Your People More Engaged 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode 5  we are talking about Use These Three Powerful Sales Amplifiers In The First Thirty Seconds Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show  

Episode #104 Hard Sell Hell Take One I feel sorry for the “phone dogs” having to cold call clients to sell them stuff and at the same time I hate them.  They are paid to call clients to arrange for one of the sale's team to roll in and close the sale. I am all in favour of cold calling but I detest idiocy.  The phone dogs are given sales scripts cobbled together by idiot bosses and the end result is you feel your intelligence is being insulted by this brutal process.  There are so may better ways to cold call clients it is embarrassing, so why do they persists doing it the stupid way?  Let's look at a more intelligent approach.   Welcome back to this weekly edition every Monday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and my new book Japan Business 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. We all grew up thinking teachers had a pretty good life.  Work is over by 3.00pm and they get months off from work during the summer holidays.  How good is that!  Well of course not in Japan.  Junior high school teachers here worked the longest hours on average of all the forty eight OECD countries.  They are putting in fifty six hours per week on average compared to the thirty eight point three hours average by the participants in the Teaching and Learning International Survey.  Primary school teachers in japan worked fifty four point four hours per week on average. In other news, a government survey has found that fifty three point two percent of youths and young adults in japan do not want to study abroad.  This is interesting because as the Japanese consumer population declines, because of the aging society, Japanese companies must add operations based outside of Japan.  These companies will desperately need more internationally minded and highly skilled speakers of English to compete internationally.  Where will the come from if the young don't want to leave Japan?  Finally, there is a major wealth disparity in Japan.  According to a Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications survey, households whose head is sixty years or older, have about twenty four million yen or two hundred and twenty thousand dollars in savings on average.  About eighteen percent of this age group had forty million yen or three hundred and seventy thousand dollars or more in savings.  Twenty two percent however only had five million yen or forty six thousand dollars.  Households headed by someone twenty nine years or younger had on average only two point five million yen or twenty three thousand dollars in savings and debts of four point nine million yen or forty five thousand dollars. For those between the ages of forty and forty nine the average savings were ten point two million yen or ninety five thousand dollars and had debts of ten point six million yen or one hundred thousand dollars. This is episode number 104   and we are talking about  Hard Sell Hell     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. “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?  They don't know me and have found my address and phone number somewhere, so are trying to begin a relationship.  When you are starting a relationship you need to immediately put the other person at ease and try to build some rapport.   “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?”. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back This example passage does a number of things.  It flatters me that I am discerning, checks that I have time to talk, tells me they are in the wealth advisory business.  They also pick a problem that busy executives do have and that is that often we are not managing our own wealth sufficiently well.     By asking me if I have had that experience, this opens up a sufficiently broad timeframe range to receive a positive “yes” response. By saying they may or may not have what I need, comes across as balanced, consultative and not hard sell.  Referring to the best practice examples, tells me they are only going to talk about things that are relevant and working well already.     Checking whether I have capacity to take action will save us all a lot of time.  Wealthy people don't leave their money sitting around in cash.  They are leveraging it, investing it, working it.  Often, as a result they don't have any capacity to invest, because they are already locked into other investments.  The wealth management firm is looking for people who have not committed all of their wealth because they have recently cashed out of something, come into sources of cash or have a high degree of liquidity to enable them to move cash around between investments.   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.  The young woman I was talking to was calling me from a Philippines sales boiler room and was a "phone dog", her job being to call large numbers of people like me on a list and go through the script.  I departed from the script and she was lost.   We are all in the trust business and so what we say can't be tricky, smarmy or duplicitous.  We are here to serve clients and tricking them into seeing us isn't a winning formula.  The point of the conversation was to get an appointment, no matter what.  Wrong objective!     The point of the conversation should have to been to build trust and invoke interest. They need to weed out non-clients like me, so that they are only speaking with qualified buyers. I wasn't one, but she had no idea of knowing that because the script wasn't intelligent.  Now you would hope that your financial advisor would be intelligent, yet what they were doing was clear proof to me how unintelligent they were.   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.  THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Fridays, I release my other TV show The Japan Business Mastery Show on YouTube.   In episode #105  we are talking about Success Formula For Leading project teams. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!      

Start  In today's show we are looking at how to plan to be clear in your talk, knowing the viewpoint of your listeners and getting the delivery right.  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show".  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number 3  and we are talking about Four Easy Ways To Become More Clear When You Present      Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor…. Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Four Easy Ways To Become More Clear When You Present   The most common request from people attending our presentation skill classes is to become a clearer speaker.  Here are four areas to concentrate on.   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?  We need to be crystal clear about what we are trying to do with our talk, before we even worry about the design, production and delivery.   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 pitch our talk at the right level for the audience – no dumbing down to the exceedingly well informed, insulting them at every turn.  We don't want to be an acronym heaven dweller or a specialist jargon snob, baffling the punters completely.  We need to gauge our listener's level of comprehension and make sure we are talking to them at their level of expertise.   Rehearse our talk before we give it. Sounds straight forward doesn't it, except that hardly anyone does this! If we prepare the talk in writing, we may find the cadence is different when we say the words out loud, compared to when we 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.  Speaking in a boring monotone is one of the most common errors of non-professional, non-competent speakers.   Get the mechanics of delivery right. 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. 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 wooden face, totally devoid of expression is a tremendous waste, when we have so much potential to add power to our words with our facial expression. 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. 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 running the ideas together.  This makes it hard for the audience to digest the key points, because the points are rapidly overwhelming and replacing each other. Throw in some gestures to add power to the words, but don't maintain the same gesture for longer than 15 seconds.   To be clearer we need to decide what is the purpose of our talk, thoroughly investigate beforehand just who will we be talking to, rehearse our talk before we give it and get the mechanics of delivery right.   Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode 4 we are talking about Four Vital Ways To Get Your People More Engaged   Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show  

Episode #103 The Danger Zone When Presenting   In the history of the world, it has never been harder to be a presenter.  The Age of Distraction has guaranteed that everyone will mentally escape from us, without a bye your leave and with no compunction.  Assuming you have done a good job planning the opening to grab attention, have you also planned for the middle stanza of your talk?  This is where people can get bored and distracted.  They will leave you.  We need to plan the brackets of the main body of our talk or we may find ourselves talking to ourselves, as everyone is furtively looking at their phones under the desks.  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Monday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and my new book Japan Business 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. According to Toyota their Japan Taxi vehicle was launched not for profit but to contribute to the creation of a rich society by supporting the movement of many people with taxis.  It can carry wheel chair users, luggage-laden travelers and foreign visitors of all sizes.  It has a sliding door on the left side which make it very easy to enter and exit from. The object is to replace one third of Tokyo's thirty thousand taxis before the Olympic games start. Government subsidies are giving taxi companies incentives to buy the vehicle.  They consume half the fuel of older vehicles and the anti-collision sensors have reduced accidents by ten percent.  In other news, the Financial Services Agency the FSA is calling on financial institutions to crate financial products that focus on longevity  risk. This is running out of money before running out of life risk.  The FSA warns thought hat there is a need for services that preserve asset for when people cognitive functions deteriorate.  Finally, with the rise of research into autonomous driving issues have arisen.  In a level three situation the car is self driving but the human driver must take over in an emergency.  How does the car know this is the time to release the autonomous driving mode?  It won't do that until it is sure the driver is ready to take over.  Sumitomo Riko in Nagoya have developed the Smart Rubber sensor, made of anti-vibration electrically conductive rubber material which can determine which part of the steering wheel the driver is holding, by detecting a change in pressure.  Currently computers have a hard time determining whether pressure applied to the rubber on the steering wheel was from the driver or something else.  The new sensor will improve the accuracy of those detections. This is episode number #103  and we are talking about The Danger Zone When Presenting      Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. We have worked hard to get our opening right.  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 don't need to thump the microphone and ask if they can hear us don the back because we have already tested it.  We don't need to fuss around with our laptop because we are ready to go or if there is a laptop change over, we do that first before we even start saying one word.    That first word is a chosen word, not some accidental offering.  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 firmly clasped in their hands.  Their mobile devices will release them from the mortal toil of listening to us and they can be swept afar to more interesting and pleasant climes.   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 do 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.  This shouldn't be left to random chance.  This needs D-Day level planning, so that you know what slide you will show at what point, what story you will relate.  Your voice is such a phenomenal tool yet so many neuter it by turning it into a monotone that is guaranteed to become an insomnia cure.  Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back 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 an 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.  There is huge demand for reality television, which are like home movies into the lives of celebrities.  This is basic storytelling, often at a very mundane level.  Nevertheless, these programmes draw an audience because we are fascinated by the personal lives of others.  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 to nod 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.  It is our job to make sure that doesn't happen and the way to do that is to plan thoroughly on the basis, they will be gone in a nanosecond if we falter. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Fridays, I release my other TV show The Japan Business Mastery Show on YouTube. In episode #104  we are talking about Hard Sell Hell. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!  

Start  In today's show we are looking at how to prepare to deal with the gatekeepers who will try to block you, the right approach during the call and the importance of having a massive hook to grab attention.   Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show".  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number 2   and we are talking about The Top Three Most Critical Things You Must Do When Cold Calling       Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor…. Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. The Top Three Most Critical Things You Must Do When Cold Calling   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 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode three we are talking about Four Easy Ways To Become More Clear When You Present   Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show   

How To Persuade Followers Take One Welcome back to this weekly edition every Monday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"     I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and my new book Japan Business 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. Here is some bad news for pollen allergy sufferers in Japan. The National Federation of Health Insurance Societies the Kenporen have proposed that prescription drugs to treat hay fever containing the same content as their nonprescription counterparts should be excluded form public medical insurance coverage. Hay fever patients who pay only ten to thirty percent of the costs of these drugs would need to fund the full cost from their own pockets.  The savings would 560million dollars a year for public health costs. Nationally one in four people suffer from these allergies and in a big city like Tokyo the number is probably closer to half.  In other news, the Government is going to increase subsidies for companies whose employees take paternity leave.  The rate of staff taking the leave is only about six percent and far from the government's goal of thirteen percent by twenty twenty.  Japan ranked forty first in a UNICEF report on paternity leave based on legal entitlements.  The reasons cited for why more men don't take the leave were companies being short handed and a corporate culture that makes it hard for employees to request paternity leave.  Finally, financial institutions are starting to implement measures to address issues related to the dementia amongst their aging customer base. Elderly people hold sixty percent of individual assets totally some sixteen trillion dollars.  The number of aging dementia sufferers is projected to grow to seven point three million by twenty twenty five.  The share of assets held by dementia sufferers is expected to top ten percent by twenty thirty. Banks are training their staff on how to support customers with dementia.  They are also requiring that customers suspected of having dementia be accompanied by their family members when they visit the bank. This is episode number #102  and we are talking about How To Persuade Followers     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.  Death is not imminent but following idiots probably does shorten our lives.  Higher degrees, certification, specialisations, longevity, technical knowledge  etc., are all relied on for authority, to convince others that we should be in charge. But should we be in charge?   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 role and that is to develop 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.   In the old days, there was a clear separation between the individual's work life and private situation and the boss would never go there, as it was considered intrusive and none of their business.  Times have changed and society seems more complex today.  We want people to bring their whole selves to work.  The need for staff input of ideas and creativity is greater than it has ever been in human history.  Technological advances have plugged the entire advanced world into a 24/7 cycle of work.   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.  Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back 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.  Depending on the market, they may also be closer to the customer than their much older bosses.   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.  I wish it was that easy. 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.    In our office, we start the day by getting everyone together and going through the Vision, Mission, Values, and on daily rotation, one of Dale Carnegie's principles.  Why do we do this everyday?  Connecting the team to the WHY we are doing this work is the single most important job of the leader.  Each person takes turn leading the session, so it is not reliant on my being there.  The alternative, which you no doubt have seen, is to frame all of this stuff and hang it up on a wall so everyone can remain oblivions to it.  Not much of an alternative really is it.  Better to make it real and remind everyone everyday about the WHY.   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.  Here is a new challenge for bosses. Drop the “I know everything, now do this” approach and take on the “what do you think” alternative instead.   This is a radical switch for many leaders, but an absolutely important one.  Asking questions will yield so many more dividends than telling everyone what to do and how to do it. If you can make the switch you will have more success, because you are able to out think the opposition.  Even if they copy you, they will always be one step behind.  They also miss out on the motivational aspect of team members seeing their ideas come to fruition.  This builds teamwork and higher levels of engagement.  Your rivals will have a very hard time trying to copy that, because you have created an ecosystem of success that is distinctly your own. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Fridays, I release my other TV show The Japan Business Mastery Show on YouTube.   In episode #103  we are talking about The Danger Zone When Presenting. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!  

 Welcome to this first episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show. If you enjoy podcasts as well, there is an accompanying podcast episode released every Friday.  This show is designed for busy people who just want the diamonds. In today's show, as leaders, we are doing a reality check on our assumptions about what our staff really want. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Friday of "THE Japan Business Mastery Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Business Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our studio in the High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.   This is episode number one  and we are talking about Five Deadly And Dastardly Leader Misperceptions       Before we get going, a quick word from our sponsor…. Welcome back, Okay, now its time for the show, Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Five Deadly And Dastardly Leader Misperceptions Becoming a leader is usually because we were superior to our colleagues.  Maybe we had better technical knowledge, more experience, were better organized, worked harder than the others.  The problem is that for a hammer everything looks like a nail and we are the same.  We imagine everyone else is similarly motivated like us.  “If you just do what I did you will be fine” is what we tell them.  Not true!    Here are five of the most common misconceptions leaders have about their team members   Everybody is the same. We believe that there is a commonality of purpose within our team.  They are basically looking for similar outcomes.  We can treat them and interact with them the same way.  The reality is we will have people in different stages of their life and career.  They have different educational backgrounds, grew up in different locations, have different families and think quite differently from one another and from us.     Everybody wants the same thing out of work We are highly motivated and that is part of the reason they made us the boss.  We love challenges, to be creative, to push the envelope.  We love the thrill of the hunt for business, the cut and thrust of negotiating with buyers.  Probably none of these things excite someone who works n the back office.  Some people see a job as a job and their real passion is the hobby or their family or friends.  Work is just a means to an end.  They do their work and then want to go home and forget about it.   Everybody wants to be promoted You worked super hard because you had tremendous ambition.  You now synthesise your desires with those working for you.  You imagine they want to be promoted too, just like you.  They are not that interested.  They are happy with what they are doing.  They have found their groove, where they can control the stress and the wear and tear. They don't want to upset the apple cart.   Everybody wants to be a manager You had ideas, desires and aspirations to be the boss.  You wanted to be in charge, to do things your way.  All great, but the people working for you may be constructed in an entirely different manner.  They see what a miserable time you are having as a manager.  Constant pressure from above for results, the long hours, the unrelenting pace.  Maybe they don't want that for themselves.   Everyone wants to live up to “your expectations” You're the boss, so you have your standards of how things should work.  You are logical and considered, so it is natural that others would agree with how you want to run the world.  Well maybe not.  They may disagree with the way you run things.   They may have their own opinion on standards and these differ from yours.   We fool ourselves into seeing everything around us through our own prism.  We extend that viewpoint to our team and believe they are in sync with us when they are not.  When you look at your team members remember : people are different; they don't want the same things out of work. They don't all want to be promoted, not everyone wants to be a manager and they have different standards from you.  Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. THE Japan Business Mastery Show is here to help you navigate your way around business in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues.  Hit the little bell for automatic new episode notifications. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Mondays, I release my other TV show The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube.   In episode two we are talking about The Top Three Most Critical Things You Must Do When Cold Calling Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next exciting episode of the Japan Business Mastery Show    

Today is a very special milestone, as we have reached the 100th episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show.  It is nearly two years now since we started.  In the show, I bring the power of the Dale Carnegie Training curriculum to bear on the tough issues we all face.  I add in my own experiences in business here, hard earned over the last thirty three years. I have made plenty of mistakes and I hope I can be a guide for you, so you can avoid them in your case.  There have been other business shows set in Japan in the past, which I used to enjoy, but one by one they have all faded away. I am glad that my own show has continued. On this special occasion we need something special to go with it.  We will send to you, no matter where you are located on the planet, a copy of my new book Japan Business Mastery.  We will be giving away twenty copies and here is how you get one. If you are happy for me to quote it please leave an email comment at greg.story@dalecarnegie.comand the twenty most insightful comments on the show will be rewarded with a copy of my new book.  I will reach out to those selected, asking you for your best postal mailing address, so we can send you the book by airmail. Those who enjoy listening to podcasts will be happy to know you can now access all the episodes of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show as a podcast as well, wherever you get your podcasts.  Today I am also drawing your attention to my new book called Japan Business Mastery available on Amazon.  To go with the book, I am also starting a new TV show on YouTube called The Japan Business Mastery Show. There is a podcast version to go with it, wherever you get your podcasts. With all of this action going on, I need to move some things around.  Here is the new weekly publishing schedule.  The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show on YouTube and the podcast version are released on Mondays.  On Tuesdays, I continue with the Presentations Japan Series Podcast, Wednesdays with the Sales Japan Series Podcast, and Thursdays with the Leadership Japan Series Podcast.  Fridays, I will release the Japan Business Show on YouTube and the podcast version the same day.  That means we are broadcasting every day of the week.  I guess Saturday and Sunday are still open, but I think I am already crazy enough to be doing daily releases every week.  Actually, I am getting tired just thinking about this publishing schedule.  Why am I doing all of this for free?  The answer - at Dale Carnegie we have a genuine passion to help people progress in their careers and for businesses to be successful.  To have the consistency and dedication to release an episode every day, week in and week out, requires passion.  A passion to serve and that is very important in all of our businesses isn't it?  In this one hundredth episode, I am going to talk about the importance of showing your passion for your subject when you are speaking.  We have all suffered from the opposite haven't we?  We have been forced to listen to a boring, unengaged speaker just droning on and on, as they run through the details of the data.  When it is our turn, we all need to do a lot better than that don't we, if we want to keep the attention of our “Age of Distraction” audience.  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show". This is quite special, as today we broadcast episode number one hundred, so please allow me to say thank you to all the followers of the show for supporting it over this two year period.  I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery and my new book Japan Business Mastery. As always 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. The number of working women in Japan has topped thirty million, the highest since records were started in nineteen fifty three.  The number of women holding a job rose five hundred and thirty thousand for last year. Only fifty five percent of women hold full time jobs, the rest are working part time or are contractors with less stable positions and generally lower wages.  A Kyodo News survey of one hundred and twelve companies found fifty seven percent said they are trying to create a working environment more favourable to women.  In other news, Japanese women and men retained second and third place respectively, in their rankings for average life expectancy around the world in two thousand and eighteen. The average life expectancy of women in Japan is eighty seven point three two years.  For men it is eighty one point two five years.  A Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official commented, “Life expectancy has grown longer as we have seen drops in mortality rates for cerebro vascular disease or strokes and pneumonia amongst women and the rate of cancer for men.  Finally Toyota Motor Corporation has developed a self driving mini robot car to transport sports equipment during athletic events such as the Olympic Games next year.  It will transport the equipment used for the shot put, javelins, discuss and hammer throw events to return them to the athletes .  The robot which can travel at twenty kilometers an hour, has three cameras and a lidar sensor which enable to it to see its  surroundings.   In this episode we are talking about   The Power Of Passion When Speaking     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   Formulistic presentations may tick the boxes, but definitely don't ignite much enthusiasm in the audience. Yes, the key points were covered, the time was consumed, people heard the presentation matching the topic previously promulgated, but so what?  When we attend a mediocre or even bad presentation, we are reminded that a great opportunity has gone begging.  When it is our turn and we stand in front of an audience, we are representing our personal brand and our firm's brand.  People will evaluate our company on how we perform.  So our job is to perform well and really build fans for our business and ourselves.   Yes, a 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.  Have you ever noticed that a flat, deadly boring speech can be followed by a very engaging Q&A session led by the speaker? This is because the speaker is now freed from their self-imposed limitations of reading the speech.  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. Observing a lot of speakers, I have noticed that the things that often go missing most are their passion and commitment for   the topic. Additionally, it may be that 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 even start.  We need to grab their attention away from whatever it was they were thinking about before we get up to the podium.   An excellent opening needs considerable planning.  It must be a battering ram to break through the wall of audience disinterest and skepticism.  It must have a powerful hook in there to keep our attention.  Remember, this is how we in the audience are trained.  Headlines, the opening stanzas of newspaper and magazine articles, book titles, talk shows, the nightly news programming, television dramas, movies, etc., are all carefully designed and scripted to grab and keep our attention.  This is what we, as speakers, are competing with – a professional class of smart, well paid, attention monopolizing experts.   So our opening has to instantly grab attention.   Next we need to lead our flock through the intricacies of our topic, so that they can keep up and understand where we are going.  If we have key points, then give them numbers, because we more easily follow number sequences.  Just don't make it too many numbers.  Keeping up with the thirty three key points of any topic, delivered in a thirty minute speech, is a nightmare the audience doesn't need.   Wrapping it all up at the end is a critical component too, because this is the speaker's final impression with the audience.  Have you noticed how often the final words of the talk just fade out.   The speaker's voice strength just drops away altogether at the end.  What we really want is passion backing up the conclusion.  The voice tone should rise to a crescendo.  The talk completes with a powerful hypnotic, all embracing call to action.  We want everyone, metaphorically, to join us and storm the barricades.    Instead we get that limping, low energy fade out, as the ineffective speaker just bumbles their way into Q&A.  Typically, they don't have any strategy to control the flow of Q&A either.  Because of this, they lose control of the proceedings. They have committed a fatal mistake and allowed the final question to completely determine the final impression of the talk with the audience.  How many times have you heard a question raised which was completely off topic? Unfortunately this happens quite often, so the danger here is that the questioner highjacks our speech.  Their topic is the last item ringing in the ears of the audience rather than what we were there to talk about.  Do not let that happen!  We need two powerful, passionate closes – one for the end of our speech and one for the end of Q&A.   Passion for the topic and the audience are requirements.  These are not optional extras, useful additions, that we can include or not at our leisure.  If we don't feel passion for our topic and our audience, then we come across as flat, perfunctory, formulistic.  In these cases, when the audience leaves the venue, the speaker, topic and their organisation are immediately forgotten.  With that type of result, we have to ask, “well just what was the point?”. The residual impression is negative. The listeners feel that their time was wasted and no great value was imparted. They leave determined that if that same speaker ever pops up again in the future, they won't bother to attend.   You may not have world beating speaking technique, structure, openings, closings or control of the Q&A, but you can overcome all of these shortcomings, if you really communicate your passion.  We will forgive you small foibles, if we feel you really want to share this vital information with us.  We want to know that you are really motivated to help the audience, who have given up their precious time to hear you out.  Enthusiasm is contagious.  Our audience will forgive a lot of our faults, if they feel our energy, passion and commitment for the topic. 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 truly professional  and isn't that what we want in business? THE 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. Thank you for watching this 100thepisode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 other weekly shows.  For podcasts, Mondays for the Cutting Edge Japan Business show podcast version, Tuesday for The Presentations Japan Series, Wednesdays for The Sales Japan Series, Thursdays for The Leadership Japan Series, and Fridays for The Japan Business Mastery Show, wherever you get your podcasts.  Also on Fridays, I release my other TV show The Japan Business Mastery Show on YouTube In episode one hundred and one, we are talking about How to Find Golden Clients. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Here is a simple question – are you only working on the highest value items, that only you can do?  Some things you can and should delegate but there are others that need your exclusive, personal touch.  Isn't that what leaders should be doing with their time.  If that is not the case, then please take note of some efficiency ideas from today's show. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, 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. The proportion of children with allergies or dental problems is more than ten times higher in families on welfare than in those not receiving benefits.  The Tokyo university study identified factors such as stress, house dust and lack of supervision.  In households on welfare, thirty one percent of boys aged five to nine suffered from asthma, ten times higher than the norm.  In other news, part-time University lecturers with Ph.D.s are part of the working poor.  They get paid a very low amount for lectures, get no pay during holiday periods and don't get remunerated for preparing classes or marking essays. Tenured tracks are reducing but those entering the pipeline are increasing.  In two thousand and eighteen the number of Phds was fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty eight compared to only five thousand five hundred and seventy six in nineteen weighty nine.  The number of PHD doing part time work went up six fold from fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty eight in nineteen eighty nine, to ninety three thousand one hundred and forty five in two thousand and sixteen. Finally, one in seven Japanese children live in relative poverty.  The child poverty rate in Japan tops all of the OECD countries.  In single parent households, it is fifty percent.  Among households on welfare the ratio of children advancing to universities and vocational training was thirty five percent less than half the average of seventy three percent. This is episode number  ninety-nine and we are talking about How To Finally Get Your Act Together     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. “The first thing is to make sure you are in the moment” says sixteen time tennis Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic.  “That is much easier to say than to do.  You have to exclude all distractions and focus on what you are about to do.  In order to get into that state of concentration, you need to have a lot of experience, and a lot of mental strength. You are not born with that.  It is something you have to build by yourself”.     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.  When I am teaching leadership to senior leaders and we get to the time management bit, I ask who plans their day – written down and prioritised?  On average I would be lucky to get 10% of the participants raising their hands.  When I clarify that they are writing it down in some form of numbered order, a few sheepishly lower their hands.   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, so get over it.  The power of setting priorities, in order, is that you can concentrate on the highest value components of your work.  When I was at University, I remember one of the professors showing me a cartoon about the difficulties of sitting down and writing. The ironing, the cleaning, the lawn mowing all were given a higher priority, because the writer was afraid to start and looked for escape routes.  We do that in leadership – we procrastinate on projects and tasks we should be doing.   Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back 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.   We also need to create block time for thinking.  We can get very tied up in our businesses, busy, busy, busy working in them.  We should also allocate time to for working on them as well.  That means getting away from the everyday routine and taking a step back.  We need that thinking time to let ideas emerge, percolate and galvanise.  What should I be doing more of?  What should I be doing less of?  What can I add in to the business?  What can I take out?  Time spent pondering these ponderable will be some of the most valuable time you spend at work.  You don't do it now or do enough of it, because you are not allocating the time.  The weeds have seized you and you must break free.   Leaders, let's stop kidding ourselves - all we have is time and how we spend it determines all. Let's take back our control and rise above the noise, to work at the most peak level of effectiveness possible.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode  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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

In this modern day and age a salesperson just swanning into a meeting and asking the client really basic information about their company is completely incomprehensible. It is basic laziness and unprofessionalism.  It is winging it when there is no need.  There is so much readily available information on businesses and the individuals running them today it is incredible.  It is about time salespeople started using it.  Find out how they should be doing that very shortly. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, 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. Tokyo cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint was hacked to the tune of three point five billion yen or thirty three million dollars.  Remixpoint the owner of the exchange said two point five billion yen or roughly 24 million dollars belonged to customers.  Ouch.  In other news, Japan recycles eighty four percent of the plastic it collects, one of the highest rates in the world.  This sounds good but the figures are misleading.  Of the plastic recycled only twenty three percent is turned into new plastic, four percent is chemically recycled into its constituent parts.  The vast majority, all the remainder, is burned. Other countries don't count burning as recycling.  Finally, convenience store giant Seven and I had their new mobile payment system using barcodes and QR codes hacked and customers were defrauded through unauthorized access.    Eight hundred and eight customers using the cashless payment system lost thirty eight million yen or three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.  One month after its all dancing all singing debut, the system has been entirely scrapped. This is episode number ninety eight and we are talking about  Stop Being Hopeless In Client Meetings     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.   This is rather ironic because we salespeople have never had it so good.  In this modern age we have so much information available to us just a few clicks away.  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.   A few minutes finding this information and reading it will give the salesperson a very clear idea of the key business drivers for the company's strategy.  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.    Being able to tie what you sell to the goals they have set for themselves instantly makes the context relevant and places the discussion on the right basis.  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.   How many salespeople though bother to do this prior to calling on the client?  Not enough! If we turn up to their office and say, “Tell me about your business?”, this speaks volumes about our lack of research on the company beforehand.  It would be much better to ask a question that relates to the goals which have been set within the company.  We should be looking for some context where we can show how helpful we can be, in solving their local issues preventing them from satisfying their corporate 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.   We want to capture the scale of the gap between their current performance and their required performance, plus their chances of bridging that gap without our help.  If we find out the opportunity to grow 30% in Japan is a snap, because business conditions here are so much better than everywhere else for them, we may have a hard time showing where we can be helpful. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back On the other hand 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.  We could ask them “how is business?” and they may or may not choose to enlighten us to their reality.  Remember, everyone loves to buy but no one wants to be sold.  So the less you have to tell salespeople anything, the less likely you will be sold anything.    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. This should be our goal and we should be using the best resources available to us to achieve our goal.   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.   In sales, we need our buyers to know, like and trust us. The like and trust parts are the difficult bits, especially at the initial stages of the relationship. Sharing things in common is a great way to quickly establish credibility and a relationship.    Let's take my example.  I am a proud Queenslander, grew up in Brisbane, I support the Brisbane Broncos and Origin rugby teams, studied Modern Asian Studies at Griffith University and I practice karate.  There are a wealth of speedy connectors right there.  You can find all of this out about me on-line in about five minutes.    Start our meeting by commenting on how well Queensland has been doing in the Origin rugby and you and I are off to a great start! It means you know about the rabid Queensland versus New South Wales State rivalry in rugby and how important it is to native Queenslanders like me to win.   I am a buyer of goods and services here in Japan.  Over the last twenty 25 years here, not one salesperson has tried to connect with me through knowing some common connectors. Given what is out there now in the public domain, there is no excuse for salespeople calling on me, particularly over the last ten years, to not try to connect in this way.   It is the same for most people we meet.  We can get the relationship off to a flying start, if we bother to invest the time to find out their key details.  Yes, we are all very busy but that is not a sufficient excuse. We salespeople are simply not doing a good enough job to use the tools at our command today.  It is crazy when you think about it.  Trying to build a connection and establish a positive first impression has to be every salesperson's goal when meeting new clients for the first time.    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.   One of the other tricky bits about Japan is the group dynamic of decision-making.  We may not know beforehand precisely who will be in the room.  Often there will be extra people who turn up and so we won't be able to research them prior to the meeting.  However, after the meeting we can try to find out something about them that might enable us to establish a relationship.  If they support a particular interest, we might send them an article on that subject.    If they like a certain sport or activity we might arrange tickets as our guest.  However, I am a bit conservative regarding individual gift giving in Japan.  There are often corporate compliance restraints on entertainment and gift giving which we should be aware of.  We don't want our efforts to cause them any embarrassment or trouble.  On the other hand, we could bring something to eat to be shared with the whole team and that is usually acceptable.  Japan, fortunately has an amazing selection of these types of goodies for just such an occasion.   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.   Action Steps   Go on-line and read through the corporate annual report Use social media to find out about the person we are going to meet Use search tools like Yahoo and Google to see what we can know prior to the appointment If new people turn up to the meeting, do a search on them and see if there are ways we can connect with them. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode ninety nine we are talking about How To Finally Get Your Act Together. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

 No one tells you when you start in sales that you need a crash course in juggling.  Not juggling balls in the air but juggling al the deals with clients that need the follow through and juggling all the deals that are cooking away but not quite ready yet.  We can get ourselves into trouble, if we don't acquit ourselves well in this juggling venture.  Find out why that is very shortly. Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, 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. Toyota Motor Corporation is setting up a joint venture with Chinese ride hailing giant DiDi Chuxing Technology company.  Toyota is investing six hundred million dollars into the new venture to expand its business in China.   GAC Toyota Motor company a joint venture between China's Guangzhou Automobile Group will also join the project.  Toyota aims to promote the use of electric vehicles suitable for future mobility services in China, the world's biggest auto market.  In a bid to transform itself into a mobility company Toyota has established Monet technologies with investment from Softbank Group Corporation. Toyota also invested one billion into Uber technologies new subsidiary to develop autonomous vehicles together with the SoftBank Group and auto supplier Denso corporation.  In other news, A science Ministry committee of experts have approved Japan's first research involving the injection of human induced pluripotent stem iPs cells into fertilized animal eggs with the aim of growing human organs. The aim is to use human organs for transplantation in the future. Finally, The bank of Yokohama and Chiba Bank have agreed to a business tie-up.  The two banks the biggest and third largest by assets aim to launch a partnership in areas such as sharing information on mergers and acquisitions and business successions. This is episode number ninety five  and we are talking about Winning Sales Follow Through     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   The implication of this title is that if you don't properly follow through on the sale then you are losing.  Well, it is true - you are losing.  The difficulty of gaining a sale is hard enough, but the real difficulty is 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.  There are proposals to write, meetings to be held, materials and data to be gathered – all sorts of tasks required to make the sale happen.  In the middle of this rush, a sale is registered and 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.   We need to think carefully about our workload and ensure that above all, we protect our reputation for reliability.  If we are going though the Valley of Sales Death, where we have run out of prospects and the sales pipeline is now empty, we may be rushing around like a maniac trying reboot the sales process.    This means we are often over extending ourselves and we don't get to the follow through in a timely manner.  It might mean not following through fast enough with potential clients we met at networking events.  We lose the momentum and now they don't respond to us.  It might mean, that we have sealed the sale and then mentally move on to securing the next one, without properly nailing down the execution piece of the first sale, we have just completed.   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.    Clients themselves are genius at this.  You meet them, hit them up for a follow on meeting and they say contact me: after Golden Week (May), after obon(summer holidays in August), after Silver Week (September), after bonenkai(end of year party) season, after oshogatsu (New Years).    Basically they are trying to condition our expectations of getting a meeting with them.  That is to say, they are resisting our efforts to see them, by trying to slip out of our schedules.   We can take a leaf out of their book too and 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?”   In this way, we are not putting too much pressure on ourselves, if we think we cannot actually squeeze in this next meeting reasonably soon.   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?”   I struggle with this myself.  I get on a roll and pump up the client meetings, then the proposals have to start rolling out and this is highly time consuming.  The days are filled with more and more meetings and the time between them to do the follow up gets squeezed. Deadlines start to get missed or start to drift and things start to fall of the table and not get done at all.  I have to have a few harsh words with myself and tell myself to stop biting off more than I can chew.    Often, the client will stall you on a decision.  “We will study the materials and get back to you”. They don't and you don't get back to them either, to see about the why they haven't gotten back to you as promised. This is because you have moved on seamlessly to the next client meeting, then the next subsequent round of either hollow promises or genuine undertakings, which are slow to materialize.  Sales brethren, don't expect the client to do all the work on the follow through – that is our job.   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.    They have given you permission to delay, but they don't trust people who can't make their own indulgent deadlines.  Your trust quota from the client will immediately start to evaporate.  Remember, our objective here is the re-order, not just a single sale.  Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back You might worry about all the potential business you have left on the table by taking this extra time to concentrate on the follow through with this one client.  The trade off is that your reputation remains solid gold and you are going to ensure you will be around for a long time, not just a good time.   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 accomplito 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.   You may have seen entertainment programmes where the performer has a number of large plates spinning on a thin, reedy looking stick. As they increase the number of plates in motion, they get busier and busier rushing around to keep them all spinning, so none crash and get broken.  This is the sales life of follow through.  If we over estimate our capacity and launch too many items for follow through at the same time, like those spinning plates, we will falter and crash.   We need to have a brilliant technology for time control and time management.  We need to be highly disciplined.  We need to be excellent memo takers to ensure we write down what needs to happen next. Never try to commit the many things you have to do to memory, unless you are operating at the genius level of detail recall.  There is an ancient piece of wisdom on this:  “The faintest ink is superior to the best memory”   Write it all down, in detail, so that it is clear, creates a retrievable record and which is then actionable.  We need to be able to transfer that information to our schedules and link it back to the required sequences of follow through.  These all add up to our completion of the promise.   Often, we depend on others for some parts of the follow through and this is where we need to be excellent at delegation.  The main reason we don't delegate at all and blow ourselves up, is we are scared to rely on others.  Somewhere in the past we were let down and we are haunted by that memory for our entire working lives.  We cannot grow unless we get leverage. The chief source of leverage is other willing hands.  The issue with delegation is we don't do it properly and then conclude the tool, rather than the tradesperson is the problem.   When delegating there are some fundamental steps which must take place in order for us to be successful.  Firstly we need to plan the delegation and select the best person for the task.  This sounds infinitely reasonable, except we usually select the person who looks the least busy instead. Later we wonder why we have trouble on our hands.    The next step is we meet with that person to explain the task. This is where 99% of people get it wrong.  They tend toward the “dump it” approach rather than the “sell it” approach.  The “dump it” approach is where they just hand off the task and maybe explain a few of the details.  Typically they just say, “I need this done by next Monday”.  They leave out the WHY and the “What Is In It For You” part of the conversation.   Having explained the background, the WHY, their self interest in the project etc., we now work with the person being delegated to, on the timeline and delivery method.  We want them to be doing the main part of this, so that they have ownership and control over how they deliver it.  There will be milestones towards completion which need to be monitored.  At the successful fruition of the delegation we celebrate the achievement.   Follow through is not a one time effort, it is an every time thing.  In Japan, there is no margin for forgiveness of an error.  We are focused on the re-order, so we begin the follow through in the way we want to finish – highly regarded as someone true to their word, who can be trusted and who is totally reliable.   Action Steps   Understand the risks of poor execution after the sale has been completed Control the client's expectations Realise if you have too much on your plate, you need to slow down the pace Gather the best time control and time management methods you can find and use them Write it all down some place where you can later find the notes Use proper delegation methods that lead to success THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode  ninety six we are talking about Ignore Your Business school Advice. Uh, oh - 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Technical experts are rarely expert presenters.  Why is that?  They are smart, well educated, highly knowledgeable about their area of expertise, have tons of data and boast abundant experience.  Their presentations should be nothing less than triumphs, legendary value, unmatched deep dives on their subject.  Rarely the case though. They fail for the simplest of reasons, when really they shouldn't fail at all.  Find out why very shortly.  Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, 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. The Japan Post Insurance scandal boasts some amazing numbers.  Ninety thousand cases of inappropriate sales, twenty-two thousand cases of customers being tricked into making double payments, forty-seven thousand cases of being left uninsured for months before signing new contracts after their old ones were terminated, and twenty four thousand other cases where customers were disadvantaged.  What happened? The bosses set aggressive sales targets for the sales staff and they gamed the system to make their numbers.  When the scandal broke, the bosses tried to justify what they staff had been doing calling it “legitimate”.  That didn't fly and before you knew it, the Presidents of Japan Post insurance and Japan Post were doing a lot of deep bowing at their press conference. In other news, a Pew Research center report for japan found that ninety percent of Japanese think robots and computers will be doing much of the work currently being done by people, in the next fifty years.  Some eighty-three percent saw this as causing greater inequality, while seventy four percent believed people will have trouble finding work.  Finally, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has provided five hundred million yen or roughly five million dollars in subsidies over three years and three months to SkyDrive Inc, the first company in japan to develop an electric vertical takeoff and landing craft or eVTOLs.  Osaka Prefectural Government is aiming for a one person vehicle with six propellers to provide a demonstration flight at the Osaka World Expo in twenty twenty five.  At the Fukushima Robot Test Field at the end of February ten drones were launched simultaneously by different business operators to test whether they could fly safely without collisions in an airspace of nine hundred by six hundred meters. This is episode number  ninety-seven and we are talking about Technical Presenters Biggest Mistakes  Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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 rigeurfor 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.   Lets start with the deck, because this is the holy grail for specialists and this is where all the time is sucked up, with iteration after iteration.  Slides can be printed out and distributed after the presentation.  Why not during?  Yes, you can do that but the chances are that you will be on slide 5 and your audience will be on slide 45 and you have lost control of their attention. Better to mention at the start that the materials will be 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. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back The details can be presented on the slide because our audience can read it for themselves, which means we don't have to cover every detail on every slide.  We can show and tell.  That is, show the slide in its full glory but only refer to a few key points. This allows us to speak without being trapped by the text on screen.  We can speak to the points, elaborate and tell stories to bring the facts to life.    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 bring energy to the fore when we make recommendations or issue warnings.  These are simple voice modulation techniques which add validity to what we are saying.   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.  Regardless of the subject matter, it usually has ramifications for people and people are emotional.  We can find how this topic relates to their businesses and their lives and make it real for the audience.   We don't have to be dull. 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. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 In episode ninety-eight we are talking about Stop Being Hopeless in Client Meetings. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Academic studies of business are important sources of case studies, theories and new research.  All great stuff.  Some areas though are definitely behind the times and that is in the area of imparting information to an audience.  The bleeding of the executive summary from the written document, into the way business conducts meetings is a guaranteed formula for tears before bedtime.   Find out why very shortly   Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show" I am your host Dr. Greg Story, Your Corporate Coaching and Training Guy, 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 has been concerned about having too many of its eggs in the Tokyo basket.  There has been a move to relocate central govern offices out of Tokyo, revamping universities outside the capital area and government grants have been extended to promote local industries in rural areas to attract companies to move their headquarters out of Tokyo.  This has pretty much been a total failure. In fact Tokyo's population grew by one hundred and forty thousand last year.  The number of firms who have taken advantage of tax incentives to move their headquarters out of Tokyo has been insignificant. Only the Cultural Affairs agency is moving to Kyoto.  Despite all the rhetoric, all the rest of the bureaucracy is staying put.  In other news, a Health Ministry survey in two thousand and fourteen counted one point one million workers  who considered themselves depressed.  This was up from four hundred thousand in nineteen ninety nine.  More recent surveys pin about ten percent of the people in companies as suffering form depression.  Finally, of the one thousand five hundred foreign detainees who were held in prison as of june last year, six hundred and four were asylum seekers. The number of asylum seekers accepted into japan was just forty two.  There were ten thousand four hundred and ninety three applications for asylum. This is episode number  ninety six and we are talking about  Ignore your Business School Advice     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Avoid this advice at all costs, “State your conclusion first and then explain the reasoning behind it”. I am sure many have heard this dubious gem about how to persuade live business audiences.  It is well intentioned but atrocious advice. Driving this effort are the dual objectives of clarity and brevity.  Admirable outcomes for any business meeting.  However, if you actually want to dissuade people concisely and quickly, then go for it.    The “conclusion first” advice is a natural 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.  The written word though is different, but here we are talking about oral business presentations.   “Conclusion first” sounds quite logical and reasonable, except it doesn't work very well when it comes to persuading an audience.  If you are just imparting information then it is probably fine, but if you are seeking agreement on a course of action, then expect low rates of success.   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. This, by the way,  is when they are supposed to be absorbing your rationale.  Instead, they are no longer listening to you and are concentrating solely on negatives.   The Japanese language, like some others,  gives us a good clue on fixing this problem.  The verb is at the end of the sentence and so while we are absorbing content, we don't know if the sentence is describing something in the past, present or future.  We also have no idea if it is positive or negative.  This prevents the listener from jumping in and cutting us off.  They have to suspend judgment about the content. This enables us to explain the reasoning, then bring up our recommendation rather than the other way around.   Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backStart 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 Ben Smith in Tokyo after Thanksgiving.  We were meeting in their wood paneled boardroom, on the 46thfloor of their office in Toranomon Hills, 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, “Greg, 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.  We provide our experience, our rationale, our logic and reasoning inside the story.  We next 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.    Better to bridge to your conclusion, while others are already mentally agreeing with it, than having to fight a rearguard action from the start.  This approach allows us to more easily persuade others to take the action we are proposing.  This is the real world of business not varsity.  Try and it and enjoy the results. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode ninety seven  we are talking about Typical Technical Presenter Big Mistakes. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Very few business presenters are able to really engage their audience. They are speaking at them rather with them. In today's show we will deal with how to turn that situation right around and become a presenter who has the audience eating out of the palm of your hand.   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. There have been some changes in the way higher education is being funded in japan.  Government spending on education in japan represents one point seven percent of  public spending compared to the OECD average of three percent.  Tertiary educational institutions in japan rely heavily on private funding at sixty eight percent, more than twice the OECD average of thirty percent.  The amount of financial support provided by families as a percentage of income of university students has declined from seventy six percent in nineteen ninety six to sixty percent in two thousand and sixteen.  During the same period the percentage of student loans increased from six percent to twenty percent.  In other news, the Japanese government is encouraging firms to keep employing workers up to the age of seventy, to help ease the manpower shortage and ease the pressure on the pension system brought on by the twin factors of an aging and also declining  population. The number of sixty five or older workers was eight point six two million or twelve percent of the sixty six point six four million people, fifteen or older who are working.  Today twenty four point three percent of senior citizens have jobs.  The pool of workers in the fifteen to sixty four age group has dropped five million since two thousand and twelve to seventy five million today.  Finally, the Japanese domestic market for internet shopping has grown steadily at an annual rate of ten percent according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.  In two thousand and seventeen, Japan's on-line shopping market reached sixteen point five trillion yen or one hundred and fifty four billion dollars. This accounts for five point seven nine percent of total household spending..  The ratio in Britain, China and The US has already passed ten percent so Japan can expect to double in size over the next few years. This is episode number Ninety Four and we are talking about  The four hundred face presentation     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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, Snapchat, Line instead.  We cannot be so arrogant as to imagine our content can carry the day in this age of distraction.  The younger generation are going to be the future business audience from Hell. They are growing up totally distracted all the time, with the concentration span of a dazed gnat.  They have an addiction to being in touch with each other all the time and are unapologetically reaching for their escape vehicle - their phone - in a heartbeat.   If you are looking down at your note 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.  Some will be the same faces, depending on the size of the audience.  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.  Our object should be to speak one-on-one to every single person in that audience.   But Greg, in Japan, we don't make eye contact.  Not true.  In a typical business meeting, continuous eye contact will be burn out the retinas of our Japanese counterparts, so we have to learn how to turn the eye contact on and off.  A presentation is not the same thing though.  This is a different role for us and we need to play the bigger game of being persuasive. To do so means we have to bring our full armory to the cause, to battle listener distraction and escape attempts.   Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backHow would you like to become a dynamite presenter?  Sounds good doesn't it, well here is the answer – the High Impact Presentation Course.  Two days, two instructors, every thing video reviewed, massive individual coaching – this is the Rolls Royce of presentation training.  The next programme in Japanese will run on November thirteen and fourteen. In English we may have another programme scheduled for November but that is not yet decided.  We certainly will have one in English on February fourth and fifth next year.  Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com 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 not looking at the projection screen, our laptop monitor, the back wall, the front row or only one side of the room.  We are circulating in a random fashion around the audience, trying to draw them into the web of our message.   We have in our mind those 400 faces we have to connect with, before our time is up.  When we do this, the members of the audience feel more closely connected to us.  They feel as if they are being spoken to directly and they feel flattered with the attention.   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.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 that the next High Impact Presentations programme in Japanese will run on November thirteen and fourteen.  In English we may have another programme scheduled for November but that is not yet decided.  We certainly will have one in English on February fourth and fifth next year. Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com   In episode  Ninety Five we are talking aboutWinning Sales Follow Through. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

The new Japanese financial year has already started now and I hope that last year's results went well for you.  The reason I do this show is to help as many people as possible improve in the areas of leadership, sales and persuasion power.  I hope it is helping and if it is, then please leave me some comments. Today we are talking about how to be the authentic you when you give presentations.  That doesn't mean be the authentic disaster, because you are hopeless and just not professional.  What we are going to cover today is a checklist for you to access, so that what people see when you present is the best possible you, the professional you. Build your personal and professional brands.  Let's find out how we do that!   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. Japanese firms operating in Asia see Vietnam as the most attractive investment destination in the region thanks to the country's high economic growth as well as its strengthening position as a production hub and its large consumer market.  Once forms establish themselves in Vietnam they consider expanding their operations in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.  India was the next major interest.  Attracted by its high growth potential.  China was the third  most popular investment spot .  In other news, currently Japan hosts nearly  two  hundred  and seventy  thousand  students from other countries, with ninety  three  percent coming from Asia.  Forty  percent  from China, twenty  three  percent from Vietnam, eight  percent  from Nepal, and six  percent  from South Korea.  In two thousand  and  seventeen, seventy  nine  thousand,  five  hundred and  eighty Chinese students were studying the sciences at graduate schools in the USA compared to  nine  hundred and  ninety  Japanese students.  Of those Japanese students  four  hundred  and  ten were studying social sciences.  The number of Japanese students studying natural sciences in the USA at postgraduate level was a mere  zero  point  eight percent of their Chinese counterparts. Uh oh!! Finally, in January a scheme to divert funds sleeping in bank accounts for ten years or longer for use in initiatives in the public interest such as assistance to families in poverty has started.  About seventy  billion  yen  or six  hundred million  dollars is expected to be deemed dormant each year.  These monies will be transferred to the management of the Deposit Insurance Corporation, an institution that deals with bank failures. Bye, bye your money folks! This is episode number Episode #76  and we are talking about Your Own Leader Voice     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.Why are so few business leaders good communicators, given all the education they have received, starting at varsity and then later, through executive training they have received via their own organisations? Leaders – let's stop kidding ourselves, the reality is, if we can't talk to people, we can't lead successfully.   The TED talk phenomenon, which has spawned TEDxEverywhere, should be having a positive impact on leaders.  It would appear though that not many of us are taking any note.   Leaders are often told they need to be authentic. That means to some, that it is fine to be dull, dense, distant, obtuse, monotone and forgettable.  Dramatic oratorical flourishes are not required, but congruency is a must.  For leaders this means matching the way we communicate with the content of our message.    When we speak using a monotone delivery, placing equal stress on each word, sadly, 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.  Authentic failure as a communicator is probably not what leaders have in mind as the desired outcome when they talk about being authentic.   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 to keep the audience focused on what we are saying.   Leaders are often notable for speaking while exhibiting a “wooden face”, meaning they maintain the same facial expression throughout their talk.  Passable, good, striking, awesome, even exceptional news is greeted with the same dour 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.  Get the face involved, because it is a million times more powerful as a communication tool, than whatever is up on the screen behind us.   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 trample over the top of each other. Pausing is needed to allow the audience to process what they have just heard.  Getting through it in the time allotted by the organisers, does not equal getting our message across to the assembled audience. What can we do better? Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backWe can also speak using our body.  Our facial angle 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 interaction – rather fake engagement.  On the other hand, locking on to their gaze for much longer than six seconds starts to burn into their retina and becomes uncomfortable.    Our feet positioning, funnily enough, is important when speaking.  Pointing them straight to the front and 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. They subsequently only engage that half, leaving the remainder of the audience in supreme neglect.    Slouching, standing off balance, standing too wide at the base projecting arrogance or nervously striding about the stage, may not be projecting the professional image leader's desire.    Our hands can be a dilemma too.  We either overemploy them, so that like the monotone voice, everything gets the same unbroken level of emphasis 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.  Gestures are powerful tools to emphasise the key points we want our audience to remember.    Being a “good speaker” is not the goal.  Being a good person, who can speak convincingly is the real goal.  There are plenty of spivs, spinners, crooks, dodgy politicians, shifty CEOs etc., who are verbose and quoting that brilliant Aussie gem: “can talk under wet concrete with a mouth full of roofing nails”.  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, be you, but be the best possible you. Action Steps from today's show 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 Remember – you are the brand THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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. In episode seventy seven, we are talking about what we can learn from seventeen generations of traditional Japanese service. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Sales has been coopted by Hollywood, creating a stylized version of reality.  Sharp suits and conman ways are portrayed as the profession.  The truth is more prosaic, fundamental and involves simple basics.  Understanding buyer need and supplying it, isn't that hard, but salespeople say and do dumb things instead.  Today we will look at some simple things every salesperson should be doing and some things they should definitely be avoiding. 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. In a recent government survey   six    hundred  and  thirteen   thousand people in the  forty  to  sixty  four  age bracket were found to be recluses who rarely leave their homes.  This is even higher than a previous survey, that found there were five  hundred  and  forty  one thousand in the  fifteen  to  thirty nine age bracket.  Known as hikikomori in Japanese these recluses number over a  million today.  Seventy  six  point six  per  cent were men. Nearly  fifty  percent have lived that way for at least  seven  years. In  thirty  four  percent  of cases these hikikomori relied financially on their parents.  In other news, Japanese are working longer and not retiring. The ratio of people with jobs amongst those in the  sixty  five to  sixty  nine bracket is now  forty  four percent.  The elderly accounted for nearly  twelve  percent of the nation's workforce compared to only  seven  point  eight per  cent  in two  thousand  and  six.  Of those aged  sixty  five to  sixty  nine, seventy  two  percent were hired as irregular workers and their pay has been reduced to  fifty  to  seventy percent  of what they used to earn as full time regular workers.  In a Cabinet Office survey,  forty  two percent of people said they wanted to keep working as long as they can. Finally, SMBC Nikko Securities has launched a service for customers to advise on investment in Japanese stocks using artificial intelligence.  They have teamed up with AI technology developer Herzog.  The free AI based service will show stock prices expected a month into the future.  It will propose the best portfolios according to the client's risk appetite. This is episode number seventy seven  and we are talking about  Sales Delusions     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.  Smoothly memorised shtick, elaborate glossy materials, sharp suits, large expensive watches, bleached teeth, the perfect coiffure are not important in sales.  Yet, this is the image of the pro-salesperson.  Most of us never meet many pro-salespeople, because the vast majority we run into are hopeless.  We meet the great unwashed and untrained, the part-time and partially interested, usually in a local retail format.  The slick sales dude is what we see in movies or is a received image from urban myths. Hollywood pumps out  Wall Street,  Glengarry  Glen Ross,  Boiler Room, The  Wolf  of Wall Street and we get sold an image of what high pressure salespeople look like. Japan is fascinating, in that it throws up some doozies.  Rotting blackened stumps for teeth, disheveled clothing, scuffed worn shoes, ancient food stains on ties – you encounter this low level of personal presentation here with salespeople.  It is almost the opposite extreme of the extravagent American movie image. Rat with a gold tooth or rat with a rotting tooth – neither appeal very much.  What we buyers really want is someone on our side.  We want help to solve issues slowing us down, holding us back or preventing us from growing as we would wish.  There are  six  steps on the client journey with salespeople:   know you, like you, trust you, buy from you, repeat buy from you and refer you because they are a believer.  This sounds simple, but salespeople get confused about who they are working for. They think they are there to work for themselves and get their commission or bonus or promotion and the client is just a tool in that process.  This is really, really stupid. I coach salespeople but am amazed at the dumb things they say and do.  Some want to jam the square peg in the round hole and then argue with the client about why it will fit when it clearly doesn't.  When they get pushback from the client they then try to overwhelm the objection by strength of will or force of personality.  This is really, really stupid too. The salesperson jumps into the slide presentation on the laptop from the get go.  Or they are pulling out their shiny flyers or expensive brochures or whatever and are launching forth with their memorised shtick. My first sales job was early evening door to door Britannica encyclopedia sales in a poor working class suburb in Brisbane.  Before we were unleashed on an unsuspecting, semi-literate public, we had to memorise, word for word, the entire twenty-five minute presentation.  It wasn't great then, but it is unacceptable now.  Some people are still back in the nineteen seventies with their sales efforts.  I get sales prospecting calls even today telling me “so and so” is in my area etc. I can actually hear the cadence of them reading it off a script in front of them!  Pathetic. Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back Let me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  On April 22ndwe will run the One Day Sales Booster Course Part One.  If that is too early for you we will run it again on November 11th.  Now Part Two of Sales Booster will run on August 5th.  Details are on our website at emjapan.dalecarnegie.com Now back to where we left off.  When I am coaching aspirant professional salespeople, I ask them how do they know which slides to show or which flyer they should offer to the client?  This is usually greeted with a “Huh?” response. We all did “show and tell” in elementary school but some have not travelled very far since then and think this is how you do sales.  When I arrived at the Shinsei Retail Bank  the financial product sales team would whip out a flyer of one product and if the wealthy client didn't go for it, then they would just whip out the next one. This went on until the client either got tired of it or bought something. As salespeople, we don't know what to show the client and we shouldn't show the client anything, until we know what they want.  So keep the laptop closed, the flyers in the briefcase, the widget under the table and ask questions instead.  By the way, get permission to ask questions first, especially in Japan.  Here the status of the buyer is sky high and it is a total impertinence for a lowly sales pond scum to be asking God questions about anything. Nevertheless, God or otherwise get their permission and ask your intelligent questions.  Find out if there is a match between what you sell and what they need.  Mentally scour the walls of your gigantic solutions library, floor to ceiling packed with possible antidotes to their business ailments and select the best one for the client.   If there is no solution in your library, then don't try and force the square peg into the round hole.  Just thank them for their time and go and find someone you can help. If your solution doesn't fit, then don't waste the client's time - keep your shtick to yourself and move on to the next prospect for whom it may be a perfect fit. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 weekly podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts. In episode  seventy eight we are talking about Good Leader Habits. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

We all know we are the product of our habits, yet we do nothing about elevating our behaviours.  We also know that certain things work better with people than others and we should focus on the things that work best and make those our habit.  But we don't do that either.  Instead we keep repeating the same errors every time.  What did Einstein say?  Repeating the same actions but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.  So we must be crazy then. Effective human relations principles are things we should firstly understand and secondly bolt on to our personal operating system, such that they become seamless habits that we employ without thought.  Today we will look at just how to do that.  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. The Japanese government is about to introduce legislation requiring companies to set up protocols for preventing and dealing with abuses of power.  Pawahara is the Japanese word for this taken from the English Power Harassment.  It will take a year before the legislation comes into force for larger companies and three years for midsize and smaller companies.  By the way, there are no penalties attached to the legislation. Complaints about Power Harassment have increase three times from twenty  two  thousand one  hundred  and  fifty  three cases in two  thousand  and  six   to  seventy  thousand,  nine  hundred and  seventeen in  two  thousand  and  sixteen. Power Harassment is officially defined by the Government as the act of causing physical or emotional pain, or demoralizing the workforce by exploiting one's position.  The Labor Ministry had issued six examples: physical attacks, verbal abuse, deliberate isolation from other employees, making excessive demands, making too few demands and infringing on the privacy of others.     In other news, Line corp and Mercari are joining forces on mobile payments.  The operator of japan's most popular messaging platform and the used-goods online marketplace app will let shoppers pay for purchases at stores that accept each other's systems.  They also launched an alliance to welcome other mobile payment providers.  Line plans to introduce Line securities equities trading with Nomura Holdings this year if it receives the necessary permits.  It is also looking at a banking tie up with Mizuho Financial Group in twenty  twenty. Last November, Line announced an alliance with China's Tencent Holdings and its WeChat Pay aimed at Chinese visitors to Japan.  Finally, the Japan patent Office established the startup Support team last July to help startups protect their intellectual property faster. As part of their IP Acceleration Program for Startups they send specialists from their IP Mentoring Teams to the companies to assist them.   Also restrictions were eased for super-accelerant patent examinations to speed up the process.  It used to take an average of nine months to get a patent approved in two  thousand  and seventeen and this is now expected to shorten to around  twenty  four  days. Progress This is episode number seventy eight  and we are talking about  GOOD LEADER HABITS    Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.          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.  Discipline is a famed part of military life and various slacker generations are recommended compulsory military service as a way to fly straight.  Where does this military discipline come from?  Regular habits are a big part.  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.  You don't have to join the military to garner good habits but becoming more disciplined is a big help. Our biggest successes come from our ability to work with other people.  There are very few professions where you can do everything on your own and don't need the input, cooperation or contribution of others. However, we can pick up bad habits that damage our ability to garner that input, cooperation and collaboration. Here are a few bad habits we can eliminate if we want a smoother path to success. ONE  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.  Some people are pretty good haters and excellent at bearing a grudge.  So if you want to create a blood feud, then start publically whining about your colleagues.  If you have a beef with someone and you heroically decide to confront them with their failings, expose their inadequacies, and detail their insufficiencies then expect either the silent assassin who won't say much but will be seeking revenge at the first opportunity or the instant combustible who will explode right there and then and counter attack ferociously.  Very few individuals will look deep inside their heart, saint like, and admit their errors and bow to your superior and wiser judgment.  You have just made an enemy for life.  How about you?  Do you have enemies for life or have you become someone else's enemy for life? If the chances of success in complaining about others 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. Let's stop doing that and instead find a more subtle way to draw attention to problems which allow that person to save face.  Call out the error indirectly.  The issue will be raised for discussion and solution but not the animosity.  Make this your habit rather than a surgical first strike. TWO 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.  Yes, you can gain compliance and they will do it, if you are higher in the power structure, but you won't win the hearts and minds to the cause.  Let's become 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. Questions are our friends here and statements our enemies.  A statement will trigger resistance, whereas a well crafted question will lead to self-enlightenment.  Make asking well thought out questions your habit, rather than firing off statements like missiles.  Socrates was doing this back in ancient Greece, so there is nothing new about this concept. Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backLet me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  On May 24th and September 2ndwe will run the One Day Step Up To Leadership  Course.  If that is too early for you we will run it again on September 2nd .  Also, starting on June 3rdand running for seven weeks, we will offer the Leadership Training For Managers Course. Details are on our website at emjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off.  THREE 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.  Hollywood has glorified the riveting, moving oratory that rouses the masses and points them in the same direction.  In the real world of business leadership, this is a useful skill known only to a miniscule minority.  The vast majority will not be able to inspire their colleagues to man the barricades anytime soon, but with better human relations skills they can persuade them to do more mundane tasks like ensure the organisation goes forward and prospers.  When we shut up and allow others to speak we learn a lot more than when we are doing al the talking.  We already know what we know.  By listening, we uncover their desires, thoughts, attitudes, hot buttons, beliefs, fears, interests etc.  By knowing each other better, we can become closer through better communication around points of agreement and shared interests.  It is hard to disagree with someone you like. The reason you like them is because of those shared interest and ideas etc.  The reason you know those things is because you weren't always hogging the airwaves and doing all the talking. The caveat here is that you are genuinely interested in them.  A predatory listener, hoping to scoop up enough material to manipulate the other person into doing their bidding, is not a creating a success habit.  People are not stupid and we can all spot fake interest pretty quickly.  The wielder of the fake interest weapon will cut themselves to pieces, as others realize they cannot be trusted.  As we all know, when you lose trust in business you are finished. FOUR    Craft the appreciation habit   Self-centered people are always on about themselves and what they did and how great they are.  They can linger long on their superior qualities and accomplishments but are rather parsimonious about recognizing the achievements of others. These people wonder why no one wants to help them and why they get so little cooperation.  Flattery is not appreciation.  It is a lie that is hoisted on its own petard pretty quickly. The fake praise alarm bells goes off inside our heads almost immediately we hear it, so it has zero impact, except to never trust the perpetrator.  Honest and sincere appreciation is what resonates with us.  The reason we know it is genuine is because of the way it is communicated to us.  General statements like “good job”, “well done” are in danger of setting off that mental “fake praise” alarm.  We need to dig in deeper to what was good.  When we select the action or behavior that was “good”, we now begin to make it real rather than dubious.  Concrete examples add truth to our words and resonate with the listener. 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. We will definitely have habits one way or another so why nor make a conscious choice to use these habits to be better with others for a smoother path and a happier 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 THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 weekly podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts. In episode  seventy nine we are talking about DON'T READ IT. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Nervousness when presenting can make us do strange things.  Two of those are reading our speeches or trying to memorise them. Both are a potential disaster and best avoided.  We think we have to read it or memorise it, because we are not sure we will know what to say. We are killing our audience when we read it and we are jousting with a meltdown if we fail in our memorization. Today we will take a look at why these two techniques are a poor choice and look at what we can do instead.  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. Tokyo based venture company A.L.I Technologies aims to release a mass market flying motorcycle by twenty  twenty  two. Called a hover bike they plan to sell them in emerging economies in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where there is poor road infrastructure.  The vehicle will use propeller power to hover centimeters above the ground.  It will stay at the desired altitude through technologies that use sensors to avoid obstacles.  The price will roughly match those of mini vehicles.  In other news, Seven Eleven has launched an experimental program by shortening business hours at some directly run outlets in order to consider whether to revise its policy of operating twenty four hours a day.  There are currently fifty eight thousand convenience stores in Japan, dominated by Seven Eleven, Family Mart, and Lawson. Most convenience store chains require that they be run without a break. The labor shortage in japan however is driving this review.  Franchise store owners are finding it increasingly hard to hire staff. There may also be some greater effort toward using automation and artificial intelligence to run stores without staff to get around the staff shortage problems.  Finally, Suicide is the leading cause of death among children aged  ten  to  fourteen  in japan. It now accounts for  twenty  two  point nine  deaths in this age group.  Overall suicides peaked in  two  thousand and  three  at more than  thirty  two  thousand. In  two  thousand  and  seventeen it had dropped to  twenty  thousand  four  hundred and  sixty  five per  year. For children there has been noted surge in suicides after holidays such as the spring and summer vacations.  Last July the government adopted a suicide prevention plan, strengthening counseling on-line while also giving lectures to students on how to seek help when they have concerns. This is episode number seventy NINE and we are talking about  DON'T READ IT     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.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 however 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. If we read it for ourselves and struggled with some of the big clever journo style words, we could still break out our dictionaries and plumb the meaning. 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. He had a slide deck, but he just used this as his navigation, to help draw us into his story. The issue here is how should we deliver 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 way too long. That is the case for just about all of us.   Usually the sheer effort required is not worth it.  His speech content was far superior in the construction of the content, compared to the second speaker.  But he failed as a communicator, because he read it to us. All of his effort went into the crafting the script and nothing into the delivery.  It was all about him and how clever he was and not about us in the audience. 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 manage them without getting myself into trouble. However I did get myself into serious 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 thirty years, I had to memorise the content.  The plan was to memorise the first part in Chinese and then switch to Japanese, which was 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.  As we say, it seemed like a good idea at the time! Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backLet me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  On May 27th and July 8th we will run our One Day Successful Public Speaking Course. For two days on July 10thand 11thwe will run our High Impact Presentations course. Details are on our website at emjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off. 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.  So off I went, with no safety net.  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 self inflicted, fatal error.  While they were applauding I was wondering what to do next.  After having a brief internal debate with myself, I decided to wait for the applause to die down and then resume my memorized speech.  Because it was a memorised speech and not natural conversation, it was a forced exercise to remember the words.  Disaster.  Suddenly my mind went completely blank, and I mean a total whiteout.  I could not recall what 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.  I learnt it is pobably wiser to avoid memorising your speech. 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 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. Please, please, please 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. We will regard you highly as an authentic person who spoke from their heart.  And we will remember you thereafter in a positive vein. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 weekly podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts. In episode Eighty  we are talking about true north in sales. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

The pace is unrelenting.  The world is producing information at a prodigious rate and somehow we are supposed to keep up with it all.  In todays show we will explore some ideas on how we can better deal with this daily overpowering tidal wave of stuff.   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. Toyota Motor corp will supply its fuel cell vehicle technology to major Chinese automaker Beijing Automotive Group as it seeks to expand business in the world's largest auto market by volume.  This is the first tie up between Toyota and a Chinese automaker for hydrogen powered vehicles.  Toyota is allowing royalty free access to nearly twenty four thousand patents for electrified vehicles.  In other news, the English language ability of students at public secondary schools missed the government's proficiency target in two thousand and eighteen. Final year students of both junior and senior high schools did not reach the fifty percent goal for achieving the required levels for the Eiken proficiency test.  The average result was only forty two point six percent for junior high students and forty point two percent for High school students hit the targets.  Finally, the Keidanren, the nations most powerful business lobby has approved year round hiring of new graduates.  Restrictions have been lifted to enable firms to hire workers with greater flexibility based on their needs while allowing the students more freedom in their job hunting process. This is episode number eighty four and we are talking about  HOW TO MASTER THE DAILY INFO TSUNAMI      Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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, Pintrest accounts saps your mind and body.  The black, oily tsunami of “stuff” just keeps coming, no matter what you do.  Life is short and is this all there is to look forward to – years and years of this regimen?  How do you grow when you are constantly being pushed backward, fighting for survival, swimming against a roiling sea of “stuff”?   “While the music is playing you have to keep dancing”.  Uh oh! Is that really the case?  Can we keep dancing or will we suffer a major intervention that wrecks everything, because we can't find a way out of this impending doom and gloom of overwhelm.   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.  Dig further for each item as to why it is a constant irritant.    For example, “I pile up paper as a way of not losing it, but I don't get back to dealing with it”. “E-mail has become untenable, there is so much excess flow, I can't keep up and things begin to drift”. "I have all of these projects noisily buzzing around, at various points of completion, and they are like a dark cloud of impending doom that hovers over me”.  “Meetings suck the life force out of me by devouring my precious time and energy, compounding my woes and squeezing the little non-meeting time available to me”. “Business social media is a modern day digital opiate, spreading fast and wide, debilitating all who come into contact with it”.   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.  Get the survivors into a priority order for further attack.    If it is paper, ruthlessly throw it out and file the rest into one file, arranged inside into priority order for the next assault.  Before you file anything permanently, ask yourself, “how often in the last year did I consult any of the items I have already so meticulously filed?”. Scariest question in captivity!    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.  If it doesn't make it into one of these three folders then unceremoniously delete it.  If you are a notorious hoarder (like me), and simply cannot bring yourself to press the delete button, then put it in a new folder called “Just In Case”.    Only after that process has been completed, you may roll over and give up!  Hey, if there is some sticky item that is still that important, the other party will remind you with their follow up, so relax.   Find out more when we come back from the break                                         Welcome backand here is some information which will be useful.  On June twenty first and later on November eighteenth we will run a course called How To Make Multi-tasking Work For You. Details are on our website enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we were: For projects, stop the bees buzzing in your head, by writing down all these nebulous items on a long list and then attach priorities to them.  Start working on the main priority projects first. Just by plucking them out of the ether and writing them down, we realize the awful truth – we have too many things on the go and this is ridiculous.  We can now attach more realistic timeframes for completion and maybe even drop some.   Meetings are trickier, because often we have little in the way of choice and few options.  Be positive, consider your compulsory attendance at excruciatingly painful meetings as character building – “what doesn't kill me makes me stronger”.    If you must attend, try to bring some better order to the way meetings are run.  Try to have the agenda sent out beforehand, get everyone to agree to start on time regardless of who is not in the room, elect an Attila The Hun style facilitator to run the meeting to better control the ebb and flow of discussion.  Finish on time!   Don't set meetings in one hour blocks – say make it 40 minutes instead, and get through it all in that time or hold content over to the next meeting.  If you have truckloads of meetings and you can pick up just 20 minutes a day from every meeting, then life starts to look a lot, lot better!   For business social media, face the fact that you have become a heinous glutton, and have seriously over indulged.  Be positively violent toward non-essentials.  Axe them without mercy or at the least, banish them from your purview. Make some choices about where the highest value lies and spend your downtime there.    Keep in mind that there is not that much coming through the digital fire hose that is really vital, as opposed to mildly interesting.  If you really need information on a particular subject, rather than random grazing on the high plains, you can use the search function to aggregate what is out there. Think high art curation, rather than mass consumption.   Truncate the deluge, sort, prioritise and curate.  Get clarity first then allocate the time to wade into battle, swinging your long sword, smiting the enemy left and right, until the battlefield is yours again.  Be absolutely ruthless about wasting your time on low level “stuff”.  Now go get um!   Action Steps Stop, look, consider List up the items Look for the root cause behind the issue Create block time Concentrate on the priority items only Be ruthless - cut, cut, cut THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty five we are talking about Where Should I Stand When I Am Presenting. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Sadly not everyone is like us.  At time, we have to deal with people who are quite rude or aggressive.  This usually triggers an escalation of tensions and problems arise and smolder away under the surface, until the next eruption occurs. How can we stop this vicious cycle of downward spiraling emotions?  That is what we will deal with today. 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 is a crazy place. A pair of hybrid melons from the City of Yubari in Hokkaido fetched a record price of five million yen or forty six thousand dollars at the start of the season.  The melons usually sell for between four thousand yen and ten thousand yen and are given away as seasonal gifts.  In other news, Japan was the world's top investor in two thousand and eighteen.  This is the twenty eight consecutive year that Japan has been number one.  The net balance of assets held by the Japanese government, companies and individual investors stood at three hundred and forty one point five six trillion yen or three point eleven trillion dollars. Germany was second at two hundred and sixty trillion yen and China at Two hundred and thirty six trillion. Direct investment in the USA by Japan was a record high of fifty five point six three trillion yen or five hundred and nineteen billion dollars.  Japan's total overseas investments was also up by zero point five percent to reach one thousand and eighteen trillion yen or nine point three two trillion dollars, rising for the tenth straight year.  Finally, the government is going to legislate to reduce food waste.  Major convenience store operators Seven eleven and Lawson will start discounting rice balls and lunch boxes that are close to their expiry dates, by offering customers enrolled in their loyalty campaigns special shopping credits worth five percent of the value of purchases. The Japanese government said there was six point four three million tons of waste in two thousand and sixteen and half of that came from the commercial sector. This is episode number Ninety three and we are talking about How to Deal with The difficult     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.   I mean, come on, putting up with these people is exhausting and just wastes a lot of valuable time.   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.  If your rivals are dealing better with these internal issues than you are, in the end, their team will win in the marketplace.   One of the conundrums is defining “difficult”.  It varies so much between individuals and from situation to situation. Nevertheless, we can all recognize trouble immediately when we see it.  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. A bit of self-reflection will help to flush out our perceptions, biases, attitudes, behaviours, feelings and communication style that might be fueling conflict.   Past situation analysis is a handy tool to plumb the depths of our unhappiness with others.  Reflect on a situation where you didn't handle the difficult person well and things rapidly deteriorated.   What was the trigger point for you or them?  What was the outcome after the confrontation?  Is it possible you contributed to the explosion of emotions?  What was the biggest lesson you came away with from this meltdown?  Additionally, have there been any situations where you did pretty well handing a difficult colleague?  What worked, what was the outcome and what did you learn as a result?   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. Before allowing the chemical reaction in the body to take over and go into fight or flight mode, mentally just hit the pause button for 6 seconds.    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 they 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?  Keep the pause button on hold for another 6 seconds and think if there is 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?   Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backIf you really want to learn how to do better with people, then the Dale Carnegie Course is a wonderful programme to help you do just that.  This is a twelve week programme that improves communication, leadership and people skills.  The next Japanese language programme will start on September 18th.  There is also a three day Immersion version available starting on August 22nd. The next twelve week programe in English will commence on September 26th. Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com  Back to the show. When we take a breath and pause, we can have better control over how we react to them, rather than letting the chemical surge take over.  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?  The hard bit is biting our tongue after we have asked the question, so that we don't cut them off and jump in with our own shiny insight.  Instead, hear them out and ask follow up questions.  This now allows us to better understand what is driving the disagreement or their behavior.    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.  We might mention some mistakes we have made in the past and how we have resolved to do a better job of educating ourselves and thank them for widening our range of viewpoints.  There is nothing more disconcerting than trying to argue with someone who doesn't argue back, but instead praises you.   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.  This is the verbal aikido approach of not confronting or resisting attacks, but re-directing the energy along a path of our own choosing.  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! THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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. Remember the next Dale Carnegie Course Japanese language programme will start on September 18th.  The three day Immersion version is available starting on August 22nd. The next twelve week programe in English will commence on September 26th. Details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com In episode  Ninety Four we are talking about the Four Hundred Face Presentation 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

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 others THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

The number one request we receive from our participants in our presentations classes is help to make them clear to their audience. You would think that wouldn't be that heard.  Don't worry, plenty of people are seizing defeat from the jaws of victory in this department. Today we will shine some light on what we should be doing to be more clear when presenting.  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. Cash is still king in japan. Notes and coins in circulation account for twenty percent of the nation's GDP.  This is double the amount in the EU.  Cashless payments are still in their infancy at only twenty percent compared to Korea at ninety percent.  Japan plans to reach forty percent cashless payments by the time it hosts the next Expo event in Osaka in twenty twenty five.  Japan is expensive for credit card costs to merchants.  At an average of three point five percent this is high compared to globally at one point five percent.  Even for QR code systems the rate is three percent.  There are estimated to be three hundred million e-money cards in circulation and over thirty million mobile phones with e-money functions in Japan.  These only account for a few percent of retail payments though.  In other news, last year one in eight young people turning twenty in Tokyo were not born in Japan.  That doesn't count those born in japan, but who are not ethnically Japanese. The Government says there are two point seven three million non-japanese living here.  The Japanese population may be declining, but the number of non-japanese is up six point six percent since two thousand and seventeen.  Finally, if you are thinking of buying a convenience store franchise in Japan to become free of the corporate chains you might want to do some careful research. For example, seven eleven increased its outlets by one thousand every year between two thousand and eleven and two thousand and seventeen.  During the same period, the labour shortage became more severe.  The number of job offer to job seekers went from zero point five six to one point five four. Hourly costs for staff went up from seven hundred and thirty yen per hour to eight hundred and forty eight yen.  The labour shortage and twenty four hour operating rule of the franchisors is forcing owners to work increasingly longer personal hours with no time off.  Seven eleven also asks for between forty percent to seventy five percent of gross profit as its franchise fee. This is episode number ninety one and we are talking about Don't Mystify Me With your Presentation Please     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. he global chief's private jet has landed. 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.  After the obligatory networking and chatting with tablemates over lunch, the main event gets underway.  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.  Being intellectually brilliant and speaking above your audience is not effective communication. 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. Consequently the speaker lost the audience. 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?  These are all bad questions for an audience to be asking.  They should never have to wonder because the speaker is clear, coherent and provides direction.   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.  The slides roll out and pull us along the path of the argument.  Other simple ploys like “there are three key issues” or “the five areas of urgent attention are…” helps to frame the content in a way where we can track it.  These structures help us to relate the current point to those preceding it.      Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backIf you would like to give crystal clear presentations then take a look at doing our High Impact Presentations two day programme running on November thirteenth and fourteenth.  Details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com  Back to the show 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.  Our font this day though was dry and not at all helpful because we couldn't get the point.   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. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Remember, if you would like to give crystal clear presentations then take a look at doing our High Impact Presentations two day programme running on November thirteenth and fourteenth.  Details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com 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.   In episode ninety two we are talking about Every new sales year you are back to zero again. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!  

We are all amateurs when it comes to negotiating.  Very few of us bother to study about it, because it seems removed from our everyday. It is the lore of movies, where tough negotiations are portrayed as gladiatorial encounters.  When we do get into a negotiation, we have no plan and little clue about what we should be doing.  So today, we introduce with some ideas about negotiating to better prepare ourselves for that day when we have to conduct a negotiation in business. 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. Bank passbooks have been a staple of banking in japan, along with many hour waits for the most mundane of processes.  Major lender MUFG will no longer issue paper passbooks from now to most customers who open new accounts over the counter.  They want us all to move on-0line to help them reduce costs.  The banks have to pay two hundred yen stamp duty annually to the government for every passbook they issue.  Expect the other major banks to follow suit.  In other news, Amazon and major super market chain Life will tie up to sell fresh food on-line.  The target market for this service are the elderly and customers too busy to shop. Amazon is touting delivery times as fast as two hours. Amazon japan expects to be able to expand its product offerings while the supermarket hopes to reach a younger customer demographic and people who live in areas without stores.  Finally, farm damage from bad weather and disasters totaled five hundred and sixty billion yen or over 5 billion dollars last year.  The number is the second highest in the last ten years, after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown disasters. This is episode number ninety and we are talking about  Negotiating With The Unpleasant     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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 12 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.   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.   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 In sport we say play the ball not the opponent.  So we should 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.   Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backIf you would like to get some training on negotiations, we will be holding a one day programme in English on November twenty seventh and in Japanese on December ninth.  Details are on our website enjapan.dalecarnegie.com.  Back to the show. Be honest Be honest and transparent about what is important to you and why.  Clearly state your goals, issues and objectives so the other side can grasp where you are coming from.  Don't assume it is obvious, because it probably isn't.  If only common sense was more common!   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.   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.   End on a good note Shake on it, agree the actions steps and who is accountable for what, by when and how.   Enjoy the process Reflect and learn from every negotiation.  Have your own criteria to evaluate the process and solution then write it down as a record for future reference.  See your own growth being aided by understanding and learning from different points of view.   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.   Action Steps Have a positive attitude Meet on mutual ground Clearly define and agree on the issue Do your homework Take an honest inventory of yourself Look for shared interests Deal with facts, not emotions Be honest Present alternatives and provide evidence Be an expert communicator End on a good note Enjoy the process THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Remember, if you would like to get some training on negotiations, we will be holding a one day programme in English on November twenty seventh and in Japanese on December ninth.  Details are on our website enjapan.dalecarnegie.com 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.   In episode ninety one we are talking about don't mystify me with your presentation please . 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

How hard can it be the present the sales materials to the buyer?  Simple right!  Well maybe not. What are the best practices to ensure the meeting is a success and we make a sale. So many salespeople are taught product knowledge, given catalogs of products, prepare slide decks to explain what they sell to the buyer, but have got very little clue about how to present it all.  Today we pull back the velvet curtain and show the success secrets of how to present your materials to the buyer  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. Last year, the number of deaths in traffic accidents fell to the lowest on record since 1948.  Sounds pretty good right.  However, the number of fatal accidents caused by drivers seventy five and older hit a record four hundred and sixty, accounting for fifteen percent of all fatal accidents.  The number of people seventy five and older who hold a drivers license increased to five point six million. By twenty twenty two the number is predicted to reach six point six million.  Keep your wits about you folks when you are out and about. Japan is a pretty safe place but be careful out on the roads.  In other news, Tokyo based Mynavi's survey of new company recruits showed that one in three are considering leaving their jobs within five years and only one in five treat their employment as being a lifetime role.  This is shocking in an economy used to people joining companies for life.  Nearly half said they are considering changing their jobs within ten years. Only seven point six percent were planning to spend more than ten years with their employer.  Twenty one point eight said they plan to stay with their firm until retirement.  Finally, more than a million Japanese work in a different city to their family being away on job assignments.  Usually the wife stays put with the kids and the husband lives alone in a different town. In a two thousand and seventeen survey by the Japan Institute for Labor policy and Training, nearly two thirds of Japanese firms transfer their staff and only nineteen point four percent say they take any account of the wishes of the employees as to where they are transferred. These assignments usually last longer than three years, with very limited company support for family reunions. This is episode number eighty nine and we are talking about Presenting Our Sales Materials     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.   Also, at the beginning, we don't know which materials to show to them, because we don't know which is the best solution for their needs.  Are they after blue or pink?  There is no point in going to great depths to describe your unmatchable, unbeatable, best blue in the universe, a prince amongst blues, if they only want to buy pink. After the questioning phase is completed, when we know what they need, then and only then, do we can grab our materials and guide them through the detail.    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.   When we need to make a strong point, we should back it up by using eye contact.  The problem is their eyes are glued to the page in front of them, so that they are not even looking at us anymore.  To get their eyes off the page, to make eye contact with us, simply raise the pen to your own eye height and their gaze will soon join yours.   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.   Slide Decks Regarding the preparation of slide decks, this is a very specific “visual” topic and so please go to our You Tube Channel.  We have a comprehensive video tutorial of all the nitty gritty detail of what works best. To access the video, please go to our YouTube Channel, “Dale Carnegie Training Japan”.    In the playlists, there is a section called “How to Become Really Excellent At Presentations”. Scroll down to find the video titled “How to Use Powerpoint etc., (Properly) When Presenting”.   This takes you through colours, fonts, layout, graphs, tables, photos - everything you need to know in one place.   Many Japanese presenters are at world champion level at getting this type of thing wrong.  Everything and the kitchen sink is thrown up on the one screen, with garish colours and disparate fonts.  Usually it is a total mess.    Don't make this your template to try and blend in. The country of zen has not managed to apply any such minimalist concepts to what goes up on a screen.  The basic rule is “less is more” with presentations on screen.   Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backIf you would like to get some sales training for yourself or your team, then August fifth we run our sales booster two programme and later in the year, we repeat our sales booster one programme on November eleventh. These courses are entirely modular, so it doesn't matter which order you do the programs in.  Details are found on our website enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to the show It is extremely rare that we wrap up a deal at the first meeting in Japan.  Usually, we come back with our solution and pricing.  There are many favoured standard styles for presenting proposals for clients, so it is impossible to go through all of those.    However, in general because of their risk aversion, most Japanese buyers have a tremendous desire for detail.  Let me share with you an insight about this preference for above average levels of information supply.   When I was student here in the late 1970s, I attended an international symposium on Sino-Japanese relations.  One of the Japanese academics was relaying a story about the introduction of zen into Japan from China.  One of the zen stories used a well and a bucket as a metaphor for a spiritual point of instruction.  In the Chinese version, the key point was the allegory not the detail of the equipment being used    In the Japanese version of this story, great attention was placed on the dimensions of the well, the bucket, the winding mechanism, the construction of the rope etc.  I have never forgotten that insight and it has played out as a truism here in Japan.  I have found it is almost impossible to give the Japanese buyer too much detail.  I am not suggesting you should, but just be aware there is a hunger here for data.   As flagged, this is part of their risk aversion preference.  By having more and more detail, they can reduce the possibility of a mistake or a failure.  They will suck up as much detail as they can get out of you.    It doesn't mean you should give them so much detail, because it diffuses their concentration on the key things we want them focused on.  Remember, we should never sell past the sale.  However, bear in mind that the demand for detail and data from the buyer is always going to be super strong.   Probably way past what you may be used to.   The proposal should reflect the information captured during the sales interview.  Outline what you believe is the issue facing the client based on what they told you.  Warning! Before proceeding any further, it is critical to check that you have clearly understood their needs.     If this is incorrect, then the rest of the document is immediately headed for the trashcan.  Assuming that is not the case and having laid that understanding out, now suggest your solution.   Depending on your preference, you can present the content in this way: Expected Result-Problem-Solution or Problem-Solution-Expected Result.   At the solution point though, go into some substantial detail.    Where possible try not to just send the proposal document by email.  Present it yourself, because what may be clear to you, may not be so clear to the buyer. We often assume knowledge that they don't have and so key points can be missed.  Sometimes buyers will say “just email me the proposal”.  Resist this idea with every fibre in your body and get over there and present it instead.  Mention you have something you must “show them” and explain that is why you can't just send it.   Often they will be the internal advocate for what we are selling, so we want them to have the power of persuasion on our behalf. Always present the proposal in person for clarity and so you can answer any questions or correct any misunderstandings.   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 Before putting together your slide deck watch the video “How to Use Powerpoint etc., (Properly) When Presenting”. Always present your proposal in person Expect the Japanese will want a lot more detail than you may be used to putting in your proposal document Present your solution in this order: Expected Result-Problem-Solution or Problem-Solution-Expected Result.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Remember, if you would like to get some sales training for yourself or your team, then August fifth we run our sales booster two programme and later in the year, we repeat our sales booster one programme on November eleventh.  These courses are entirely modular, so it doesn't matter which order you do the programs in.  Details are found on our website enjapan.dalecarnegie.com 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.   In episode  ninety we are talking about Negotiating With The Unpleasant. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Breathing. How hard can that be when we are presenting?  Funnily enough we do crazy things and create problems where we don't need them.  Today we are going to look at how to make sure we have enough oxygen to the brain and enough wind power to drive the vocal chords. 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. The biggest and most powerful Japanese business federation is the Keidanren. It's chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi recently told a news conference that lifetime employment is no longer sustainable. The link between tenure and wages in japan is one of the strongest in the OECD countries.  With lifetime employment the firm is supposed to develop you throughout your career. However, more than two thirds of Japanese workers believe they need further training, which is double the OECD average.  Participation in lifelong learning in Japan is in the bottom quarter of OECD members.  Also the share of Japanese workers who find training useful for jobs is the lowest in the OECD.  In other news, Softbank has used at least five investment vehicles, including the one hundred billion dollar Vision fund to make its mobility investments.  Deep pockets and aggressive investing tactics and sweeping vision of the future of transportation give SoftBank and its founder Masayoshi Son and outsized influence in shaping the entire industry. The Vision Fund has more than thirty investment professionals who work to promote cooperation and integration among the portfolio companies, which they refer to as a family.  Finally, Japan's greenhouse gas emissions fell one point two percent in fiscal two thousand and seventeen, a fourth straight year of decline.  The Environment Ministry said this was a result of increased  use of renewable energy.  Japan is targeting a twenty six per cent cut by twenty thirty.  So far they are at eight point four percent.   This is episode number eighty eight and we are talking about  What Is the Correct Breathing Method When Presenting    Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Breathing is such a natural act and normally, we don't pay it much attention.  Some how 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. Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backand if you would like to improve your public speaking skills then take a look at our Successful Public speaking course.  This is a one day programme and the next course will he held on July eighth.  If you want to develop a very high level of speaker skill, then our two day High Impact Presentations course will do just that.  Japanese language versions are being held on July tenth and eleventh and later in the year on November thirteenth and fourteenth.  The English version will be held on July sixteenth and seventh .  The details can be found on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com   Back to where we left off. 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.   This diaphragm breathing is actually how we should be breathing all of the time and I recommend you start the practice and make it your default habit.  When we are in front of the audience, they cannot see the breathing rhythm, so there is no need to feel self-conscious.  Every breath we take starts at the lowest point of the diaphragm and we sense our tummy being pushed out and then being pulled back in. This is how we should be breathing while we are on stage.   Interestingly enough, if we lose the flow and suddenly, the breath begins from the very top of the chest, we will feel our pulse rate pick up, our chest tighten and our shoulders start to rise.  This might happen at first, before we can master this deep diaphragm breath control, but don't worry.  Just slow the breath down and concentrate on the lower diaphragm and trying to push your tummy out with each inhalation.  Once you do this, the cycle will re-institute itself and you will be getting plenty of air.  The key is to pick this up in rehearsal.   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.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty nine we are talking about Presenting Our Sales Materials. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Dale Carnegie's famous book How To Win Friends and Influence People dealt with what to do when you want to get on with others.  Today we are going to have a bit of fun and talk about what not to do.  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. In twenty forty when Japan's population of people sixty five or older is expected to near its peak, the number of senior citizen households will increase by seventeen percent from twenty fifteen to reach twenty two point forty two million or forty four percent of the nations total households and forty percent of those households will only have one member. In other news, a Japanese aerospace startup Interstellar Technologies Inc successfully launched a small rocket Momo-3, making it the country's first privately developed model to reach outer space. Founder Takafumi Horie said, “It was a complete success.  We'll work too achieve stable launches and mass produce rockets in quick cycles”. The firm aims to develop low cost commercial rockets to carry satellites to space.  Finally, in the past two years Japan's total employment rose by two point two nine million, while Japan's overall population declined by eight hundred and forty thousand. Since nineteen ninety six, irregular employment has surged rom twenty percent to forty percent. Japan's labour participation rate of those working between the ages of fifteen to sixty five stands at around seventy eight percent.  Switzerland's rate is eighty four percent so Japan still has room to grow. This is episode number eighty seven and we are talking about  How To NOT Win Friends And NOT Influence People      Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   Whenever you see a fault in someone else, jump right in, don't hesitate to correct it immediately. If there is a mistake, then remonstrate with them about their failings.  They need to know about it don't they!  Belittling them in public is a good way to keep their ego in check.   You have read somewhere on-line, that people respond better to honey than vinegar, so from time to time, honey up your words with some fake praise.  Really crank up the superlatives and pander to their ego to get them to do what you want. People are pretty thick, so you will probably have to lay it on with a trowel.  Delivered with a fake smile is good too.   Rather than plumbing the other person's desires and communicating in a way that get's their buy in, just pull rank and tell them what they have to do.  You know more about everything than they do, so make them fly straight and use the dominance of your personality to force them forward.   Treat people as disposable commodities, who perform required functions.  Cogs in your wheel really. Apart from fake interest, don't care much about them, after all they don't count anyway.  The world is your oyster, not theirs and if they were not so stupid and lazy, your life would be much easier   Avoid smiling – it will be taken as a sign of weakness.  A heavy, serious face makes you look more important and impressive. A scowl seems to work wonders in intimidating others to do what you are telling them to do.    Axe that jive about getting them to talk and you being a good listener.  Hey, time is short.   They need to hear from you what they need to do. Use most of the time to talk about yourself and your brilliance.  They need to hear this, to learn from the superior role model on how it is done.   You have interests and so do they, but your interests are much more important, so make sure they are au fait with yours.  You are important, not them, so the object of each exchange is to boost your own importance with those around you.  Make sure they know what a big shot you are at every chance.  Keep repeating pertinent facts until they get it.   Win every argument, don't leave any opportunity to chance.  You must dominate the ideas war.  If they start to think they have won over you, it will be the thin edge of the wedge and others may start to get uppity as well.  Put them in their place immediately and without reservation.   If they are wrong then tell them so quickly and emphatically.  They need to hear this from you every time they step out of line. Mistakes cannot be tolerated whatsoever, so the faster you point out their errors, the more efficient things will be around here.  Never forget you are the font of all knowledge and they need correction.   If it turns out you are wrong, never admit it.  Stick to your guns and browbeat them into submission.  There cannot be any questioning of your leadership authority. To bone up on how to better spin it, re-read George Orwell's “1984”. It is a great primer on “doublespeak”.   Don't bother to engage people in a friendly way.  Life is a serious affair, so they had better get with your plan and your approach. This will help them to get the message faster, cut out all the fluffy bits and get straight down to the meat.   Do the majority of the talking, so they can't get a word in edge wise to disagree with you.  Simply out talk them and bludgeon them with your will. If they are not getting it, then talk LOUDER!   Make sure they know your ideas, in detail.  Don't ask them for their ideas, all they need to know is what you tell them.  They don't need their own opinion, because you are going to give it to them.   Don't bother with that hokey “walk a mile in their moccasins” liberal, pinko propaganda. They need to appreciate your better considered viewpoint – it will save us all a lot of time.   They may have ideas and desires, well, so what? Your ideas and desires are all that count.  They are much more relevant and important, so solely concentrate on what you want to happen.   Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backand a course you might find fabulous for developing excellent people skills is the dale Carnegie Course; Effective communications and Human Relations. Courses run for twelve weeks and the next programs start on these dates: June 19th, July 6thand September 18th.  Full details are available on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com   Back to where we left off: People are basically evil and untrustworthy.   Don't expect any nobility out of the great unwashed. Check everything twice and expect to be ripped off and cheated by the rabble. Therefore always be checking and be very well prepared in advance.   Forget about selling your ideas, why should you have to?  Just tell them what you want and force them to do it.   If there is a mistake, don't beat around the bush – call it out and preferably do so as publically as possible, so that they can be shamed and the rest can benefit from a “teachable moment”.   In the unlikely event you ever made a mistake in your life, keep it to yourself.  Don't be generous and judge them by taking into account where you may have struggled in the past. Instead have a sky high expectation for them and hold them to it.  Ultimately, they will thank you for the double standard.   Give direct orders at every stage and opportunity.  People are either weak willed, sheep or plain stupid, so they need to be told what to do, in detail, in triplicate and often.   If they blow something up, hold them accountable and don't worry about them losing face – they can be an object lesson for others on the penalty for failure and the shame attached to that.  People are driven more by fear of failure, than desire for gain. So hammer them hard.   Wait until you receive perfection, before you hand out any recognition. If you do have to give them any praise, let's keep it miniscule.  We don't want them getting a big head.   If they are having trouble with their work, make a point of describing the distance between their current capacity and the problem at hand.  They need to know they are far from the mark and that they had better harden up.   Forget about whether they are happy doing what you suggest.  When did any of your bosses care about whether you were happy following orders?  The point is that they should do what you say and their happiness or otherwise is not important in the big scheme of things.  Produce the numbers or else.   Anonymously send this transcript to your competitors, as a true guide for leaders. Sign it as follows: “This is good. Regards, J”, so they think it is from someone they know.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty eight we are talking about What is the Correct Breathing Method When Presenting. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

How is it possible that a salesman who can barely see over the counter become the top salesman in his company?  We all think we have our problems but compared to Toshiya Kakiuchi we have nothing to complain about.  With his limitations, he succeeded in sales, so if he can do it then what is our excuse? 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. The Bank of japan has forecast that nearly sixty percent of Japan's regional banks will suffer net losses ten years from now.  They are facing a dwindling client base brought on by accelerating population decline in many regions across Japan and the tightening profitability of their businesses.  The worsening performance of regional banks is bad news for companies and other borrowers that sustain regional economies.  Mergers will help to some extent but this won't fix their profitability problems. In the April-December period in two thousand and eighteen more than eighty percent of the seventy nine regional banks listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and other markets posted either reduced profits or losses.  In other news, according to a recent survey by En-Japan Inc, close to forty percent of employers feel they have low retention rates for regular employees hired in the middle of their careers.  Companies said that nineteen point two percent of midcareer hires were likely to quit between six months and a year after being hired.  Another five point eight percent left in less than a month. One in three forms said a midcareer hire was prone to quitting in less than six months.  Finally, The number of children in japan fell by a third during the Heisei period running from nineteen eight nine until this May. The number aged under fifteen was estimated at fifteen point three three million, as of april this year, down one hundred and eighty thousand from a year ago.   This is episode number eighty six and we are talking about The One Hundred and Six Centimeter Salesman     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.Salespeople are world class whiners. They are the most creative group amongst all professions for coming up with excuses about why they can't meet their targets.  The sale's life requires a constant stream of new buyers. Marketing is permanently inhabited with ne'er-do-wells, who are sabotaging the sales department's efforts with underdone campaigns and inept promotions.  When the leads are few and far between, desperate measures are called for and the chief villain of the piece is cold calling.  Everyone will assure you that you can't cold call in Japan.   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).  You have probably seen some seriously stressed out younger person in your reception hall of your office, hanging around looking totally out of depth and out of place, getting the bum's rush from the most lowly ranked person on your company's totem pole.  That was a tobikomi eigyo salesperson, 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.  He expected to be seated at a desk, building websites in the safe bosom of the office.  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 eigyostyle, 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.       Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backand if you are interested in sales training with dale Carnegie we are running the programs Sales Booster One on November eleventh and Sales Booster Two on August fifth.  More details can be found at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off: After his talk to the Economist Conference Network event, 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.  We have tobikomi eigyopeople coming to our office every month, trying to sell us one thing or another.  Like everyone else, we send forth the lowest person in the chain of command to shoo them away (nicely of course, because we are Dale Carnegie!).  Do we remember any of them 30 seconds after they have moved on to the next company's reception area?  No.  Kakiuchi san, though, is definitely memorable, distinct, differentiated. You are not going to forget him turning up to you office.  He told me that he had to just keep going back again and again. Eventually he would get to talk to a decision-maker who could buy and they did buy.   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.   Today he runs his own company Mirairo that researches, designs and consults on the needs of the disabled.  He has produced an app called Bmaps that tells the disabled where there are stairs, elevators, physical barriers on their route to their destination. His book Barrier Value (バリアバリュー) tells his story of how he overcome his challenges.  With our aging population demographics, we will all be needing his company's services in the future, as our hips and knees weaken and those stairs are looking like Everest.   So salespeople, don't complain about cold calling.  Read Kakiuchi san's book and reflect on how lucky you are, with so much sales opportunities right in front of you. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty seven we are talking about HOW TO NOT WIN FRIENDS AND NOT INFLUENCE PEOPLE. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Most presenters fail to consider the importance of where to stand when presenting.  In today's show we will go into some detail on how to adjust for different venues, how to engage with your audience and things to avoid.  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. The curriculum for general courses taught in high schools, which has remained untouched since the current system was established after world war two, will be reformed as part of a plan to drastically revamp secondary education. This reform reflects a sense of crisis among educational authorities about declines in the amount of time that high school students spend studying and their willingness to study. Nine point three percent of first year junior high school students said they do not study on weekends with the figure rising to twenty five point four for first year high school students. In other news, the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group banking unit executive Saiko Nanri wants to change Japan's long-standing culture of drinks between managers and employees. Companies have long encouraged such parties to give workers the chance to break down barriers with their bosses in an informal setting. Nanri has told her team that she won't hold the gatherings, saying they're unproductive and unfair to parents of young children.  Her stance calls into question old work habits blamed for hindering productivity and discouraging women from remaining in the workforce.  Finally, almost half of the rail lines run by JR Hokkaido are unprofitable.  About two thirds of lines operated by JR Hokkaido have considered seeking financial assistance in order to keep their respective routes open, while the remaining third are leaning toward shutting their lines down due to a dearth of passengers.   This is episode number eighty five and we are talking about  Where Should I Stand When I Am Presenting     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.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.    I attended an effective talk where the stage was empty, yet the speech suddenly got underway with no speaker in sight.  He was actually wearing a Lavelle microphone and was behind the audience at the rear of the room. The acoustics of that hall however, gave no indication of where he was standing and so it created a buzz as the assembled masses tried to place the speaker's location, with the voice they could all hear.  He then strode manfully to the stage and continued his oration.    As an attention-getter, to break through all the clutter in the heads of the audience, it was very effective and he did that just by varying his speaking spot from where everyone usually starts.   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.  Just be careful at the edge that you don't fall off, because that can easily happen, when we are fully engaged on our audience and we miss the peripheral sight of the edge.    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.    I might also add that if the venue is large, then really exaggerate your gestures and expressions. The scale of the venue requires that larger version of you to enable you to engage with your audience and “work the room”.  Get to the venue early and go sit in the most distant seats. That is when you realize how small the speaker is when on stage and that you have to “big it up” more.   Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backand here is some information on presenting.  On July eight we will run our Successful Public Speaking course.  On July tenth & eleventh and later on November thirteen and fourteen, we will hold our High Impact Presentations course in Japanese.  On July sixteenth and seventeen, we will hold the same course on English.   Back to where we left off. You might be thinking you have to stand where the podium is located. Why?  With the automatic slide advancers available today we can be highly mobile.  If the clicker isn't working well, then enlist a colleague as a “slide advancer” to man the laptop and move slides on your signal.  Or, you can just stroll back to the laptop and do it yourself. Don't get stuck behind the podium because we can't access all of your body language if you do that.   If you are stuck behind a podium, then be sure that as much of your upper body as possible is visible. This might require asking the venue staff for a small platform on which to stand behind the podium.  The microphone arrangements may make that tricky, depending on the height of the stand provided. If you need to remove the microphone from the stand then do so and stand as tall as possible, so you can be seen easily.   If the venue is smaller, then we can stand left of the screen but we can employ three strategic distances in combination with the content of what we are saying.  We start speaking when we are about halfway between the back of the stage and the audience – the neutral or green zone.    If we want to add strong support to a micro point we are delivering, then we move forward to as close to the audience as we can get, the intense or red zone.  We don't stay there long because the pressure is too strong for the audience.  We should move back to the middle, to lessen the intensity.    If we want to make a bigger or more macro point, we move toward the rear of the stage, the big picture or blue zone and then go back to the green zone. These changes of distance are related to what we are talking about so there is no consistent pattern necessarily.  In fact, we don't want any consistent patterns or we will become predictable to our audience. They switch us off because they have anticipated what we will do and they soon lose interest.   Normally lighting isn't an issue unless some amateur stage hand, do-gooder or volunteer decides your screen needs more contrast and they turn off or dim the lights.  Stop whatever you are doing and request them to turn those lights back on.  We need to be seen and we need to see the faces of our audience.  We need to gauge the reaction to what we are saying and to check if we are losing their interest or not.    A speaker recently gave a TED talk here in Tokyo, but to accommodate various cool technological features such as holograms, an invisible screen was separating the speaker from the audience.  Well it was invisible to the audience and they could see the speaker, but not the other way around.  That is a nightmare right there, because you are talking to an audience you can't actually see.  It always pays to check the speaking arrangements before you speak or get here early and try to fix logistical items which will negate the impact of your talk.   Sometimes in smaller, more intimae venues like clubs, the lighting is rather poor.  We can use the projector to throw up light or we can look for spotlights to try to get some light on us and the audience.  We can also try and stand very close to the audience, so that our physical presence will compensate for the lack of light.   If we are on a panel and everyone is seated, we should stand when we give our initial remarks, if possible. Thereafter, we may be seated, as we back and forth on the various worthy points under consideration.  By standing, we use our full arsenal of body language capability and projection to make our argument.  When you can stand up and speak without relying on having notes cradled in your lap, you gain more credibility and more projection for your argument.  In Japan, the crowded space on the raised dais between your seat and the obligatory low table, may not allow it, but don't be afraid to stand and talk, rather than having to remain seated if you can manage it.   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. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty six we are talking about The One Hundred and Six Centimeter Salesman. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

If we don't have a nice flow of new clients we cannot expand the business or replace clients who have dropped out.  The marketing team have their role to generate leads and the sales team have their responsibilities too.  Sadly, the two things they can do directly such as cold calling and networking they avoid. They don't like either because they have no idea of the best practices involved to make these methods sing and yield new buyers.  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. Korean University students are targeting Japan as a place to work.  The Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency KOTRA helped two thousand six hundred and fifty three students obtain jobs abroad, eight hundred and seventeen of whom were hired in Japan.  This was roughly thirty percent of the total.  KOTRA noted that these South Korean students had high skills not only in Japanese but also in English.  One Japanese employer commented, “They have experienced military service and are disciplined.  They are good to work with, because they respect their superiors and are diligent”. Given the bad political relations with Korea this trend is somewhat surprising, but looks to continue to grow. In other news, Toyota Motor Corp and Panasonic Corp will integrate their housing businesses as they seek to collaborate on “town development” for next generation lifestyles where homes and vehicles are connected to the internet.  Toyota President Akio Toyoda said, “From here on out, information will link all items and services that support people's daily lives.  I want to take on a new challenge of providing a new kind of lifestyle”.  Finally, as of two thousand and sixteen Japan had thirteen point one hospital beds per one thousand people., the largest ration amongst all the OECD countries., where the average is five point four beds.  In fiscal two thousand and eighteen, japan had an excess of two hundred and eleven thousand beds or fourteen per cent more than in two thousand and thirteen. This is important because forty percent of medical costs in japan go to hospitalisation.  If a medical institution has excess beds the impulse is to fill them.  This is episode number eighty three and we are talking about  New Client Acquisition     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Japan is a huge market. This is a wealthy, sophisticated society, with a design sense second to none. People work diligently as a team and put in long hours.  Achieving annual organic growth should be an expectation of bosses that sales teams should be able to realise.  Yet, the results are often flat lining or disappointing.  Excuses abound – the yen is too strong, the yen is too weak, competitors are discounting, new competitors are taking market share, etc.   Finding new clients is the perpetual Holy Grail of the sales world.  Websites lure, social media sponsored posts promulgate, ad words harvest, email sequences are very precisely engineered and content marketing assures expert authority.  But this is the world of marketing to unleash the lead flow so that the sales team can follow up.  How well do the marketing and sales teams work together?  Often, not well.  The marketers complain the salespeople are squandering their hard earned efforts. The sales people whine about the poor quality of the lead flow.  Down at your shop, are they operating as two independent empires or as hand in glove colleagues furiously plotting together to achieve world domination over your competitors?   Targeting new clients doesn't get much attention in Japan.  We all know that our avatar represents the typical client and all we have to do is identify others who fit that profile and the chances are high that they too will benefit from our product or service.  How many sales teams here have defined their avatar? What about your crew?  Can they nominate the ideal client?   A standard operating procedure should be the Spider.  What is this Spider you might ask?  If a client from a particular business has landed in your sales funnel and have bought from you, there are no doubt others in that same niche who would also possibly buy as well.  For example, if one airline buys from you there may be a good chance other airlines have similar needs.  Imagine a whole bunch of other look alike buyers you can bring into your web. Having made a sale to one company, do the salespeople take the Spider metaphor to heart and start listing up other similar targets to proactively contact. They should, but they don't.  Why is that?    A major ice wall confronts them – the unknown, unfamiliar and unnerving.  They don't have a contact who can introduce them, so they do nothing. The idea of cold calling the target company is judged hard graft, so they don't try.  By the way, are your salespeople doing cold calling or are they avoiding it?  They know the person who picks up the phone is going to be a slayer of salespeople aspirations.   It is not an impossible quest though.  There is a way through the initial business barrier by focusing on the design of the conversation that will spark buyer interest.  But no, they do nothing and just leave it.  It is fair to say it is no push over here.  When you cold call a Japanese company, if you don't already know the exact name of the person you are after, then you get cordoned off by the lowest person on the firm totem pole – the youngest female usually.    Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backand let me introduce two sales programs to help your salespeople succeed.  The sales booster One and Sales booster Two  courses cover all the critical skill areas needed in sales.  Sales booster One will next be held on November eleventh, 2019 and sales Booster Two  on August fifth, 2019.  All the details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off. They are not very lady like though, in fact they are stone cold killers, axing your intention right there to speak with the buyer.  In short, they are merciless, ruthless and unrelenting.  If you are made of sterner stuff and don't go down immediately without a fight, they will cast you off to the next level on the totem pole.  This is the spotty faced, flat headed youngest male in the section, who will promise you that their boss will call you back, as he gleefully gets rid of you, knowing that the hoped for call will never happen.   This is grim stuff, so these opening conversations should not be left to whim.  These need to be well designed and well practiced, so that you do get through to someone who can make a buying decision.  Untrained salespeople try to cold call without a solid plan, fail, and then tell all and sundry that you cannot cold call in Japan. Not true, but you do need to have a proven methodology for doing this.  Is this the case for your firm?   The fall back position may be to try to meet new clients through networking.  Japan is a curious place though in the networking world, because fundamentally, no one is terribly interested or motivated to network.  I know you, you know Taro, you introduce me to Taro. I will do the same for you with my contacts.  A pretty limited way of doing things, but this is acceptable here. Barefaced bowling up to a complete stranger and introducing yourself, trying create a new connection, is greeted with such shock, that salespeople give up quickly.   Can you widen your network of people you have no connection with and can you work the room here? Yes, you can, but again you need a methodology and you need to take salespeople out of their self -imposed limits and practice it.  Do your salespeople practice how to network with complete strangers down at your firm?   Here is the issue. Cold calling and networking are defined activities with best practices that work.  The majority of companies however do not invest in teaching their sales staff how to master these dark arts.  Instead they whine about the lack of new clients.  This situation is begging for a solution and for the most part will remain that way.  The firms who get it will make the effort and collect the new business, while their competition runs around bewildered in ever decreasing circles.   Action Steps Design hooks in the cold call conversation that the person receiving the call, wouldn't dare not pass the call on to a key decision maker Train the team on how to create a brilliant first impression when meeting complete strangers.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode eighty four we are talking about How To Master The Daily Info Tsunami. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

What are we on about with this sales lark?  Are we in sales to make our fortune or to make the client their fortune?  The difference in perspective is massive. For a long and successful career in sales we need to be thinking in terms of how we can best partner with the client to make them successful.  This mentality is not all that common in the profession and that is why so few salespeople are successful – they have the wrong mentality, they don't know their true north to get their correct bearings.   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.   Convenience store operator Lawson will introduce self-checkout systems in all of its fourteen thousand convenience stores by October this year to cope with Japan's labour shortage.  Customers will scan the barcodes themselves with cashier machines that can be used for self service.  Only cashless payment methods such as credit cards and digital currency will be accepted.  In related news, The Trade ministry last April, unveiled their Cashless Vision aiming to raise the ratio of cashless payments from twenty  percent  to  forty  percent by twenty  twenty  five. By comparison about  ninety  percent  of transactions were cashless in south Korea,  sixty  percent in China and forty  five  percent in the USA.  Pay Pay Corp entered the cashless market last October and is backed by yahoo and Soft Bank.  Using the app, customers can scan QR codes displayed at stores with their smart phones to complete payments.  PayPay has a tie up with Alipay, an on-line payment system from China's Alibaba Group targeting foreign visitors.  The Japanese Government is going to reward with discounts  of  five  percent of purchase amounts for a period of nine months, to consumers who make cashless payments to small and medium sized retailers.  They are doing this to take some of the sting out of the increase in the consumption tax from  eight  to  ten   percent in September.  Finally, as part of the Tokyo twenty  twenty  Robot Project, robots will be deployed to assist spectators and staff at the Tokyo Olympics.  The Human Support Robot (HSR) and Delivery Support Robot (DSR) developed by Toyota Motor corporation will be used in tandem to assist visitors using wheel chairs.  The HSR is a one armed robot about a meter tall which can hold objects, pick things up off the ground and reach high up. When people order food or drinks using a tablet computer, DSR will transport the item in a basket and HSR will then deliver them directly to guests. In addition Atoun Model Y a wearable robotic suit developed by Panasonc corp will be used by staff tasked with carrying, loading and unloading heavy objects.  The suit can reduce the burden of heavy loads by  ten  to  forty percent. This is episode number eighty and we are talking about  TRUE NORTH IN SALES     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.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 stamped on to the brain of every single person involved in sales. Don't miss it – we all know that selling stuff is a tough gig.  Rejection is the normal response to our spiffy sales presentation and follow up offer. You have to be tough to survive in a sales job.  You need other things too. Product and technical knowledge are important.  Total command of the detail is expected by clients.  However, we need to be careful about what we focus on. Are we letting the product details and features confuse us about what selling is really all about? 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, but $$$$ signs?  I can recall seeing them sitting across the table from me, mentally salivating at the thought of the big fat commission this sales conversation is worth?  I can sense they have already bought the new three  series Beemer before the ink is dry? 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 “preparedness” 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. As a side note, here is a little Japanese language grammar insight for you.  Kokoro in Japanese means your heart or spirit and kamae means you ready position.  In karate, for example, we take our kamae, fighting position, when we do free sparring.  So the word kamae becomes gamae when kokoro and kamae are made into a single compound word. So we can translate kokorogamaeas “getting your heart or true intention in order”.  This concept is the core foundation of my sales philosophy. 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?  Salespeople need to start by searching their heart for their true intention.  Huh? Does this sound a bit too “hug a tree” Californian style, overly emotional for you?  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.  Of course, there are the exceptions – the Hollywood image of the “smooth talking” salesperson who could sell you anything and will certainly try to.  Oh, they may con us once, but we will eventually work them out. In this modern age, social media can kill us very fast.  Our reputation can be shredded and before we know it, we are out of business. These single transaction orientated salespeople are like skyrockets that initially blaze bright 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.  The best Japanese salesperson I ever interviewed for a sales job was a convicted criminal.  The criminal part didn't surface immediately, but came up later through some background checks  - note to Sales Managers – do background checks!.  Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backLet me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  Now Part Two from the April edition of Sales Booster will run on August 5th.  On November 11th we will again run the One Day Sales Booster Course Part One. Details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off.  He was absolutely brilliant in the first two interviews, polished, genius personified in the sales role play, and WOW, what a closer!  I thought “Yes!” at last, I have found my perfect Japanese salesperson. Actually, he was a liar, a thief and a baddie.  He had zero True North orientation and his kokorogamaewas plain wrong.  What a wake up call to smell the coffee for me. 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.  They are underskilled because they have never received proper sales training. People often arrive into sales jobs through companies who are transactional in nature.  It is the industrial model of sales.  Potential salespeople come in the front door and if they don't magically hit their numbers, are shown the back door after a few weeks or months.  Another sacrificial victim is then brought into the meat grinder through the front door and the process repeated forever.  No thought is given to investing in these new hires to properly develop their understanding and skills.  It is just a throw of the dice every time, to see who stays and who goes.  This routine usually produces very unfortunate sales behaviour in the individuals involved, as they become more and more desperate to make a sale to keep their employ. Desperation drives people to extremes and the client's interests in all of this are thrown right out the window. The ethos of the organization is short-term gain and their salespeople are a type of plug-and-play item, to be switched out as soon as needed. 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.  We need clients to know, like and trust us.  Establishing our individual sales philosophy based on the kokorogamae concept is going to deliver the like and trust component in spades. If your current sales life is a nightmare of transactional relationships, burning clients for short-tem gain, unrelenting pressure on the numbers and no training, then get out of there as soon as possible.  Before you can get out of there though, take responsibility for yourself, make kokorogamaeyour light on the hill and move forward. Watch the videos on YouTube, get the books on sales written by the famous masters and study hard about what it takes to have a successful sales life.  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 kokorogamaeof 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. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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.   In episode  eighty one we are talking about The Professional Leader As Coach. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

New clients are the lifeblood of businesses.  Keeping clients is difficult, things change and they disappear. They have to be replaced.  How do we replace them?  In today's show we look at two excellent techniques for doing just that.  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. Hanko the personal stamps required in Japan since the  eighteen  hundreds are getting phased out at some of the country's biggest institutions.  Lenders have begun allowing customers to transfer money or make payments with their smart phones, instead of using hanko. Japanese banks are trying to slash paperwork, boost efficiency and appeal to younger generations. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial group has started offering accounts that don't require hanko or passbooks and is trying to overhaul its branch network to replace rows of tellers with tablet computers and video booths.  The goals is to help customers adapt to digital platforms so they can do more banking on their own devices.  As many as one hundred on the five hundred plus branches will convert to the new format by twenty  twenty  four.  They plan to halve the number of branches at the same time.  The Abe government is trying to make more government services available on-line.  In other news, six years have passed since Prime Minister Abe announced plans to create a Japan in which women can shine.  According to the OECD, only zero  point  seven percent of Japanese women were in management positions in  two  thousand  and  seventeen , basically the same share as in two thousand and   eleven. The figure is well below the average four  point  seven percent seen on other developed countries.  In the World Economic Forum's annual World gender Gap Index Japan ranked one  hundred  and  ten out of one hundred  and forty  nine  countries. Japan ranked lowest among Group of Twenty nations in terms of female politicians, with women occupying just  ten  point two  percent of the  four  hundred and  sixty  three  seats on the Lower House.   Finally, back in the early  two  thousands  the government implemented reform of the nations system for training legal professionals, launching law schools modeled after those in the USA.  However more than half have been shut down due to declining enrollments and the bar examinations for students who have completed the two year programs have been disappointing.  In  two  thousand and  fifteen the government gave up on its goal of boosting the annual number of successful bar exam applicants to  three  thousand, halving the target to one  thousand  five  hundred. This is episode number eighty two  and we are talking about  Using Your Hands     Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.We think of speaking as an activity where we use our voice. That is true but we use a lot more than that.  We use our face, eyes, legs, body and our hands.  When we are speaking while seated it is different to when we are standing. We need to master all situations for when we are called upon to speak in front of others.  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. ONE  Hands in front of the body.  This for men will usually means wrapping the right fist by the left hand and holding both in front of the groin.  For women, Japan has a specific requirements such as cupping the fingers of each hand so they interlock like the yin yang symbol and holding them at waist height or sliding the fingers together at the thumb and first finger intersection,  so the arms are outstretched and all the fingers are pointing to the ground.  This is usually a set piece and is combined with the foot positioning, so that one foot is forward of the other and the front toe of the rear shoe touches the back heel of the front shoe. These elaborate rituals are a product of trying to standardise the form and to kill uncontrolled hand movements.  It also kills the ability to use gestures to support and strengthen our words.  The arms and hands when held in front of the body also 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 vial organs from you, in case of sudden attack”.  As a speaker, we want to be as inclusive as possible, so we need to eliminate all physical barriers (podiums, reams of notes, ipads, arms) between ourselves and our audience.  We also want to show we are totally confident and have a welcoming attitude to our audience. TWO   Arms behind the back, clasped together. This is another anchor technique used when the speaker has no idea what to do with their hands.  The hands are also invisible to the audience, so the speaker feels they can forget about what to do with them or how they are placed or situated.  That is true, but there are a few issues with this pose.  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.  The thigh bone of a major animal, a sturdy, gnarled tree root or a sharp, flinty rock with which to bash us on the head and steal out fire, food or loved ones. In more advanced and sophisticated times, the fear is they will suddenly whip out a deadly blade and plunge it deep into our soft intestines and kill us. The palms open and facing forward gesture is a universal and timeless indicator of “I am not a threat to you, because, as you see I have no hidden weapon”.   This when associated with certain words and phrases says “you can trust what I am saying”.  Not a bad thing for a speaker to achieve with an audience, especially to a gathering of card carrying skeptics. THREE  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.  By the way, I do recommend the latter posture, if you are ever standing close and talking with someone you are suspicious of.  My karate background recommends that position, because from there it is very quick to parry a sudden “king hit” style blow to either your face or your body, but I digress.  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.  Holding our hands by our sides is a natural position and from here it is easy to raise our hands when needed, to inject a powerful gesture with which to back up our words. FOUR   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. Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backLet me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  Our One Day Successful Public Speaking  Course will run on July 8th.  Also our Two Day High Impact Presentations Course will run on July 10thand 11th.  Details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com Back to where we left off.  FIVE    Holding something in our hands.  When we are teaching public speaking, our participants often want to hold their speaking notes in their hands when they do the pair practice role plays.  I notice they actually never look at them, but they feel comforted that should they get into trouble, help is close by, if there is a possible brain white out.   Sheets of paper however tend to 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. If we are looking down, be it at the notes page or an iPad, we break off eye contact with our audience. Instead, we need to be watching our audience like a hawk, constantly gauging their reaction to what we are saying. We also want to employ our eye power to engage with them directly and sell them on our key messages.  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. SIX   Gripping the podium, the microphone stand or holding the hand microphone with both hands.  The double hand, vice like grip of the podium gives the speaker the feeling of stability. It also removes the “what do I do with my hands” conundrum.  What it says about you though is, “I am nervous and lacking in confidence”. 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.  Holding the microphone or it's stand with both hands, precludes us from gesturing during our talk.  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. Having said that, if you find your arms and hands are shaking almost uncontrollably, because the adrenaline is coursing though your body, then by all means hold the microphone with both hands and gather it to your chest, so no one can see how petrified you are.  The shaking won't be visible anymore and you can feel more confident when you are talking. SEVEN   Hands under the table.  If we are seated during our presentation, we don't want to hide our hands under the table.  This is the same trust issue as the hands behind the back in number two.  Place the hands on top of the table, resting comfortably together where they can be seen.  From there, pick them up and use them for gestures. EIGHT  Over employing or holding on to the same gesture, all of the time.  We need to use a variety of gestures otherwise, we become too predictable and boring for our audience.  We also need to turn gestures on and off, like the faucet of a tap. Don't let the water run too long, remember to switch it off for a while.  The break between usage and non-usage, gives the gesture more force with our audience.  If we hold the same hand position for longer than 15 seconds, all the power of that gesture dies and it just becomes an annoyance to our audience. NINE    Pointing our finger at people, making a fist like we want to fight, making slapping sounds and waving our hands around like a drowning person when speaking.  Thrusting our single finger at someone is an aggressive action, as is brandishing our fist. We associate these gestures with an invitation to argument or combat. Neither should be our intention when engaging with our audience.  Slapping or hands together or slapping our legs is an unnecessary distraction and we should avoid doing so. Waving our hands around becomes another distraction from the message we want to convey and can look like we are out of control. Mastering how to employ our hands effectively distinguishes the professional speaker from the rest of the crowd. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. 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 weekly podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts.  In episode eighty three we are talking about New Client Acquisition. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

We live in a micro attention span world.  We are also becoming more and more self centered around what we want and why we need to have it right now.  A lot of the older courtesies and societal manners are perishing by the wayside.  We might be that person standing up there on stage surveying a crowd full of self important, totally preoccupied people who would rather hear the sound of their own voice, than listen to yours.  Well what do you do about that, especially when the booze has been flowing and people are creating a loud roar in the room? How can you break in, keep them interested and get your message across?  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. Average land prices in Japan went up for the first time in twenty six straight years of decline. These gains were mainly for urban areas.  Average commercial land prices rose for the third straight year. Prices in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka rose four point two  percent while Sapporo, Sendai, Hiroshima and Fukuoka jumped an average of nine point two percent.  In other news, are you sick of fumbling for your keys to open doors.  How about a little microchip implant to fix that problem? An informational technology company in Osaka Otafuku Lab has implanted a chip that signals a sensor to open the door. President Takashi Hamamichi said the current chips available lack memory capacity but improvements in the technology provide more convenience in the future.  More than thirty people in Japan have inserted chips into their bodies so far. This is episode number Fifty Three  and we are talking about Big Boozy Crowds And Public SpeakingSoredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.  Apart from bona fidemembers of Imperial Families, everyone is fair game in the “let's ignore the speaker” stakes. Cabinet Ministers, eminent speakers, famous personalities all struggle to get the attention of the crowd.  When it is our turn, what can we humble beings do about this? 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. Speakers should not try to compete with irritating white noise in the background, so check this will be done before you are due to launch forth.  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.  Usually, they are not skilled speakers themselves and so they may do a lame job at best. If you are in the MC role yourself, about to introduce the programme speaker, avoid the charisma by-pass problem of no presence in the room.  I recently saw a giant of a man, fulsomely mustachioed, boasting a hulking frame, draw up to the microphone and in a tiny faint voice try and call the assembled masses to order. He had absolutely no success, so even an imposing physical presence is no guarantee to cut through the clatter.  On the other hand, 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.  We always want the audience to easily see our face.  Even better, dismiss the podium altogether, because now we can use our body language to maximum effect.  If you are using a laptop on the podium, turn it to the side, so that you can see the screen and stand facing the audience, so there are no barriers between you. The technology should be at our command and not commanding us. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backAs noted, 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.  These errors are easily avoided if you just hold the microphone about a hand's spread in front of your mouth and speak across the top of the microphone mesh. 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 but don't overdo it .  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”.  Again, add a pause and let peer pressure quiet your audience. If it is still noisy, repeat this phrase once more and do not start until you have total silence. 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 room 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.  Using pauses during your talk is also powerful for focusing everyone on the message you are delivering 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.  Some final advice, don't practice on your audience.  Spend time rehearsing your talk, so that you are confident and comfortable that you can command the room from the very start. Action steps 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 Uses pauses – they add power to the speaker If you strike a glass to produce a crowd-quieting chime, add a pause and then speak A short burst of music can silence an audience and clear the way for you to start speaking THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode fifty four we are talking about Can't Cold call In Japan. Oh Yeah, Really?. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Honey works better than vinegar in attracting people and their cooperation.  We know that, so why do we forget this at work.  We are short with people and too much occupied with our immense status and authority.  This is all vinegar. Others are not attracted to this approach.  We need to work on our people skills if we want to have influence and get cooperation.  How do we do that? 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. There is an acute shortage of delivery drivers in the transport business that is impacting companies like Amazon and Rakuten.  According to the Ministry of Health, labor and Welfare there were two point seven jobs for every driver application in June.  A separate government survey in two thousand and sixteen found that eighty three percent of transport companies were overworking their drivers.  This high demand situation has led to higher salaries, with the resultant costs increasing delivery rates.  Amazon and Rakuten have been moving their business to Japan Post which has increased its share to twenty percent, third after Yamato at forty three percent and Sagawa Express at twenty nine percent. In other news, the pickup in land prices has been fueled by the Bank Of Japan's monetary easing programs.  The gains have been particularly steep in the areas popular with tourists.  The booming tourist trade has pushed up demand for Hotels an shops that cater fir tourists.  Land prices in Ginza keep rising and Kyoto is also doing very well. The biggest jump was in Kutchan in Hokkaido, the location of the internationally popular Niseko ski resort. Last year the number of inbound travelers to Japan hit a record twenty eight point seven million.  The total this year topped twenty million in mid august and appears on course to exceed thirty million by year's end. The governments target is fifty million by twenty twenty. This is episode number fifty-five and we are talking about  Lead To Outperform The Competition Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Harvard Professor Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe how nations can achieve their aims through persuasion and the ability to attract.  Our world bristles with nukes.  Testosterone fueled fighter pilots duel at supersonic speeds over rocky outcrop flashpoints.  Drones have 007 licenses to kill and volatile dictators strut, posture and provoke. Hmm…having a soft power alternative to World War Three sounds attractive.    Closer to home, can soft power in our businesses achieve persuasion and attract cooperation? There are plenty of testosterone fueled dogfights going on in the C-suites amongst colleagues and between Divisions.  Corporate leaders strut and posture, while middle managers whip the troops to do more, faster with less.  Power, status, authority, rules, regulations, contracts etc., keep people in line, but none of this engages them.  Time for some fresh thinking! Here are four soft power plays that persuade and attract the team to outperform the competition. Play One:  work on our communication.  The WHY of the vision as well as the what and the how need to be explained in ways that inspire the troops to care. We own the world we create, so include our people in creating the vision.  Plenty of corporate offices have elaborately framed Vision, Mission, Values statements that hardly anybody can recall.  How do you live it, if you can't remember it?  Well you don't and this is a failure of communication.  The Ritz Carlton Hotel chain became famous for having every shift start their day by re-visiting their WHY.  Good organisation creates good communication.  How hard is it to get all of your work units starting with a daily WHY recharge?  It takes a few minutes and costs almost nothing. Play Two:tap into the emotional wellsprings of engagement. Intention is important here. Following Douglas McGregor's Theory X, Theory Y staff motivation models, if we see our people as lazy, inept, untrustworthy then we have to ferret out their failures and fix them.  If we see our team as basically good, loyal people doing the best they can, then we can switch our gaze to becoming a “good” finder to recognise them, rather than to scold them.  So leaders need to take a Theory Y “happy pill” every morning before work and decide they will be finder of good work and praise it, rather than becoming a Theory X carping dud detector.  Try it for a week and see the difference. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backPlay Three:emphasise “valuing your people” rather than parroting the “corporate values”.  Our global engagement survey, validated in Japan, showed that the feeling of being valued was the trigger point sparking inspiration, empowerment, enthusiasm and confidence.  Innovation is directly correlated to engagement, because if you don't care, why make it better? Communicating to each individual “you are valued” is using soft power. Play Four: ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Based on their hard skills credentials, supervisors believe they have super vision, so they can tell people what to do.  One brain's output, no matter how good, is still only producing a narrow sliver of ideas. Actually the further up the chain of command you fly, the more distant you become from the action and informed perspectives.  Engaging people in the front line, through valuing their input, produces outperformance. Don't miss it – the crowdsourcing of ideas from the team is a soft power play that pays off.    The end is nigh for those organisations who don't introduce Professor Nye's soft power play into their leadership armory.  As we say in Japan, “time flies like an arrow”, so let's all commit to going “soft” and persuading and attracting our way to success. Action Steps Start with the WHY before explaining the What and the How Become a daily Theory Xer, seeking out the positives in your people Ensure your people feel they are genuinely valued every time, all the time Become an “ask” rather than “tell” leader Commit to persuade and attract your way to success THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode fifty six we are talking about How To Not Blow Your Acceptance Speech. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

When you are under the spotlight in business you have to shine.  Yet, so often, we see people catapulted to the top as an award winner and they do a dreadful job with their acceptance speech.  You really have to wonder why that is?  They entered the contest so they must have at least expected there was a chance of winning.  If that did happen, then they know they will be invited to the stage to receive the award and say a few words.  When this turns into reality, it is at this point that often the wheels fall off. Their spot of fame turns to infamy pretty quickly, as they botch it and come off as rank amateurs rather than successful professionals.  It doesn't have to be that way, by the way.   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. The Japanese government has given approval for the use of blood transfusions including platelets created form artificially derived stem cells to treat patients with intractable diseases.  Researchers expect the induced pluripotent stem cells to become a new source for platelets, replacing transfusions of donated blood that tend to be deficient. In other news, over one fifth of Japan's population is now seventy years old or older.  There are twenty-six point one eight million people over seventy accounting for twenty point seven percent of the population.  Wow, that is more than the population of my own country of Australia. Elderly women, defined as those aged sixty-five or older have grown to a record twenty-point one two million compared to fifteen point four five million men. Japan's ratio of twenty-eight point one percent elderly is expected to reach thirty-five point three percent in twenty forty.  Those over eight years of age represent eleven point zero four million people , and those over ninety comprise two point one nine million people.  The older generation are still working.  Working over sixty-fives number eight point zero seven million people accounting for twelve point four percent of the workforce. This is episode number fifty sixand we are talking about How Not To Blow Your Acceptance Speech.  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? How could it come to this, to have capitulation snatched from the jaws of triumph?  Simple really.  You didn't prepare properly.  You didn't think through the consequences of filling out that pile of boring and tedious application documents, all those many moons ago.  There you were cheerfully getting stuck into the booze at your table with your colleagues, full of bonhomie and good spirits, unsuspecting of the ordeal about to descend upon you.  The harsh stage lights shine on the harsh reality that you are woefully unprepared for the win.  At the podium, emotion wrestles with the brain to pull it altogether, but you fail.  Remember we judge every company by the people we meet.  If they are smart, we think everyone is smart.  If you are a shambles, we pin that crime on the entire team. 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? Here is how to do it with aplomb, so that the audience mentally genuflects, “Wow, I wish I could be like that”.  Firstly, find out how much time you will have available.  How would you know that – ask the organisers.  How many minutes do they give the speaker who wins, when it comes their time to address the crowd?  Usually, you can imagine two minutes tops.  In that space of time, what would be the content you want to cover.  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.  You could just say a simple thank you to these groups, but that is a bit pedestrian.  Here is your chance to really shine, so why not grab it with both hands.  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. If it was a colleague for example, you might say: “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” .  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. This is the time to sell your company's services or products.  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 just the planning component completed. The other thing is the speech delivery practice. There will no supporting slides to serve as a prompt for what you cover next.  There will be possibly be a mike stand and no more, so no place for notes and you don't want to be reading them anyway.  Better to have your eyes on your audience and connect with the room.  Mentally, divide the room into six sections and give some attention to each sliver.  Think of a baseball diamond.  Left, center and right field plus inner and outer field. Make eye contact with someone in each section and speak to that person for about six seconds before moving to another section.  Do it at random, so the audience can't mentally escape, because they can predict where you will make eye contact next. Use your hands for gestures, rather than thrusting them into your pockets, stand up straight for maximum credibility and a professional look.  You may be nervous and speaking quickly, so make sure to inject some pauses, to allow the audience to catch up with where you have been taking them. A pause allows you to check that your speaking speed isn't getting too fast and frantic.  Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backStand up straight, don't slouch with your weight split 70/30. Instead go for 50/50 weight displacement, so you look as tall and elegant as possible.  This is no time for being casual. This is a formal occasion, so rise to the challenge and impress. If the mike stand is too low, then adjust it, unhook the mike itself or pick the whole thing up (like a rock star!).  Leaning over and down to speak into the mike, gives your audience an unwanted view of the top of your head.  You want them looking at your face, not your pate.  You need to have good posture throughout to have sufficient gravitas suitable for the evening's affair. Run through this acceptance speech at least twenty times, before you give it.  Use your smart phone or tablet and video yourself, to get an idea of what the audience will be seeing.  You may be puzzled to discover that you are scowling and looking unhappy on this magnificent occasion, because the concentration is killing you. Smile!  It is easy to say, but under the pressure we may forget to smile and just look angry and unhappy to our audience. You may find you are speaking in a dull as dishwater monotone voice, that is killing your audience and your reputation.  The video will reveal all and help you rid yourself of bad habits, nervous ticks and outright errors. What happens if you get the order wrong, get stuck or leave something out?  Don't worry.  The only person in the room who knows what you are going to say is you.  Therefore if you do mess it up, maintain your absolute best poker face and keep going.  Make it appear as if everything is going according to your best laid plan. So if we put it all together, it would 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. Please take the structure provided and create your own stories that will attract the support of your audience.  This is the time to differentiate your company and personal brand, so make the time and put in the effort.   After people come up to and tell you what a great speech that was, you will realise all the preparation and effort was worthwhile.  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.  Good luck and break a leg! THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode fifty seven we are talking about Is Your Sales Environment Driving Or Diminishing Sales. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

 Sales is a difficult world, but there are certain environments which lend themselves more toward making salespeople successful. If we are allowed to flourish, the chances are high that we will maximize our opportunities.  Focusing outward on the competition is much better than having salespeople squabbling amongst themselves over commission splits or who owns the client.  Giving salespeople enormous upside for success encourages greater commitment to the cause.  Ross Perot was IBM's most highly paid salesperson, until the senior executives took umbrage that he was earning more than they were.  Their egos reduced his remuneration and so he left to start his own company Electronic Data Systems (EDS).  If they had been a bit smarter, he would have kept earning the company huge revenues and they would have ridden the earnings wave.  Does your firm embrace success or want to control it?   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. Kotaro Chiba started his Drone Fund in 2017 and it was oversubscribed.  He is planning to raise two more funds.  McKinsey predicts that in five to ten years, the skies will be filled with drones delivering goods and in ten to fifteen years we will be heading to work in flying cars.  Does anyone remember The Jetsons cartoons from the sixties?  Chiba says “its like a gold rush in the air and the first movers will reap the best results.  The Japanese GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO CREATE THE LAWS AND INFRASTRUCTURE  NEEDED TO PUT FLYING CARS INTO THE SKY IN THE NEXT DECADE.   Drone startup Skyrobot predicts the Japan drone market could reach twenty billion dollars by 2025.  Japan Post has successfully tested drone deliveries between two post offices in Fukushima nine kilometers apart in November.  This was done completely remotely, with no visual monitoring, for the first time. Packages weighing up to two kilograms will be delivered in about ten minutes.  In other news, the Japan Press Research institute found that TV is used by 92 percent of people in Japan as a news source.  Japan is still quite unique in this regard. The internet topped the list of news sources for those up to the age of forty nine and for those over fifty, they preferred television for their news.  Regarding the reliability of news, NHK earned seventy point eight points out of one hundred points, followed by newspapers at sixty nine point six points and the internet at forty nine points. This is episode number fifty seven and we are talking about  Ideal Sales Support Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. “Public floggings and humiliation will continue until sale's team morale and performance improves”.  What are today's revenue results, how much is in the pipeline, when will we get paid by the client, what is the run rate, will we meet our budget, what have you done for me lately -  this is the lexicon of sales.  The sales results are the end product of a series of processes.  There is usually ample attention placed on sales processes but sometimes we need to step back from the detail, the mechanics, the techniques and contemplate the overall environment we have created for sales to flourish.  Your Japanese sales manager yelling at the sales team and berating them for under performance is usually not very productive, because the motivation drops and a vicious downward spiral kicks in.  The client's best interests are out the window immediately and in short order, the unnecessary brand “flesh wounds” start to accumulate. We need to redirect the team's performance by moving things forward, rather than constantly combing through the bitter ashes of past defeats. Here are five environment builders to boost the success of the sales team. #Number One:  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.  Salespeople compete with each other, rather than with their external rivals. We need to change our focus from inside to outside. Shifting the world into “us” and “them” can be great for focus and encouragement.  Unfortunately, a lot of the “us” and “them” is often too internally focused.  This is usually centered on the failings of Marketing or IT or Production or just about anybody outside of sales, who can be blamed for the lack of production of results.  Better to focus this caustic energy on the competition.  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 let's focus them outward. Number Two: High Income Factory Having no limits on sales people's earnings motivates. Pretty obvious!  Sadly the ego of the President or the Sales Director can get swept up in this commission-based melee, especially when they realize that individual sales people are earning more than they are.  Emasculating or ending a successful sales structure, because of ego or greed, is stupid but it still happens anyway as the Ross Perot example underlines.  Rather than reducing commissions, lets keep the no-ceiling attraction there to drive results and make sure it becomes a win-win for everyone.  Japan rarely operates on one hundred percent  commission, so there is usually a base/commission trade off.  Why not one hundred percent?  Because salespeople don't have to accept that much risk. They have many choices about where they will work and they are risk averse, so base and bonus is best, base and commission is second best.  Keeping the unlimited income prospect in everyone's sights is good business, because the corresponding base pay rates can be kept lower.  Even if performance takes time to produce or is not being generated, then the actual fixed costs remain low.  The more sales people succeed, the more attractive you are as the employer to the quality talent you want to attract and retain.  What are some other things that work well? Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome backNumber Three:  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 should be no different – back to basics on a regular basis, eliminates or confines bad habits.  Your own presentation can become boring to you.  The client usually only ever hears it once, but the sales person could be giving the same basic presentation 20-30 times a week.  Short cuts emerge, bad habits surface, best practices are trimmed, inconsistencies pop up, complacency arises when sales people, even the good ones, find themselves immersed in dull 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.  Are your people getting their fair share of this sales stimulation? Number Four:  Self Directed In the famous movie Glengarry Glen Ross, the sales “leads” are so valuable they are placed in the company safe.  Ace sales guy, Ricky Roma, played by Al Pacino, is the only one who is not dependent on the company provided leads. Moral of the story - don't let sales people become dependent on leads generated by the marketing department or from the web. Networking uncovers clients. Highly targeted cold calls creates new clients.  Asking for referrals gets new business.  Calling clients who have gone quiet gets new sales. The best sale culture is one of accountability for production , independence and a will to achieve.  Organised tenacity, creativity, freedom, self starter 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. Number Five:  High Praise & Recognition Culture It may be thought that self-directed sales people don't need praise or approbation.  Guess what?  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 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. Action steps Step back and take a good hard look at the sales environment that has been created to date Make the competitive focus outward not inward Provide “no ceilings” commission structures to motivate everyone Invest in the development of sales success Make organised tenacity, creativity, freedom, success orientation the dominant attributes Don't ever underestimate the competitive nature of salespeople and our appetite for having our egos stroked THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode 58 we are talking about Creativity Needs Mistakes To Be Allowed In Japan. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

We have been requested to give a talk, so where should we start?  Should we jump straight into pulling together all the slides for the presentation?  Absolutely not.  We need to prepare this talk so it will be a  success. The first important question we must ask is who are we going to be talking to?  The next question is about the purpose of the talk.  Is it to educate, impress, motivate or to entertain? The next considerations all the mechanics of the speech.  Is it at the end of the day when everyone is sleepy, or will it kick off proceedings at the start of the day.  How long do we need to talk for?  How do we need to dress for this talk?  There are so many items we need to consider before going anywhere near the slide deck.  Yet this is just the opposite of what most people do.  They spend all of their preparation time putting their slides together, do no rehearsal and then proceed to practice on their audience. This is definitely not recommended, if you want to be successful.   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. Coworking space is really taking off in Tokyo.  According to CBRE, in Tokyo's twenty three wards co working space counted for only zero point five percent of office space prior to 2009.  Today it accounts for seven point nine percent.  WeWork Japan's chief executive Chris Hill said that “We feel the opportunity is big enough here that we can grow faster than anywhere else”.  WeWork Japan is a joint venture between WeWork and SoftBank and opened its first location in Japan in February.  Their aim is to expand the number of users to ten thousand by the end of the year, in eleven different locations, in four major cities. Large companies like Sony, Panasonic and Honda are trying to adapt to the digital era by joining up with startups, hiring external talent and creating a more flexible working environment. WeWork fits the bill for them. Enterprise members account for about one quarter of WeWork's global member base and they are trying to use Softbank's client network to expand that number in Japan.  In other news, Japan's job availability improved to a fresh fifty four year high in September.  There were one point six four openings for every job seeker.  Think about that when you are trying to recruit someone.  The job unemployment rate fell to two point three percent, near the lowest level recorded since the early nineteen nineties. The percentage of people in the working ages of between fifteen and sixty four with jobs, rose to seventy seven point three percent, the highest number since this data first became available in nineteen sixty eight.  The percentage of women employed also rose to a record high of seventy point three percent, with men at eighty four point one percent. This is episode number fifty nine and we are talking about  The Best Way To Prepare For Your Presentation Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Before jumping straight into the slides to build your presentation, identify your likely audience.  Who will be staring back at you when get on your feet to present? 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 for your industry.  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 what is 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, storm the barricades?   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. Every word counts and so we need to really prepare well.   What time of the day will we speak.  After lunch and after dinner are two tough speaking 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. If you have attended one of these events you recall there is that low roar of an ascending passenger jet coming from the back of the room during the speech as people blatantly ignore the speaker.    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 bold tie, adventurous pocket chief or bright 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.  Many people though have no clue about this so they stand on the opposite side.  Don't make that amateur mistake.   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 and put everyone to sleep.  This is partially their regard for hierarchy, because standing above others and looking down on everyone else, implies you are superior to the audience.  It is felt better to be seated on the same level as the audience. It is also showing polite regard for the speaker, on the basis that you will get tired having to stand and so please be comfortable and sit down. Pass up all opportunities to sit. The people advising you are not professionals in speaking and their advice is worthless.  You will often hear Japanese speakers mount a rostrum and say, “Excuse me for speaking from this elevated position”.  Is it a good idea to apologise for standing? Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back It is much better if you can stand.  This is 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 need to apologise for standing above everyone, then do it, but keep standing no matter how many do-gooders try to get you to sit down.  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?  Usually for more formal speeches 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 excess energy will harmonise your energy output and reduce your nervousness.  Following this, take deep, slow, breaths from your lower diaphragm to help reduce your pulse rate.  If you can't do that then just work on the breathing to lower your heart rate and get your nerves under control.   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 we are 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 immediate end of your talk and a second one for your finish 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.   Try to incorporate these ideas into your speech preparation.  Most importantly, also allow time for doing a rehearsal of your talk. You will find out which bits flow well and which need some rethinking.  You will also be better able to gauge your speaking speed and speaking length.  This is important if you have to speak within a very tightly controlled time limit.  Don't worry that you may vary from what you were practicising, when you give the actual talk.  Only you know what was supposed to happen and if you change it, keep that information to yourself. Planning and rehearsal need to go together and need to be given sufficient time to be effective.  Most people just assemble their slides instead.  This is a big mistake and one you can simply avoid by adopting some of the ideas shared today. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode number sixty we are talking about The Sales Success Ecosystem. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

 Modern life is full of contradictions.  We have vast computing power in the palms of our hands. Yet, some choose to play mindless games on their device.  Others are busily scrolling through the detritus of other people social media postings. Observations like “Oh look at what that cat is doing!” needlessly cloud our brains.  Yet we are busy, aren't we.  We are actually more than busy, in fact, we are in a rush.  We need to gain every possible second, so we can spend it later adding comments to someone's irrelevant on-line post.  In the process, we are losing touch with how to engage people. Passively devouring social media cannot be a game changer, yet this is how precious moments are being spent today. In Japanese they say “kuki wo yomu” or read the air, but in this hustling life we can miss the context, miss the bigger picture.  This is not a cost free exercise folks. 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 is among the biggest users of robots in the world, with three hundred and three robots per ten thousand employees in 2016.   This is the fourth largest globally, according to the International Federation Of Robotics.  What does Japan think the future looks like workwise?  The Pew Research Center noted that eighty nine percent of Japanese were saying it was “probable” or “definite”, that robots and computers will take over many of the jobs currently being done by humans. This percentage was the second highest among nations surveyed.  Seventy four percent thought people would have difficulty finding new jobs after being replaced by a robot.  Eighty three percent saw economic inequality worsening.  Only thirty five percent thought there would be better, higher paying jobs available as a result of robots and computers taking over most work currently done by humans.  In other news, OECD data shows that in 2016, the Japanese created forty one dollars and fifty four cents in GDP for every hour worked, below the OECD average of forty six dollars and ninety eight cents.  The Group of Seven average was fifty five dollars and thirty nine cents. Japan's GDP per hour worked is the lowest in the G7 and lower than all the major economies in the OECD except Korea. Japan's productivity remains significantly lower that the United States at sixty three dollars twenty six cents, the EU at fifty seven dollars and sixty four cents and roughly half that of top ranked Ireland at eighty two dollars and fifteen cents.  Maybe we need those robots here after all to improve productivity or encourage more Irish migrants to move here. This is episode number sixty oneand we are talking about Haste Makes Waste in Business Baby Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Is speed in business expensive?  Pushing ourselves to go faster and faster is getting crazier.  It is not all upside though.  Constant hustling can lead to large and small errors of judgment.  We get so caught up in living twenty four seven 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 push past them to get into the subway car or we block the train exit corridor, because we are transfixed by a tiny screen.  We cut drivers off in traffic to get a ten second edge.  We try to barge into elevators before the occupants have all moved out.  We dither around and then 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 instead. Doing more, faster with less, we are constantly hustling, hustling to gain time.  The process becomes addictive.  The unrelenting daily email tsunami pushes us to gain extra time - all the time.  You would never know that the subway trains arrive every two minutes in Tokyo, by the desperate way some people are scrambling to get into carriages.  This unquenchable thirst for saving seconds becomes our norm.  Our “contemplative self” is subsumed by the “mad rush us”, leaping around like a lunatic. We start to lose awareness of the impact we are having on those around us.  Our words and actions become one-way traffic as we do unto others, as we dictate. What do we all preach though? Customer focus, good listening skills, sensitivity to the client's needs, consultative sales techniques, etc.   Decades ago I saw a very funny Mr. Boo Chinese comedy, in which the hero Mr. Boo steps on the toe of another passenger in the subway car, doesn't apologise and gets into an argument with the stranger.  In the next scene, he is visiting the house of his new girlfriend and of course the father turns out to be the gentleman he was rude to in the train.  Very funny, as we watch him squirm in his embarrassment.  Imagine if every interaction you have with others, where you are overly focused on hustling for your personal gain, came back to haunt you like Mr. Boo's father of the girlfriend experience.  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 start aligning a lot more of those heroic, beautifully framed and wall mounted Vision, Mission and Value statements with your actions.  You would start to value the input of others, because for the first time in a long time, you would actually be paying full attention to what others are saying.  You would become more considerate of others.  Why aren't we doing this now? Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back.  The slow food movement was a reaction to the impersonalisation of the food service industry. It was a getting back to the basics, the fundamentals approach.  We need a slow business movement to help us do the same thing in the way we run our businesses.  Scrambling for extra seconds, so that we can spend more time glued to screens featuring Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, email etc., is actually pretty pathetic, when you sit back and take in what we are all busily doing with our time.  Is the content of social media really that valuable or are we living our lives vicariously through the goings on of others, most of whom we have never even met?  Scrolling through their posts we lose time and we lose our focus on more important tasks.  Is this what we were so vigorously gaining those additional seconds for by constantly cutting corners?  Ask yourself what are you doing with the additional time you have managed to squeeze out of your day?  Are you employing it productively?   Contemplation as an idea is vaporizing right in front of us as we constantly hustle.  Context is down for the count. Self awareness is in increasingly short supply.  Who we really are and what we actually stand for in our value system is getting badly bent out of shape.  When we are madly running around, we are not focused on what is going on around us. We are just rushing to the next spot, because we are in the zone.  We can't see ourselves as others see us.    This is a product of the haste of modern life, a life bristling with technology that is supposed to save us time.  Actually, we feel more time poor than any time in the past. This is the irony.  We are wasting our time at a prodigious speed. Time is life, so what does this tell us about how we are living our lives?  This indecent desire for speed comes at a price and we need to be vigilant about the consequences.    One of the things I really admire about Japanese society is how, with a massive population living cheek by jowl for centuries, they have managed to remain so considerate of others. As busy as this society is, and it is super busy here in Tokyo, they have maintained a decorum with each other that is admirable.  What are we doing by comparison?  Are we focused on the people around us or on our phone, on their feelings or our racing internal clock?  There is a cost to being in a constant hurry and that is the diminishment of the strength of our relationships.  That is an expensive transaction right there, in the modern business world where gaining trust is paramount.   So if you find yourself constantly hustling like mad, stop and ask yourself, what is the cost of all this speed? What is this all for?  What am I actually doing with all of these contraband minutes?  Ask yourself, “am I doing the thing at this moment that is the best use of my time?”.  Unleash the contemplative you instead and practice tuning yourself into other people.  Get your face out of your screen and on to the big picture.  This is the universal, timeless, key business success skill – the quality of our ability to do well in our engagement with others based on shared trust.  Our modern instinctive rushing, rushing, rushing all the time can mean we are in danger of losing this vital business success skill.  How is it going for you?  Have you got it or have you lost it? Action Steps: Develop more self awareness Give people your 100% attention when you engage with them Prioritise contemplation Make haste slowly THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode sixty two we are talking about The Winning Presentation Mindset. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Mindset is a big deal in sports.  We understand that it is important in business too, but we sometimes miss the point that it also applies to how we approach public speaking.  We can exude confidence or terror.  Either way the audience will buy what we are selling. How do we exude confidence?  This comes back to our basic beliefs about ourselves as a speaker, which then determine the mindsets of “I can do this really well and be successful” or “I hate doing this and I am not very good at it”. Confidence doesn't arrive from wishing. We need to work hard to build that feeling of confidence in our presentation capability.  Proper preparation and ample rehearsal practice build belief an that determines a positive winning mindset.  Great, but how do we do all of that?   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. The Abe cabinet is pushing hard to bring in foreign workers to Japan but not everyone is for this idea. There was a protest march through the Ginza area recently organized by Japan First, waving Japanese Imperial flags and urging the plans withdrawl.  Mikio Okamura head of Japan First in Tokyo said, “Before you let in foreigners, you should deal with Japan's unemployed.  Then we would have Japanese people looking after the elderly. That would be the happiest result for the Japanese”.  The Japan Trade Union Confederation known as Rengo, questioned the lack of a public debate on the subject and said that foreign workers shouldn't be accepted without careful consideration.  On the other side the Japan Chamber f Commerce and Industry noted in June that two thirds of companies said they were short of workers.  The number of companies folding because of a lack of workers jumped by forty percent in the first half of the financial year, compared to the same period last year, according to the Teikoku Databank.  In other news, at the Beijing International Book Fair in August, a Chinese translation robot, the Yudao AI Translator translated Srinivas Mahankali's one hundred thousand words or roughly a three hundred page non-fiction book into Chinese in thirty seconds, with ninety five percent accuracy.  A professional editor spent two weeks cleaning it up for publication and this compares with the normal six months required to do the same tasks.  Also In China, the Xinhua News Agency launched a world first with an English AI Anchor debuting at the World Internet conference in Zhejiang province.  The robot was developed together with the Chinese search engine company Sogou with the robot physically modeled on the Xinhua agency's presenter Zhang Zhao. According to Xinhua, the robot learns from live broadcasting videos by himself and can read texts as naturally as a professional news anchor. Watching the video, the voice was eerily real, as was the robot resemblance to the actual Zhang Zhao. Looks like news anchors and translators had better start retraining for other professions. This is episode number sixty twoand we are talking about  The Winning Presentation Mindset Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   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.  Perhaps without even actually remembering any particular incident, we manage to maintain a dread for speaking in public and carry that into adulthood. This was absolutely me by the way. I avoided public speaking pretty successfully, until I was around 29 years of age.  I was really fearful of it and there must have been something in my darkest memory, which was driving that fear, even if I can't nominate any particular trigger.   Here is the rub. 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 usually get straight into the nitty gritty details, the mechanics and logistics, without spending even a moment on our proper mindset for the activity. This is a bit of a crazy allocation of priorities though.  We are putting our personal and professional brand out there for all to see, so we should recognise this as a fairly important opportunity to get it right.  If you think reputation has significance then we are putting ourselves in the danger zone. That is probably why I avoided public speaking for so long.   The mindset game is a critical one, especially if we are nervous about giving presentations.  Confidence is firmly 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 ever show that side to our audience.  Hesitation kills the message delivery and therefore the message impact.    I saw a speaker recently and I felt he was impressive.  Thinking back about it, why did I feel he was a good speaker? On closer inspection, I realized he wasn't saying anything breakthrough or particularly valuable. He wasn't bringing much in the way of new information or insights to his audience.  What he was bringing though, was a tremendous amount of confidence to be standing there, in front of all those quizzical eyes, looking back at him. We in the audience were buying his confidence, more than anything else. There is a powerful insight right there and if you can combine that confidence with really good content, then that will be an unbeatable combination   Often when we are anticipating the presentation, we imagine that our wondrous content on its own will carry the day.  We justify our ineptitude by presuming that we can be hopeless presenters, but somehow because of the quality of our material, it won't matter in the end.  Be in no hesitation, this is completely delusional and it is total folly.  There are very few subjects in business where we are the font of all knowledge and therefore everyone else has to put up with our lack of professionalism as a speaker.     Normally, we are competing for the attention of our audience.  Social media is a modern scourge in many ways from mindlessly wasting people's valuable time, to having to joust with scammers, to cyber bullying.  It has made a hell for presenters. Nowadays, within two seconds, our audience can vanish and escape to any number of other more interesting worlds.  People are becoming more used to multi-tasking.  They are reading their Facebook feed, searching for things on Google, checking out Instagram, replying to emails and scrolling through LinkedIn or Twitter all the while they are doing something else quite important, like supposedly listening to us.  What can we do about this? Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backWe need to have a powerful presentation and speaking faculty to compete with the idle wonders of the Internet. A big part of our appeal is our message's worth and the potent 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. This means we are able to deliver the talk without having to read the text.  We can talk to key points in front of us in our notes or up on the screen.  This is quite different from burying our heads in the text, looking down the whole time reading the content and not engaging with our audience.  To have the confidence to work the room while speaking, means you have to know the content.   You can do it, because you created it or you adjusted what someone else had put together for you.  Regardless, you will know much better than your audience what it is you are going to say, so you are in total control.   Start with a powerful opening, including the key message later 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. You have managed your schedule well, so that there has been ample opportunity to practice the delivery.  This is how you build a powerful, positive mindset about public speaking.  People who are spending all their time on the making the slides forget they have to rehearse the delivery for an audience. They usually prefer to practice on their audiences, then wonder why the whole thing was very flat with no engagement of their audience.  After this near death experience, they retreat back into their foxhole and have to be pried out to make any further presentations.   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.  This is what the top athletes do before their matches. They see themselves being successful, they see the details of how that success is being built up throughout the match, they see the elation of victory at the end.  We should be doing the same.   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 be successful 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.  Mindset matters.  We will have one either way, so why not make it a winning mindset. Action Steps Decide you will have the right mindset for your talk Understand your delivery is what makes your content work, not the other way around Don't read the text – speak to your points or use the screen for your prompts Carefully design your opening, your key points (3 to 5) and your two closes Use mental imaging to see yourself being successful giving the talk Rehearse – don't practice on your audience THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode 63 we are talking about What Salespeople Care About, If They Are Smart. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Getting buyers to hand over their hard won cash is a daunting task in many ways.  We salespeople love a challenge though, so we often conspire to make it harder than it has to be, by killing the opportunity in front of us.  Semantics is a critical study area for salespeople, because how we say things makes such a huge difference.  There are ways of framing questions and making statements that work better than the alternatives.  We need to master those techniques. There are also certain words we should permanently strike from our vocabulary list.  It should be obvious that sales training roles plays must be conducted in the language of the buyer, Japanese, but for many large companies mysteriously, they still train in English. That's weird!   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 is legislating to allow in large numbers of foreign blue collar workers to overcome the current labour shortage here.  Social harmony is a critical key to Japan's success and not everyone is so happy with how this change is being handled.  A Kyodo news poll showed   sixty  five  point  eight  percent of voters were against the Diet's passing of the bill to accept foreign blue collar workers.  The plan is to bring in   three  hundred and  forty   five  thousand   one  hundred and  fifty   foreign migrant workers over a five year period.  The Abe Cabinet's approval ranking dropped from forty  seven  point three percent  down to  forty two  point  four percent as a result of the Government driving the bill through the Diet.  In other news, we know japan is a nation of hard workers.Health ministry data shows that a majority of cncer and heart patients worked in ome form while they were undergoing treatments in hospital.  Nearly  eight  two percent of cancer patients surveyed, said they worked from their hospital, including issuing job related reports and making preparations for their return to their jobs.  Of those who worked,  ninety one  percent  had used smart phones to conduct work from treatment locations.  Naomi Sakurai, Director of the Cancer Survivors Recruiting Project said, “patients think they‘ve caused trouble for their places of work and think they must do their jobs even while in hospital”. This is episode number sixty twoand we are talking about  Le Sales Killer Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. What we say and how we say it matters.  It matters in life, in families and in business- especially in sales.  Sales talk is very semantics driven.  By the way, the classic Hollywood big talking salesperson is an archeological artifact, a dusty relic, now banished to the tombs.  Today, salespeople have to be articulate but not glib, concise not flowery, evidence based not barrow-boy spivs.   Japan presents a challenge with developing salespeople.  Invariably, they are the undereducated graduates of OJT or On-the-Job Training. This will work for certain technical themes, but not for the broader art of sales.  Attempts by foreign corporates to rectify this problem 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. It is always snake oil.    Sales training for salespeople must be based on the reality of selling to clients in the client's native language and culture .  If the clients are Japanese, then the training has to be done in Japanese, because what we say and how we say are so culturally and linguistically specific, there is no way you can satisfactorily train this in English.   This doesn't stop people from trying though.  The snapper is when they add to their woes by using the HR people from Singapore or Hong Kong, the usual hub centers in Asia.  These are staff who invariably are smart, sharp, rapid fire Chinese speakers of accented English.  They facilitate from the global corporate sales textbook and have never sold a day in their life in Japan. What a sham when there is no instructor understanding of the subtleties of the Japanese language or the opportunity to coach the sales roles plays in Japanese.   Even more sadly the English language comprehension levels of the local staff max out at 60% in the morning sessions and drop precipitously to 10% to 15% by mid-afternoon.  I know, I have sat through these types of sessions with my Japanese colleagues.  They wilt in the afternoons, eyes begin to glaze over, as that wall of solid concrete advances forward and hits the frontal lobe of the brain.   Let's stop wasting time and money and get this done properly in the language of the client.  There are plenty of sale's fails anyway.  The first big fail is lack of preparation and anticipation of the issues facing the client.  Because of this gap, the language being used 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.  Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome backIn a court of law, you can't lead the witness, but in sales that is our job.  Take the buyer to conclusions they hadn't reached before because of lack of insight or information. Of course, we need to be asking good questions, to find out what the buyer needs and using SWOT analysis allows us to get to the key points faster and builds more credibility.   Blocker words are another killer of sales success.  This is directly related to a lack of discipline on the part of the salesperson. They go shooting their mouths off, without engaging their brains, and in the process out flood stupid words that scupper the deal.  What are these blocker words – some common ones include: “sort of”, “a few”, “kind of”, “sometimes”, “more or less”, “about”, “some”.  All vagaries to which no useful sales evidence can be attached. We should speak with authority and certainty, because clients want our full belief and commitment, so that they can trust what we say is true.    Words like “price”, “cost”, “contract” are also poor selections.  These words create an image of money going out like a flood, but no value coming back in.  We should be speaking of “value” and “investment” instead.  Your parent told you to be careful about signing a “contract”, so let's sign an “agreement” instead.  Simple semantic switches in emphasis, but these make a big difference to what clients hear.   Salespeople also 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.  Being concise is the key mantra here.  Pare back the dialogue to only words which are relevant, project value, are laden with evidence and which build trust – everything else has to go.  You want the buyer talking not you, so shut up and listen to their answers to your carefully crafted questions.   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.  We can be our own worst enemies sometimes, so let's get our act together and be more professional in our sales life.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode 63 we are talking aboutJapan's Work Rhythm Is Different. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Quotas, budgets, targets, feared employment oblivion all drive salespeople toward making sales.  Some go for the whales, but often don't even get a minnow. Others grab everything they can get.  The focus tends to be on getting that sale, bringing some money in the door, getting some commission, keeping your job.  The issue with this though is it corrupts our salesperson horizon.  It makes it too proximate and makes us too short term focused. What we really need to do is reorient our thinking around building a profession where we enjoy repeat sales.  We all know finding a new client is hard, difficult and expensive. We need to be farming part of the business and hunting for the rest.  When your focus is on one sale your relationship with the client is quite different to trying to build a long term partnership.  The sales pros always go for the partnership, over the short term gain of a single sale. 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 falling birthrate is a concern for the Japanese Government and it is introducing some new measures to reverse the problem.  The number of babies born in   2018  dropped to the lowest point since data became available in   1899  .  The required fertility rate is one point eight by the end of twenty twenty five and currently it is only one point four three.  The Diet is going to be asked to approve a new scheme to provide free public education for all children between aged between three and five starting in October 2019.  Also day care services will become free for children up to the age of two, if they come from low income households.  Poorer households will also receive grant type scholarships for university students. In other news,Toyota is working on developing robots for our homes, helping with chores and offering companionship.  In   2015 Toyota spent a billion dollars to open its AI focused Toyota Research Institute in Silicon valley.   In   2017  , it set up a  one hundred  million  dollar  fund to invest in startups and new robot technology.  In    2018  , it restructured its partner Robot Division to speed up decision making and shorten development time.  It is an attractive market.  In   2017   more than  two  point  one billion dollars was spent by consumers on robots for automated vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers.  Finally, Japan has extended the current copyright protection period from fifty years to seventy years, after an author's death. Intellectual property is a signify export market for the USA and so this is a big benefit to rights holders there. Good news for me though, because my book Japan Sales Mastery will have seventy years of protection after I am dead. But I will still be dead though. Given the snail's pace of change here in Japan it means Japan Sales Mastery will still probably be relevant into the next century!!!   This is episode number  sixty five  and we are talking about Not A Sale Thank You, Repeat Sales   PleaseSoredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.   Clever, shallow, smooth as silk, glib salespeople are the scourge of the earth.  They are focused on your money and how to separate you from it. There are no barriers to entry or qualifications to enter this field of work. Some will tell you anything, they live for today and like a shark, are constantly moving in order to feed. Snake oil purveyors to the naïve and trusting.  So, how do honest salespeople get anywhere when the image of the profession is so negative.  Movies like The Wolf of Wall Street, Boiler Room, people like Bernie Madoff, etc. - it goes on and on convincing us that we are permanent, potential victims of scammers, charlatans and confidence men.  By the way, we are all in sales today.  You might be in one of the “professions” but you are no longer above the fray. Lawyers are competing for clients just as voraciously as dentists, architects, engineers, doctors and everyone else who spent years slogging through varsity.  The title might be vague, such as the popular “business development”, but the activity is the same, just without the skills. The key point to differentiate yourself from the carnival barker pond scum is to stop focusing on sales. Instead focus on the re-order. This mental shift is fundamental. A sale can be a one time thing, a transient satisfaction of a temporary itch.  In some cases that may be all that is needed.  This is the hard road of sales though – constantly prospecting to find new clients, having a pipeline that is razor thin and constantly teetering between feast and famine.    The re-order concept is totally relationship based.  There is a degree of trust that brings the business to you, without you having to go and hunt it down.  Clients want to work with you because they feel safe and secure.  They know the value you provide and they know your word is your bond.  Sometimes, it may be a long time between drinks before the follow up order appears, but it will eventually appear.  In this profession of sales, we all know the client is never on your schedule.   So what is the key to gaining the trust and providing the value?  I believe the term kokorogamae(心構え) or “true intentions” is the key.  Your true intention is to be a 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. Find out more when we come back from the break   Welcome back  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.  Instead you will tell the client what you do, who else you have done it for and some evidence about the results achieved for them.  Evidence not bombast is a constant theme in your client conversations.   You will bring insights you have gathered, that spark those client “we hadn't thought of that” moments.  You don't string together a bunch of statements and claims about your widget's features.  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.    Your questioning skills are such that the client feels safe in the knowledge that your really understand what their business needs. You introduce the solution's features, the benefits of the features, the applications of the benefits and the back up evidence to support what you are saying.  You execute on the order from the client, as agreed and you deliver value at every point possible.  You do this every time.  If something goes wrong you fix it immediately, you don't become mealy-mouthed about what was discussed and you hand back the money without hesitation.    No trust or no value – then no re-order.  It is simple and complex at the same time.  If your “true intentions” are correct, then value and trust will flow accordingly and so will the re-orders.  Always go for the re-order, as the philosophical starting point of your sale's efforts.  Your kokorogamaewill be aligned with future success and that is where we want to be isn't it.   THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode sixty six we are talking about Hey Leaders – Are You A Scowler Or A Smiler?  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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

Okay, I have a presentation to give, so which slides can I use?  Bad idea.  This is the last thing you should be doing, in terms of preparing for your talk.  You have the topic, but who will be in the audience and what level of familiarity will they have with your topic?  Start with the end!  Go straight to the design of your key punch line, your biggest takeaway, the one thing you want to audience to get from your talk.  Start there and design the conclusion.  Move to the main body and finally decide how you will break through all the audience distraction and grab their attention with your opening. Speakers don't plan to fail, they fail to design properly. 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. Automation of retail is upon us.  We had a kiosk recently open on Akabane station here in Tokyo with no staff and everything automated, similar to AmazonGo in the USA.  Seven-eleven has now launched an experimental convenience store in Tokyo with an unmanned payment system integrated with facial recognition technology.  The NEC developed system checks customers faces against pre-registered facial images of customers using cameras when they enter the outlet and make payments. In other news, Japan is opening up the door to foreign workers but will they come? Japan is only twenty ninth out of sixty there countries in terms of ability to attract develop talent behind Taiwan and Estonia according to the IMD World Competitiveness Center.  According to a Gallup survey, even if there were total global freedom of movement, Japan isn't all that attractive and the population would only grow an extra one percent.  Canada's population by contrast would grow one hundred and forty seven percent and the US by forty six percent.   This is episode number  sixty four and we are talking about Design Your Talk For Success Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. 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.  They feel happy however because the talk was completed and they can tick that box.  This is often the case here in Japan where giving the speech well and just giving the speech are confused. Our objective is to provide value to our audience and build our personal and professional brand, not just give a speech.  We judge companies based on who we meet. If the person speaking is really impressive, we extrapolate that ability and project it to the whole team.  Conversely, if the speaker is a dud, then we assume nobody at that shop is much good.   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.  The actual content delivery of the concluding message may vary from what we design at the beginning, but it is still a very good discipline to force us to focus on the one central thing we want our audience to take away from our speech.   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.   Covering too many points and our audience will have trouble following the thread of our argument.  Too few points and the argument may not seem convincing for lack of depth and evidence.   We may group similar ideas under the one umbrella idea and may include those together.  We have the key points selected that we want to raise and now we have to construct the argument to support the ideas.  This would include some evidence based around statistics, data, expert opinion and authority references.   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. This is to tie the whole presentation together.  We might review what we said or we might focus on a particular key point.   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 have no control over what people will raise at the end by way of questions and so it often happens that an audience member will take the discussion off topic.  If we just allow the event to finish at that point we have lost control of the messaging.  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.  This is a tricky one because it is wrapped tightly together with the first impression we will make with the audience.  If we try a joke that is weak and falls flat, our initial impression is negative.  If we start rambling, we lose the audience's attention.  If we commence with something very boring we are going to have trouble breaking through the noise that is humming away between the ears of our audience.  We need to break into their attention and capture them for the receipt of our key message.   Questions are very powerful.  These should be asked rhetorically, in a way that the audience is not actually sure if it is a rhetorical question or something they actually have to answer.  This creates a certain amount of tension that drives their attention to what the speaker is saying.  They are curious to find out what you meant. Find out more when we come back from the break Welcome back   Other opening techniques include quoting some relevant expert on the subject is also good because it references the topic and gives the speaker additional authority to their message.   Statistics are powerful 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 grab attention, so make a provocative statement and then explain what you mean.   We can always flag our conclusion at the start and then spend the rest of the time justifying our interpretation.   This is a standard ploy and it has it's own risks.  Audiences are already distracted and anything that smacks of predictability sees them drifting away from us and straying into extraneous unrelated thoughts, completely off-topic.   The title of our talk is usually selected before we get down to the nitty gritty of the speech design.  We may have been requested to speak on a certain subject, so our ability to use our title to intrigue may be contained.  It is not such a problem because most people will have forgotten the exact title of your talk and unless there is a slide with the title listed, they will have trouble recalling it word for word.   The opening, therefore 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.   Before the start of the event, get there early and mix with some of the participants.  Get them talking about the topic, this is a good way to connect with the audience by referencing what a couple of them said in the moments before the speech started.  The person referenced feels very special through the recognition and the imaginary boundary between the speaker and the audience disappears as the speaker becomes one with the group.   Only at this point in our preparation should we start playing around with the slides to support the presentation.  Once you have designed it this way the need for a lot of text on the screen disappears.  We know what we need to say and so we can start introducing pictures and diagrams, as well as text.  Even the text can be just one word because we are able to talk to the key points covered by that word.  This is very powerful because it keeps your eyes on the audience and off your text.   When we are designing the talk there will be key words that lend a lot of weight to our argument and these may be key words we want to emphasis on the screen, though a photo or a video or some image.   Everyone is used to seeing lots of text on the screen and when you present in a different way you remain memorable.  The audience will not remember the details of your speech, but they will remember their impression of you, the speaker.   Japan may be the land of Zen but there is very little Zen influence going on when it comes to slides.  Baroque with its ornate detail is more the flavor here with many competing colors and a screens packed with information, spread across an astonishing number of different fonts styles and sizes.   Japan has a love for detail, but we don't have to put it all up on the screen.  Japan also has a love of the written word and what is written down carries a lot more weight that in Western countries.  The point here is that Japan is still some way behind the rest of the world in this aspect of clear communication. THE 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. Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button. Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. In episode  sixty five we are talking about Not A Sale Thank You, Repeat Sales Please. 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 We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!