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Salespeople don't set the price of what they sell.  This is usually an obscure outcome decided by someone else inside the machine.  It might actually be an elaborate process, where multiple variables are carefully calibrated, mathematical formulae are applied and a price is arrived at.  Or, it might be a slightly moist index finger boldly thrust skyward to come up with a number.  The latter is often the case when arriving at pricing for services. Regardless, the salespersons task is to sell at that price.  This is where we get into trouble.   Salespeople are total wimps when it comes to price.  We have learnt that getting a sale is what counts and price is an obstacle in that process.  If we are on a fixed salary and bonus or base salary and commission, the two usual cases in Japan, we get paid when we make a sale.  Do we know the profit margin attached to each sale? Usually no and actually we don't often care either, as long as we get paid.  We are just happy to (A) not get rejected by the buyer and (B) get a win, however small. Our self-esteem is totally tied up with getting sales, modest in size or otherwise.   The instinct of the salesperson then is to make the price as malleable as possible.  Offering a discount seems to get the buyer in a good mood and more likely to give us a yes.  This reduced price immediately impacts our commission and if we keep doing this, will also impact our bonus and job security, as we don't bring in enough revenue relative to the target.   The key problem is that the salespeople often don't believe in their own product or service.  Because of this they can discount with gay abandon.  This is a short-term gain for long-term pain.  The ability to meet the price requirement is a critical piece of the salesperson's skill set.  Dropping the price may be easy, but we never build the skills to really succeed in this profession.  It usually is a path to our removal by the sales manager, who understands we are unable to sell.   Amateur salespeople, when they don't believe in the price, start right off the bat with a discounted price. They say stupid things like, “normally the price is x but I am going to offer it to you for y”.  Or, “if you buy two, I will drop the price by x”.  The client hasn't even requested a discount, begun haggling, attempted to massage the ask and yet lo and behold, a miracle has just popped up without warning.  This tactic may be misinterpreted by salespeople, who don't know what they are doing, as building trust and a good relationship with the client. That is a false dawn of hope on the part of our intrepid hero or heroine.   Thanks to volunteering an unprompted price cut, the client now understands that your firm are a bunch of liars who say one thing, but do another.  They also know you are a tricky bunch who are trying to snow buyers with your fiction pricing magic.  They don't see the gratuitous lower price as a bargain.   They see that as the starting point in a negotiation to drive the price even lower.  By having a listed price and immediately offering a lesser price, the buyer feels you cannot be trusted because you cannot even defend what you say is the value of your offering.     By dropping the price so quickly, the whole question of perceived value is brought into fundamental disrepute.  There is no fixed price for this sale and therefore no equivalent particular value attached to it either.  We are now in the Wild West of selling, where there the only rule is the right of force and the buyer has the Gatling Gun and we have a water pistol.   The salesperson's job is to pour on the value explanation and show why this pricing is fair and reasonable, fully justified and easily defensible.  If they do need to meet the client's restricted budget or need to allow the buyer to save face with their bosses, then any discounting should in the first instant be attached to volume purchases.  If they buy more then the price can be adjusted.  The amount reduced should be as smallish amount, as part of the first offer.  Remember, we are now off the paved highway and are hacking our way through the dense brush of a negotiated agreement, where there are no maps, no signposts and no 5th Cavalry about to come to the rescue over the sand dunes.   If the price point is to be assaulted, then the reductions should be small and fought heroically all the way.  Do not go for round number drops or large number drops, go down in dribs and drabs.  The client will feel much better knowing that they got a legitimate discount against the usual price, because they extracted that right out of the salesperson's hide, rather than the salesperson rolled over right from the get go.  When that happens, they doubt everything about you and your company because your pricing seems bogus.   Never drop your price.  Defend your price with value.  Resist reductions all the way down and extract some form of quid pro quo against volume purchases.  If you buckle, you will be destroying the brand, the brand positioning and the credibility of the firm.  You may lose some sales.  These are usually people who cannot afford you anyway.  If you believe in the value of what you are selling don't give in, defend, show value, fight, fight, fight.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.     About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, THE Sales Japan Series and THE Presentations Japan Series, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

The customer is Kamisama (God) in sales in Japan.  We hear this a lot here across all industries and sectors. Sometimes however, the buyer can more like an Oni (Devil) when they deal with salespeople.  Bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of the source, but when you are trying to sell a company on your product or service, do you just have to suck it up?  Actually no! Unless you are in a very small market segment, where there are only a limited number of buyers, then as salespeople we have choices.  If the former is the case, then I suggest changing industries and getting out of that negative bad behavior environment.  Life is short and good salespeople have highly transferable skills.  If you know what you are doing, you can probably work in almost any business, as long as there is no requirement for highly technical knowledge. The Japan winner of the worst sales environment is the pharmaceutical industry selling to doctors.  Unlike the rest of the advanced world, where patients use the internet to educate themselves about medical conditions, before they see the doctor, Japan is still stuck in the pre-1990s. Japanese doctors consequently, still consider themselves vastly superior to everyone else, from patients on down.  At the absolute bottom of the pile are drug salespeople.  Being forced to wait around for hours, fawning over the doctor, being spoken to like dirt, cleaning their Mercedes, arranging all types of incentives to get them to buy your drugs, have been the fodder for legendary poor buyer behavior forever.  Conflicts of interest have emerged recently as a concern and there are many more restrictions now on entertaining doctors.  The flow of goodies is being restricted and so the salesperson doesn't have as much in the way of ame (sweets) to offer anymore. They still get plenty of muchi (whip) from the buyer though.  Japan has a powerful hierarchical system in place in society.  You have been busily networking, creating new opportunities.  The company President you have just met tells one of the staff to get together with you the salesperson.  You might be thinking, this is looking good.  Not necessarily. What often surprises me about HR people and other underlings in Japan is how they run their own show, regardless of what the President may want.  Recently, I had lunch with a multi-national company President here running the Japan operation.  The President is dynamic, articulate and a great presenter.  After the lunch, as promised, the President sent an email to the HR person instructing them to get together with me to discuss training for their company.  I follow up with the HR person many, many times, but never get an answer.  It has become obvious they do not care what the President said, they have their own views on how to run the training and we are not going to fit into that plan.  On another occasion, I had met the Japanese President at a networking event, followed up, got a meeting and in the process he introduced me to the HR people.  In the meeting, the President suggested they take a look at what we offer.  Many, many emails and attempted contacts later, no response from the HR team for  follow-up meeting. Going back and telling the President who introduced you that, in fact, they have no power within their own organization is a bit of a delicate conversation.  Even if you raise it, you have just said that the Emperor has no clothes.  They do not thank you for pointing out their underlings are in rebellion and they themselves are impotent.  I am still working on a solution for this contradiction. Another annoying activity is being asked to spend time to put together a proposal and quote on a product or service, but there is absolutely no intention to buy from you.  This is often driven by internal compliance regulations that require three quotes. They have already secretly selected the provider and your job is to provide the paperwork to make sure that happens and the compliance box is ticked.  We were contacted by a large company recently asking for a proposal on a particular piece of training.  Efforts to meet the client to discuss the needs etc., were rebuffed because they said they were so busy – just send the proposal, it will be fine (!).  This is a tricky one, because you don't know if you are the patsy here or if they are in fact so very busy that is why they need your help.  To test the system in these specific doubtful and dubious cases, I never follow up from my side after sending over the proposal.  I know, I know. This sounds like a very bad sales effort on my part and I should be fired, but it is a technique to reveal who we are dealing with here, time wasters or genuine buyers.  If they are really interested, then they will get back to me with either more questions or an order.  If stony silence is all we get, we know we have been royally used to assist a competitor's sales effort.  That is a double ouch right there, isn't it! It is not always black and white though.  In another case the President was a graduate of our programme and told his HR Director to get us to put together a proposal  on some training.  This is exciting and you think “we are looking good”.  The President knows the quality and the results from first hand experience and has the authority to make this happen. Or so it seems.  In this example, I actually get to meet the HR people and their internal client.  I followed up to present the proposal to them.  “No, we are very busy, just send it”.  Warning signal right there.  I pushed back, “actually I need to explain it for you”. Further stalling, “No, just send it”.  The pricing by the way, was very close to their indication.  Eventually you send it, but now you begin to suspect this is revenge on the President for daring to enter their world of authority.  What looked like an inside track to a positive decision, gets derailed as the internal buying entity flexes muscle to show their independence.  Applying my standard rule, I do not follow up further and just wait to see what happens.  There was no response from their side, so again few options available, other than to tough it out. These things happen in business, but the key point is do not take it personally.  Sales is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and your emotions are always under attack.  Accept that sometimes you will get played by the buyer, but keep a record of the incident.  Every six months give that company  a call to see if your nefarious counterpart is still working there.  People are much more mobile in Japan, compared to many years ago and there is a good chance the evil, malicious puppeteer has moved on.  We should not deal with that particular buyer again, but we can try to deal with the company. There are usually many buyers in your market and many who you have had no contact with as yet, so there is little need to deal with bad buyer behavior.  As the old saying goes “fool me once it's your fault, fool me twice it's my fault”. Action Steps if you are in an industry where buyers habitually treat salespeople very badly then switch industries Just because the people at the top like you, don't think that means anything in Japan. Keep working on those who actually execute the work. If the buyer just says “send it to me” get worried, you may be the patsy for unknowingly assisting a rival's offer Keep in touch with the company, the “problem child” may have moved on Never forget “fool me once it's your fault, fool me twice it's my fault” Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Prospecting For Golden Clients   Do you have a clear image and understanding of your perfect client?  Authors often mention about writing for their avatar.  This is their imaginary reader.  They have a clear picture of whom they are writing for.  They know their reader's hopes, fears, aspirations, behaviors, goals and idiosyncrasies.    In sales, prospecting to find your Golden Client is a bit like discovering your life partner.  We have to go out and meet a lot of potential partners, until we find the person who just clicks with us.  We find we get along very well together – we are simpatico, share common interests, have great communication and are on the same wavelength.   Clients are our partners too.  Partners in the sense that we are looking for a long- term relationship.  Our chief objective is to make re-sales.  Not to make a “sale”, but to generate consistent orders year after year.  This can only occur when the mutual trust has been built.    If we have distilled what our perfect client looks like, then we have a much better chance of finding such a buyer.  Now our perfect buyer may need to grow into that category.  It is rare to find someone who is perfect from the outset.  The “test and see” strategy in Japan almost ensures that the first orders and interactions will be limited, as the buyer tests us out, to see if we are reliable.    This is done for self-protection in business.  The distribution system in Japan is often convoluted and there are many outstretched hands involved.  This means there are also many interlocking relationships, constructed on years of obligations and counter obligations.   As a new supplier, we are caught up in this web of mutual responsibility.  Failure in any one part of the system jeopardises the livelihood of everyone in the food chain and so people take this relationship building very seriously.  Once burnt they are very shy to try again, so we have one shot to make a new client and we had better not blow it.   So our perfect client may actually have to grow in scale to become our perfect client over time.  In the beginning, we may only see small orders which based on satisfactory performance by us, will be able to grow in importance.  This is the theory anyway.   Now this gradual scale increase idea raises a problem.  Which are nascent perfect clients and which are buyers just pushing hard for all they can get from us?  At the start this is sometimes hard to determine.  As sellers, we tend toward being especially accommodating in the beginning, because we want to grow the business with this new client.  This makes perfect sense, but we should always have our BATNA at the ready, to wield whenever needed.   Our BATNA is our “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”.  This is our walk away position.  If we get pushed unreasonably hard on price, we need to be thinking where is the point where this new client is less than perfect.   In fact are they meant to become a non-client, because they are too demanding, too cheap and too problematic?   Sometimes the buyer tendency is to play the “new client” card as hard a possible. They want to force concessions. Then despite all the rhetoric and agreement about this being  a one-off, once in  lifetime special introductory arrangement, they then set that number as the new low bar.  Against this standard all further future discounts are measured and negotiated.  This is not a partnership.   We need to have a clear view of who we want to partner with and make sure that there is that level of compatibility. There needs to be win-win outcomes aplenty.  We can have the correct approach to clients but not all clients reciprocate.  Desperation drives bad decisions and bad partnerships.  Life is short.  So it is better to take our time and make sure this client is someone we want to be dealing with for a long time.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.     About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcast “THE Leadership Japan Series”, he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Ownership Versus Dictatorship In Leadership   Leading people can be easy, if you want to be a total dictator and just order everyone around. The way of doing everything has to be specified and the detail has to be scrutinised within an inch of its life, all the time.  All the ideas have to come from you and all you want is passive acceptance from the team. They are the arms and legs and you are the brain, in super command mode.  Actually there are plenty of leaders like that in Japan. The control part works just fine because you are in control of everything.  This means your entire day is broken up in firing out orders and then checking to make sure they were executed in the exact format you had specified. This uber control method has a lot of consistency and predictability to it.  Compliance heads love this environment, because it is all about controls. This is the Theory X leader that Douglas McGregor wrote about in his study of motivation.  The leader working on the basis of strict controls and severe penalties for non-compliance.   At a certain point of scale though, this breaks down because you just can't manage enough time in the day to interact with each person individually or check up on their work directly.  This is where you need middle managers.  You can apply this same management technique to Middle Managers, but you personally are removed no from the front line.   You are also limited to how much innovation you can expect in the business.  This would be fine, if there were no competitors in the market and that they also were not innovating.  That never happens, so while we are gaining super control over our own business, we are handing the field over to our competitors who can out innovate us.   We also face succession planning problems.  Who can move yup through the ranks and lead, if all potential leaders have grown up on hand held spoon feeding by the bog boss?  We need capable people to take over.  The issue is capable people will quit that type of environment, because they have their own ideas and aspirations and they feel suffocated by all of this top down dictatorship.   We know that people will feel ownership of the world they help to create.  This invites us as leaders to involve our people in the business we are running.  We want their engagement.  If they are not engaged why would they care about doing things better.  To get innovation we need engagement, to get engagement we need to provide a sense of ownership.   What happens though when the person you look to for leadership, for innovation, for creating ideas doesn't come to the party.  Japan is a country of following orders and many people are happy with that.  Tell me what to do and I will do it very well, but don't ask me what to do. This isn't all that helpful when we are trying to skate to where the puck is going to be in business. We have no clear road map of the future and we have to think about what our business will look like in five years time. What will the marketplace look like then, our competitors, our suppliers, etc.  The boss can't tell you that.  We all have t work together to divine the future and then make our plans on that basis.   As a leader we can be making a big effort to give ownership of this process to our subordinates, but we notice that some grab the chance and others don't.  People in Middle Management have been given the opportunity to come up with their vision for the department for the future and that have produced exactly nothing after many months.  What do we do?   We may instinctively feel that we need to give people ownership, so the dictator role model is ruled out.  But we notice they are not thriving in this “you own the business” environment.  The first thing to realise is that not everyone is like you or wants to be like you as a leader.  Some people need a dictator to tell them what to do here in japan. That would be you, so play that role.   You may decide that your leadership team cannot carry the weight of someone who can only do what they are told and who cannot take ownership.  Often, these people are functional experts who are deep, deep in heir craft and you cannot lose their expertise.  This is the classic case of people being promoted into leadership in Japan based on age, stage or speciality.  They were not raised above the crowd based on their leadership capability and were given no training in how to lead.   You may need to put someone above them, who can be the actual leader and keep them in their functional day to day supervisory role.  That way you don't lose them, but you can also call on someone else for the ideas and participation at a more senior level.  Or you can become the brains of the outfit for their department and just tell them what needs to happen and then supervise the execution of the plan.   The key point is to play to the strengths of the team members.  We re going to do better by elevating their strengths than trying to eliminate their weaknesses.  Think about yourself - how many of your own weaknesses have you been able to successfully eliminate? You have 100% control over yourself, but you probably haven't been able to eliminate the weaknesses of your direct reports.  Build on their strengths and get the right people on the right bus and sitting in the right seats. 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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.        

Selling To Buying Teams   In Japan it is rare to be selling to one person.  Even if we only meet one person, there will be others who have to be consulted and have an influence over the buying decision.  It is often the case that we meet teams of buyers in the meeting.  We may have our champion helping us to become a provider for the client company, but there may also be blockers who attend the meeting to make sure nothing happens.  When the numbers increase, the complexity of getting a positive decision goes up.   When we are dealing singly with our champion, we have to arm them sufficiently to run through the blockades within the firm.  They need to be given the right arguments to deal with the naysaysers inside the company. There will be different executives involved, with different agendas and we have to give our champion the bullets to fire off, when they hit resistance.   During the meeting we are facing a mixture of viewpoints on the buying decision.  We need to run the ruler over this group and decide who we are dealing with and what are their buying perspectives.  Generally there are four different types of buyers apart from our champion.  The Executive Buyer will be the CEO.  They tend to take a long term viewpoint and are driven by strategic value and growth opportunities over time.  The Financial Buyer is usually the CFO and they have  shorter time frame in mind than the CEO.  They are driven by costs because they are looking at the cash flow situation of the company and the debt burden.  They are interested in payment terms – usually long ones – and flexibility around the conditions associated with the purchase.   The Technical Buyer can be the functional specialist, the accountant, scientist, engineer, doctor, HR specialist, etc.  They tend to be driven by efficiency, practicality, capacity. The User Buyer has direct application of the purchase and are concerned with the features, the ease of use, the reliability, the warranties etc.   Giving a one size fits all presentation to a buying team made up of people with different perspectives is going to be insufficient to the task.  The presentation needs to be structured so that the tasty bits are presented to each perspective, in a way that they can identity with it.  We should prepare on the basis that all four buyer types will be in the room and then vary our presentation according to who actually turns up.   There is no guarantee that concentrating on the President is going to bed down the deal.  Often the President will have delegated the final decision to the person who has the biggest stake in the decision.  They may be trying to empower their staff and won't overrule them, even if they personally hold a different view.  Japan is also a classic for ignoring any women in the room because they are not perceived as having any say in the final decision.  This is old style thinking.    I was at networking function and met a very attractive, smart young businesswoman who had a big title on her business card.  I guessed correctly that she was a family member of the majority owners of that company. I didn't go and see her, but sent one of my very capable female consultants to do the follow up meeting. Don't assume that because they are women, you can concentrate on the men and still do business with that company. Those days are over.   Also don't just address your remarks to the English speakers in the group.  They are rarely the decision-makers.  When you talk make eye contact with everyone in the group and include them in what you are saying.  It doesn't matter if they understand the English or not, but they will understand you recognise their importance in the group.    You may have experienced the reverse situation.  The buyer only talks to your Japanese staff member and ignores you even though you are the boss.  This can happen even when you speak Japanese.  It is very annoying.  So don't do the same with your buyer group, involve everyone in your remarks.   Just to make the whole picture more challenging, there is another layer of complexity we need to add to the meeting.  Each of the people present on the buying side, will have a particular personality style which will impact on how they like to communicate.    Those who are Drivers are very task and outcome driven and are strict time-is-money types who will make a quick decision and want to move on to the next project.  Get straight to the point with them and be direct, they won't be offended.   Their opposite style are the Amiables who like to get to know who they are dealing with, so that the right element of trust is established.  They are not in a hurry and don't like pushy salespeople.  Be subtle and soft in tone and body language.   Analytical styles are logical, data and proof driven.  They love numbers to three decimal places and having all the ducks in a row, arranged nicely. They dismiss all salespeople statements which are not backed up by fact as pure fluff.  Talk numbers and logic.  If you want to make a statement, then wrap it up inside a question.  If they say “yes” to the question then they are accepting the statement.  For example, you want to make the statement that, “we can guarantee delivery in three days”.  Don't state that.  Instead ask, “If we could guarantee delivery in three days, would that help your business?”. If they say yes, they have validated the importance of quick delivery.   Their direct opposite type are Expressives.  They like the big picture, look at holistic solutions and love to brainstorm on strategy. They hate getting stuck down in the weeds with a lot of small fry detail.  Talk about the future and how brilliant it will be with your solution to their problem.   So in addition to the buyer's job function perspective, we also have to be aware we need to switch our communication style to suit who we are talking to.  We will need to be talking about the area of their interest and in the communication style they like.  This takes quite a feat of flexibility on the part of salespeople, but this is what separates the great from the good. What Is The One Key Thing When Presenting?   I was talking with a friend, while we were having lunch at this very nice Italian restaurant he frequents, near his office.  Between dishes, we were talking about how he has to go to his US headquarters and join all the other representative Country Heads from around the world and give his report on how the business is going in Japan.  I was thinking that that must be a very high profile and pressure presentation. So I mentioned how great our High Impact Presentations Course was. In my own case, I wish I had done it 20 years earlier, because it would have changed my career trajectory.  Anyway, my friend was patiently listening to all of this and then asked me a very profound question,  “What is the one key thing when presenting?”.   What he was getting at was that if we had to boil it all down, what is the one most critical skill we need to be effective as a presenter.  This is a major question in business. After all, this is our personal and professional brand we are putting out there on show for all the world to see.  This is not something we want to get wrong.  I had no hesitation in telling him “focus on your audience”.   Great. What does that mean, because aren't we all focusing on our audience when we present? Definitely, yes, we should be focusing on our audience, but often we are deluding ourselves.  If we break down the presentation and analyse it, we can see that focusing on your audience has major ramifications for your degree of success when talking in front of others.    We may have what we want to say in our mind when preparing the talk.  We may be an expert in our field and have a whole bunch of stuff we want to share because we are excited by the content.  However, we may have not taken the trouble to think about what the audience would be most interested in?  Why would they turn up?  What will they be expecting to hear?  We may have not bothered to research who would be in the room.  What would be the age range, the gender mix, the degrees of expertise on the subject.  Did we do our research so we could focus the topic down to the slant most likely to impress our audience?  Or did we just talk about what we were interested in?   Who were we thinking about when we got up to speak?  We may have started our talk focused not on the audience but on ourselves. We were thinking how nervous we were feeling.  We feel captured by our high pulse rate, our sweaty palms, our dry throat, our weakness in the knees.  The focus is 100% inward not outward.   We may have been very deeply engrossed in the notes we were reading, such that we didn't even look up at the audience.  Or if we did, we used one of those fake eye contact approaches, where our eyes look in the direction of the audience but we are not really looking at anyone. We may have decided to ignore half the crowd and only talk to one half of the room or maybe only the front row or maybe no one, because we are staring over all the seated heads at some spot on the back wall.  Or we may be skimming across the room looking at everyone for one second and therefore looking at no one.  We cannot engage anyone in the audience with a fleeting one second glimpse but we can try to give the impression of an attempt to engage with our audience. This is not a talk focused on the audience.  Do the audience members sitting there feel that we are talking directly to them individually and not to an amorphous mass.   We may have decided that the audience was pretty dumb, so we need to read the text on the slides to them. We might even do that by turning our back on the audience and staring up at the text on the screen.  We are so focused on the text and the content and not on those listening to us.   Just to drive home the lack of focus on the audience, we cram so much information on each slide, that they becomes impenetrable.  Analytical types love jamming ten graphs on the one slide or throwing up the entire text document on screen.   We may hit up the slide with five different colours in a florid mess.  Or we may have gone crazy, like an example I saw recently, where the presenter used four or more different fonts in the text.  This made it super hard to read for the audience members.   Where was the focus?  It was on the presenters “cleverness” to showcase so many fonts on each slide, even though it was a disaster. Not to really rub it in, but the Japanese presenter was delivering a two hour lecture to a local Chamber of Commerce on presenting skills.   We may be rambling, because we have a poor structure for the talk, so we are hard to follow.  We may not have applied a logical flow to the talk to make it easy for the audience.  “Don't make your talk hard to follow” is a fundamental rule.     Or we may speak in a monotone to see how many people we can put to sleep.  By hitting key words we can emphasise key messages we want the audience to take away with them.  We may be umming ahhing like a legend, to really distract the audience from the message.  We have not done any work on polishing our presenting skills, because we are not focused on the audience but selfishly on the most friction free, time efficient approach.  That means no extra effort being made.   We may have spent a total time of zero minutes practicing the talk before we gave it.  We may have spent our time instead working on the slide deck.  It takes time to cram ten graphs on the one slide, with five different colours and four different fonts for the text.   This major effort will just suck up any potential rehearsal time before the presentation.  So where were we focused after all?   Even though we may imagine we are focused on the audience, we may in fact be missing the opportunity or actively working against that aim.  Take another look at whether you are actually focused on your audience or whether you are just imagining it. 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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.            

What Is The One Key Thing When Presenting?   I was talking with a friend, while we were having lunch at this very nice Italian restaurant he frequents, near his office.  Between dishes, we were talking about how he has to go to his US headquarters and join all the other representative Country Heads from around the world and give his report on how the business is going in Japan.  I was thinking that that must be a very high profile and pressure presentation. So I mentioned how great our High Impact Presentations Course was. In my own case, I wish I had done it 20 years earlier, because it would have changed my career trajectory.  Anyway, my friend was patiently listening to all of this and then asked me a very profound question,  “What is the one key thing when presenting?”.   What he was getting at was that if we had to boil it all down, what is the one most critical skill we need to be effective as a presenter.  This is a major question in business. After all, this is our personal and professional brand we are putting out there on show for all the world to see.  This is not something we want to get wrong.  I had no hesitation in telling him “focus on your audience”.   Great. What does that mean, because aren't we all focusing on our audience when we present? Definitely, yes, we should be focusing on our audience, but often we are deluding ourselves.  If we break down the presentation and analyse it, we can see that focusing on your audience has major ramifications for your degree of success when talking in front of others.    We may have what we want to say in our mind when preparing the talk.  We may be an expert in our field and have a whole bunch of stuff we want to share because we are excited by the content.  However, we may have not taken the trouble to think about what the audience would be most interested in?  Why would they turn up?  What will they be expecting to hear?  We may have not bothered to research who would be in the room.  What would be the age range, the gender mix, the degrees of expertise on the subject.  Did we do our research so we could focus the topic down to the slant most likely to impress our audience?  Or did we just talk about what we were interested in?   Who were we thinking about when we got up to speak?  We may have started our talk focused not on the audience but on ourselves. We were thinking how nervous we were feeling.  We feel captured by our high pulse rate, our sweaty palms, our dry throat, our weakness in the knees.  The focus is 100% inward not outward.   We may have been very deeply engrossed in the notes we were reading, such that we didn't even look up at the audience.  Or if we did, we used one of those fake eye contact approaches, where our eyes look in the direction of the audience but we are not really looking at anyone. We may have decided to ignore half the crowd and only talk to one half of the room or maybe only the front row or maybe no one, because we are staring over all the seated heads at some spot on the back wall.  Or we may be skimming across the room looking at everyone for one second and therefore looking at no one.  We cannot engage anyone in the audience with a fleeting one second glimpse but we can try to give the impression of an attempt to engage with our audience. This is not a talk focused on the audience.  Do the audience members sitting there feel that we are talking directly to them individually and not to an amorphous mass.   We may have decided that the audience was pretty dumb, so we need to read the text on the slides to them. We might even do that by turning our back on the audience and staring up at the text on the screen.  We are so focused on the text and the content and not on those listening to us.   Just to drive home the lack of focus on the audience, we cram so much information on each slide, that they becomes impenetrable.  Analytical types love jamming ten graphs on the one slide or throwing up the entire text document on screen.   We may hit up the slide with five different colours in a florid mess.  Or we may have gone crazy, like an example I saw recently, where the presenter used four or more different fonts in the text.  This made it super hard to read for the audience members.   Where was the focus?  It was on the presenters “cleverness” to showcase so many fonts on each slide, even though it was a disaster. Not to really rub it in, but the Japanese presenter was delivering a two hour lecture to a local Chamber of Commerce on presenting skills.   We may be rambling, because we have a poor structure for the talk, so we are hard to follow.  We may not have applied a logical flow to the talk to make it easy for the audience.  “Don't make your talk hard to follow” is a fundamental rule.     Or we may speak in a monotone to see how many people we can put to sleep.  By hitting key words we can emphasise key messages we want the audience to take away with them.  We may be umming ahhing like a legend, to really distract the audience from the message.  We have not done any work on polishing our presenting skills, because we are not focused on the audience but selfishly on the most friction free, time efficient approach.  That means no extra effort being made.   We may have spent a total time of zero minutes practicing the talk before we gave it.  We may have spent our time instead working on the slide deck.  It takes time to cram ten graphs on the one slide, with five different colours and four different fonts for the text.   This major effort will just suck up any potential rehearsal time before the presentation.  So where were we focused after all?   Even though we may imagine we are focused on the audience, we may in fact be missing the opportunity or actively working against that aim.  Take another look at whether you are actually focused on your audience or whether you are just imagining it. 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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Leading Your External Partners In Japan   For many companies it makes no sense to fund their own sales force in Japan.  The money, expertise and time available within the organization is insufficient to the task, so a partner is required.  This could be an equity partner or a distribution alliance.  The penalties for getting this wrong though are high.    Poor partner selection can ensure your product or service never gets anywhere in Japan by design. The big player looks attractive as a distributor, but they are partnering with you to kill your business. They have a preferred product or service and the last thing they want is for you to disrupt the market.  The best way to do that is partner with you and then just idle the business.  They know it will take you years to figure it out, if you ever do.   When the agreement period for the partnership is set long, the pain is sustained and there is nothing you can do about it.  Desperate or ignorant company representatives sign long contracts with insufficient milestones.  Ideally what you want are clear performance targets in the agreement, which if they are not met, would allow the contract to be ended.  Expect strong resistance on this idea.   The poor levels of due diligence on these types of partner arrangement are astounding.  When talking to business people, I am always amazed at the number of supplier partnerships which occurred because the foreign seller happened to sit next to a Japanese businessman on the plane.    Even presuming you didn't get stuck with an evil partner trying to kill your business, the case often occurs that they are killing your business anyway, through incompetence. They might be well minded but still incompetent.  The partner's sales team's interest in your offer can be an issue.  Basically, they aren't interested.  Japanese sales people prefer to visit clients and collect orders for established products, rather than having to actually sell anything. Your product by definition is new. The preferred methodology is to get you to take a whack on the price, as an incentive to get clients to buy it. This is pure laziness on the part of the partner's sales organization.   Selling from a value perspective is key, because Japan is a tough market to raise prices in, once you start low.  The buyers have fixed their mental temperature at a low level and resist your efforts to raise the temperature.  Often we may assume that the partner's sales organisation can sell. That would be too generous. Usually, salespeople in Japan are either poorly trained or under trained when it comes to selling.   This is where you need to provide some training for their sales team on how to sell.  You might think that all you need is to train them on the product features etc., but that is too optimistic.  They won't be much good in designing questions for the buyer to attract interest in your product.  They won't go much beyond an introduction of the features.  They won't sally forth into the sunny uplands of benefits of the features, the application of the benefits, the evidence of the application and chancing their arm with a trial close. They won't know how to deal with objections when they come up and they won't ask for the order.  Apart from those small details they will be fine.   Getting sales people who already handle a multitude of other products to become interested in yours is a struggle.  However by providing value, such as excellent training that benefits all of their job, they feel a sense of appreciation.  It needs to be set up though.  Don't rely solely on the leaders of the partner organization to do this for you. You need to speak to the salespeople directly about how much you admire their work, how committed you are to seeing them succeed and explain why you have introduced this broad based training, beyond just the product specs.   You might be thinking that the partner's sales managers can lead the team but again, you are being too generous.  Like many countries, sales leaders are selected based on a bunch of reason which having nothing to do with leadership potential.  In Japan, they may be the most senior or they might be the best sales person.  These leaders also need proper training, so make sure they get it.  Put them through the same training as the sales people, so that they know what they can expect from the salespeople in terms of knowledge and capacity.  Also give them better training on how to lead.  This will be a revelation for them, because they will have been thrashing around for decades unsure of what they are supposed to be doing as a professional in sale's leadership.   Expect all of this will be resisted by the partner organization and ask yourself why that would be?  You are paying for it after all, so what is the problem?  Good question isn't it.  Welcome to Japan!   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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

No Sale's Questions Please, We Are Japanese   I was visiting the office of one of my multinational corporate clients and we were talking about the issues he was facing with his Japanese sales team.  His product is given the “yes” or “no” purchase decision by the business owner.  In this industry the business owners have very little time available so getting an opportunity to speak with them is gold in itself.  There are also lots and lots of competitors in this business, so the buyers have no shortage of choices.  The sales team are experienced salespeople and have been selling this range of products for a number of years – they are veterans.  And yet they haven't come to grips with one of the most important precepts of selling – ask well designed questions of the buyer.   Japan throws up all sorts of interesting challenges in the selling field.  One of them is social hierarchy.  This can be pedigree – coming from an elite social group, who tend to marry within their own ranks and who tend to inherit the business.  It can be based on education.  The name of the elite institution you went to, puts you into a very small circle of the best and the brightest in the land and everyone knows it, including you.  It could be the faculty you attended within that elite higher education organization, that marks you even further apart as an expert.  It could be the title on your business card, that tells everyone you are a formidable person who has risen to the top of the tree in business.  It could be the size of the organization you work for, a massive machine of vast power and scale, a behemoth bristling with power and influence.   The lowly Japanese salesperson calling on one of these elite buyers is fully conscious of their own inferiority and the low rung they occupy on the totem pole of influence.  Unless they are properly trained they can be on the back foot from the start and never get in control of the sale's conversation. This was the problem I was discussing with my client.  His salespeople are telling him they cannot ask questions of their elite buyers because of their own social inferiority and position as salespeople.   Nonsense.  This is a lack of sale's ability not a business barrier erected to keep the hoi polloi at bay.  As in all cases in Japan, the buyer is GOD.  Note: they are not king as in the West but GOD, regardless of their background. When they are part of the super elite, then they are a bigger GOD. You don't just start interrogating GOD, you get permission first.  Now this would seem a relatively straightforward process, except that few sales people in Japan have any well defined process for the activity of sales.   The first thing we need to do in setting up the permission to ask questions is to design our Credibility Statement.  It is not complex.  Tell the buyer what it is you do, but do it in a succinct way.  Do not ramble and do not go into super detail – just the broad brush of what your company does.  For example for my company we would say, “we are global experts in training soft skills”. Four key words there – global, experts, soft skills.  That is enough for the buyer to clearly understand what it is we do and to make an initial judgment of whether that is relevant or not to their business. Next we give a relevant example of where we have provided our service or product for a similar buyer and had success for them.  We know that buyers doubt seller's claims as fluff, unless there is some evidence to back it up.  It is not always possible to come up with a similar case.  However we should try to get as close as we can, even if it is a different industry but a similar echelon of scale – for example, very boutique or gargantuan, start up or 19thgeneration, foreign or domestic.   “We recently did some work for an asset management company to improve their people's pitch quality, they made it to the final round and won the billion dollar pitch”.   Here we are proving evidence that what we do works, that we have the skills to make a difference securing the client's desired outcomes.   Finally we make a suggestion, but not a bold claim. In America a bold claim, actually a super bold claim would be de rigeur but not in Japan.  We need to be subtle so we say, “Maybe, we could do the same thing for you. I am not sure, but in order for me to find that out if that were possible would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”.  It is showing respect for the buyer, saying that we are not presumptuous or arrogant enough to think we know what they need, without discussing it with them first.   We don't say we are going to spend the next twenty minutes drilling down on your needs and finding out all the issues of your company, going deep and personal.  We just say we want to ask “a few questions”.  Every client will think a few questions is better than an interrogation.  However, because our questions are very well designed, we will have them thinking more deeply about their own business. In this case, they will not have any hesitation to continue the session with us beyond a few questions.  If our questions can trigger a thought bubble inside their head that says, “we hadn't thought of that” or “we haven't planned for that”, then you have struck gold right there.  Ask stupid questions instead, suddenly the interview will be over and you will be out on the street.   Getting permission to ask questions is not hard, if you know what you are doing.  Years in the job of selling doesn't mean the salespeople actually are professional.  They are just repeating the same mistakes their sempai or seniors taught them when they entered the company.  So getting progress here in the sale's field is glacial.  Japan – you have run out of time, we need to do a lot better. 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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.      

Don't Be Boring When Presenting   Every week I get to listen to speeches from some of the top people in their field.  I belong to an elite Rotary Club here in Tokyo.  That description in itself is a bit of a problem, given the philosophy of Rotary as a service organisation helping society and connecting business people together.  When my fellow Rotarians from different parts of the world hear this term “elite”, they will be puzzled, but hey, this is Japan and we do things differently here.  My particular Rotary is brimming with the captains of industry, the commercial crème de la crème, the top shelf of corporate leadership.  One of these titans was giving a presentation recently.    He runs a huge print media company with an eye popping daily circulation in the millions that is the envy of his Western compatriots.  This is a man whose whole career has been devoted to communication, capturing stories and gaining influence.  So my expectations were raised on a couple of fronts.  I thought here is a speaker who will have a lot of interesting anecdotes, given his organization has a global footprint and the fact that they have been doing this the 1870s.  I thought given all the changes going on in the media business, he will be able to provide insights into where the industry is going.  What a disappointment.   The first red flag that the quality of this presentation was going to be less than expected, was when he started reading his speech.  For someone in his position, with the many decades of experience he has, why on earth would he need to read his speech.  Everyone in that audience reads his media product on a daily basis without fail.  He is a fellow Rotarian so he is amongst friends.  There is no question time in this format so there can be no concerns about being ambushed by a tough question.  This would have to be one of the safest speaking environments on the planet. He could talk to his notes without having to read the whole thing word by word.   We all have some area of expertise otherwise we wouldn't be given the chance to speak.  When we have experience with our area of knowledge we don't need to read the script.  We can talk to the points and this allows us to engage with the audience in a more natural way.  Unlike our speaker, we won't have our gaze transfixed on the sheet of paper sitting on the rostrum in front of us.  This forces our eye line to be looking down on the page and not up at our audience. This creates a barrier with our audience and precludes the opportunity to engage with them.  Our eyes are such powerful communication tools and we should be using them to look at individuals in the audience as we speak.  We should be switching our gaze around the room, holding that person's attention for around 6 seconds before moving on to the next person.   The next red flag on the quality was his speaking speed.  When we are reading we can tend to speed up.  This gets worse when we get nervous.  I don't know if he was nervous or not, but I do know he was whipping through his speech at a  rate of knots. Another reason for the speed can be trying to squash as much content into the delivery as possible in the accorded time.    Slow down for clarity. I am a rapid speaker in both English and Japanese.  I have to really work on myself to slow down so that the audience can follow what I am saying.  This is especially the case when speaking in a foreign language.  Slightly different accents and cadence can be hard for the listener to catch and when you speed things up the degree of difficulty rapidly accelerates.  When we are flying along at speed we tend to lose the pauses.    Instead it becomes a machine gun delivery that just runs one set of thoughts right over the top of the preceding ideas, making it very hard for the audience to keep up.  We need to give our listeners some little time to catch their breath mentally and digest what we have just said.  As he was speaking in Japanese, I would have appreciated a few pauses so I could process what he was saying more easily.   Were there interesting stories and anecdotes from his star studded career covering the major events of the last 40 years?  Nope. Were there interesting trends being revealed about the future of media in Japan. No.  It was boring and uninteresting and it didn't need to be like that.  Tell stories from your own experiences – we  have a strong interest in that type of content. Lots of things happen in business and in life and we all have terrific episodes and examples we can weave into our talk to support the point we are making. Think about your audience and what would be of interest to them about trends in your industry that will impact their business, the market or create future societal trends. Something that the broadest base of listeners can relate to.   We didn't have any of that on this particular day but we should have.  It was boring. 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 dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

The Focused And Disciplined Boss   Intellectually, we all know what we should be doing and how we should be doing it, but that isn't how things work in the real world is it! We have turned our email inboxes into giant parking lots for stranded emails, which get no attention, but are parked there ready for action. We know we are wasting a lot of time in meetings, but the meetings are always scheduled for an hour where everyone follows Parkinson's Law and allows the work to expand to fit the time. We have papers, magazines we will never read but aspire to and reports piled high on all flat surfaces within arms reach. Another parking lot for the parentless paper trail.   So much time is spent on organising the logistics of leading today. Sorting through stuff to decide what to do about it, rather than actually doing it. We file emails or electronic documents and then can't remember where we filed them so spend time hunting them down. We keep shunting paper around from one spot to another, because we can't commit to knocking the work off and moving onto to the next task. Democratically, we all have 1440 minutes in a day, but we can't actually manage time - we can't flex it into 1441 minutes a day. We can only manage ourselves and the priorities we set.   Chaos for one is flexibility for another. Your workspace looks like a bomb went off, but magically and annoyingly, you can retrieve the exact piece of information needed from the rubble on command. Others have almost empty desks, where neatness shines like a beacon of hope for everyone else. Everything in its place and a place for everything. Smarty-pants types!   Which one are you: supreme order or supreme chaos? Is there a right answer? No, we all have our own ways of working. It is the amount of productivity our systems allow us, that makes all the difference.   What about where we spend our time relative to past, present and future activities. Again, there is no correct answer, we must however decide where to direct our energies. As another way of looking at our way of organising our work, we can break tasks up into past, present and future.   Past might coalesce calls to be returned, emails to be answered, reports to be written, etc. Present might encompass today's meetings, urgent matters that pop up and require boss attention so that staff members can do their work or any deadlines due today. Future might be travel arrangements, project proposals to be approved, future deadlines coming nearer, people who need to be contacted.   We might take tasks from each group, list them up by group and give each a priority number of order of attention. We might rotate through each group, doing one from the past, then one from the present and next one from the future, before moving down to the next number on the list of priorities.   We can do it this way, just to bring a little variety to the way we normally work. Sometimes shining a light on tasks makes us realise we have forgotten to give a project sufficient time or we have not put enough effort into the Important but Not Urgent category of planning. Doing things the same way all the time is comfortable. It is good to put ourselves in places outside our Comfort Zone, if we want to drive greater productivity and clarity around task completion.   Here are a couple of productivity tips worth thinking about. Allow an extra 25% of time for completion of a task. Often we cut things too fine, so we never ever get around to completion or to a critical mass on a piece of work. That little bit of extra time may move the needle to see that work completed or almost completed, rather than being tossed into the bottomless pit of started, but not realised projects.   Before we head home, we should look at the next day's schedule and priorities for that day. This gets our mind organised for the next day, so we are ready to go immediately when we get to work and we catch any preparation we need for the next day, which we may have forgotten about.   Where we can, we should confirm meetings ahead of time, especially clients we are visiting. If there is a change, it is good to know early, so that the day's plan can be rejigged right then and there. Other people we work with can forget meetings and this is a sure way of reminding them what they need to do, especially for those more logistically challenged amongst us.   Try to organise time in large slabs of Block Time. It is similar to making an appointment with a client or a boss, which we usually honour very diligently. We are just making the appointment with ourselves in this case, so that we can get through some concentrated work without interruption.   Keep all the project parts together, so that you are not chasing after missing bits. Clutter builds up quickly, so be ruthless about tossing stuff out. Try to have your workspace cleared of all other papers, except the ones you are working on – this brings more clarity to what we are doing, by reducing distractions. Do one task at a time, rather than trying to multi-task – don't split our concentration if possible.   Have a place we can note down important information. It might be on paper or done digitally, but we need a type of reminder list as we work on through the day to capture thoughts, data, information and inspiration.   Try to have our schedule planner with us, be it paper or in an electronic calendar form accessible through our phone. And try to have one planner to reduce the double inputting. This scheduling process helps keep us on time.   When we are going to events go early. Japan can be a challenge to find locations, so allow extra time to navigate the address. If it is an event, get there early and check through the name badges to remind yourself who will be there so you can put a face to a name. Also look for people you may want to meet at the event to expand your network. Always arrive early so you looking cool, calm and collected rather than panicked! 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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Totally Ineffective Sales   The phone rings and a magazine wants to interview me for a series where they feature companies located in suburb of Minato-ku, in central Tokyo. I had never heard of this magazine, but am always grateful for any media exposure, so I say “Yes” to the interview. The date and time are fixed. One twist to the interview was that it would involve an interview by a Japanese actor, who I had never heard of. Fine, because what do I care, as long as the media exposure is there, I don't care how they do things.   So the cameraman, the actor and the journalist all turn up and away we go. It turned out the actor didn't ask me any questions at all, but was primarily there for the photo opportunity. The journalist was actually conducting the interview. The cameraman and actor depart and I am now getting an explanation on the magazine from the journalist. Despite what was written on his business card, it soon becomes apparent that the journalist was actually the sales guy.   Well we are straight into the details of the pages of the ads in the magazine and the different configurations. Ad sizes, locations, colour, black and white, pricing etc. This takes some time to go through and I am sitting there thinking to myself, “Is this guy going to ask me any questions? Is he going to explore where the gaps are in our marketing? Who is the primary audience we want to reach? What are the issues we are facing?”.   Now fascinatingly, these areas did come up in the interview phase, as I outlined some of the things I wanted for the firm and where I felt we were being challenged. Did he follow up on any of these leads or plumb them for more information and greater depth? No. He just ploughed straight into the features of the magazine.   I asked him how long he had been in sales and he told me 18 years and had been with this one company his whole career. It was obvious he had never received any sales training in that time with his employer. Here is the immense irony. He is here in my office calling on the President of a corporate training company, that specialises in soft skills training in the areas of sales, leadership, communication and presentations. We teach sales! He had no professional sales skills.   It was also obvious during the interview, that no research had been done on our business or on me. Given I thought this was a media interview, I was not perturbed by that, because they were here to ask me a bunch of questions for the article. Once I realized this was a sales call, I thought that is pretty poor preparation on the part of this sales guy. He could have done a very simple search on us, checked out our YouTube channel, looked at my LinkedIn profile, looked at my Facebook, checked me and the company out on Google search. He could have come to the meeting well armed, to engage me in the buying process. He had done nothing.   Being a patient, generous soul, I went to the rack of flyers and brochures and pulled out the Japanese version of Sales Advantage, an eight week course we teach on selling. I then proceeded to explain to him about the sales cycle. Research the buyer prior to meeting, gain trust, explore client needs, tailor the solution to those needs, deal with any hesitations or concerns, ask for the order and do the follow up. No rocket science here but there are a lot of very effective structures present in the training for each part of the cycle.   I particularly pointed out that he asked me no questions at all, but proceeded to try and sell me a solution, when he had no idea what I needed. That just cannot work because it is madness and yet this is the shtick of so many salespeople everywhere around the world not just in Japan.   Until he knows what I want, he shouldn't even be bringing up solutions. I told him to keep his magazine and price list on the chair next to him, well out of sight of the buyer. Don't even refer to the details, until you know which details will be relevant. All that should happen first is to build the trust through gaining some rapport. This can easily be based on information uncovered in the pre-meeting research. I am a traditional Shitoryu Karate 6th Dan and that is fairly unique for a foreigner in Japan. He could have engaged me on sports, because he was pretty big guy himself and maybe a sportsman as well. If he had been a rugby player (he had that type of size), we could have talked about my Brisbane Broncos hometown rugby team. The possibilities of creating something in common are endless. He did nothing.   After establishing rapport, we need to ask well designed questions to uncover the needs. Only then get involved with the solution. That magazine had many pages and many possibilities, but he should only have been directing my attention to the few areas where I have the strongest need. I don't need a tour of the magazine, we are all time poor and he should be sensitive to that. He should only show me the areas which are going to light up my strongest interest. I also suggested he get out a pen and use that as a pointer, to again direct the buyer's attention to only those parts of the page which are most relevant. A page is crowded with information and the sales person's job is to isolate out the most compelling sections and only concentrate on those. Exclude the rest because it is a distraction from the main message.   I now started selling him on our sales training course! The terrible part was at the end when he asked me for $500 for a tiny little paragraph, with a black and white photo, in the rear of the magazine. I said “No”. He then told me, he had explained over the phone that there was a $500 charge involved with the interview for the space in the magazine.   Well I don't recall that part of the conversation, perhaps because he was speaking so fast when we were discussing the meeting over the phone and the phone line clarity wasn't the best. This was when I also realised this was a bait and switch technique to get sales. They sell you on doing the media interview but the real purpose is to sell ad space.   I stuck with my “No” to the $500, even though it wasn't a huge amount. I wasn't being mean. I was trying to educate this 18 year veteran of sales about selling. Going to his boss and explaining why they has spent money on the actor and the cameraman and had come away with no result would be an unpleasant conversation, but I thought it may cause him to reflect on his poor skills. Will that be the case. I hope so but I doubt it! 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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

How To Facilitate When Presenting     Many presentations are one dimensional. The speaker speaks and we just listen, maybe getting a chance to lob in the odd question at the end. In many cases, with internal presentations, there will be a role for the presenter as a facilitator as well, to get the discussion going or to drive the decision making process. Very few speakers are trained to facilitate and so we more or less bumble our way through.   One of the first things we have to learn in our facilitator role, is to shut up and listen. When we gave our presentation, we had the limelight. As a facilitator, though, we want as many others as possible to share that limelight, which means we have to get out of talk mode and go into listen mode. Sounds easy, but it isn't.   When we are revved up in presentation mode, it is hard to change direction and just stop making our points. When someone says something, our brain lights up with something clever we would like to say. In fact, we get the inspiration pretty quickly, so we tend to switch off the person who is speaking and what they have to say. We just concentrate on what we want to say. Effectively, that means we have now stopped listening. We might be better than that, but we may instead be doing selective listening. Only honing in on the points we like and ignoring the rest of what the speaker had to say. We need to really work on our listening skills as a speaker and allow others our full attention when they are contributing. If you find yourself cutting others off before they finish, then you know you need to ease off and just listen more.   Silence for a speaker can be a struggle. Japan has no problem with silence so there is no social pressure here to fill the airwaves with continuous talk. We should take a leaf out of their book and use silence more when facilitating. Ask a question and then become quiet, even when we get into that uncomfortable silence period. Some are shy to speak up, others are deep processors going down many layers of thought on what they want to say. We need to give them time to contribute, we may even need to ask the more boisterous types to hold their comment and allow others to talk for a change.   We need nerves of steel when we do this, because in Western culture, silence is seen as uncomfortable, an indication of the breakdown of communication, that something has gone wrong because people are not participating. No one in Japan particularly feels any of that, by the way, so it is all in our heads.   Also avoid rephrasing a question or comment, unless it is really necessary. People have their own styles of speech and we need to make them feel welcome to contribute. If we become “correctors” of other people's comments, they get the message that they are not skilled enough in communication to be able to lodge their own original effort. From this point on they will simply stop contributing. We should also be careful about changing the subject, until everyone has had a chance to comment. As mentioned, some are shy, some are deep thinkers and just at that vital moment when they are about to launch forth with their carefully crafted contribution, we switch subjects and they are banished to silence.   We also need to have a poker face. If we hear something with which we very much disagree, our facial expression and our body language, can go into overdrive and convey our displeasure with other people's views. Again, this acts as an inhibitor of participation. Bosses do this all the time and then wonder why the number and quality of ideas are so poor.   We need to be aware of when to use closed questions to drive clarity and agreement and when to use open questions, to stimulate discussion. It can be a good practice to disassociate ourselves from the question and ask it as if a third party was involved. For example, “some commentators have the view that the new financial year is the best time for launching new projects. How has been your experiences with this type of thing?”. By not attaching our name to the view, it makes it easier for others to put forward a contrary view.   When we are asking questions, there will be three common varieties. The fact-based questions are there to get out information and data and generally will have a specific, correct response. This type of question is better addressed to the whole group than an individual, to avoid the possibility of calling out someone who cannot answer and will be embarrassed.   Opinion-based questions help to get a sense of how people feel emotionally about a topic. It is important to assess the emotional climate in the room on some topics before we go any further with the discussions. When people are reluctant to offer their opinion, especially here in Japan, you need to use a different technique. Ask everyone to write down their thoughts, but don't ask, “What do you think?”. In Japan, that is too confronting. Instead ask “What did you write down?” and people will speak up.   When we are speaking that is one role. When we move to facilitator mode we need to switch gears and make some adjustments to how we do things. Understanding the different requirements is key. As a facilitator, we want audience participation and their contributions. We need to set that up and make it happen. 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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Soft Versus Hard In Leadership   I was invited to speak about Japan at an HR Forum in Taipei recently. The audience was made up of very senior executives from a wide range of industries. There was quite a lot of discussion about the challenges of leading firms today. The central debate which emerged though was about being hard on results and hard on the people to get those results or to be more people focused? What struck me was the central concerns raised were not culture related, nationality or geographically bound. This tells me these are central constructs which can apply anywhere.   Too tough an attitude toward our staff breeds sycophancy, “yes men”, timidity and stasis. When you combine this with a firm run as a family business, the problems just multiply. “Bakabon” is a nifty Japanese term to describe the idiot offspring of the company founder. They are talentless, but they have the right surname, gender and they will take over the business, when the founder dies. Talented people don't want to work in these businesses because they can never get to the top, because they are not part of the family.   In listed companies, hard driving bosses create havoc. They see their career as a series of stepping stones up the path toward corporate success. The people working for them are the temporary input needed to derive the output desired – the results to show what a genius leader they are. They expect this success to be a springboard on to the next bigger post. It is then goodbye to everyone who made it possible – you won't be remembered. You were just a means to an end, that being a brighter future, wealth and prestige for the golden one. The rest of you left behind, just keep slogging it out.   The point was made by one executive that at different times, there is a place for running the show like a brutal dictatorship. He gave the example of coming into a firm that was going down. His job was to save it and many a hard conversation was had with the team to that end. You can understand that in a life and death situation the niceties can be suspended in order to survive.   Is that the only way forward though in that situation. Could we get lift off from the team with a different approach? Part of the problem with the harsh interaction formula is that we are imposing our will, values, timetable and our priorities on others and forcing them to comply or else. What if we were able to align their desires with our desires? This requires a lot more effort than balling someone out and threatening them with obliteration if they don't buck up.   To make that alignment of purpose and desire work, requires we know that person and what they want, which comes back to our communication and time management skills. Busy bosses have to abbreviate everything because they have no time due to poor time management. As the scale grows so does the pressure on how well we can manage our time.   They are also working on the basis that their job is to manage the firm's processes to get results rather than to manage processes and build the people. This is what differentiates the leader from the manager and so we have a lot of managers masquerading as leaders.   We cannot delegate tasks to grow people because we don't trust that the delegatee can do the job properly. Why would that be? Well, we have not factored in the possibility that we will have to mentor the staff member in this new role or that we will need to spend time helping them understand the WHY.   This is because we are so time poor and just simply can't fit it in. It seems faster if we just do it ourselves. So we just stick with watching the processes and we forgo our role to build people. Don't believe me? Get out your pen and write down how many hours a week you spend right now on building your people? Shouting out orders and issuing commands doesn't count as building people by the way. If that number of hours calculated is perilously small, then you have not being doing your job as a leader and you have slipped down the ladder to being a manager.   The leader's job is to get production achieved through people, by finding out what motivates them and aligning that with the firm's goals and targets. This requires communication and people skills. It cannot be created in a minute on demand.   If you don't have this mentality, then you won't arrange your time management to allow the conversations with your staff to be had. Yelling at staff is much easier than creating a loyal, highly engaged, motivational environment where people do their best creative work in an ecosystem of trust, which is outwardly focused on beating the competition in the marketplace.   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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Sell The Sizzle Not the Steak   I recently saw a documentary sponsored by Salesforce called The Story of Sales. There were 8 chapters in this documentary: What is sales; the evolution of sales; educating salespeople; what makes a great salesperson; making a connection; technology's impact on sales; the future of sales and sales is great. It was very comprehensive and featured a number of American gurus on the subject. In one part, they showed an old movie of a sales trainer talking about “Sell The Sizzle Not the Steak”. We have all heard this mantra before, but is it true today?   I was thinking about that sizzle part. Which bit is the sizzle? Who thinks it is sizzling? Is there only one sizzle? In sales, we can wax lyrical about the steak, its quantity, quality, provenance and we can get enthusiastic about the sizzle. The problem with all of this though is we are making some major assumptions.   What if they don't eat meat? The whole sales construct is out the window right there. Did we ask them at the start if they were predators or herbivores? Did we find out if they eat steak? Maybe they prefer lamb or game or seafood – did we check? Or did we just launch into our fluent, dynamic, convincing, extremely well polished and attractive pitch?   Now talking about the sizzle makes a lot of sense, because this is the application of the benefit of the features. The features would be the cut of the steak, the number of grams, the degree of fat marbling, whether grass fed or grain fed, the origin and safety of the beast. We could talk about the cooking pan, the barbecue grill, the mechanics of the timing of turning over the steak, the relishes we can use, the balance of flavors, the degree of salt used, etc. The benefits describe the taste, the aroma, the protein contribution, the iron content in the diet. The application of the benefits talks about no longer being hungry, enjoying the occasion with friends, the bonhomie created through matching with excellent red wines, the visual scene of the meat being heated up, the sound and scent of the sizzle.   However, did we know whether they like the steak cooked in a pan in the controlled environment of the kitchen or outside on the barbecue grill? Do they like their steak turned over once so it is rather rare or do they like it well done? Do they like to add salt and pepper? What sauces do they prefer – ketchup, barbecue sauce, home made sauce, Worcestershire? Do they drink red wine, like the smell of steak cooking or the sound of the sizzle?   Sell the sizzle sounds easy, but all roads lead to Rome in sales and that always leads back to the quality of our questioning skills. The documentary on Sales had everyone hammering home this point, everyone in furious agreement, yet at the same time trying to carve out their little expertise niche on the subject. Fair enough, that is how you sell books, training courses or software.   Today, the internet brandishes our websites, stuffed to the gunwales with key information about us, our company, our products and services. Buyers can find out a lot about what they are seeking before, we even get to talk with them. The problem with that though is we cannot possibly anticipate all of the questions, concerns, doubts and hesitations they will have. Our websites are always going to be inadequate.   In the case of most B2B sales, we need to meet the buyer. We need to dig deep into questioning them about all the assumptions we are packing. We need to be skilled at linking their answers to the solutions we provide. We need to be strategic in our thinking and good at analysis. We need to be asking questions that trigger insights they had not considered about their business. We need to be dressing up statements, as questions to check for agreement and at the same time differentiating ourselves from the hoi polloi of our competition. We need to sell to their emotions and help them justify their decision with a wall of logic.   Do you think AI empowered robots can replace us and do a better job of handling that little list of goodies? Not yet!   So the sizzle is a bit more complex than it looks at first blush. Asking questions sounds easy too but are they the right questions, the best questions, the most impactful questions?   We do a lot of sales training here in Japan and the quality of the questioning is always a problem. Salespeople skip from one question to another, ignoring hints from the client that are worth a fortune. We have to stop doing that. We all need to take our assumptions apart and have a good look at them.   What is your equivalent of “sell the sizzle” simplicity in your organization that is costing you money through lost sales? We all have it, some accepted truth, dubious ancient wisdom, powerful precedent, established policy or groupthink. We have to be more vigilant to better analyse what we should be doing and how we should be doing it instead. 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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.              

The Power Of Belief When Presenting   Watching a grey haired, grizzled veteran of the media making his award acceptance speech talking about the importance of the pursuit of the truth in the media and a High School Senior speaking out about gun control, I was struck by how powerful both speeches were.  Many award speeches we see are either hopeless or perfunctory.  This one was different.  No notes, coherent, well delivered, confident and with a strong message.  The High School boy also spoke without notes, in front of a big audience, yet with so much confidence and clarity.  The common factor for both was the amount of belief they were communicating in their message.   Now in business, we might be thinking that is all very well for a media representative trying to fight back against a President who lambasts journalists about fake news and disparages their profession. We might think that this young man has survived a life and death experience and so he has that special degree of super commitment.   We in business are quite different aren't we?   Getting fired up over spreadsheets, or quarterly results, or the PR department's corporate messaging isn't all that life changing, powerful or exciting. This is a cop out.   If we are delivering a presentation in business, we have a message we wish to convey and the delivery of that message can make or break the success of what we are doing.  If we are just reporting numbers, we can see that as a routine function, isolated and puny in impact.     What if we saw our activity against the WHY of what we are doing and connected the numbers back to that. What if we connected it to the lofty goals we have set for ourselves and how these numbers fit into that effort.  What if we connected it to the competition out there and how we were doing against them in the market place.  We can all take something that seems mundane and find a greater sense of purpose.     If we are presenting on behalf of our firm, we are usually trying to convey a positive message about the company and what we are doing.  If we analyze our audience well, we can know how to connect what we want to say with issues that they are interested in and will value.  There is no shortage of ways to make a presentation relevant to our audience. The secret is in the planning.   The delivery is the hard part though.  Seeing yourself as a soldier on the media front lines, fighting back against the evil afoot is a much more uplifting topic than talking about the firm's annual marketing plan. The delivery can have the transfer of belief though.  Yes, the scope and scale of the drama is different.  However, we can seize on the central point we want to get across to our audience and talk about that in a way that resonates we totally believe what we are saying is the best advice for them.   Counter intuitively, start the planning with the talk's final punch line.  What is it you really, earnestly want to communicate, what is your key point?  Once you have divined that essence, build the talk around it by offering evidence, examples, vignettes, stories, proof, case studies that back it up.   If you believe what you are saying, then be supremely confident when communicating these points.  Send out waves of desire to help your audience do better through what you are conveying. The feeling is totally different to doing a download of data to an audience. This is the mental provision of the buffet and then the audience are on their own to take what they like and have an interest in, with no central compelling narrative, idea, point or message. We don't want that.   Even if the object of the talk is to inform, the desire should be to provide the most up to date, highest value information and insight about what it means to our audience. If the object is to impress the audience about our company, then the desire is to convert as many of the people in the crowd to become fans, so that we can help them with our solutions. We don't just want them to like our firm, we want them to buy our wares, speak highly of us and recommends us to all and sundry.   Belief is the most powerful engine with which to power a presentation. Find where you can inject belief into your talk. It must be relevant to the audience, genuine, authentic and heart felt. When you speak with belief you speak with a different voice. Something magical happens to you as a communicator and you and your message will be remembered. And that is what we want isn't it.   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 dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Bruce Lee Nailed This Leadership Flaw   I am a big Bruce Lee fan, but I never thought of him as a purveyor of leadership wisdom. Lot's of interesting stuff gets posted on Facebook and sure enough the following was attributed to Bruce Lee, “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer”. Did Bruce really say that? Who knows, but it is a great piece of insight about leadership anyway, so let's roll with it. Leaders habitually fail to learn from their subordinate's answers and also overestimate their ability to share their personal wisdom with the team. No one is listening much to each other.   Bosses aren't learning much from foolish questions, because well, they consider them foolish and of no value. When we have brainstorming sessions in companies, the boss is the judge, jury and executioner of aspirant ideas. The boss runs the session because they are the boss aren't they. This is interesting and here is a suggestion for all the bosses out there - don't always be the facilitator of ideation sessions within the company. Let someone else run the session and just be a contributor.   The boss presence in the room in Japan means there is a tonne of deference going on. Yes, I know we have the same thing in Western companies too but the scale in Japan is much larger. The Confucian precepts of respect for authority, respect for men, respect for those older, all play a stifling role in Japan, when it comes to the free for all of brainstorming.   Actually it isn't much of a free for all in Japan, more a filleting process, when ideas are being put up. Bosses tend to whip out their razor sharp Japanese hocho (knife) and slice ideas apart as they emerge. “We tried that already”, “stupid idea, someone give me another one”, as they stand next to the whiteboard calling out for input. As we know, having your idea sliced and diced on the spot by the boss doesn't inspire the offering up of any further ideas, so we fall silent as the tomb.   Now the foolish question in a brainstorming session is a gift. We don't treat it as such but that is a mistake. Foolish ideas break the idea generation sequencing. We normally think in sequential, logical terms. This is fine for iterative ideas, for kaizen style small increment of improvement. It is not so helpful for coming up with breakthrough ideas. This is where foolish ideas come in because they force us into places where we wouldn't normally go.   It makes you react because it is out of scope, beyond consideration, unprecedented, unexpected, irrational, illogical. It forces your brain to start taking that foolish idea apart and start fixing it, straightening it up, getting it into a logical construct, searching for the practical application. This is where real creativity comes in, but we wouldn't have gotten to that obscure angle if we hadn't the benefit of the foolish question in the first place. Any brainstorming session that doesn't tolerate foolish ideas at the idea suggestion stage is bound to be shallow and of little value. Bosses take note – welcome foolish ideas.   The other piece of Bruce's advice about fools not learning all that much from a wise answer is interesting . In Japan, bosses tend to have the most experience, access to the most valuable information and are plugged into where the business is headed. Naturally these bosses become the fonts of great wisdom within the company. They are serving up pearls to the swine on a regular basis. They imagine that they are having a positive impact, sharing their knowledge and their insight into how to fix problems. The dispensing of all this value however only has value in itself if people are listening to or are executing on what they have been told.   Staff are all convinced they are already busy, busy, busy. Actually busy enough not to need another shiny idea from the boss. The new boss initiative is greeted with mild interest and a secret determination to do nothing about it. The boss is busy too, so after casting the pearl forth the boss moves on, fully occupied with a whole bunch of other stuff. At some point in the future, the boss wonders what ever happened to that initiative that was spoken about. The answer invariably is nothing has been done and nothing achieved and time has been lost.   The error is one of ownership. “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still”, is an old saying. Bosses have to get staff to buy into the idea. Passing off pearls of wisdom isn't enough. These magical contributions have to be acted upon and made reality. The only way that happens with any panache is when the staff buy into the idea and assume ownership. This is the critical transition path of fluffy ideas to concrete outcomes.   Boss communication skills are on display in this regard. They need to be highly persuasive to get staff who are 100% convinced they are too busy already, to squeeze another project into their work lives. In a tumultuous world though, bosses are shooting out orders and advice at rapid fire and imagining they are doing a good job. The truth is they are not getting engagement and commitment to what they are saying.   We have a cool saying in Dale Carnegie, that “people own the world they help create”. This tells bosses to get their staff involved in the creation process and that means allowing them to brainstorm ideas and make foolish suggestions. Bruce Lee was right. We need to better understand what is wise and what is foolish in the workplace. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Business Contracts In Japan Aren't Worth The Paper They Are Written On   A friend of my mine has started his own consulting business recently and does Facebook Live updates to his growing band of devotees. I was watching one broadcast the other day when he was talking about always enforce the contract. He had signed a contract with his client, the situation changed and the client wanted to change the arrangement. Naturally, we are talking about the client paying less money than originally agreed. It was within the scope of the contract that the originally agreed money should be paid, because the changes fell outside the time limit for any alteration to the signed agreement.   My friend did relent and allow the buyer out of the contract, because he was told he would get looked after the next time. The person making this promise promptly left the company in short order and the replacement CEO brought in his own suppliers and my friend was out of pocket. Subsequently, his advice to his followers is always stick to what has been agreed and don't let the buyer off the hook for the money.   I was thinking about whether I would agree with that advice for Japan? Western society, particularly the American business world is very litigious and so contracts become the income source of the numerous law firms there ready and able to enforce the contract in a court of law. I signed a contract to supply training services with a foreign corporation, where to my astonishment in the fine print it said I would agree to forgo the settlement of any disputes in a court of law. I thought lawyers were smart, but whoever drafted that clause was on drugs. Should we have a dispute, I wondered, how will they handle it, if we don't agree? Pistols at 20 paces?   Japan is a country where domestic contracts are pretty much relative. If the buyer situation changes, then they expect the seller to recognise that and adjust the agreement accordingly. This usually means the seller getting less money or no money and having to wear it, to maintain the relationship with the buyer. Is everyone here in Japan ethical and won't take advantage of you? No. Of course some companies will use this loose arrangement to suit themselves and say “to hell with the seller's interests”. Of course Japanese companies who operate internationally are used to contracts being enforced, because they have deal with foreign entities who will go to court and so they have learnt to do the same thing.   If we take the big picture view, for the majority of cases, companies are ethical in Japan and they will not try and dud you for a short term gain. There is the problem of people moving around within the company every few years, as they rotate through the organisation. Your earlier flexible attitude may not be known to the new guy or gal and that creates a problem. Generally speaking though, Japanese companies are pretty good at doing handovers. Even if that vital piece of business intelligence was missed in the handover, the person you had the relationship with can usually be relied upon to reach out to their successor and put them in the picture.   My fear with my friend's advice is that if you take a Western legalistic approach, rather than a more holistic approach, you will get paid for that one deal but that will be the end of the relationship. Japan is a country full of obligations. Japanese business people see business as a partnership and requests for the seller to be flexible for the buyer, are part and parcel of that world. Now there are plenty of countries where you would never dream of providing that flexibility, because they will skin you alive at the first whiff of weakness. Japan isn't one of them.   The other side of Japan is you do get paid here. Yes, someone may not pay you at some stage in Japan, but it is very rare in mainstream business. Most terms of trade are thirty day payments and Japanese companies stick with that agreement. The slowest payers in Japan by the way are some of the biggest multi-national companies on the planet. These are major brands sticking it to the little guy because they can. You either take their 60 or 90 day terms or don't do business with them. I hate this approach.   If you are playing a long game in business and we should all be playing the long game in Japan, then my advice is to be flexible and preserve the relationships above being strict on the terms of the agreement. You might get caught, but the chances are slight and the risk on the other side of the ledger is much higher.   We talk about “buyer beware” but “seller beware” is also good advice. Judge the scope of the business potential over the long term. What we call the lifetime value of the buyer. If you see that some flexibility now will result in a continuous streams of orders, then it makes good business sense to agree to their requests.   I am dealing with a huge multi-national company's Japan team. They violated the terms of the agreement over cancelling scheduled, agreed training. I had every right to demand they pay, according to the agreement. I agreed to their request to overlook the penalty payment because I could see a lot more business coming our way. It has come, as we enter the second year of a lot of training being delivered for them. On the other hand, if it is a one off arrangement, then you may not need to be flexible. Instead, demand payment as per the agreement.   This is common sense in business and we have to judge each case by its own merits. This is important and we shouldn't be rigid and have only one response about “abide by the contract or else.” Japan is all about the long term and relationships built on trust. Keep that in mind next time the buyer wants to vary the agreement.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Experts Not Very Expert At Presenting   Five star luxury is always appreciated and the hotel setting for this presentation was clearly appropriate given this elite event. The speaker's contribution to business acumen was being highly anticipated, judged by the number of people in the room. Numerous round tables with white tablecloths, mainly men in dark suits, reserved tables for the more important, Western breakfast buffet at the back – the usual setting. We are all gathered for the information we are about to receive because there may be some insights presented which may help our businesses. We are also all armed with our mental review sheet of the presenter's competence and by extension his organization. We want to know how much we can trust what we are being told.   Experts are a problem when they come to presenting their knowledge because they don't value the process. The data, the graphs, the trend lines, the insights, the market intelligence all have value, so a first rate treasure trove can be delivered in a second or third rate manner. This is their excuse at any rate, “I don't have to be a good presenter, because everyone is assembled to hear my genius content”, they plead.   Usually economic and market related expert presenters are carrying around big brains which are highly analytical. They rely on the inherent quality of their information to carry the day. Worryingly, they are in the persuasion business without realising it. Despite what they imagine, the data doesn't sell itself. There is a line of reasoning, some thesis, a discourse that is near and dear to the heart of the presenter. They are here because they want people to buy their analysis, to think highly of them and their company and purchase their firm's widget or whatever   The buying process though hinges on trust and credibility. Experts need to show two things – that they know what they are talking about and that what they are saying is true. The “true” bit can be gauged by the quality of their sources of the data, plus the veracity of their analysis and argument made on that basis. The trust part though is a lot more personal exercise. Is the expert able to articulate the thesis in a way that the audience can agree? Is the presentation easy to follow? Is the data being presented easily digestible, so that we buy what they are selling?   This is where the problems start. The speaker is a poor speaker. We are now getting sidetracked by their inability to strings two sentences together. We have lost focus on the content and are now diverted by their delivery. Their monotone delivery is making us sleepy. The lack of tonal variety means that each word is assigned exactly the same value, so the gems, the pearls, the brilliant diamonds are not standing out as they should.   They are wooden in their body language, so the face is the same mask throughout, like one of those Japanese Noh masks. They are not lifting our belief in what is being said by getting their facial expression behind the words to drive home the point. They are not using much in the way of gestures, because when their hands are not holding the podium down with a vice like grip, they are flourishing the clicker around to advance the slide deck. Gestures can be very powerful to draw attention to key points and to engage the audience, but none of that is on display today.   The visual aids are not really helping all that much. There is too much information on each slide, so our attention is being dispersed across too many data points. Analytical types think that if one graph per slide is good them three must be a lot better. It isn't!   Adding lots of text must be a good idea they think because it adds greater value. The concept that the presenter could speak to a key word hasn't filtered in yet. They see the screen as an extension of their writing pad and so let's pile on the words, to get everyone understanding the point. Whole sentences are more attractive than single words from their point of view.   Looking fixedly at the screen information is a favourite. It is as if they are totally mesmerized, captured by the data and can't help looking at it, so they ignore their audience. This a big thing to give up, if your are in the persuasion business and trust me we are all in that business.   Being able to drive home your key points, while eyeballing the audience is a powerful weapon. We can engage our audience and draw them into us and what we are saying. We have had thousands of years of refining this in the Western world and we know the power of persuasion through the spoken word. The experts though, ignore history to their peril. By watching our audience, we can also keep a hawk like view of how our audience is reacting to what we are saying and showing them. The reactions are very helpful to where we need to place the emphasis of the talk and give us a heads up, on what questions we are likely to get in Q&A.   It was obvious that no thought had been put into how to open the presentation and how to close it. We went through the slides, went straight into the questions and then moved on to the coffee break before the next speaker. When we are presenting, the first words out of our mouth had better be pretty good. We need to tempt the audience to want to stay riveted to the presentation, because the content is valuable, the presenter is valuable and the presenter's organisation is valuable. We need to hammer our prime message twice at the end, once before we go to Q&A and then again as we wrap it all up and head for coffee.   I heard from one of the organisers that this was this expert's first foray into presenting the latest global research findings of this venerable organisation. It became obvious they hadn't bothered to provide any training before his first outing and also that he wouldn't be getting any after the tour either. It is a “work it out yourself” approach to harming one's personal and professional brands.   Crazy stuff you might ponder, but this scenario is all too common. Don't put people representing your organisation out there on public display, until they have had some training. We don't want them to underwhelm or even worse screw it up. These are all own goals easily avoided, yet we see the same mistakes time after time, often from the same company! Don't be one of them.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Japan's Galapagos Syndrome Still Alive And Well   The description of Japan, as similar to the remote islands of Galapagos off the South American coastline is often quite apt. The fauna and flora of the Galapagos Islands are unique and have become so, through their splendid isolation from the outside world. When the ruling Tokugawa family declared death for anyone coming into Japan or leaving Japan, with the exception of the Dutch down on tiny little Dejima Island in Kyushu, the country went into isolation from the rest of the world. Many things in Japan still continue in isolation despite the country opening up to the world, thanks to the arrival of American gunboats in the 1850s.   In 1992 I was posted in Nagoya, for four years, launching up a totally new operation there. I found it tough. We were trying to get Australian products and services into the Chubu region market, but the mental resistance was quite strong. Initially l thought it was because we were foreigners. I discovered that even those Japanese who were posted there from outside felt the same sense of isolation.   The people who staffed the companies in Nagoya graduated from schools and Universities in Nagoya or its surrounds. They spoke the local dialect, Nagoya ben and supported a range of parochial activities that differentiated them from “outsiders”. Being from Queensland in Australia, I knew all about parochialism. The Japanese staff I met in Nagoya coming from “outside” that region couldn't wait to get out, because they complained they never felt accepted by the locals. This is the Galapagos syndrome in action.   Now the four years I spent in Osaka from 1996 were quite different. Yes or No was quite quickly forthcoming which was great – you received a decision. In Nagoya it was usually No. Osaka was more open but they also felt a jealousy with that upstart Tokyo. Osaka had been the commercial capital of Japan for centuries until the Tokugawa family decided that they would make the sleep fishing village of Tokyo their national headquarters. The locals mainly all went to school and university in the region, spoke the local dialect Osaka ben and supported a range of parochial activities that differentiated them from “outsiders”.   Back in Tokyo for the third time in 2001, I felt freed from all of that narrow minded regional parochialism. Sadly the narrow mindedness continues even here. I find this often in business. For example, when you go to a networking event, no one seems much interested in networking. The company representatives stand around talking to people they already know. If one of them knows someone else there, then an introduction is made, but no one is actively walking around handing over their business cards or meishi to strangers. Not done old chap, what.   Even at international events held in English hosted by the various foreign Chambers of Commerce, the more cosmopolitan Japanese representatives seem reluctant to network and meet new people. Surprisingly, if they arrive early, they go straight to a table and sit down – a sort of seated wallflower. When I approach them and ask to meet them, their faces drain of blood and they go quite pale at the thought of having to speak to a foreigner in English. I see the spread of relief in their faces when I switch to Japanese. Puzzling though, that the company would send someone to an international event, who is scared of having to speak to foreigners.   Who is educating these company staff about how to get out of their own mini-Galapagos? Their bosses are either doing the same thing themselves or they are ignorant of what a poor job their people are doing. I met someone at a recent networking function and followed up the next day, asking to be introduced to their HR person, so I could introduce Dale Carnegie Training to their company.   The HR person replied to them, they already have training contacts and so no need to meet me. It is quite normal that they may have some current suppliers but what struck me was the reluctance to expand their world. Here was someone in their comfort zone, settled in snugly in their mini-Galapagos.   Yes, they may have an existing supplier, but why is there no interest to know what else is out there. I can guarantee that the other supplier is not 106 years in operation globally or 55 years in Japan; that they have offices in 100 countries around the world; that they supply training to 90% of the Fortune 500 countries. No, they are not doing any of that!   Now I am obviously very proud of what we do, but that is not my point. What struck me as strange is why is this HR person doing such a poor job for their company? If they were half awake, they would want to expand the range of options and look for the best quality training they can find, to give their company a competitive edge in their market. Ultimately, it may not be with us, but at least they should be better led to get their thinking out of Galapagos and into the real world. This is a major recruiting, training and leadership issue.   In Japan, HR are often the internal police, making sure all the regulations and procedures are being followed. What we call strategic HR barely exists here. The idea that HR can impact the company's results is a thought rarely held in their minds. They are relentless box checkers – placing a check mark when activities are completed, rather than analyzing which are the best activities.   This is a leadership decision to have people like this running such a vital function. Take another close look at who you are employing in the HR function. You may be shocked to find out they are dummies, not doing the firm much good at all. Japan in general and companies in particular, cannot afford to be mini-Galapagos Islands in this matrixed, inter-connected, 24/7 global construct called modern business. Time for a change.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Most Difficult Part Of Business? People!   Cash flow, market movements, competitor pricing, buyer budgets, seasonality, etc., there are many things which making business hard. I was listening to a podcast recently and the point was made that “people are the hardest part of running a business”. The point they were making wasn't related to just the labour costs or turnover. They were thinking about the impact an individual has on a firm. The degree to which they identify with the enterprise, their level of engagement is a key concern. This flows straight away to customer service, productivity and quality control.   Now in a perfect world we would only be hiring the best people, the most committed, self-motivating, most highly engaged individuals. That would be good, but that isn't the reality or if it is, it isn't the reality for very long as markets move.   The hairdressing industry in Japan has trouble getting staff. Barbers and hairdressers are in short supply. When customer service isn't what it should be the owners have to bite their tongues and carry on. They are not in a position where they can easily fire people. I know this because of an incident recently with where I get my hair cut in the Azabu Juban. Now I have been frequenting this same barbers for 17 years, around 4-5 times a year. My son also, up until recently, went to the same place for about 10 years, until his mother decided he needed to look more glamorous and took him off somewhere else.   At the end of the cutting session, the barber used an electric razor to do the final trim around the back of the neck below the hairline. At the time it felt painful but being a stoic Aussie male, I just put up with it because it wasn't for such a long time. When I got home my wife noticed I had these bright red ridges where the razor has been working and the skin was terribly inflamed.   Being a typical Japanese consumer, she photographed the wounds on her phone and went there the next day to remonstrate with the barber. He is a youngish guy and he was in total denial mode. Finally, one of the more senior barbers apologized. Was my wife satisfied with this treatment of the long term customer – no!   I can guess that the owners will do nothing about this because they can afford to lose me as a client more easily than they can lose the young guy working for them. Now why didn't the young barber apologise and take full responsibility? I have been going there much longer than he has worked there, but his thinking is to avoid all accountability. He is thinking about himself and not about the business.   What they should have done was apologise, immediately check that razor because there is some fault with it and make sure this doesn't happen again with another client. I doubt they have done that, because no one has contacted me after the incident. If they didn't check it, that is very unprofessional. If he did check and subsequently found out he was wrong, that the razor was faulty and then he still didn't contact me, the mistake is even further compounded.   The culture and training in that team is not on the mark is it. In a small organisation like that, they probably invest very little in soft skills training and spend all their money on hard skills around the actual job of hairdressing. All organisations need to do both. Getting the client care culture right must the top priority of the leadership because if they don't get that correct, the business will fail.   Easy to say but check your own situation. Is the thrust of the training on the hard skills? Has the right client service culture been created? This is Japan, so these types of incidents really stand out because generally here the level of customer care is higher than in most other societies. Even if we make a mistake, if we have a strong culture, we can recover because the staff will go the extra mile to correct the problem. What training have we given our people for when problems and mistakes arise. Often, this may have been left vague. It is a good idea to go back and review what we are doing. Is there a standardised approach that everyone knows?   One of the issues in Japan is people hiding mistakes and not taking accountability because there is such a bias against making any errors. We have to create a strong culture that says a mistake is not fatal to your career, but hiding it, not fixing it or not taking responsibilty will be fatal.   Will I go back to that establishment? My wife is absolutely clear that I shouldn't. I don't know. I run a small business too, so I know the difficulties are mainly concentrated in the people employed, so I empathise with the owner's dilemma. I will have to make a decision in about three months time I guess. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Watch Others To Learn Presenting   When we are the thick of things we have trouble observing ourselves. Public speaking is really pushing many people right out of their comfort zone, so the stress levels are massive. They feel they are heating up, their breath is getting shorter, their tummy feels rather bad and their throat is parched. It is very hard to be an objective observer of your own performance when you are mainly preoccupied with survival. This is where being an observer of others is very handy.   Our High Impact Presentations Course uses this technique in depth. While we are up there presenting our classmates are watching us like a hawk for two things. One is to discover what we are doing that is good. The second is looking for areas where we could do better. You will notice I didn't introduce any ideas about things they could critique about our performance. This is looking into the past, it degrades everyone's confidence and creates a negative relationship between the participants.   When we are not in class though there are many chances for us to observe how others present. Obviously when we attend events with a speaker we can take the opportunity to hone our observation skills. The vast majority of attendees are there just to hear the speaker and learn something from the content. They are not mentally pulling the whole operation apart and analysing it. Well that is precisely what we should be doing.   Did the speaker attempt to connect with the audience before the event? Did they reference something said by one of the attendees to build a bond with the audience and break down the barriers? How was the introduction? Usually this is done by the hosting organization's person. Was it obviously something that person put together and therefore was a pretty half baked affair or was it an all dancing, all singing warm up for the main act?   When you are presenting always prepare your own introduction. Don't make it an essay, keep it brief and focused on the high points. Don't allow anyone else to represent you during the talk. Send it before you speak or hand it to them on the day. Either way, try to get them to stick to the script. What you have written will always be a lot better than anything they come up with.   How was the speaker's opening of the talk? Were they fiddling around with the tech and discussing it with the audience before they got going? Did they say stupid things like “can you hear me?” as they are tapping the microphone, because they hadn't bothered to check earlier when they arrived. Was the first sentence something which grabbed our attention and made sure we kept our hands off our mobile devices? Could they break through all the clutter in our minds as we worry about yesterday, what happened today and what we need to do tomorrow? How did they open? Was it straight into an interesting story? Did they say something surprising or informative? Did they open with a question which got us engaged in the theme of the talk? Look for these techniques and then consider what you need to do to grab audience mind share when you are a speaker. Today, there is so much more distraction and competition for limited time, miniscule concentration spans that we have to really be on our game, in that environment.   Once they got going was it easy to follow where they were going with this presentation? Did it hang together? Was it logically well constructed so we were brought along with their argument and we were persuaded? Did they shift gears every five minutes or so to maintain our interest? Were they using their eyes to engage us one by one, their voice to have modulation to maintain our interest? Were they using their body language to add strength to their argument?   How did they wrap it up? Did they loop back to something they said at the start? Did they use a quotation from an authority figure? Did they summarise the key points?   Did they handle the Q&A like a pro? Were they paraphrasing what had been said so everyone could hear it. Were they using cushions to buy themselves thinking time. Did they have a second close ready to go so that they could make sure their key message was the last thing the audience heard and remembered, regardless of what came up during the Q&A?   So as you see, we are going to be kept pretty busy when we attend someone else's talk. By checking for these things we are programming into our minds the importance of being properly prepared before we get up and talk. Don't let the chance slip by to work over someone else's efforts to insulate ourselves from the typical errors and to make our talk a triumph, based on learning from the foibles of others. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Japan Must Globalise But Where Are The Global Leaders?   The consumer demographics for Japan are crystal clear. The domestic market is shrinking and will continue to do so into the future. The population is aging, so there are opportunities serving that market today but it is a shrinking market over the long term. Once this baby boomer generation passes then the revenue problems will really hit hard. Basically japan is not a growth market in most sectors. Japanese corporations recognise this and are expanding their operations overseas. Part of this process is the globalisation of these companies, as they realize their staff have to become more global in outlook and capability for the organisation to survive.   Junsuke Usami, a partner at L.E.K Consulting wrote an interesting article on this issue, which was published in the Diamond Harvard Business Review. To have capable Japanese leaders who can run a global business is a reflection of Japan's difficulty in producing strong leaders in the first place.   He noted four syndromes that prevent Japanese companies from developing strong business leaders. I am going to add my take to explain the four problem areas he has nominated.   Cannot do early promotion for high potentials Everyone enters the company on April 1st and moves forward on the basis of age and stage, not talent. Seniors rank over juniors and it cannot be the other way around in a seniority based system. No matter how capable the junior staff may be they will not be selected to lead folk older than them. In the old system of lifetime employment, staff knew they would get a chance at one point in the future. That is not felt to be an iron clad guarantee anymore, so the talented are more skeptical than in previous generations. As the young sign up for a free agent era of employment, where there are prepared to walk out the door if they think the grass is greener on the other side, this loss of talent to competitors will be painful. If you have no system to fast track the next generation of global leaders within the company then progress will be glacial, in a world that is moving so quickly it makes your head spin.   Cannot give high potentials stretched challenges to accelerate their growth Before the economic bubble burst in the late 1980s, Japanese companies had so many levels within their promotion systems. You progressed in tiny increments. This made sure the rate of progress was slow. Access to challenging work was limited. The plus side was that you get coaching on the way up from your boss, so the OJT or On The Job Training system, more or less worked. The collapse of the economy saw many layers cut and everything compressed. The bosses today have to do their own email typing, are terribly time poor because their job scope got much larger and are basically out of the successor coaching business. The jumps are now much larger, the number of positions much fewer, so the difficulty of moving up has become much greater. Bosses are not delegating because they think, “it will be faster if I do it myself”. They are also risk averse to delegate to a subordinate, in case the delegatee makes a mess of it and blows up the boss.   Cannot take risk This is part and parcel of growing up in Japan. Risk aversion is built into the DNA. People know if they make a mistake it could be career ending. They are so scared of a mistake, they prefer to do nothing and make no decisions, even though both avenues are against the interest of the company. In large companies HR is feared because this is where the collection of all the records of any mistakes made are kept and these are brought out when it is time to consider which of two candidates to choose for the promotion. We are all the product of our mistakes and that is how we learn. By denying people the right to make a mistake, we are holding them back. This has an impact on the range of experiences available to leaders as they rise through the ranks.   Develop only “company professionals” not “management professionals” Traditionally there have been very few mid-career hires in Japan, so the bonds of those who have joined the company straight out of university are strong. Everyone has shared experiences in the company and groupthink becomes entrenched. Relationships within the company become the way of moving upward rather than through ability. Internal patrons become important and are a substitute for personal capability.   These four syndromes identified by Mr. Usami guarantee that companies won't create strong leaders. The gap between where companies are in the leadership journey and where they need to be just grows every year. If they were able to stay entirely domestic in their focus then it would work, as it has its own circular logic.   The brave new world outside of Japan can't accept this construct and this gap is agitating against producing the global leaders the companies need to progress in the 21st century. The talent is there, it is just unable to be properly developed. It is all a bit depressing really and you have to worry about the country's future if they can't fix this issue of not being able to produce strong leaders, who can deal with the global challenges facing Japan. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.      

Handling Sale's Meltdowns   Sales is a tough gig. Sometimes the whole sale's meeting turns out to be a disaster. I had one of those today. The majority of my personal sale's leads come directly through networking. We get leads off our SEO, through ad words and our general marketing activities. These all go to my sales team for follow up. We also do cold calling but as the President of the company, this is basically out for me. If I cold call someone as the President it comes across as a bit desperate and creates some doubt in the mind of the recipient of the call. They wonder why does the President have to cold call potential clients, what is wrong with this company?   It just doesn't set the right frame for establishing a relationship. Networking is far better for me and trust me, I do a lot of it, to create opportunities to meet new companies.   Recently I had met a representative from a foreign multi-national company, who was not actually the right person to sell to, but who I asked to introduce me to the buyer. I always do this, if I think there is some potential and sometimes they do help out and sometimes they don't. This duly happened in this case, the appointment was made with the buyer and I turn up on time. I am sitting in the meeting room waiting, when the door opens. A solid wall of vast negativity hits me as the buyer comes in to the room. Was it a bad day, is every day a bad day for them, were they unhappy that I had extracted a meeting through my contact? Who knows what the issue was, but it was definitely a big issue.   I was reflecting later that it has been quite a while since I have had such a totally negative sales meeting. Of course many don't buy and many never answer your emails or return your phone calls, but that is part and parcel of selling. What do you do though when you realise from the body language and attitude that this is going to be hard or even impossible?   Well you need to do your best. Unsurprisingly, the buyer insisted that I do my pitch rather than go through any discovery process around potential needs. This is always a very, very bad way to start a sales presentation. Handing over your solutions when you don't know what the problems are is a methodology designed to fail. Almost every time this happens for me there is no sale. It wasn't looking good.   Today's respondent was not cooperative in the answers, as I tried to dig down and find some potential needs. You can't control that, but you still need to ask. The meeting is going badly, you know it and so you need to start thinking about extracting yourself because you realise there is no value here and no possibility of this time and effort amounting to a sale.   One of the things you can do after the meeting though is get someone else in the company to be the contact point, given you found you were radioactive, as far as this buyer was concerned. In my case there was a narrow chance to do some follow up by sending some links with more information. I asked one of my Japanese salespeople to do that and took myself out of the picture. As it turned out, the response she received was “we have no interest”, written in a very negative tone. You still have to try regardless though. In sales, there is no such thing as “no”. It is only “no” at this moment, to this offer, while that person is there.   I also suggest that we all mark our calendars and do follow-up with the company in a few years time. The buyer told me they were two years into the job, so I probably expect that in around two years time they will have been replaced by someone a lot nicer and a lot less difficult to work with. Either they move on or the company will move them on. So keep them on your mailing list for updates from your newsletter, but also check to see if they opt out. I am fully expecting this will be the case in short order.   The other important thing is to keep your confidence intact. Having a really bad meeting like that can sap your belief in yourself. Sales is a rollercoaster of emotions. Elation with a sale and deep depression with a rejection. To keep ourselves intact we need to face rejection in a way that we can pick ourselves up again and go back out there and try again. In Japan, they have a saying, “shichi korobi, ya oki” or fall down seven times, get up eight. That is sales in a nutshell.   In my case, I always think that buyers who don't buy from me are idiots. It sounds harsh doesn't it. But I know that what we offer is high value, has a proven track record and will get results for their organisation. I see this buyer as doing a very poor job for their company. In fact, I see them damaging their own firm.   Now, this is just a mental trick I use to keep myself positive in the face of failure. Of course we should all reflect on what we could do to improve our sales presentation, but if we did our best, it was professional and they were a pain, then don't hesitate to protect yourself emotionally. Without hesitation, lay the blame at the feet of the buyer. Then get back out there straight away and get the sale with the next client. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

How To Be Confident When Presenting   The Mochizuki Room of the High Performance Center Akasaka opens up and today's class members gradually file in, finding a seat, hanging up their winter coats. They mostly don't know each other, so there is a little bit of nervousness in the room, as they start meeting their classmates and their instructors. At the outset, we ask them to set a vision for the training. It is written in the present tense, but the timing is set 6 months in the future. This requires a bit of mental gymnastics. That means it is not written as, “I will do something or other” but “I am”, as a form of expression. It assumes they have achieved some outcome and that is was a big success.   They have to project forward to a point where they will be giving a future presentation and they have to describe how successful it was, as if it really happened already, even though it is in the future. Next we ask them to imagine after that successful presentation, that they are the last to leave the room. As they are walking out of the building following the crowd, they can hear some of the attendees of their talk discussing their presentation. We ask them to nominate what are the three attributes they want to hear used to describe their presentation, from those who have just heard them speak.   When we ask our class participants for High Impact Presentations Course what are some of the attributes they want to have referenced as presenters, the word “confidence” comes up in almost 99% of cases. Other attributes include: clear, interesting, professional, fun, motivating, impactful, logical, valuable, passionate, interesting etc. Why is confidence the most widely sought after attribute?   We know that confidence sells the message. Someone who doesn't look confident about what they are suggesting is rejected right then and there. If you can't believe it yourself, then why should we believe what you are saying. This reaction makes sense doesn't it.   Confidence also presumes a positive mental state. Speaking in front of others can be contemplated as a negative. Perhaps at school they gave a report and classmates laughed at them, crushing their confidence forever. Maybe they presented their tutorial paper at University and they were diced up by their classmates. Somewhere in their past there may be a recollection of the intense shame, humiliation and despair they felt when they have to present in front of others.   Usually a lack of confidence is associated with nervousness. Being nervous is one thing and putting yourself in that state is another. We are all trained to avoid pain and unpleasantness. Knowing you will become very nervous if you have to present in front of others, automatically has us looking for the escape route to avoid that situation. We know what is coming and we don't like the look of it. Having the adrenalin coursing through our veins, our breathing feeling constrained, the blood draining away from our major organs releasing a queasy feeling in the pit of our stomach is not a state we want to enter into if we can avoid it. That was me too. I avoided public speaking for decades, because of my lack of confidence. Was I half smart enough to go and get some training to overcome these fears? No. I did nothing but sweat and tremble in trepidation that I would have to speak in front of others. I passed up on opportunities to build my personal and professional brand and to promote my organisation.   This is the point – we are not confident because we don't know what we are doing. Any task we have never done before or which is technical and requires some degree of training is going to make us nervous about doing it. Public speaking is no different.   Like these attendees of the High Impact Presentations Course in the Mochizuki Room, we can all overcome these fears of insufficiency to the task, by getting the training. They learn how to deal with fear, with the fight or flight syndrome all speakers have to face. They learn speaking structures that will enable them to prepare any presentation format. When you can just pour the content into the right format, life gets a lot easier. Understanding the point of the talk is another simple but key element. Am I here to get action, to entertain, to inform or to impress? Learning how to design the start and finish of the talk, how to properly design the slides for the talk, how to analyse the audience to know how to present the talk are all the basics we need to know.   When you add in the personal coaching from the instructors it all starts to improve. You only get positive feedback, so your delicate nervous state is not totally upended. You get specific things to work on and lots and lots of practice. You hit the magic marker. This is when you learn how to switch the focus from yourself and move to focusing on your audience. It doesn't happen immediately but it does happen. Once you do that, all the fears about speaking in front of others, which is all about you by the way, disappear.   This is when you can start to notice the impact of what you are saying is having on your audience. You can see the impact because you are watching them like a hawk, never taking your eyes off the audience and you are using your eye power to engage them one by one, throughout the presentation. People nodding approvingly really boosts your confidence and you start to enjoy the process.   With training, you never fear the Q&A. This is when the event potentially becomes a street fight with no rules. When we are speaking we have control of the time, the agenda and the content. Q&A can see questions which have nothing to do with the topic, severe critiques of what you have just said and someone's own diatribe on a subject they hold near and dear. You cannot control this but you can control your response. When you have been trained you can weather any storm and can become bulletproof against any attack. Trust me, this knowledge makes you very confident when presenting.   So get trained and increase your confidence when presenting. It is that simple. Once you have done it, you will kick yourself as to why you didn't get the training earlier. It makes you happy to get the skills but sad to think of how much time and opportunity you have lost for no good reason. Better late than never though, so let's get going! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Questions As Incoming Missiles   The new President, a super star with a brilliant resume, started attending our Division's weekly meetings. We were between divisions heads, because he had just fired the old one, so he took it upon himself to see what was going on. We were all pretty excited to be in the presence of corporate royalty. The first meeting, though in a room a bit small for all the people crowded in, seemed to be going okay as people reported the results. But then things went a bit crazy. When he didn't like what he heard, he would explode with rage, going from zero to 100 in a nanosecond. His fury was so intense and his questions were brutal and lethal. If you were on the receiving end, your spine simply decalcified on the spot. Every week the meeting was like this.   Here is something I noticed. Never sit in front of an enraged President. Whoever sits in front is going to get both barrels between the eyes. It happened every week, time after time. Get there early and always sit at the absolute end of the long table, on the same side as the President. It is very hard to see you there, so you can escape his wrath and get a good view of the decimation taking place amongst your colleagues!   In business, we are sometimes confronted by a doozy of a question. It could be from the Board Chairperson, an unhappy client, a town hall meeting for the staff, the union delegation, cranky shareholders, an overly ambitious peer during a presentation to the big bosses or a member of the audience attending one of our speeches. Usually we don't handle it very well, because we rush to defang the question by answering it immediately. We speak, drawing on the first thing that pops into our mind, rather than going to our third or fourth more considered response.   When questions are thinly disguised incoming missiles, everyone around us takes cover, in case any of the debris lands on them. A lot of gazing at shoes starts to happen and we feel we are out there on our own. Counter-intuitively, when we handle one of these very hot ones, everyone is really impressed and our stocks rise substantially. So knowing how to deal with danger can be a rather large positive. Great, so how do we deal with trouble?   This requires discipline, concentration and courage. Do not allow your face to show the shock of the assault. Put up the best poker face you can manage as you listen to the tirade. That also applies to your body. I was under attack in a public situation and I caught myself moving my head slowly from side to side, as a sign of my negativity to what was being proffered. I wasn't even aware at the start that I was even doing that, so we have to be careful to rein ourselves in physically.   Also never nod up and down as you listen to the question under any circumstances. It is a habit we have created to acknowledge that we are listening to you, but it can get us into trouble. If it is being filmed, the clever editor will run your apparent agreement with either the negative comment of one of the participants or from the host of the show. It looks like you are agreeing with them.   Repeat the question, but do it in a way that kills the power of the weapon. In a public occasion, people often cannot hear the question, so it is legitimate to repeat it for the audience. When we repeat it though, we emasculate it. For example, imagine it is a town hall meeting and the question rockets in that, “Isn't it true that 15% of the staff are going to be fired in this financial year?”. We don't repeat , “The question was are we going to fire 15% of the staff before year end?”. Instead we neutralise the fire of the words and say, “The question was about staffing levels”.   Just by going through this process alone, we are buying ourselves valuable thinking time. We can add extra thinking time when we include a cushion statement. This cushion is nice, fluffy and soft and is placed between the hard, sharp edges of the question and our answer. In the example above I might say, “Getting the correct balance between work volumes and staff to do the work is important”. In the cushion, we are looking for a statement which will not ignite more opposition or raise temperatures in the room. We want something bland and neutral. This statement gives us more scope to formulate our answer to the question. Remember, we are looking for the answer as close as possible to the one you get hours later, when you have thought further about it and realize, “I should have said this or that”. Too late by then, but if we can buy a bit of time we will do much better with our immediate answer.   When answering the questions we can deny it, admit it, reverse the proposition or explain it. If it is factually incorrect, misinformation or a misinterpretation we need to deny it, in order to quash rumors and incorrect musings.   If it is true, then own up to any misunderstandings, mistakes, or errors. There is nothing so pathetic as someone who is clearly wrong, trying to wriggle out of it with mealy mouthed excuses. Harden up and be accountable.   If it is a negative, there may be some silver lining in the clouds. We need to look for that and bring it forth in an attempt to create some better balance of the interpretation of what has happened.   We can also simply explain what is going on. We can clarify misunderstandings, give background information which led to the decision in dispute and provide other relevant details.   No matter which of these we choose, we need to be very careful when delivering it. When presenting we always spend six seconds using our eye contact to engage with each person in our audience. When starting the answer, look straight into the eyes of the person who raised the question. No matter how scary they seem, look straight at them. After that ignore them completely and only talk to the others in the room. Look at each person for six seconds and then move on to the next person. Keep repeating this.   Often people are trying to upstage us, embarrass us, make themselves look smarter than we are or any other number of stupendously stupid motivations. Don't give them any additional attention. By ignoring them completely, we take away the limelight and their power.   If it is an incoming missile, they are not for converting to your point of view, so don't even bother.   To get the balance back on track, after giving your brief answer to their missile question, tack on a piece of good news about what the organisation is doing. We need to re-arrange the audience's perspectives. They are focused on what is wrong through the question, so we also need to get them considering what is working well.   When we use these techniques, we look sensational because everyone else in the room is cringing, trying to become the smallest possible target and worried they might be next for a tongue lashing. We hold our head up high, defuse the missile and look so professional. If your boss is unhinged like our erstwhile President at the beginning of this story, then getting your seating arrangements properly sorted is your only hope!   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Effective Team Building Is Not A Snap   You are sitting there at your desk beavering away as usual when you get the phone call. Suddenly you are called upstairs by your boss to their office. You are informed there is a new project needed and that “we want you to head up a new team to get it done. There is a lot counting on this and time is of the upmost urgency”.   This is good and bad. You are already very busy with a bunch of other work not yet completed and this project sounds very high risk. If the project doesn't get done well and on time, you know your head is on the block. On the other hand it is a chance to shine and show the big bosses you are more than ready to join their elite company.   The only problem is you cannot do the whole project by yourself. Fortunately, you have been given permission to pull together the team you need to get the job done. In a perfect world, like you see in the movies, you would be selecting the all star team of high achievers and the most motivated dudes and dudesses on the planet. Not going to happen.   You will have trouble getting anyone initially because no one is available and the talented few are totally locked in to other projects. You will get the team you can get, not necessarily the team you want.   This will be a new team and therein resides a raft of complexities right away. You are highly motivated because it is a make or break chance for you. For the team members it is an additional burden in their work lives they feel they don't really need. We have to disengage them from their existing work to make space for the new project. No one is happy about doing that by the way because they know their current tasks aren't going to be magically completed by someone else, while they are working on this project for you.   You might have been given the authority to create the team but the members hearts and minds are not something that can be won over by fiat. How can you get them enthused and motivated about the project? It sounds like a cliché but you need to establish the WHY we are doing this project through the Vision for the team.   This cannot be an email you send out alerting everyone to the new team Vision. We need buy in. “People own the world they help to create” tells us they need to be the ones who create the Vision. We need to use our communication skills to explain the veracity and urgency of the WHY of the project. Having done that we need the team members to create the Vision. This will be the guiding light for going forward.   The team collectively completes the project. That means each person has to be motivated to work hard on the project. They have to defend milestones, to adhere to quality standards, to be accountable and to get on with each other and with you.   The getting on with you is not a given. You have to earn their respect, commitment and effort. You can threaten them with diabolical outcomes if they don't toe the line and try and put the fear of God into them, so that they get with the programme. Stupid idea – don't do that. You will only ever get partial buy in at best. At worst, they may even sabotage the project to see you ejected out of the organization once it fails. Instead use human relations skills to create the environment where they will motivate themselves to do an excellent job.   Here are some basics in human relations skills that will help you to create a team of believers, rather than resisters.   Become genuinely interested in other people The key word here is genuine. People can spot fake interest from far away. By talking with them about themselves we can understand what motivates them. Everyone is different so no “one size fits all” type of approach will work. You need to understand what excites them individually , what is important to them and find a way that this project will deliver that for them.   Smile Sound so simple. Except that busy people, time pressed types, stressed individuals forget to smile. This could easily be you or become you. When you engage with your team you have to remember to start every interaction with a smile. People will gravitate to people they like and there is nothing more powerful than a smile to build a strong bond between people. Forget that fake smile business, this has to be genuine. You will be surprised how little you actually smile at work. We are all so serious at the office, we just train our facial muscles to scowl and show worry, more than we train them to radiate goodness and light.   Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. We are usually poor listeners, especially bosses. We are in the habit of making announcements, firing out orders, issuing directives, scolding poor performance, and telling others what to do. We are always perpetually super busy, so time is money and short form communication using headlines becomes the norm.   ‘The trigger to our engagement of staff is creating the strong feeling of being valued. There is nothing more powerful that listening to your team members for creating motivation. When we really listen to them, they feel they are valued, that what they do is appreciated, that they make a difference around here. Telling them what to do just doesn't stimulate that level of emotional commitment to any great extent. We listen to learn what motivates them, to hear what concerns them, to build empathy with them. This is powerful.   Talk in terms of the other person's interests. Our team members have one constant thought - what is in it for me? If we keep their perspective at the forefront of our minds when we are talking to our team members, our communication skills and persuasion skills will be excellent. Forget about what you want. What do they want and how can this project bring it to them? If we talk about the wonderfulness of the project in its own right that might make us the boss feel good. The team members are much more interested in how this project is going to be wonderful in helping them get their goals met.   Leading isn't about being the most gifted technician, the one best with numbers, the grey beard with the most experience, the hardest of the hard skillers. It is about getting the team to function well together because their commitment is sky high. The reason it is sky high is because you are an outstanding team leader who knows how to use these human relations principles and use them in a genuine not manipulative way. People are not stupid. They can tell if you are genuinely interested in helping them meet their goals or not.   Be genuinely interested in your team and your projects will be successful. You will be given more and more responsibility. The leader who can have people willingly follow is the leader that every company wants. Become that leader. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Growing Existing Account Sales   You call on your client at their downtown office and you are ushered into one of those typical Japanese meeting rooms. The client joins you and together you enjoy a coffee or green tea and chat about the business. The discussion is about the last sale and the possible next sale. It is usually a discussion about more of the same solution though, rather than a broad ranging talk about all the other possibilities available to the buyer.   We all know that it is much cheaper and more effective to sell to an existing client than to run around and find a new one. Knowing this and doing something about it though, are not the same thing. We make a big effort to grow our databases of people we know. The real issue is not so much who we know, as who wants to know us. Think about it. Who amongst your current clients wants to know you?   Existing clients know us, trust us, like us, and will do business with us. We are the problem though because we pigeonhole our clients into existing narrow bands of business and we never realize the full potential of the relationship. We only supply a small part of the range of solutions we have on offer. We only engage with our clients to a certain not complete extent. What can we do about changing that? Obviously whatever we have been doing isn't working particularly well in terms of broadening the sales relationship.   Using an Opportunity Chart we can map our existing business with our clients and we can also map potential business with non-clients. On the “y” axis of a chart we can list the solutions we provide to customers. Each separate line on the “y” axis nominates one of our solutions which we currently sell to buyers. One the “x” axis in each separate column we list up buyers or potential buyers for our range of solutions. Inside the matrix we have created, we can nominate the current state of the relationship. We use the codes A, B and C to differentiate the chance of a sale taking place. “A” indicates they are already buying from me now, “B” indicates there is a good opportunity here to make a sale and “C” indicates there is a marginal chance of making a sale.   This very simple exercise quickly points out a couple of things. It shows that there are new sales opportunities because we have the solution a potential buyer needs. Often they will be in the same industry facing the same problems of our existing clients. The experience we have already gained with that particular industry gives us insight into the key issues and usually the issues are very common. The starting point of our conversation can be very much better informed and more pointed.   If we are making a cold call for example, during the course of that call we might say, “We have been spending a lot of time with people in your industry and they tell us that retention of good staff is becoming more of an issue than it has been in the past. In fact, they are telling us that it is hurting their ability to grow their businesses. We have been able to help them with this issue and it really has made a big difference. If this is an issue in your company, maybe we could do something similar to help you. I am not sure if this is an issue or if we can help but what do you think? Shall we get together and explore if there are any best practices which will be of assistance to you in your company?”.   This Opportunity Chart is a very frustrating idea. It is very annoying to discover that you are only selling a one or two solutions to the existing buyer, when in fact you could be selling a lot more. Why don't we sell all of the range of solutions we have now? Part of the reason is we get into a groove, where we are comfortable and the buyer is comfortable and we tend to stick with what we have always been doing. Once you start to branch out, more complexity is released. More people inside the company become involved in the decision making process, there will be additional sign-offs required, additional budgets needed, etc.   This same Opportunity Chart works well with “orphan clients”. These are buyers, who for whatever reason, have stopped buying. We are all busy and if a client doesn't buy we tend to move on to find the next buyer. If there was a change in personnel on the buyer's side, the existing relationship may have been compromised by the new staff member. Maybe we did it to ourselves when one of our team left and the client was either not followed up, not followed up well enough or the right chemistry wasn't there between our substitute staff member and the buyer. The Opportunity Chart shows the logic of our ability to serve the client and we should try and reclaim the relationship. It may be that the trail has run cold and any existing rapport has been lost or diminished. That is too bad, but we should just treat the client as if they were a new buyer albeit one we know quite a lot about.   When we are dealing with existing clients we usually have one strong contact inside their company. This is our Champion. They like us, they support us and they continue to buy from us. This is dangerous though because often when they leave we have nothing. We need to be trying to get our Champion to introduce us to other key people in the company, so that we can bullet proof ourselves from being isolated if our Champion leaves.   This means we are asking them to introduce us to other executives or line managers inside the company and to other staff in their section. They can also help us to map the client company hierarchy as well, so that we get picture of the decision-making structure.   One of the frustrations of selling is that the client is like a black box, and apart from knowing our Champion, we have no clue how things are done over there. We need to get our Champion to help us understand the way things work inside their company. When we know this we can strategise which other key people we need to get to know.   As a simple reality check, get out a piece of paper and create the organizational chart of your existing client. It is scary how little we really know. We have been getting sales, we have been busy with the follow-up and we have moved into a relationship rut without knowing it. We have to “make hay while the sun shines” as the old wisdom suggests and have our Champion educate us now. This is much more preferable to finding ourselves in a stage where we have no one supporting us inside the company, once the Champion disappears.   We have so much untapped potential right there in front of us. We can find new business with non-clients, we can find additional business with existing clients, we can start relationships with multiple Champions within the client firm. We haven't bothered to date doing any of that, because we didn't have a formula to make it happen or the thought to do it. Now you have both, so go get it! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Having More Presence As A Speaker   Two different presenters and a big occasion. The five star hotel ballroom was packed and a lot of attention was being given to these two leaders, both new to their roles. Presenting is a cruel world. It has no respect for position or pedigree. Like the first presenter, you can be a big shot at your mega company, but unless you have the goods, no one will be impressed and in fact you will damage both your personal and company brand. In the case of the second presenter, you might be a VIP and in Japan this is a big deal and pretty good, because of the way everyone fawns over you. The gloves come off though when you get up on stage to do your presentation. If you are a dud, average, mediocre or uninspiring, then the sheen on that old VIP status starts to look a bit dull and tattered.   If the big shots are having trouble, how about the rest of us? How do we have a presence on stage when we speak? I teach our High Impact Presentations Course and do a lot of one-on-one Executive Coaching for presentations. Often, I hear the request from the participants and from the executives around how to have more presence when on stage.   It is true isn't it. The vast majority of people we meet in life have very little presence. Why would they suddenly be transformed into a presenting god at the podium? It is the same inside companies. The Japanese executives are often requesting help with having more “executive presence” when they are attending large, high level, internal meetings. Part of it is language skills in English. Part of it is cultural – be humble, play yourself down, don't stand out, be respectful of those older or more senior than you in the room. Part of it is a complete lack of training.   When we present there are three levers we need to pulling on hard and they are the words, our voice and our body language. The words obviously relate to the content and it has to be excellent. If what we are saying is boring, obvious, unremarkable or insignificant, then don't expect to be carried from the hall on the shoulders of your supporters, as they parade your triumph along the cobbled streets to the town square.   Japanese presenters need to lose their obsession with linguistic perfection. The audience just doesn't care. So what if a grammatical mistake is made or a word mispronounced? In this multi-cultural, global, matrixed world, native English speakers are used to hearing non-native speakers mangle the English language. Actually they don't have a problem with it, because they are used to it. We correct what is being said, inside our minds and connect the dots, so we can follow where the speaker is going. We are doing this without conscious thought because it has become so standard and natural.   The voice is a powerful instrument. This is where we need to rise to the occasion. A presentation should be delivered as if we are having a fireside chat but at a volume and strength, that is made for the public occasion. We keep the intimacy, but we elongate the vocal range. We are creating variety and are staying as far away from a monotone delivery as we can get. Japanese language is a monotone, so it is handmade for putting the audience to sleep. Even in Japanese though, we can use variety in speed and power in our delivery to give us sufficient vocal range to keep the punters awake.   Body language includes gestures, posture, eye contact etc. The hidden key to having more presence really requires skills in this area though. I have been training in traditional karate since 1971. I also did ten years of taichiquan before I had to stop when I came back to Japan. In both cases, called chi in Chinese and the ki in Japanese, there is magical energy in the body. All martial arts are devoted to harnessing that power.   Does this mean you have to take up martial arts to be a speaker and tap into the energy source. I don't believe so, based on our ability to coach people to have more ki when they present. The amateur presenter is consuming all the energy within themselves. They haven't worked out that you have to project that energy into the audience. They miss this because they are focused on themselves and what they are doing, rather than being focused entirely on their audience.   Here are a couple of simple things to adopt from now on whenever you have to present. I will condense 47 years of training down to key points. When you speak, look straight into the eyes of the individual in your audience, for about six seconds, before moving your gaze on to the next person. Keep this up throughout, with no wavering. Also, do it in a random fashion so that it cannot be predicted. Cover all areas of the room, front, back, left, right, middle as you look at individuals.   At the same time as using your eye power, project your energy to that person.   Imagine it was like an energy laser beam you were projecting to the people sitting in front of you. Use your voice to shoot the words out to these people you are looking at. Gestures add power to the words. Combine your body language together to direct more presence to the person you are speaking to.   All of this is taking place at the same time. What it means is that you are directly 100% of your attention to one person at a time when you are speaking. Many speakers are looking everywhere and nowhere when they are talking. Instead use this total power direct into the audience.   By the way, in a big hall, the 20 people sitting around your target person, will all feel your attention is being directed toward them. What the audience feels is your full energy and power when you present.   This is what they mean by having “presence”.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

My Japanese Managers Are Duds      The foreign firm sets up in Japan and they hire an experienced senior Japanese President. Things roll along, although with Japan operating like another planet. VIPs visit. Meetings are held, plans are made. The results never seem to come to fruition, despite the passing of time. “Japan is different” is trotted out each time to explain. Finally headquarters snaps, fires the extremely well paid Japanese President and send in their own guy or gal to turn things around. The newbie arrives into a heavy fog engulfed landscape, where nothing seems quite right. Three years fly by, the fog is lifting a little, but no real progress has been made. The newbie is transferred out and another one is dispatched to Nippon.   Now in the process of trying to reattach Japan to the mothership, for the first time, headquarters has better information about what is going on in Japan. It doesn't seem to be helping much though. The new President surveys the team and finds major gaps, especially with the managers. The first observation is that they don't seem to be any good any managing. They seem to be weak on communication, coaching and motivating skills. This is a bit hard to tell though because of the language barrier.   Over time the President finds an interpreter inside the company who can help with the language challenge. Without knowing it, the new boss has now anointed this handy person with a lot of power to influence. If they are a relatively junior person, which is often the case, then they start to be whisked outside their expertise areas pretty quickly. The boss starts asking their opinion about issues that are way outside their experience level.   The firm is being divided up between those that are ready to support the changes the boss wants to introduce and the group who want to maintain the status quo. From a Japanese perspective, having some “green” expatriate turn up into the country who doesn't know the culture, language, business practices, clients, competitors or how things are done around here is a scary proposition. The potential damage they could do has to be minimized.   The best way to do that is keep them in the dark, uninformed about what is really going on and to secretly resist all dubious changes. Waiting them out seems like a splendid option. To the new boss's astonishment, things they want implemented are not. Changes they need made are not. In fact, it seems so hard to get anything done in this country.   When the new boss tries to work through the managers it doesn't seem to work. They don't seem to have a strong sense of personal accountability for the results. They seem bereft of any ideas or innovations. They can't seem to lead anyone to get anything done. They appear to be company bureaucrats who seem wedded to the old way of doing things. Tasks allocated are not completed or are completed at a glacial pace.   Things start to get desperate because now headquarters are breathing down the new boss's throat about where are the improved results. Desperate times require desperate measures and maybe a good round of firings may focus the attention of the survivors. This is when the new boss discovers things are not so straightforward. Getting rid of managers for incompetence doesn't constitute a justification for firing them in Japan. The HR function seems to be in the business of protecting people rather than helping to rationalize them.   The opposite tack doesn't seem to be yielding any value either. Offering people bigger bonuses or commissions to stimulate the greed button in order to punch out more results isn't getting any traction. “Why aren't they motivated by money like everyone else?”, the boss sighs.   It rarely happens, but if the new boss took a careful look at the salaries and bonuses of the managers, they would see that they are well paid and having had a big remuneration lunch, they are not interested in any desert. They would also realise that these managers know they can't be fired easily, so threats fail to move them. They can see that they have been managers for many years but what they cannot see is that they were promoted on the basis of their age and seniority not their capacity. Just to compound the issue, they were never given any training on how to lead. All they have to go on is the example from their own bosses, who were also promoted on the basis of age and stage, rather than ability. A vicious circle of incompetence has been firmly welded into the body of the organization.   Doubts form. Maybe that handy interpreter is in league with the old guard, feeding information both ways, to control how much gets done. A double agent so to speak. The boss's sense of isolation and powerlessness grows daily. This is not fun and worse, it is derailing a brilliant career. Time to slip the noose and get out. The new President arrives and round and round the merry-go-round we go again. Welcome to Japan! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Extracting The Truth From Buyers   Sales as a profession requires the skills of the sleuth. There is no information, false information, incomplete information, low value information and actual stuff worth knowing to parse. The buyer has what we want and hopefully we have what they want. We need to go through a dance like phase first, as we shadow box around the subject, before we can start to go deep in search of the truth. The truth may be that we are not the solution for the buyer and a lot of valuable time gets wasted before we establish that reality. We need to be better at getting the real facts on the table faster.   The selection of a buyer is where the trouble starts. Salespeople are so desperate to get a conversation with a potential buyer, they are willing to overlook all the false flag indicators. In the modern business life, your phone calls made to absent buyers wither for a return. Those emails you have sent are like a fiction that never existed. Silence screams back at you as you wonder why you can't get in contact with the prospect.   This creates a tension around skimpy sales funnels and looming deadlines. Getting an appointment is felt to be better than getting nothing. Somehow that gives the salesperson the hope they can wrestle the buyer to the ground and extract a sale out of them. Any buyer qualifying process applied may result in a non-starter. The potential deal is dead before we even get going and we can't live with that thought, so better to meet and worry about the non-sale possibility later.   Which is better, seeing a bevy of non-buyers or one buyer? Obviously the one qualified buyer is going to be better use of our time, than hanging around wasting everyone's day with a non fit between buyer and seller. We all have the one or two killer questions that indicate if a deeper conversation is either needed or not and we should be brave and ask. All we have is time, so the more efficiently we spend our time with well qualified buyers the better, no matter how desperate we may be feeling about needing to speak to buyers directly.   Having properly qualified the buyer, what do we do about the buyer not being forthcoming with information? In a Japanese context, just wading in asking very detailed questions about all the weak points, failings, flaws and shortcomings of their firm is guaranteed to be met with stony silence. We need to set up the questioning phase. As part of our credibility statement we mentioned what we do, what we have done to help other companies and suggested we could also do something for this buyer. We do this in a halting, uncertain way: “maybe we could so the same for you?”. The next sentence is vital. “In order for me to know whether that is possible or not, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”. Without getting that permission, we will get nothing.   Even when we do receive permission, it doesn't signify that the floodgates of freely flowing information have opened up so that we can do our job. The issues we hear about may just be the tip of the tip of the iceberg. We are usually not being made privy to the whole scenario. We hear part of the story but not the whole thing. This is a pain. We are on a wild goose chase now for solutions which won't fully match the need. We don't know that of course, so we confidently push forward looking for gaps we can fill and issues we can solve.   It is always a good policy to assume that what the buyer is telling us isn't everything and that we are potentially fooling ourselves if we think we have a clear picture of the problem. The temptation however is to go straight into “helpful” mode and start deriving solutions to the stated problem. Especially so when you have been struggling to get appointments with qualified buyers and are feeling a bit desperate.   Better to hold our fire until we have dug deeper and have double checked what we are being told. We should ask follow up questions about what we have been informed. We should also assemble a number of issues raised and then have the buyer tell us which ones have the higher priority for them. No point trying hard to solve something which is of marginal value to the buyer.   We have to accept that perhaps we need to spend more time building trust with the buyer, in order for them to feel safe and comfortable to release the type of data we need, so that we can be helpful. The idea of doing the deal on the first meeting is basically an illusion in Japan. It so rarely ever happens. There is always going to be a need for a number of meetings and we should be prepared for that and be happy about it. The more trust we can build, the more clarity we will receive about the issues the buyer is really facing.   We need to be harsh with ourselves when doing buyer qualification. We need to assume the buyer doesn't trust us enough on the basis of one meeting, to share all the dirty laundry of their firm. We need to dig deep and double check our assumptions made on the basis of what we have been told. Being skeptical of what we are being told is always a sound policy. Take our time to build trust and get the real situation, because we are looking to construct a lifetime partnership with this buyer and our aim is not a sale – it is the re-order. Always eyes peeled for false prophets of the tips of icebergs! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

How To Come Up With Speech Content   Their request arrives. “Would you please give a presentation to our group?”. You check on what they would like you to talk about. Usually, the answer is a bit vague. The content will not be so finely or specifically designated. It may cover a broad subject area or they may mention what people usually speak about or they might just throw it back to you completely. Okay…. So how do we come up with a speech title and description?   We need both to be decided rather early because they want to promote the event and get the message out about the coming talk. That is a pain for a procrastinator like myself. I now have to think! The problem is that you need a snappy title that will attract an audience. People in marketing and advertising get paid a lot of money to come up with these brilliant little gems but we are doing it ourselves. It can't be too long, has to reflect the content of what we will speak about and it has to have a hook that will grab attention. Copywriting is a finite skill and we are usually rank amateurs. We need a title and supporting text that is going to get people motivated to turn up.   We need a theme though first and so how do we choose that? While we were discussing the request to speak, we should take the opportunity to enquire about their target audience. Are they hard-core professionals in this area, dilettantes, aspirants, fans or rent-a-crowd? What is the age and gender demographic? Once we know who we are going to be talking to, we can start to consider the subject we will choose.   Now we may have many and varied interests, but our subject guide should be what will be of the greatest interest to the largest number of punters in the audience. Obviously it has to cover an area which we can actually speak on, but our personal devotion shouldn't be choice. That talk content will be fascinating for us and perhaps lost on the audience members. Having honed the choices down to one, we now consider what is the punch line of the talk.   This punch line is also known as the close of the talk. Ironically we don't start with the title, flag the key things to be covered and then start to build the slide deck. We start with the finish and work our way backwards toward the title. As we roughly form up the content we start to get ideas about a possible title. The title can be straightforward and descriptive, like this piece or it can use other hooks. If we think about how the content will be found by search engine algorithms, it is best not to use something too illusive and arty. Speaking gigs are advertised somewhere and they do get added to your personal search results, so we should maximize that chance we are given.   The title can also be fascinating, such that people will want to hear all about it. Sounds good but this is not that easy to do and as mentioned, copywriters are trained to get the words right. We are amateurs in that regard. We can spend some time tossing around various title possibilities until we find one we like. The point is to toss around a number of them rather going for the first one to pop into our brain. Think of the title from a potential audience member's point of view. What would grab their attention and hold their interest.   The supporting description is usually only a few paragraphs long so we have to again be working hard wordsmithing the content. This is not where we spell out the content we will cover, like an agenda in a book. This part needs to be crammed to gunwales with value from the audience viewpoint. We need to be telling them what they will get out of this talk, how it will help them. We don't have so many words to do this in, so we have to hit the high notes hard. There will also be a short bio about us to explain why we have the authority, capacity and expertise to talk on this subject. It is not a job CV. It again should be a powerful couple of sentences that reeks of “expert”.   Once we have done all of this we can start working on the detail of the talk and getting the slides together. If we take our time to plan this way, we will give a much better talk, have a far greater impact with the audience and be regarded as a quality expert in our field. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Me, Me, Me Leaders   Getting to the very top of a company is a zero sum game where you either make it or you don't. There are winners, losers and wannabees. For the highly ambitious, the efforts start early. Often from childhood they have self-selected themselves to become the leader. To earn their spot at the top they have to show they can shine, as they make their way up through the ranks. They shine all right. In fact they shine all the light on themselves to make sure they eventually get the top seat. They are selfish, self centered, self-promoting and out of date.   The world of work has moved. Sheer will, dominance of others, baring of teeth and the pointed display of claws isn't as important as it once was. In the modern firm, we need to see teams working well together, both internally at the section level and at the broader level of a total company-wide team effort. This requires an aspirant for the big job to have a greater degree of big picture vision and strong sense of holistic responsibility for the entire fleet, rather than your own little row boat.   This is not how we have been developed in the past though and so old habits are hard to break. The Golden Rule of Bosses in the past was simple. Anything that went well was “all my own work”. Anything that crashed and burned was “the fault of others”. Claiming credit for everything, attaching your name to successful projects (when you actually hardly contributed anything) and widespread sucking up to the top echelon was de rigeur.   It is a tricky separation between supreme self-belief and narcissism. Many bosses cross that line and become all about how great, smart and special they are. This is the well trodden philosophy of “pick me, pick me” for the top job road to success. Huge confidence and huge ego often come as a package. It can be a nasty pairing, obnoxious and pathetically shallow.   In our companies we need leaders who others want to follow, who can engage the team and get everyone playing to their full strength. Think about it. If you are not engaged, you don't care about innovation and making things run better around here. You become disengaged, which in reality, is encouraging a form of self-centered selfishness. Leaders who are all about themselves kill motivation, commitment and engagement. As an aspirant leader though you may think you have to be constantly self-promoting yourself forward. Now where do you suppose you learnt that model of behavior from? Probably your ever upward, elbows at the ready, take all the credit, scrambling boss.   If we want engaged, creative staff we have to give them leaders who are prepared to recognize others for their good work. Hogging the limelight and monopolising successes doesn't breed any respect from those below. They are not stupid. What they see is that they are considered expendable, that their efforts are being taken for granted and their successes are being looted by their boss. When this is the case, we are not likely to leap out of bed on a chilly morning and rush down there, to work like a demon for the cause. The boss gains staff engagement to the degree they make their team members feel valued. To make them feel valued means putting the spotlight on the team and what they have accomplished. It means being someone focused on the success of others and believing that in their success, lies our own success.   These days, boss's can't bully their team members. If they do the power harassment charges will be flying around fast. They therefore can't use fear as a tool to the extent it worked in the past. There is an old saying that you get further by giving people honey rather than vinegar and it is even more true today. Playing to the strengths of individuals makes more sense than tearing strips off people who struggle with aspects of their work. Our motivation to get better at tasks is critical. When we fail and then have the boss rub our noses in that failure, we can easily feel weak and as if we can't do the job. The boss's role is to create the opportunity for staff self-improvement and for them to grow their internal motivation, rather than grow the scope of the boss's personal aggrandizement of other's results.   Recognising our people is a big part of this transformation needed for the “me to we” boss. We need to understand that the top executives are all looking for leaders who can produce staff motivation. Yes, motivation is an internal game, but the boss creates the ecosystem for it to flourish in others. The big bosses need to hear about the terrific efforts of your subordinates to fully appreciate you as a leader. Hogging all the glory for yourself is counter-productive. At the best, it means they can't promote you. They can't move you because there is no one under you, talented enough to take over. This is your own fault by the way. At its worst, you just identify yourself as a selfish, limelight hogging boor, who is destined for nothing much in particular.   Ambition for yourself is fine, but ambition to become as helpful as possible to the team and produce the next generation of leaders is finer. “Me” moved to “we” as the focus, works much better. Staff developing skills and maintaining courage in the face of fire are directly related back to the attitude of the boss. Exceptional people will shine regardless of what any boss does to them, simply because they are exceptional. They have many choices, are totally mobile and will go where the best opportunities are to be found. It is the other 99% who need our help to become as great as they can possibly become.   Talking up a storm about ourselves (and how awesome we are) or are we talking about our staff in glowing terms. Simple choice really. Which one of these bosses are you now and which one will you be in a year's time? Is it going to be twenty years of leadership experience or one year of leadership experience twenty times? Time for the focus to be properly adjusted to where it needs to be and that is off the boss and on to the team members. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

In Sales Don't Soldier On Sick   We are experiencing the highest outbreak of influenza in Japan this year. The winter daytime temperatures have dropped well below zero in Tokyo which is pretty unusual. We still have a lot of snow lying around from last week, which was the largest snowfall since 2014. Everyday, staff are reporting in sick with colds, the flu, headaches etc. What happens to your sales output during these physically demanding times? Growing up in Australia we were all taught to “soldier on” when we got sick. Maybe this was a leftover mentality from Victorian England or maybe it was a product of the pioneer society, but being ill was something you pushed through.   The reality though is that we are all working in a much more complex business environment today and just “soldiering on” won't cut it. Watching illnesses being passed from staff member to staff member, really reinforces the sense of the fragility of teams. The last thing we want is for the whole team to get taken down because of the overwhelming sense of loyalty and work ethic of one sick individual. Japan has its own version of soldier on and that is called gaman or perseverance. This means turning up to the office wearing a mask, but still working when you are sick.   The problem of infecting others is still there, mask or otherwise. There is also the question of the damage to the health of the individual. Something which could be dealt with in a few days, now stretches into weeks, because the initial recovery period wasn't long enough. There is also the question of the quality of how well you can work when you feel miserable. It is a bit like Japanese staff working longer than necessary hours, at minimum productivity levels, to demonstrate their devotion. In both cases everyone is much better to go home.   Japan has a strong sense of not letting the team down, so turning up sick is the proof of commitment to the cause. The idea that someone in a sales job could go and call on clients while sick is completely out the window. The client won't appreciate one of our team turning up to wipe out their team. This is felt to be selfish, inconsiderate and basically pretty dumb.   So if you are sick that means you are restricted to working in the office. Why do that, when we have so much excellent technology allowing us to work remotely today. Better to stay nice and warm at home and work there if you feel you must. If there are some really urgent matters then handle them from home.   But must you work when you are ill anyway? Well some simple things can be dealt with by email while at home. Meetings already arranged will have to be reset and the client notified. Follow-up items won't be followed up as promised because the time has slipped out and that has to be informed to the client. The sales numbers are going to take a hit. This might happen immediately or it may show up in a few months time, depending on the business you are in. What do we do about it?   The idea that we can push our people through their ill health to create the quota numbers is a crazy idea. Not an idea though that doesn't occur to owners and sales leaders who have responsibility for the production of results like cash flow. We need to consider how short-term and crazy that actual thought is. In this environment, your people are everything. Their well being is everything. Transactional thinking around squeezing out the results, no matter what, is an organization destroyer.   The sense of being valued by the organisation is the key driver for engagement with staff. When everything is humming along smoothly, there is no stress test of the company's actual, as opposed to stated values and the boss's real commitment to the team.   Staff are taking careful note. There are more jobs out there, than salespeople in this market. When you pressure your people to keep pushing for targets, you will drive them out the door. They realise they are expendable in your eyes and they will leave. They are thinking “show me the love”.   Instead of expecting everyone to harden up, encourage your people to rest. One of Dale Carnegie's stress management principles is to rest before you become tired and this is a very sound idea. Staff illnesses will eventually disappear and you are left with how they felt about how they were treated by you, when they needed your support. Keep those with major flus away from contact with everyone. Give them sufficient time to recover, because these modern malaises really take it out of you. Lead from the front. Stay home yourself when you get sick and model the type of behaviour you want in your staff.   Forget the revenue numbers in the short term. A highly engaged team will catch things up, as much as it is possible. The ability to keep the team together is more important than one or two month's revenue results. Be generous with your people and they will understand your true intention is to care for them. Only when you show that, will they be motivated to show they care for you and the organisation. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Presenting: Good Is The Enemy Of Great   I was recently reminded of this point about a good presentation being the enemy of a great presentation. Two speakers with a tonne of business experience gave their talks, one after the other. Both were very confident, quite competent and rather boring. By most people's measure they probably did a “good job”, but they could have been great instead. What was missing? The neglected elements are what makes the difference between being great rather than just being good.   One of the speakers used notes and did a pretty fair attempt of looking at the audience rather than concentrating on the text. This is not easy. You have to read the content, then reproduce it from memory, as you are eye balling the audience. If you think this is a snap, just try it.   Did he need to have a written text? Actually no. He could have talked to his key points, given he was highly articulate and experienced enough to do so. Being able to spend more time engaging with the assembled masses, rather than engaging with your script takes work. The content contained all of the expected things. That is an issue as well. Once your audience realizes you are doing the usual routine expected of someone in your exalted position, they tend to mentally switch off.   It was delivered with supreme confidence and you could tell this wasn't the speaker's first rodeo. It was good, but it wasn't great.   The second speaker upped the ante and spoke with no notes. This is a much better version. It means you can spend your entire speaking time engaging your audience with eye contact. It would have been better if the speaker had actually done that, picking out individuals in the crowd and engaging them one by one. Rather, it was one of those one size fits all jobs, where the speaker is talking to everyone and no one at the same time.   It was a big crowd. In these cases, when you select one person and you look and speak directly to them, the distance involved provides the illusion that you are talking directly to a number of people standing or sitting around the person you are actually concentrating on. It means you are engaging many individuals with the sensation that you are directly addressing them and no one else in the room at that moment. This is so powerful you would think all speakers would do it.   So both speakers were using eye contact, but it was fake eye contact. It looks like they are speaking to the people in front of them, but actually it is an undifferentiated mass affair, rather than creating a feeling of one on one intimacy.   All you have to do to change that, is look directly into the eyes of one person for around six seconds and they will feel a profound sense of personal connection with you. Why six seconds? The time spent under six seconds can come across as fleeting and perfunctory, rather than a genuine attempt to really engage. Over six seconds of you staring intently at someone, brings out the fear you are a psycho axe murderer, to the audience member involved.   The other element that was missing was engagement with the message. I am struggling with finding the correct descriptor here. Uninspiring platitudes is too harsh a judgment, because I am sure they were genuine in what they were telling the audience. The problem was it sounded just like the type of thing they should be saying, so our expectations were met, rather than exceeded. Good, but not great.   On both occasions, there were no attempts to connect with the audience at the emotional level through storytelling. This is rather the problem with most business speakers. They are talking to us, but not engaging or moving us. Storytelling really brings the human element to the fore. We easily follow the plot, we can identify with the characters and we will feel an emotional connection with the point being made by the speaker. This is how you go beyond good to achieve greatness, as a communicator in business. The fatally sad part is that both of these speakers' professional lives are absolutely brimming with human stories which we can naturally grasp and appreciate. There is such a richness in using stories to drive home the point, but the treasure was unspent on this occasion. Why?   Because they couldn't go beyond being good to challenge themselves to be great. This is the issue when we gain confidence to address an audience. We feel we were professional, that we did a good job, that we completed the task competently compared to most others. This is true, but we fall short of our full potential when we are self-satisfied with these lower rungs on the ladder to speaking success.   It sounds harsh but realistically most business presenters we experience are rubbish, so our scope of comparison creates a false sense of achievement. We need to become the best we can possibly be. To do that we need to engage the audience with our eyes, speak directly to them and regale them with human stories that really stir their emotions. This should be the standard against which we measure ourselves. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Japan's Big Challenge   The demographic challenge for Japan is looming on the horizon.  The decrease in the numbers of young people is permanent. What companies will face is a shift in power from the company side to the employee side.  The young entrants into Japanese companies will start to realise they are in super demand.  This will end lifetime employment as we currently know it.  If you meet someone from a Western country who has spent their entire working life with the same company you are always surprised.  This is because we move between companies and this is unremarkable.  Japan will become like this in the future. The issue in Japan will be the two Rs - Recruit and Retain.  How to be an attractive employer who young people want to work for will be the test.  Today with social media there is a tonne of information about companies which allow the young prospects to check us out.  They will particularly be looking for is information on how their supervisors will treat then. Once they get inside the company, they have different expectations to their parents about what they want from work and what they want from bosses. The bosses however may be behind the times here in Japan and not really understanding what they need to do to retain the young. Companies in Japan have not fully realised the ramifications of these changes.  They need to work this out now or the damage will be substantial.  Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

Sale's Case Studies   Getting client cooperation to create sale's case studies in Japan is tough. Japanese companies are very careful about how much information they let outside of the firm. When you are thinking to yourself “we did a really great job and this would make a great case study”, get ready for rejection. Not everyone in Japan says “no”, but the percentage is very, very high in this country. When you think about it, this is a great opportunity gone begging. What can we do, to get around this problem?   Well the “no” usually means exactly that and companies do not relent in their negativity toward the idea. Our persuasion powers always fall short because this tends to be a company-wide policy issue and the people we are dealing with can't change the policy. When you ask them why we can't turn this magnificent triumph into a case study, they say annoying stuff like “if we do it for you, we have to do it for all the other providers”. Or, “the other providers will feel we are favouring you”. As a foreigner you are inclined to think “oh yeah, so what?” and want to question why any of this would be a problem. Well it is a problem, it isn't going away anytime soon, so we have to be more creative.   We can create two types of case studies – the verbal and the print variety. The format can vary but if we think about how time poor everyone is today, clarity and brevity are virtues in both cases. We should start with the outcome, the result. Why begin at the end? We want to keep people reading or listening, so we need to break through all of the competing distractions and grab their attention. Extolling the wonderful and extensive outcomes of your solution gets them interested to see if the same pixie dust magic can be sprinkled on their enterprise. We are also showing our credibility. The outcome must be a relevant example that the potential buyer of your services or product can mentally extrapolate to themselves in order to have real meaning.   After dangling the goodies in front of the client, we now talk about the issue we solved. This is best delivered in the form of a story. Just going into the mechanics of the issue is boring and not likely to motivate the listener. If we can describe the people involved and the pain the issue was causing, we can start to ignite the listener's emotional connection with the story. We can say things like, “The pressure from our client's senior management had been intense. From last spring the section manager Shimada san was so stressed by the pressure for delivering the results on time, that he was developing an ulcer in his stomach. He even started to take time off to go to hospital. His whole team were worried because they felt they would not be able to get their piece of the project done in time. They saw a potential big loss of face because their colleagues would feel they had let the rest of the company down. They were all working hard but were concerned they were getting nowhere”. Now we have put some flesh on the bone. We have counted the human cost of failure. This is much easier to identify with than numbers in a spreadsheet cell coming up short. We have introduced a situation the buyer can mentally visualize in their own frame of reference.   Next we describe the solution we provided to fix this gap. This is the “how we did it” part of the story and again it shouldn't be a simple mechanical telling of how what happened. We need to combine the solution description with the impact it had on individual members of the team. We talk about the features of the solution but we have to link those to the benefits we delivered to the company, how they took those benefits and applied them. We can say something like this, “The XYZ software we installed used a combination of our big data and artificial intelligence capability to isolate out the critical steps to meet the deadline. We saved hundreds of hours of team time and the additional efficiency actually delivered the project pitch perfect and ahead of the deadline. Shimada san could finally stop his ulcer medication and the team were regarded as the heroes of the hour. We were invited to the celebration dinner and what a phenomenal night of major partying that was. Everyone was ecstatic with what we had done together and they really thanked us for saving them”.   Even if you cannot reveal the client's name, get these type of rich episodes into print and in front of potential clients during meetings. There is the dry rendition version – avoid that one. Instead use storytelling to emotionally involve the listener. If you do, then the story brings the key points alive and makes the buyer identify with the scenario in a way that they care what happened. This is powerful and we do not do enough good storytelling in our sales work. The irony is we are all dripping in rich and valuable detail, have plenty of scope to do this, but we don't pull all the parts together. Find your hero stories. Collect the details and turn them into tales that reek of applied benefits gushing forth from the feature nitty gritty details of the solution. But remember to make it memorable through your storytelling.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Stop Making Yourself Invaluable   It is rather counterintuitive to suggest we leaders become less invaluable isn't it. When you are climbing over the bodies on the corporate climb to grasp the top positions, you have to show you stand out. You have to show you are “the one”, better than the rest, the most talented candidate for the big job. To get the big job you have to keep repeating this self promotion process at every level, as you climb higher and higher. If it is your own business, you have so much knowledge and passion for the business, you automaticly become the one person holding all the complexity together. This is the Great Man or Woman theory of leadership, a bit like the same phenomenon in understanding history.   The story of kings and queens got a bit of a hiding in the modern histories, as scholars began searching for other factors to explain what has occurred in the past. In leadership terms, the era of the single powerful individual has yielded to a much more complex structure, better reflecting modern business. You just cannot know everything today and be the best at everything anymore, because the required specialist talents are no longer located in one person.   The modern leader has to become the orchestra conductor, rather than the virtuoso violinist. The demands from those being led have also made leadership change a necessity. Staff suffering from cancer and other illnesses need special handling. Aging and often ill parents of staff are a modern phenomenon, because in the past they passed much younger. As we get older ourselves we need to take care of our parents, so this challenges the idea of sacrificing all for the enterprise. Women play a much more prominent role in business than ever before. In modern Western societies the base population is decreasing, the cost of living is increasing and the need to for women to work has changed society's thinking about how families are to be ordered.   The younger generation entering the workplace have different ideas about what constitutes success and the old model of self sacrifice, sucking up to bosses and seeking the top job at all costs. The leader cannot say they have more skill or knowledge than their staff anymore. When we remove personal narrow band expertise from the mix, we are left with status power. Being the boss gives us authority, but it doesn't give us followers. We have to earn that follower trust and deference in a way that wasn't required before.   The ability to have the orchestra play well together, in harmony, happily, each person wanting to do their absolute best is the leadership challenge. How do we get people to that stage? Obviously hard skills are always going to be important but actually are becoming a less important component of the leadership mix. We can employ people with much more specialized hard skills which are more current than our own. We have seen leadership requirements move from a hard skills base to a soft skills base over the last 30 years.   Communication, team building, motivation, recognition, coaching, delegation have supplanted pure technical skills as the formula for getting that orchestra of experts and specialists to play together in a winning way. Part of achieving this state is to let go. To not be the most knowledgeable person in the team, the most technical, the most expert is the key today. We need people with those attributes but we no longer have to be The One. We need to go from being leaders who in the past were forensic fault finders, honing in on weaknesses and mistakes of our staff to becoming good finders. Recognising people's strengths and coaching them to bolster those abilities is what is needed now. This is extremely hard when you have been brought up under an entirely different value system.   Delegation of your authority and expertise to someone else, knowing full well you could do it better, is another hard nut to crack for the modern leader. The staff member will have certain skills but the objective of the delegation is to lift them up to attain higher level, more impact skills. In the old model, smart subordinates were a danger, because the big bosses might ship you out and move them into your job. So you had to hide stuff to keep control.   The opposite is the case today, because the machine needs more and better leaders and will promote bosses who are machine like at pumping out excellent new leaders. To help prepare these new leaders for the next level we need to give them more responsibility earlier. This means delegating higher level tasks and managing the transition, so that the project doesn't blow up in our face, but also doesn't have us micro managing the subordinates into submission.   So what are we seeing in Japan? Bosses are not delegating, coaching, or encouraging. They are maintaining their position through personal expertise, controlling and fault finding. Promotion is still based around age and when they entered the company, so do nothing is a perfect formula for not making mistakes. Success comes from keeping your head down and slowly moving up the rungs of the machine.   The revolution hasn't quite made it to Japan just yet, but it will arrive. The shortage of younger workers will force the changes though. They are not signing on for what their parent's generation went for. Trying to force them to bend to the boss's will, simply because the boss has the position power, will fail. They will vote with their feet and go elsewhere in search of greener pastures.   They will find them too, because the labor shortages will show early adopter companies how to become more successful by becoming an attractive place to work. In typical fashion, once this path is proven, everyone will pile on in and copy the formula. Women are going to be needed in the workforce and they need more flexibility from the system, to raise kids while working and take care of aging parents. This will force companies run almost exclusively by men to change their thinking, rules and systems to survive. It will also force leaders to change. Choose: change or die. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Story San, We'll Think About It   In Japan, this “We'll think about it” response is often the result at the second meeting with the client. In the first meeting, the salesperson is establishing trust and credibility. They are trying to identify if they can actually be of assistance to the client or not. There will be permission sought to ask questions to better understand the buyer's needs. In the second meeting, the proposal is presented, objections are dealt with and the seller tries to gain a client agreement to buy. Actually this is all fantasy and not what happens.   In reality, the Japanese salesperson gets straight into their pitch and starts bombarding the client with all the nitty gritty features of the product or service. They get to the end and then wonder why the client doesn't buy and all they hear is “we'll think about it”. In this case, the clients are using this answer to get rid of dud salespeople.   Sadly, even if you are a pro and were following a proven sale's process, where you did all the necessary steps, you will still often get this response of “think about it” in Japan. This is usually because we have not gotten enough clarity during the questioning process. Sometimes we have misunderstood the client or they have not been clear enough themselves. It could be that there was a hidden objection they are reluctant to share with us and we have failed to address that concern, so no purchase can be made.   What do we do about this? We can certainly accept that they do need to think about it and we need to set the date for the followup meeting right there on the spot. We can try a formula from Victor Antonio, where we don't accept that simple headline answer and we dig deeper. We can say, “when someone tells me they need to think about it, they means one of two things - they are not interested or are interested, but not sure. Which is it?”. If they say interested but not sure, then we question further about whether the purchase is a fit, whether the functionality is all there or not, or is it a question of finance?   The idea being that if the problem is anyone of these three reasons, we drill down further in order to understand how to handle it. If it is not a fit, why not? If the functionality is not there, what is missing and can we overcome that issue? If it is the money, then we look at how we might arrange the payment terms to allow them to make it in this budget cycle or spread it out over a few cycles.   In a Japanese buyer context, this line of questioning would be considered very aggressive and obnoxious. The buyer isn't King in Japan – the buyer is God and it is not the place of pipsqueak salespeople to question God as to why they need to think about it. The group decision-making process in Japan almost ensures they really do need to think about it - together. The person receiving the sales call may be on board and may have been satisfied with the proposal, but they are rarely the sole decision maker. Inside the company, the buying decision will impact on various sections and the views and concerns of those groups need to be smoothed off, before anyone can make a final affirmative decision.   Trying to pressure the buyer during the sale's call is meaningless, because that person still has to gain the internal alignment of the group on the next steps. It would make more sense if the seller instead addressed the issue of pushback toward the other internal parties who may have a problem with the decision to buy. In this case, rather than asking the person in front of us these aggressive questions, we could ask about other players involved.   For example, “Sometimes there are concerns from other interested parties about the appropriateness of the fit between our solution and your company's needs. Do you foresee any internal concerns in this area? What about functionality – do you anticipate any difficulties with the functionality of our solution from within the other sections involved? What about the finance aspect, do you expect any resistance to what has been proposed?”.   In this way we can indirectly ask the buyer about the concerns without appearing to be questioning what they have just told us about they need to think about it. We can also take the opportunity to again provide antidotes to any concerns, because our interlocutor will be “our voice” during the inside meetings where the proposal will be discussed. We need to lead the witness, so to speak, to prepare for internal pushback. So when you hear “we will think about it” and you know you have done a good job of understanding the client's needs and your proposal will help their business, just relax. Still definitely make that appointment for the follow-up meeting right there and then and get into their schedule but don't keep pushing or you will hurt the trust you are trying to create. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Oprah's Golden Globe's Speech Carries Smart Lessons   Oprah Winfrey has been celebrated by many for her recent acceptance speech at the Golden Globes event. It proves once again the power and attraction of being able to command an audience and being persuasive with your message. Like her or loath her, that performance was very impressive. She is a seasoned professional, with many years in the limelight, so naturally she was very comfortable up there on stage. The surprising thing for me though is how many famous actors have trouble stringing two words together, when it is their turn to speak without a scriptwriter feeding them the lines. So being a celebrity, being in the business, is no guarantee of oratorical magic. What can wepick up from her speech to make our own presentation's more successful?   I like the fact that Oprah started straight away with a story. She located the story in time in 1964, with a location - her as a child sitting on the linoleum floor of her mother's house watching the Academy Awards on television. By giving us the time and location she is urging us to mentally transport ourselves back to our own childhood, sitting on the floor watching television like she was. With a few short descriptors she has mentally taken us with her. This is why telling stories makes us so powerful as communicators. She has grasped out total attention. No one in that audience was reaching for their mobile phone to check their Facebook or Instagram accounts during that story.   She wrapped up the story by transitioning to comments about the judging panel and then connected that segue with the current debate about the role of the press. This is a big topic and again, something that everyone has been exposed to recently, so it is easy for us to understand what she is talking about. Putting issues into a topical reference point makes it relevant to the audience and more interesting.   She used some powerful headliner sentences during her talk to engage the emotions of the audience. The first was when she said “speaking your truth”. This related the issues about the accuracy of reporting of the press with the current scandals about the abuse of power by men, which has seen famous men fall by the wayside, one after another. This use of a rallying cry is made to engage and energise the audience. Being able to reduce complex issues down to a headline is a real skill, but these are the things on which successful rallying cries are built. She also used another good segue to link the current issue with the issues her mother and others like her endured, again linking back to the start of the story.   By bringing up the VC Taylor story of her kidnap and rape on the way home from church, connected the theme of men using their power to abuse women, by putting it into an historical civil rights context. The extension of that story to include Rosa Parks again linked an unknown person VC Taylor to a more famous personality, to bring more credibility and memory power to the listener's perspective. Now she has built a platform of context for her most powerful rallying cry of “Their time is up”. There is a certain cadence to this build up. She was piling on the references to injustices of the past, to show the current injustices in a historical light and then hammer home her powerful statement of the current moment - “their time is up”.   Getting this type of build in a story is the art of storytelling. We need to set the scene, add the logs to build the fire and then throw the petrol on the fire at the right moment, to ignite the audience's emotions. This was a masterful piece of planning and execution to get to the point of the story.   She used the “Me Too” mantra as a plea for no more cases, moving the completion of the speech to a more positive bent. She had been talking about a lot of negative things in the first part of the speech, but now she was moving the audience along the scale from desperation that nothing can ever change, to one where change is a reality. She mentioned more headline phrases, “hope for a brighter day” and then talked about a “new day on the horizon”. This is leaving the audience with hope for a better world. This is a powerful, positive call to end the speech with.   This is a useful thing to remember for our own talks because often we can be going deep into a problem and can get trapped in a negative loop. She ended with a clear Thank You and that was it, nothing more added or needed to be added and all done in under 10 minutes. Make it clear for the audience that you have finished. In our talks we can have a Q&A session, so it needs to be apparent to the audience where we are in the programme and that they can now ask their questions.   Another thing I noticed was she had controlled passion throughout this talk. She was using great energy to bring her words to life. She was also totally congruent with her content and her delivery. What she was saying and the way she said it matched up perfectly and we have to make sure we are doing the same in our talks. If it is a serious subject, then look serious and no jokes.   Her eye line was adding to her message. She was working the left, center and right sides of the room, as well as direct to the viewing audience, when she would look straight at the camera. This makes for a very inclusive style of speech. We should make sure we are addressing the entire audience. We should try to pick out people in the audience and speak directly to them for about 6 seconds, before picking up another person, repeat and repeat and repeat until we are finished. I noticed she also didn't let the audience applause break her timing, she carried on over the top of it, to keep the flow. When we have found our speaking rhythm we should keep going with it.   A polished performance and one that reinforces the importance of planning well what it is you are going to say. She injected crescendos into that speech with strong well composed headlines. She embraced key messages into the stories which themselves were easy to follow. She involved her audience by engaging with them. We can do all of these things as well, all we need to do is plan for the impact we want and then work backwards constructing how to achieve it. Speaking has so much power and all we have to do is learn how to tap into that well. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

Admitting Wrong In Customer Service   Sometimes things go wrong. Mistakes are made, errors pop up, best laid plans are laid low. Stuff happens. How we deal with these incidents makes the big difference. Some societies are legalistic, litigious and phalanxes of lawyers are lined up telling us to deny everything. Japan isn't one of those cases, so we expect a different way of doing things here, admitting that blame can be accepted, as long as it is handled appropriately.   Troublesome word “appropriately”. It is a bit like “common sense” which often proves to be very uncommon. What we may think is appropriate isn't shared by others. This is where things get murky in the service sector world. When things go wrong what is the appropriate response by both parties? The aggrieved party can completely lose it and let go with both verbal barrels, tearing strips off the offending service provider.   Given nearly 30% of the Japanese population is over 65 these days, we can all look forward to various short fuse jichans or granddads exploding with rage, when some level of service is not delivered at the “appropriate” level. Those long Japanese life spans, combined with ever shortening tempers and easy irritation from others creates an explosive service sector cocktail.   A friend of mine was lamenting some poor service provision in the IT area. The project was 9 months late and when it did finally come on line it didn't work properly at all. We all know that everything in IT takes longer than promised and always costs more than expected, but at least it is supposed to work. There can be many reasons for this. The brief may have been unclear, the execution could have been the problem, there may be extenuating circumstances, maybe it was basic incompetence?   When I was working at one of the retail banks here a very, very large amount of money had been carted out to sea and set on fire, in the form of a new internal operating platform not working well at all. It was launched then immediately scrapped. The autopsy of why it didn't work, became one of those failure orphans, where there was no one responsible. No one lost their job and no lessons were learnt. It was like it never happened, as it was swept quietly under a rug and forgotten.   Anyway, back to my friend who was rather perplexed by the reaction of the IT service provider, who was not at all responsive. Magically, the perpetrator of this grief managed to switch the tables around and blame my friend for being the problem. Now this reaction is puzzling? Why would you take that path?     Not answering the plaintive emails, texts and phone calls gets aggrieved people worked up. They feel slighted and frustrated at the same time. So lesson number one is make yourself easy to reach out to the solve problems. Is your name there on your website to be contacted, if people have an issue with your service and they want to complain directly to the boss? Our Japanese staff are all ninjas at hiding trouble from the boss, so always expect to be the last to know what has occurred, until usually when it is absolutely too late.   Also don't be mealy-mouthed about the problem. If you didn't deliver from the buyer's point of view, then admit it, because the beauty or otherwise is in the eye of the beholder here. Perception is the key and that is to say the perception of the client. There is money involved obviously, but there is something much more valuable involved and that is trust. If you want to try and wriggle your way out of your responsibilities, as was the case on this occasion, then expect bigger ramifications down the road. My friend is very well connected and will not be speaking highly of the services of this provider to any and all who will listen. That will become an invisible cost line in the P&L ,where revenues are being negatively impacted by reputation damage. You cannot see it necessarily but you can be assured it will be there.   I am reminded of another case, where a very “sharp” businessman I know has quite a big following on the Internet. Various people who feel they have been duped, have created some scintillating reading on the internet, whenever you Google his name. When people are looking to do business with you, this type of prominent, smelly baggage will hurt you forever.   It is surprising how some people don't take any responsibility for poor service. My son had a bowl of sauce spilt all over him at a ramen shop in the Azabu Juban recently. The waitress was Asian, not Japanese. To everyone's astonishment she did nothing, just stood there looking quizzical, seemingly wondering to herself “now how did that happen?” No apology, no frantic provision of towels to soak up the sauce, absolutely nothing.   The Japanese manager was busy apologising, eventually providing the towels and wiping up the catastrophe. The guilty party just went back to grilling some meat like nothing had happened. Maybe she didn't speak Japanese or English or was just stupid? Who knows what was going on inside her mind?   Luckily for her, it wasn't some short tempered jichan she spilt the sauce over, as I am sure she would have been given a severe tongue lashing, the manager would have been given a good serve too and it would have turned into quite a public imbroglio. When departing, only the manager came outside to bow and apologise at the door. Where was the errant staff member, who should have been standing there looking contrite and sorry for the kerfuffle?   The point here is we all know that things will go wrong and yet how well have we trained our staff to take responsibility for their mistakes? This young woman had been given no guidance at all and yet here she is working in a retail food environment, where accidents are bound to happen. She may be part of that foreign, low pay, hourly “trainee” brigade that will increasingly be called upon to staff Japan's restaurants, shops and retail outlets, but so what? They still need to be trained and prepared to work in one of the most demanding retail environments in the world, where standards are high and forgiveness is low.   This is a good time to take another look at what we are doing in our companies to prepare ourselves and our staff for mistakes, incidents, accidents, chaos and trouble. We can't rely on people's common sense or their capacity to take “appropriate” action. We need to tell them clearly the WHY of what we are doing. We need to explain our VALUES and we need to train them on how to respond to trouble, as viewed through the eyes of the aggrieved client. We also have to keep telling them because even though we may get sick of saying it, they need to hear it all the time for it to sink in.   No Warning Speaking   Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.   Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.   Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.   Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.   I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn't provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.   Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.   You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don't have much preparation time up your sleeve.   Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.   We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn't have to be a long presentation.   We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.   Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.   I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn't so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.   So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don't just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.   You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don't you think. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.      

No Warning Speaking   Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks. Uh oh. No preparation, no warning and no escape. What do you do? Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter. It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue. One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event.   Usually the time between your name being called and you actually being handed the microphone can be counted in milliseconds. By the time you have heaved yourself out of your chair, your brain has well and truly started to panic. A mental whiteout is probably fully underway and your face is going red, because of all the blood pressure of the moment.   Here are a couple of things we can do in this situation. Firstly, take a realistic look at the task at hand. The length of your talk will not be expected to be long. If you are a seasoned speaker, you could get up and wax lyrical for an hour without a problem. For everyone else, we are talking two to three minutes. Now two to three minutes seems rather short, except when you are suddenly thrust in front of a sea of expectant eyes of an audience.   Once upon a time, I completely forgot my next sentence and discovered the pain of prolonged time. I was asked to give a brief talk in Mandarin to a crowd of around a thousand people, when I was Consul General in Osaka. It was a special event for the departing Chinese Consul General Li, who was heading to New York. Actually, I was going okay but I paused to allow some applause to die down – this turned out to be a major error on my part.   I found when you go suddenly blank, a single microphone stand doesn't provide much cover, up on a very big stage, with all the lights on you and everyone staring at you. That 30 seconds or so of silence, where I was totally lost and unable to recall what came next, seemed like a lifetime. So I know that two to three minutes can appear really daunting when suddenly called upon to speak.   Begin by thanking whoever unceremoniously dragged you up the podium for the chance to say a few words. Try and smile at them, through gritted teeth if you have to. You have to say something, so take the occasion and put your comments into some form of context.   You can use the concept of time as your ally. For example, here is where we were, here is where we are today and here is where we are going in the future. This past, present, future construct will work for just about any occasion and any subject. That is the type of ready to go format you need to be able to call upon when you don't have much preparation time up your sleeve.   Another good construct is macro and micro. Talk about the big picture issues related to the occasion, then talk about some of the micro issues. This is useful for putting the event into a frame you can speak about easily. There is always a big and small picture related to any topic. Again, this construct travels easily across occasions and events.   We can use the weather, the location, the season or the time of the day as a theme. We can put this event into any of those contexts rather easily. Remember, it doesn't have to be a long presentation.   We can talk about people that everyone would know, who are related to the event. They might be present or absent. We can make a few positive remarks about our host. Then we can thank everyone for their attention, wish them our best and get off the stage.   Let me give you a real life example. I was at an event for Ikebana International, sitting there calmly minding my own business, when I heard the speaker suddenly call me up to the stage to say a few words. I had the time from standing up to walk to the podium to compose myself about what on earth I would say. At the extreme that time gap was probably 10 seconds. I was going to need to speak in Japanese, so that just added another level of excitement to the challenge. It had been raining that day, so I miraculously dreamed up a water related analogy.   I began by thanking the host for allowing me to say a few words, although I secretly I wasn't so happy about being put on the spot. I mentioned that the stems of the Australian cut flowers that were being exhibited that day, contained water and soil from Australia, as they had just arrived that morning by air. I said that as a result here in Japan we had a little bit of Australia present and each of these flowers were like a floral ambassador linking the two countries together. I then wished everyone all the best for the event and got out of the firing line pronto. Probably not an award winning talk, but good enough for that occasion, with that amount of notice. And that is the point. You need to be able to say something reasonable rather than remarkable to complete your sudden duties.   So always have a couple of simple constructs up your sleeve if you are suddenly asked to speak without warning. Don't just turn up thinking you can be an audience member and can switch off or these days start immersing yourself in your phone screen. Imagine you were suddenly singled out for action and have your construct ready to go just in case.   You may not be called upon, but everyone around you will be impressed that you could get up there and speak without warning. The degree of difficulty here is triple back flip with pike sort of dimension and everyone knows it. They are all thinking what a nightmare it would have been, had it been them up there in the firing line. You will be surprised how much a difference that little bit of preparation will make to coming across as professional, rather than uming and ahing your way through a total shambles of a talk. Your personal brand will be golden for the sake of a bit of forward planning. Now that would be worth it don't you think. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Dealing With Companies' “Senior Problem” In Japan   A senior problem in the past meant having a “senior moment”, where you forgot something and this lapse hinted at oncoming dementia. Today in Japan it has an entirely different meaning and refers to the demographic problems Japan is facing. Japan is aging rapidly and there is a lot of discussion about the impact that will have on the welfare, health and pension systems. What is not being discussed much as yet is what to do with all of these “young” oldies?   They are reaching 60, which is retirement age, yet they will have many decades of life ahead of them. They are healthy, active, relatively digital, have large networks and considerable experience. They all know the Government pension system will breakdown under the weight of their cohort's numbers impacting on the cost of the system. They are not confident about having enough money to last their lifespan, so they want to keep working.   Japan's working population of those aged 15-64 will decline from 65.77 million in 2013 to 37.95 million by 2060, that represents a 42% drop. The ratio of job offers to job seekers in November 2017 hit 1.56, the highest since 1974. Here we have the issue, there are not enough younger workers available to match the corporate demand. Yet at the same time, the population itself is getting older. Bringing in foreigners to make up the difference isn't an option as yet. The Abe Cabinet has made it clear their stance is they will never adopt an immigration policy to make up for the labor shortage.   At the lower skill levels, the so called trainee system is a disguised immigration activity bringing in cheap workers from Asia to do factory level work. They can be easily repatriated however, so the system has considerable flexibility, even as it is being attacked for the exploitation of some trainee workers taking place.   The Labor Standards Inspection Office in 2016 found 70.6% of workplaces hiring foreign trainees were violating Japan's labor laws. The Government make tweek the system to iron out some of the worst aspects, but it will always be a temporary approach. These trainees will have to go home at some point. I doubt they will ever be allowed to settle here permanently. Japan values it social harmony very highly and having to tolerate a bunch of foreigners with different languages, ethics, morals, social values and ideas isn't attractive at all.   What about at the higher end of the skill set scale? This is the issue facing companies. How to keep employed those who would normally be retiring. The current system is that your salary drops to half once you get to 60 and still keep working. That is a simple fixed costs adjustment strategy on the part of companies that will work for the moment. That thinking may change though once the bite of not enough skilled staff is felt more powerfully.   Japan is planning to get around the immigration option with technology. Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, on-line services, automation are the preferred way forward. We see it starting now with places like the retail banks. Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Bank has seen the number of visitors to its branches drop by 40% over the last ten years and so 6000 positions or 15% of the workforce are being eliminated over the next 5 years. In my own case, I probably get to a bank branch once every two years at the absolute maximum. Overall the number of retail customers using the bank's services via mobile devices or PCs has increased more than 40% over the last five years. We have moved our service consumption on-line.   Those older workers with skill sets the companies want to keep are being required to move into new fields. Bankers, for example, who were used to commanding teams and being the big boss of their sections are being asked to go on to commission sales arrangements, where they are paid according to their productivity. They are still young at 60 and can work for another 10-15 years if they can make the leap across to a different role.   This is the issue for the leaders in companies. How to migrate these older workers internally, retaining their networks and experience, but having them become more productive in terms of personal output. They need them to vacate their current leadership roles to make way for the younger generation coming through, but they don't want to lose them at the same time.   They will need training in modern sales for these new commercial roles they are being asked to play. They will need support also to make the adjustment to go from being the boss – a big shot – to just being one of the troops. That, in a formal hierarchical society like Japan will be a hard transition. This means they need some work on shifting their mindsets as well. That type of training is the most difficult given their age and stage but it can be done. I know that is possible because we have been doing it for our clients. Those tasked with leading this group will also have to display really excellent people skills. The leader will need some retraining on how to lead their sempai or seniors, a very uncommon requirement in Japan, where age is so closely tied to power and authority.   The new constellations in the workforce will be challenging everyone. It will become a zero sum game of those who get it and those who don't. Recruit and retain are the bywords of current and future business success in Japan. If you haven't put together your strategy on how to motivate your seniors to want to play a more personally productive role in the company, now would be a really good time to start. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Don't Blow The Solution Presentation To The Buyer   Finding clients is an art and so is building trust and credibility that you can help them solve their business problems. We might be very charming when we first meet the client, sending out a competency vibe that the client relates to. They are open to our inquiries into the current state of their business, where the gaps are located and the urgency of filling those gaps. So far so good.   We are now working off a trust base sufficiently large enough to allow the client to pull back the velvet curtain and reveal all the difficulties and problem nuances they are actually facing, as opposed to that pristine image the marketing department has been publically propagating. Dragging out the dirty laundry for outsiders to see is not something clients are going to do if the trust has not been established, so good job and well done getting to that point in the sales cycle.   Presumably you are skilled and have refrained from suggesting any possible solutions, until you have done a proper job of digging deeply into the real issues facing the client. You have not leapt in with your off the shelf product or service, the one size fits all, cure all snake oil. No you are a pro.   You have been asking well designed questions, which have been helping the client come to their own conclusion that what you have is the solution to their needs. And the real beauty of this skill set is that the client, as yet, doesn't even know what you have ready to help them. Your questions have guided their thinking about the types of solutions they will need and hey presto, your solution is a perfect match.   Now we come to the unveiling, the drum roll, as the solution is presented. This is the time for capitalizing on all the good work that has been put in beforehand. We cannot get to this point and then blow it with a mediocre solution presentation. We can't start by only ploughing straight into the details, the guts of the solution, the spec, colour, size, weight, dimensions, timing, guarantees etc. These are all plebian features, dross, mere detail compared to what we should be presenting in its entirety.   Firstly, we need to have our capability statement ready to go. In this statement we clearly explain that we have exactly what the client needs and we have the capacity to deliver it. Now if we don't, then we should state that plainly, drink our green tea and get out of there pronto. Trying to slam the square peg into the round hole simply because you have invested all this time with this client and you need an outcome to meet your quota is stupid. This is not a match, they are not a client and this effort to force it is wasted. Get off to the next client who will be a match and spend your time there instead.   If they are in fact a match, we bring forward our capability statement to communicate we can in fact help them. We do match our spec with what they need and we do go through the key features. But we don't just stop there, like the vast majority of amateur salespeople. We take each of those key features and we illustrate how these features bring benefits to the client. We don't just stop there either, we keep going, we keep climbing higher up the value chain.   We take that benefit and then we explain how that benefit when applied in their business will help them to succeed. Now clients are always doubtful about what they hear from salespeople, so there is always going to be some residual skepticism. They have been burnt in the past by idiots, so we have to deal with that negative legacy. After extolling the virtues of the application of the benefits of the features of our solution, we bring forth evidence of where this has worked elsewhere.   This is the package we need to be delivering at solution presentation time. Then to test the waters to see if we have left anything out, not explained everything fully, we ask a trial close question. This might be something as gentle as “how does that sound so far?” This is low pressure and designed to draw out doubts, problems, additional information they may not have shared as yet. We want to hunt down any possible objections to buying from us at this stage, so that we can get a deal done now.   When we are talking about all of these features, benefits and applications we should be weaving these together in a story. Storytelling is easy for the client to remember and fleshes out the key points in a way that is most readily accessible. Talk about a particular client in a similar situation and describe the who, what, where, when and how of that case. The more vivid we can make the word pictures in the telling, the more compelling is the story we are sharing.   When we put all of this together, the client's “yes” decision is made that much easier for them. That must be our object and we use our sale's skills to ensure we create the best possible outcome for the client. This is not about getting a single sale, this effort is totally aimed at getting the reorders. The pro understands the difference and wants to build a lifetime partnership with the buyer. This is what we must be thinking when we get to the solution presentation stage. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

The Power Of The Rhetorical Question   Questions in general are powerful tools for speakers. They bring focus to key points we want to get across. They are particularly useful in getting our audience engaged. They also have danger within them. Knowing when to use questions and what types of questions to use are things which must be worked out in the planning of the presentation and shouldn't be done on the fly. If you want to get yourself into trouble then ask the wrong question at the wrong time and brace yourself for the reaction.   There is a cadence to any talk or presentation and in the planning phase we can break the delivery down to five minute blocks. It doesn't have to be five, it could be four or six, but five minutes is a long enough time to go deep with a thought, idea or imparting some information without losing the concentration of the audience.   Actually audience concentration spans are a nightmare today. They have become so short and everyone has become addicted to multitasking. Even if they are enjoying the presentation, they are scrolling through their screens right in front of you anyway, without any hint of shame.   This is the new normal. We will face this problem forever and we are never going back to the good old days of people politely listening to us right through our presentations.   This is why we need to be switching up the presentation every five minutes or so, to keep the audience intrigued with what we are presenting. This is where great information or insights really help. The audience access to something new or valuable will pry them away from their screens for a few minutes longer. We will need to be using the full range of our vocal delivery skills to keep them with us. Any hint of a monotone delivery and the hand held screens will be blazing light throughout the room.   Questions are an additional assist to break through the competing focus for audience attention. By simply asking a well constructed question we can grab audience attention. We may have been waffling along taking about some pressing issue or downloading some precious data, losing our listeners in the process. However when we lob in a question, we magically get all eyes back on us. We have now gotten the audience thinking about the point we have raised.   The downside with asking questions though is people in the audience want to answer them. They see the question as a great opportunity for them to intervene in the proceedings. They may have a counterview and enjoy the chance to debate with us. They may have their own personal agenda and this break in the traffic is perfect for them to weigh in with what they think. They may even get into debates amongst themselves and exclude us entirely. Within no time at all, the proceedings have been hijacked and we are no longer in control of the agenda.   This is where rhetorical questions are so handy. They give us the ability to capture the mental attention of our audience on the topic we are discussing, get them engaged but maintain the control. A rhetorical question and a real question are identical. The audience cannot distinguish one from the other. This is good, because we can keep them guessing. What we want them thinking about is whether this a question they have to answer and are they ready to do that or is this a rhetorical question and all they have to do is listen? The difference between the two is the timing of the break before our next contribution. If we stop there and invite answers then they know it is time to speak up. If we leave a pregnant pause, but then answer the question or add to it, then they know they are not being required to contribute.   The key point here is to design the questions into the talk at the start. In those five minute blocks we need to have little attractions to keep interest. They might be powerful visuals, great storytelling, vocal range for effect or rhetorical questions. The key is to have variety planned from the start. In a 40 minute speech, apart from the opening and the closings, there are going to be 5-6 chances to grab attention. At the start we can use vocal range and visuals but as we get to the middle and toward the end, we need to bring in the bigger guns as people start to fade out.   We can't flog the audience with a series of rhetorical questions and wear them down. We can maybe get in two or maximum three in a forty minute presentation. Anything we repeat gets boring very fast. Anything that smacks of manipulation gets the wrong response.   There is a fine line to be walked here. We do want to control the agenda, the debate, the timing, the attention of the listeners, without appearing controlling. Sprinkling a couple of well constructed rhetorical questions into our presentation will help us to maintain interest and defeat our screen based, social media and internet addictive rivals. Get used to this, because this is the future for all of us as presenters and we have to lift our game to make sure we are in a position to have a powerful influence with our audiences. The alternative is speaker oblivion. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

The Foreign Leader In Japan   We know leaders who are friction magnets. They upset those working with them on a regular basis. They are quick to point out their opinion and their view. Their rights are paramount and we are soon informed of them. They are highly driven, powerful, even intense individuals. They are upwardly mobile and have sharp elbows. Basically they are a pain in most countries, but they are a disaster in Japan.   Crash or crash through sounds cool, but it is not a great formula for getting change embedded in the organization. Often Japan can drive everyone nuts because it is so hard to introduce change here. This is not just the frustration of Western leaders sent to Japan on assignment. Japanese leaders are also frustrated that they cannot get the changes they want implemented fast enough.   The forceful expatriate leader in Japan soon discovers that their will is not everyone's command. At some point they find that force of status won't work here. Japanese employees have a social contract with the company, such that just firing some of the troops for insubordination isn't so easy.   Japanese business people value their relationships and so the command to damage those because of the whim of the newly arrived boss is met with stiff resistance. The staff know that in three years or so, this new foreign boss will be winging their way to another assignment, but they will all still be here to pick up the pieces.   The idea of waiting out the new guy or gal is well established. A rear guard action is inaugurated to slow down the change, hide as many facets which no one wants to change as possible and to control how much the new boss finds out. What looked like “we crashed through” actually turns out to be just a “crash”.   There are better ways to do things here, but they involve diplomacy and tact on the part of the leader. Temper tantrums are a part of some Western leader's management tool kit. Exploding in anger and venting rage at things that they thought were being done, but actually aren't being done, is part of the package. Venting here doesn't change things much. People are people everywhere and nobody enjoys being forced to do things against their will. The local staff see themselves as the business experts in Japan. The new boss is seen as so ignorant of how things work here, that they are a danger to the business.   Losing one's temper is seen as childish and demonstrating a lack of control. A serious business person stays in control and uses their communication ability to persuade others to follow them. They are very tactful when listening to ideas they think are stupid and useless. They control their body language so the other person cannot gauge their animosity to the proposal. Japanese language is a big help here because it is so circuitous and indirect, it is genius at disguising what is really being thought. English and most western languages are much more clear and direct.   Rather than telling everyone what they need to do, to fly straight, which is the usual Western boss proclivity, it is a good idea to ask people's opinions. Asking for them to volunteer their thoughts is not going to get very far though. Japanese people are hesitant to volunteer that information for fear of getting it wrong. It is probably easier to ask why what you think should be done is going to be difficult. That is a great word “difficult”. In the Japanese context it means “impossible”. The critique ability of Japanese business people is pretty well honed and so they will find the thousand reasons why this suggestion of yours is a bad idea.   The more taxing part is getting everyone to think how to get it done anyway. This is where listening skills and encouragement are major assets for the leader. There needs to be some persistence applied here. The typical first blush replies will be half hearted, superficial answers about how to make it work, with no real belief that any of this effort is even worth it. This is where the boss needs to be dogged, but in a polite, non-aggressive way. Ask them to work on it further. This process needs to keep repeating itself until the project team actually start taking it seriously. This won't happen in a hurry which is a problem. The Western boss is always in a hurry.   Moving the needle here is a time heavy activity. The consensus building process and the involvement of many stakeholders slows the process down. On the flip side it really speeds things up once the decision is agreed upon. That is a key word “agreed”.   Hearts and minds have to be won over and trust is the key to that process. This obviously isn't going to happen for quite some period of time. The HQ expectation of a major turnaround in Japan's results is based on pure fantasy and no understanding of Japan at all. The new boss is caught in the vice of pressure from above and resistance from below.   Just when they start to sort it out and look like they may be making progress, HQ requires their vice-regal presence in the next country and off they go. Their legacy here in Japan is zero, their real impact on the business is still a work in progress that will never be brought to fruition.   Welcome to Japan. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Widen That Buyer Gap Or Else   Having a buying need and doing something about it can often be quite disparate ideas. There are many things we would all like to do in business to grow our companies. The constraints are usually money and people. The lack of resources holds us back and so we persevere, always hoping that somehow, we will be able to bridge that gap between where we are now and where we want to be.   At the CEO level, we are always focused on the strategy for the company and the future goals. This is something that occupies a lot of thinking time. Once you get below that level, the intensity drops off. The CFO is thinking about this quarter or this year. Worried about the finances, the cash flow, the ability to find the funds to invest, the analyst reports, etc.   If we are talking about line managers, they are concerned with meeting their targets and keeping their good people and getting rid of the not so good people. HR has a very curious take on all of this. Basically, they don't care all that much. They have a functional role here in Japan and are the rule police. Sometimes they have to respond to internal demands and go and source resources in the form of people or training, but generally they are passive.   When the buyer is looking at the gap between where they are now and where they want to be and they judge it is pretty close, they don't feel any urgency or need to buy. They will have certain drivers pushing them along in their role in the business, but this gap perception component is key in selling to buyers. If we can't show that the opportunity cost of no action is too high, then they are not inspired to do anything. Doing nothing or doing what you have always done are the easiest decisions for any buyer.   They are always time poor and a purchase decision usually comes wrapped in other tasks that will need attention, as a consequence of making that buying decision. Not buying isn't always about the money. Often it can be hesitancy around the Pandora's Box of extra workload this buying decision will trigger. It could be the lack of resources to make the most of the benefits of the purchase and this is what is also holding them back.   We have to draw out the implications of taking no action, of doing nothing. When and how do we do that? In the questioning stage, we can draw attention to the size of the gap. Now if we say “that is a pretty big gap you have there and you should fix that”, they doubt us. We are salespeople, so the buyer is always mentally dismissing everything we say as fluffy sales talk. We need them to tell us the gap is big and needs attention. Also that it needs attention right now.   When we are discussing the Should Be question - where they want to be in the future we need to add a little question to this process. We ask where they want to be and then we follow up their answer by asking them, “What happens if you can't get there fast enough?”. It is not useful to ask them what happens if they cannot get there, because as far as they are concerned, they can get there by themselves. No, instead we draw their attention to the speed factor. No one ever gets there as fast as they want, so it automatic opens up the idea of a gap that needs addressing. Also the current speed they are traveling at, will always be their maximum speed, so we are there to help them speed things up.   When we are asking about the Barrier Question along the lines of “if you know where you are now and you know where you want to be, why aren't you there yet”, we have another chance to emphasise that they need our help to achieve their goals. We find out what is the obstacle holding them back and then we ask the gap widener - “What happens if you cannot clear that obstacle?” Again we are trying to demonstrate that maybe they cannot do it all by themselves or do it fast enough and they need us in that equation to make it work. When we ask about the personal payoff for them if we are successful, after their answer we need to get them to reflect on the downside for them personally if it doesn't happen or happen fast enough. We ask, “so if the targets are not met, what does that mean for you personally?”. In Japan, buyers rarely ever attach any personal gain to success and will talk in general terms of the group. In this case, we need to reference what will it means to the team if the goals are not met? It is the same idea but just asked in a different way.   If we try to point out these aspects which won't work we won't be believed. We have to get them to tell us it won't work, under their own steam, at the current pace, with the current resources and investment. Once we get them thinking about that gap we can start suggesting when we present the solution that we are the cure for all their ills. We have the ability to help them get where they want to be faster and more smoothly. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.  

Have A Point Of View   Often we will hear a presentation and receive a lot of information from the presenter, but we are not really clear on what is their point of view on this subject. We don't think we need to state our point of view when it is a product, because there will invariably be quite a lot of features which can be talked about. The problem with that is features by themselves are not persuasive enough. None of us buy features, because we are all too busy buying the benefits of the features. It also might be a service. The client wants to know what difference our service will make for their business growth. It is an intangible too, so the purchase decision really rides on the client buying an image of what success will look like. This is where having a point of view kicks in.   We have to tell the buyer how great our solution is. We shouldn't be thinking all I have to do is present the detail and the client will buy what I am selling. If only it was that easy. Instead we need to be telling them that this is the greatest thing on the planet.   Technically oriented people are particularly prone to understatement. They believe that the data sells itself. This is because often they are very logical types. They didn't get the email which explained that we all buy on emotion and justify with logic. They need to state their point of view on how great they think this piece of technology or intellectual property or whatever is. If we want the audience to get our message, we have to stand firmly behind what we are suggesting. Don't make the audience do all the work – tell them this is the greatest whatever.   If we believe there is some imminent change approaching the current state of the market, we should mention that and predict what we think the likely ramifications will be. We may be proven completely incorrect but that doesn't matter. At that point in time the audience will leave the presentation knowing that you stand for something and there is an internal logic holding that construct together. It may eventually go in a different direction, but there are always so many mitigating factors, it is hard to be held to your incorrect prediction. The key is you give the audience the sense that you stand for something and are not just wishy washy and uncommitted. Better to be proven wrong, than immediately dismissed as someone who can't commit to anything and just supplies raw data.   We want belief to be demonstrated by our speaker and when they have a point of view backed up with a solid structure supporting their proposition, we see that as professional We may or may not like or agree with what is being said, but we respect the intellect and the delivery. We should never rely on the slide deck or the slick video to do the selling for us. We need to use our voice and body language to show our enthusiasm for our point of view. This is critical because we are more likely to follow your line of reasoning, if you show your 100% commitment to it.   The structure is simple. We explain our point of view, we then spend the next twenty minutes or so, supplying data, examples, facts, testimonials, stories which are the evidence for this point of view. It is all beautifully connected together. We finish by restating our central proposition and call for the audience to agree with this and support that point of view. We now go into Q&A and marshal even more evidence to support what we are saying, this time in the face of people who put up alternative ideas or totally opposite opinions. In the final close we again state our view and call for everyone to support it, this is the last thing ringing in the ears of the audience as they depart the venue.   If we want to be remembered then we need to have a point of view. If we want people to support our product or service we need to sell them our point of view on why they should buy it. We need to back all of this up with passion, enthusiasm and belief. If we do this then we will be successful as a person of influence.   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

How To Guide Your Team In Japan Through Change   Up until these last few years being capable and loyal was enough in Japan. Technology has changed the business landscape completely. Post the 1990 bubble burst, the previous many layers of management in Japanese corporations have been substantially compressed. Globalisation is forcing change within Japan and no one is immune from this trend. Team members in Japan have to deal with change and will have to face even greater changes in the future. As their boss, what are some things you can do to help them manage the transition into the new era?   Mentoring the team is going to be critical. To do that you have to become much better organised than you are now. We are all time poor already, constantly swimming against a floodtide of email and social media posts. The inflight passenger safety information videos always talk about in the case of emergency, grab your oxygen mask for yourself first, then help those around you. This is the same. The boss has to be able to allocate sufficient time to the team to help them through what will begin to look more and more like an emergency for Japan. If the boss can't do that because of poor time management, we will be needing a new boss who can do so in short order.   Here are some ideas around useful conversations you can have with the team members. Talk about change expectations. With flatter organizations and a demographic wave of boomers coming through together, there may not be the same availability of top positions as in the past. There will also be a push to keep everyone working hard into their 70s. Life expectancy will climb past 100 in Japan, so 75, for example, will seem young.   At age 60, companies are putting “retired” workers on annual contracts, at half the salary they enjoyed previously. People are going to run out of money before they run out of life, so they will have to keep working. The individual's contribution to their own medical bills will see an increase as the government runs out of the ability to fund the current scheme. Those with money will get no help, because that funding will be allocated to those at the bottom of the income tree. Learning how to manage investments to prepare for a long life, will become more pressing.   Building relationships and networks has always been important in Japan. For the young entering the workforce, they will need to think more broadly about these aspects. The lifetime employment mantra, decades at the same employer construct will go. Just like in the West, the young will move around companies more than in the past. They will need to create bigger networks that their parents who stayed at the one employer. They will be fewer in number than in the past, so developing strong relationships with key people will become more important to get things done. A lot of routine work will be done by AI and robots. There will be a need to develop expertise, but there will be a bigger need to let others know about that expertise. Getting training will become so much more important to stay ahead of the automation canibilisation curve.   The idea of starting at the top and working up from there just won't happen. Those amongst the young who become company nomads, wandering off in some new direction every two years, will not build the skill sets or the relationships they will need to be successful in the future. Patience will be the deal breaker. Those without it will go nowhere in their careers. The concept of going broad in experience terms will be the first iteration of the new era of youth worker mobility. The long game though is going to be gaining automation proof expertise and this will only come with depth of exposure and wads of experience.   The collision of the demographic crunch and Japan's immigration allergy will just keep pouring more oil on the fire of female participation in the workforce. This means the male/female power structure has to change. The boss is a lady will be much more prevalent than it is today, so young men of Japan, get used to the idea! Global matrix organizations will see the spread of foreign bosses leading Japanese teams but doing so remotely from distant climes. English will finally need to be understood and mastered in Japan, like everywhere else in the world. There will be technology to help with translation, but the human to human interaction needs direct fluency and no machine is going to replace that.   It is a brave new world for Japan, both for those aging and those entering the workforce. The boss will need to be a mentor to both groups as they are all entering unfamiliar territory. Those who are successful doing so, will not experience any particular issues with recruit and retain strategies, because they will be employers in demand. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.    

Handling Buyer Objections   None of us like to hear “no”. We are raised with this word from our parents and we didn't like getting it then and we don't like getting it now. We have something in our mind about how things should go and this little word means we are going to be denied. The irony is that in sales this is a very common answer to our offer. For something so prevalent, you would think that salespeople would be real experts in dealing and overcoming this comment. Not true.   Instead, often the first reaction to hearing no on the part of the salesperson is to go harder. They somehow imagine they can force the buyer to buy. They imagine that if they have some tricky technique they can reverse that declaration. The immediate impulse is to go straight to the answer to counterpoint the objection. This is exactly the opposite of what we should do but that doesn't stop salespeople from trying it. This is mainly an emotional reaction based on the adrenalin flooding the brain with the fight response. We need to stop that process.   How do we do that? We need a circuit breaker. We need an interruption between our hearing the word “no” and going in for the rebuttal. That is where the cushion comes in. A cushion is a short sentence which is quite neutral and won't inflame the situation with the negative buyer. We are told no because it is too expensive. Instead of plumbing the thousand good reasons why it is in fact not too expensive, we go to a cushion such as: “It is important to get the budgeting process working well in any company”. The 5 or 6 seconds which it takes us to say that sentence gives us time to mentally regroup before we try to respond to the client. We have to override the chemicals pushing us to fight, to engage the brain before we speak. The only thing we should have running through our mind while using the cushion is “ask why it is too expensive?”.   Answering straight away exposes us to a big danger. That occurs because we are possibly not answering the right question. We hear “it is too expensive” but this is a headline. We need to read the full article the get the background before we are in any position to respond. The headline may be a fake news headline as well. Perhaps they say that initial response to us, just to hide the real reason. We do this when retail shopping, don't we. We can't afford the item we are looking at when we see the price tag. Do we tell the clerk we are paupers who can't afford such an expensive good. No, we say something else, such as the colour isn't to our taste, or we are not sure about the size.   When we hear that headline from the buyer we need to ask why that is a problem. We also cannot just go down one layer. We have to dig right in for the deeper reasons. We also need to get these out and even when we think we have exposed them all we should ask, “are there any other reasons why you wouldn't go ahead?”. We need to uncover the hidden objections. Once the list is completed we now need to have the buyer prioritise which one is the main deal breaker for them. Funnily enough, if we can answer this one to their satisfaction the other objections fade away.   Once we hear the main reason holding them back we have to check if this is a legitimate objection or not? It might be constructed on false information. When I was selling Australian products into the market here, I found that Japanese competitor salespeople would have no hesitation in spreading false rumours about the rival Australian supplier. They would say the supplier was in financial trouble and would be going out of business shortly. None of this was true but that didn't seem to matter. In such cases where there is a misunderstanding or some incorrect information floating around we have to go in hard and show why that is absolutely not the case.   A statement to that fact is not enough – we have to come armed with proof to have any real credibility.   If the objection is true, then we should admit it. It may be that our delivery time is slow because it takes longer to create that level of quality. We explain the background and try to find a way around the timing of supply issue. It may be that we reverse the objection. If they say they cannot afford to buy because business is bad, we can point out that we are the solution to turning the business around. They are where they are today because they didn't have us as a partner helping them improve their business.   We can answer the objection but we need to know we have our ladder up against the right wall before we embark on a reply. We need to have the breaker in there to get us to a series of why questions to dig down to the highest priority item worrying them. If we can solve their objection then fine, if we can't fine. We just move on a find another client we can serve. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.japan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.   A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.   Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.