Podcasts about shitoryu karate

Previously Akiko was a Commentator for Fuji TV; Co-Founder of Women In Action; Partner, Strategy &; Division Head at Japan Post; Vice-President Calyon Securities; Associate McKinsey & Company; Vice-President and Associate, General Counsel J.P. Morgan. She graduated with a JD in Law from Tokyo University and has a Master Of Law from Columbia Law School “Culture is an accumulation of behaviors—what you say and do becomes the culture.” “If the ownership is there, it's really easy to engage with them.” “Listen more than you speak—especially in Japan, silence often hides valuable insight.” “You can't have a single leadership approach—it's person by person.” “Deliver, manage expectations, and be transparent—that's how you build trust.” Akiko's leadership approach is deeply rooted in clarity of direction, respect for individuality, and adaptive engagement. Her philosophy is shaped by diverse experiences in legal, consulting, and advisory roles, and it centres on fostering ownership within her teams. She emphasizes the importance of building a shared vision and selecting people whose strengths and motivations align with that direction. For her, engagement begins with recruiting the right individuals and then shaping an environment that supports their ownership of outcomes. Whether inheriting a team or building one from scratch, she focuses on identifying key issues, defining areas of impact, and matching people to those missions. She acknowledges that leadership today demands flexibility, as people differ in how they want to be led—some thrive with autonomy while others need close collaboration. Her leadership style is not one-size-fits-all; instead, it's adaptive and rooted in an appreciation of diversity—not only in personality but in professional backgrounds. Akiko credits the richness of ideas within her organization to this diversity, noting that innovation emerges from intentional dialogue across disciplines. However, she is clear that shared goals are the foundation for extracting those ideas meaningfully. Without common purpose, even diverse teams can become fragmented. Trust-building, in her view, requires consistent delivery, expectation management, and transparency. She strives to keep her promises, communicates constraints openly, and balances optimism with realism. She views culture as the accumulation of behaviour, underscoring the importance of consistent actions and clear communication in shaping a cohesive and connected team identity. Akiko also makes intentional efforts to keep her Japan-based office plugged into the global organization by fostering English-language meetings and inter-office collaboration. She believes that inclusion means not only being open to new ideas but actively drawing them out, especially in Japan where silence is often misread by Western leaders. Her advice for foreign leaders in Japan centres on listening more than speaking, respecting the local communication style, and recognizing that lack of feedback doesn't imply satisfaction. For aspiring female leaders, her message is one of encouragement—step forward, trust those who support you, and don't be deterred by fear. Her leadership is marked by resilience, clarity, and a deep commitment to enabling others to lead and succeed in their own right. Master the Art of Persuasion In today's business world, persuasion is essential. Yet most professionals lack this critical skill, watching their ideas go nowhere. What if you could command attention and have your recommendations consistently adopted? This game-changing ability isn't just for "natural communicators"—it's a skill you can master. There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/3VhvR2B) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”.   Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 40 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.    

  “If you want to impact people, first, you need to trust them—and then give them space.” “You forget about collective decision-making in Japan—you build consensus privately, one by one.” “The best execution comes from ideas people believe are their own.” “I listen first. Then I discuss. Then I decide. But always, I listen first.” “Leadership is not about being the hero—it's about helping the team become the heroes together.” Previously for Societe Generale, Bruno was Head of Risk on Capital Market Activities and ALM, Co-Head of Market Risk, Risk Assessor on Capital Market Activities; Head of Market Risk for Natixis, Head of Market Risk on Capital Market Activities ENGIE, Head of Market Risk On Credit Derivatives Credit Agricole CIB; Head of UK Market Risk for LCL. Bruno emphasizes that trust is the foundation of leadership—both giving it and earning it. He believes in creating space for team members to voice their ideas, as people are most committed when implementing their own suggestions. When he arrived in Japan, he made it a priority to listen first. Recognizing that he was new to the local context, he relied heavily on the insights of his team, who had decades of experience. His role, as he sees it, is to synthesize their ideas into a clear strategy, advocate for it at headquarters, and ensure it gets the green light. He highlights the cultural difference in decision-making between France and Japan. In France, decisions emerge through open challenge and brainstorming. In Japan, consensus must be built privately through one-on-one discussions before any meeting. He adopted this approach, understanding that Japanese professionals are less likely to speak up in group forums but are open and candid in private. These individual conversations are time-consuming but essential for building alignment and trust. Bruno also sees leadership as deeply tied to authenticity and leading by example. His background in risk management taught him that courage—especially the courage to stand up for what's right, even against pressure—is critical. His teams observe whether he is willing to defend their ideas and protect their interests. That credibility is what earns their loyalty. He's learned that new ideas are more likely to succeed when they come from the team, not top-down. Japanese staff often hesitate to share ideas if early feedback is lukewarm, so Bruno takes care to signal encouragement and patience, giving them time and space to think creatively. When they do, the results are powerful—his team's strategic proposal was not only approved by Paris but became the only strategic initiative for Japan in the region. Bruno's approach is to listen deeply, guide gently, champion ideas effectively, and push for change when it makes sense locally. He believes culture is not something to impose, but to live consistently. By modelling respect, patience, courage, and transparency, he creates an environment where trust grows and leadership becomes a shared endeavour. He calls this collective success—not about being the hero himself, but about helping the team become successful. Unlock Your Leadership Potential: Be the Leader Everyone Wants to Follow Are you tired of watching your team struggle while you figure out leadership through trial and error? Wish you could inspire genuine commitment and achieve remarkable results? You're not alone—and there's a better way. There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV) At Dale Carnegie Tokyo, we've helped thousands of professionals transform into confident, effective leaders who drive real results. Our proven methodology eliminates the guesswork and accelerates your leadership journey. To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”. Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 40 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.      

Previously, Orjan was Director of Sales, Japan at iPoint Systems gmbh, Area Sales Manager Thule Group, Director of Sales & Marketing Asia-Pacific, BA Bags/President Thule Japan, Directeur des ventes VB Autobatteries S.A.S., Regional Sales Manager East & SEA Optima Batteries, Johnson Controls, Import and Export Coordinator Aichi Sangyo. He has a Masters Degree in east Asian studies from Stockholm University Orjan Pettersson's leadership journey in Japan is shaped by his deep understanding of the local culture, his ability to build trust, and his belief in the importance of personal connection. Having lived in Japan for over 27 years, Pettersson has navigated diverse roles, from working in a small Japanese company to leading major international businesses. His leadership philosophy centers around empathy, responsibility, and fostering a collaborative work environment. Pettersson highlights the significance of cultural adaptation, emphasizing that foreign leaders must learn how Japanese businesses operate, particularly in terms of hierarchy, loyalty, and long-term stability. He believes that understanding the unwritten rules of Japanese corporate culture—such as respect, obligation, and group harmony—is essential to gaining trust and credibility. One of his key leadership approaches is maintaining open communication with employees, valuing their expertise, and empowering them with greater responsibility. A major factor in Pettersson's leadership success is his commitment to authenticity and relationship-building. He fosters a work environment where employees feel personally invested in their roles, rather than merely following orders. By insisting on working in Japanese and immersing himself in the local business culture, he has gained the respect of his teams and counterparts. Pettersson also stresses the need for adaptability and resilience. From the Lehman shock to the 2011 earthquake and the COVID-19 pandemic, he has faced numerous challenges, but his ability to stay grounded, make decisive decisions, and support his employees through uncertain times has strengthened his leadership. His belief that leadership is about "innovation with empathy" reflects his approach to balancing strategic direction with human-centered management. Additionally, he recognizes the importance of fostering creativity within his teams. While Japanese employees may be hesitant to take risks, he encourages idea generation through open discussions and structured brainstorming sessions. His introduction of informal team-building activities, such as a weekly coffee break, has helped create a culture of trust and collaboration. For foreign leaders in Japan, Pettersson advises learning the language, engaging directly with employees and clients, and demonstrating an understanding of Japanese business values. He acknowledges that bridging the gap between headquarters' expectations and local realities is an ongoing challenge, requiring both cultural sensitivity and strategic negotiation. Ultimately, Pettersson's leadership style is defined by his ability to balance Western efficiency with Japanese business traditions, fostering an environment where both innovation and long-term stability can thrive.   How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”. Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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 latest FocusCore Salary Guide is here: 2025 Salary Guide Welcome back to the FocusCore podcast with host Dr. David Sweet. This week we are talking about leadership and business mastery with Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Japan. Greg is an author of a suite of books focusing specifically on mastering various aspects of doing business in Japan. He also releases multiple podcasts weekly and is a certified master trainer in all of the major Dale Carnegie training courses. So join us for this enlightening conversation about leadership, communication and the unique dynamics of doing business in Japan.In this episode you will hear:How Greg started Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training JapanWhy on the job training is not working for Japanese companies anymoreAbout Greg's books teaching mastery in business and leadership in JapanThe importance of middle management in retaining quality talentHow technology like AI is changing recruitment in JapanThings mentioned in the episode:Dale Carnegie Tokyo WebsiteDr. Greg Story's author page on AmazonDr. Greg Story's podcast page on Apple PodcastsAbout Dr. Greg Story:A Ph.D. in Japanese organisational decision-making, and a 40 year veteran of Japan, he has broad experience, having been Country Head of four organisations in Japan.He launched a “start up” in Nagoya, and completed “turn-arounds” in both Osaka and Tokyo for Austrade.In 2001 he was promoted to Minister Commercial in the Australian Embassy and the Country Head for Austrade.In November 2003, Dr. Story joined Shinsei's Retail Bank, which interestingly was a special combination of “start-up” and “turn-around”. He had 550 staff in his Platinum Banking Division, responsible for two-thirds of the revenue of the Retail Bank, eventually becoming the Joint CEO of the Retail Bank.In July 2007, Dr. Story became the Country Head for the National Australia Bank in Japan.In October 2010, he became President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Japan. He is a Master Trainer and an international award winning Sales Leader with Dale Carnegie. He is a thought leader and has written eight books: Japan Sales Mastery, Za Eigyo (The 営業), Japan Business Mastery, Japan Presentations Mastery, Anata mo Purezen Tatsujin (あなたもプレゼンの達人), Stop Wasting Money On Training, Toreningu de Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo (トレニングでお金を無駄にするのわやめましょう) and Japan Leadership Mastery.He is an Adjunct Professor in the International Business Faculty of Griffith University. A 6th Dan in traditional Shitoryu Karate, he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business issues.Connect with Dr. Greg Story:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregstory/Connect with David Sweet:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdavidsweet/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/focuscorejp Facebook: :

I meet a lot of CEOs in Japan.  I am always out there networking and looking for clients.  If they cannot become a client, then I try to encourage them to be a guest on my podcast Japan's Top Business Interviews.  I get two groups in particular who will refuse the offer – women and Scandinavians.  They say that women are more reticent about putting themselves forward than men and my own unscientific survey would seem to bear that out.  If a man only has 60% of the qualifications for a job, he will raise his hand whereas a woman will only do so, if she has 90%.  This is what I guess is happening with my invitation to come on the podcast and talk about one topic - leading in Japan.  The women are lacking in confidence to talk about the subject, because they are not feeling they are perfect enough. The Scandinavians I know here tell me that their culture is to not push yourself forward and to stay in the background.  Their podcast guest refusal rate stands out, so I guess this is what is happening with their thinking.  So far, 213 leaders have managed to spend an hour with me talking about leading in Japan for the weekly podcast, so I am finding enough of those in agreement.  It isn't as if I cannot get guests, because no one wants to join me on video and audio to talk about leadership. I think both groups reflect a misunderstanding of what their leader role is in Japan.  The leader here is the face of the business and particularly in this social media age, we need to be masters of this new universe.  I get it.  Taking your photo or even worse – video – is not something we all welcome.  We are very self-conscious about how lacking we are in terms of being photogenic or how awkward we look on video and when we hear our own voice, we shudder.  In life, I have found I am particularly unable to be photogenic, so I totally sympathise.  You know when you take that group shot and when you get it back you look for yourself – it is always a disappointment for me. In this modern world of work, however, we are all in a life and death struggle to attract a declining demographic of young people and mid-careers hires to join us.  We must be competitive, and that means we need to be getting some clear messages out into the world about who we are and what are our values. We need to be good communicators and also add our image to go with the words.  If we can speak the words on video and audio even better. I have been told by numerous guests on my podcast that they found that they were successful in attracting new staff who had checked them and seen the video interview.  I can believe that, because the nature of the interview is very authentic and no one so far has succeeded in pushing forth a fake version of themselves to fool the masses.  I don't say much during the interview and just let the guests talk. Occasionally, I will dig down on a point to go a bit deeper, but the bulk of the time is theirs.  People watching the interview get a very clear picture of the boss and then can decide if this is the type of place where they want to work. Clients also check us out and they are making decisions about us too in terms of do they want to have a relationship with our company.  They want to know who we are and what we stand for.  This is an important chance for the CEO to become active and provide the content the buyers are looking for.  They want to know who the boss is and what they are like. Hiding in the background is not a clever option.  It is much better to work on mastering the medium.  Looking straight down the barrel of the camera lens is not that easy and for many people, it is a formidable obstacle.  Video is difficult to come across naturally, I find.  Using teleprompters is not easy either and getting the right rhythm is a challenge for me. I always have trouble with photo shoots because I manage to look like a dork more often than not.  I was watching something on TikTok where a male model was demonstrating how to move and stand, to get the right shot and I realised I have no ability to do that. Fortunately, Tia Haygood, who is my local photographer here, manages to make me look presentable enough to squeak by. What I have found is that the more you do it, the better you become, and refusing to participate is a guarantee that you will never master the medium.  The CEO shouldn't be hiding. Instead, they should be pushing their message forward at every opportunity.  So find Tia if you are in Tokyo and work on your official portrait shots to use on social media and on your website.  Get a videographer like Rionne McAvoy, who I use from Japan Media Services, involved to help you with creating quality videos.  I have been using Tia and Rionne for years and I trust their work, which is why I am mentioning them if you are looking for help locally here in Japan. The point is the leader has to lead from the front and be the face of the business.  We need to break down any potential barriers to getting staff or clients.  Get the photos, the video, the audio, go on podcasts, do the interviews – do every possible thing you can to control the image you are projecting.  If you can't speak confidently or coherently, then come and do some training with us and we will fix that for you.  There are no excuses anymore because there are plenty of people around to help. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”. Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.      

Elements Of Outstanding Customer Service In Japan (Part One) Customer service in Japan is pretty good by comparison with most other countries.  To me, it is polite yet impersonal.  The status gap between those serving and those being served is quite rigid.  In my own country of Australia, those serving are quite happy to have a conversation with the customer. They don't see themselves as inferior in status and treat customers as equals.  In Japan, there is no such equality.  The language and the culture both reinforce the buyer as God, and those serving are mere mortals there to do God's bidding. Let's look at some elements of excellent customer service over a three-part series. The sad aspect here is that what I am going to describe is totally obvious and will garner a “so what” reaction.  I urge you to go beyond that initial first blush and use this as a measuring rod to calibrate how your organisation deals with customer service problems and check if you are operating at the right level of service or not.    1.    Totally professional This is fairly obvious, but that professionalism comes from a combination of attitude, experience and training.  Even if you don't have much experience, if your attitude is that you want to provide the highest level of service, then good things will flow from that starting point and we gain experience over time.  If properly trained, then the whole process gets sped up. 2.    Knowledge Surprisingly, a lot of people in the service sector have very little knowledge of the inventory, systems, ethos and values.  When you ask a clarifying question, their face fills with panic and they have to go seek the answer from someone else.  This is a failure of leadership.  If they were properly invested in, then they would know the answer without having to run off and find the answer. 3.    Highly personalised service  Manualised or formulistic service is the norm in Japan.  Companies try to reduce all complexity down to one way of doing things and for the majority of clients, that will be fine.  To lift above the great unwashed competitors, we need to be able to provide a more personalised service. I was reminded of this recently when I brought a pocket square online from Massimo Pirrone in Antwerp. The item arrived in a nice box and additionally, he included a short note and a very nice pen as well.  It felt very personalised and I became an instant fan. 4.    Take Ownership Japan is very good when order and harmony prevail.  Chaos, the unexpected disasters – not so much. The nature of customer service is that there is always going to be a high frequency of the unexpected occurring.  The key is how we react to the changing situation.  When things go wrong, customers want the issue solved and solved instantly.  They expect the person they are interacting with to make it happen, regardless of the degree of difficulty.  Japan has a nasty edge to it when customers exploit their expectations too far and start bullying staff, because the customer is God. If the person serving the customer takes ownership of the problem, they will keep pursuing the solution until resolution.  That is the mentality the supervision and training need to reinforce. 5.    Anticipatory Omotenashi is the high point of Japanese service and a big element is the person serving the customer to anticipate what the customer needs before they voice that request.  On a hot day, being served some iced water as you enter the business is a nice touch, completed without you have to place an order. This is an attitude of service that drives behaviour.  With the right leadership, this can be taught. 6.    Proactive This is similar to anticipatory, in the sense that we are not adopting a passive stance. We try to arrange things well before the need arises by being well prepared.  We are always looking for faster and better ways of doing things.  We are making suggestions for the client, for their best interests, rather than expecting them to have complete knowledge of what we can do for them.  They will never know our business to the depths that we do and so we have to be thinking ahead and bringing up possibilities which wouldn't necessarily occur to them. We will keep going with our list of things to think about in terms of the service we currently supply and how we supply it in parts Two and Three. Do you need to sell more?  Is your sales manager stressing you about making your monthly sales quota? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43kQpsN ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”. Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.      

I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses.  Here are my musings after 50 plus years of training in traditional Shitoryu Karate.  Stepping on to the floor The dojo is the ultimate equalizer.  Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks's mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else.  You have had all of your wealth, privileges, educational background, society status, connections stripped away and you are left alone to rise or fall based on your own abilities. In business, we forget this primary lesson and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities.  We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people's real abilities are recognized and rewarded. Starting The class begins with a short meditation interval.  This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what is to come.  Next everyone is bowing toward the front.  The front of the class represents all who came before us.  We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization.  By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going.  Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion.  Finally, we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travelers on a journey of self-discovery. How do we start the work day?  Is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY we are there.  In our office we review one of the Dale Carnegie Principles each day.  We then share our scheduled meetings, our highest goals for the day, end with a motivational quote and a final rousing call to all do our best (ganbarimashoo!). Stretching We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles to be able to operate at the highest possible levels of performance.  If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice and coaching or are you just practicising on the client? Basics We repeat the same drills over and over, every class, every year, forever.  We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution.  We are aiming for absolute efficiency and economy of movement.  We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought.   A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity?  Sparring There are two formats.  Prearranged sparring dictates what is coming and the order in which it comes.  Free sparring is one hundred percent spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of ploy and counter ploy.  At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in under one minute, but using our physical techniques with total body commitment. When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker?  Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes?  Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains and  speed over their brawn? Kata These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents.  The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection.  The form is set and so we can release the mind into a Zen state enabling us to go beyond the form.  Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected?  Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness?  Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation?  Strengthening and warming down Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance.  We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles. Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace?  Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people?  Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested. Finish We repeat the bowing and this time we add our Values.  We voice carefully chosen words which represent the value system of our dojo, (Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect).  These are the last things setting into our minds, before we go back to our normal routines. How do we end the workday?  Do we set up for the next day by reviewing what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow?  Do we reflect on the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better?  The system of the martial arts hasn't changed all that much over the many centuries and for a very simple reason.  It works.  How about your company?  Are you perfecting your systems for the ages?  

There is a debate about whether Japan is any different from anywhere else when it comes to leading the team.  Intellectually, I can appreciate there are many similarities because people are people, but I always feel there are important differences.  One of the biggest differences is how people are trained to become leaders in Japan.  I should really clarify that statement and say how they are not trained to become leaders. The main methodology for creating leaders in Japan is through On The Job Training (OJT). I can see there is a crisp logic to the idea of OJT back in the day, however it is now a flawed system in the modern world of Japan.  In the West, leadership training is a given, because the value is recognised and so the investment is made to better educate the leadership cohorts through each generation. The first problem with Japan OJT is it presumes your boss knows about leading.  There is very little formal leadership training going on in Japan.  I don't believe it just about investing the money.  There is no great tradition here for corporate leadership training.  Before we dive into this subject, I believe we should clarify what is a leader in Japan and what is a manager and what is different.  Japan, in my observation, is full of managers, and there are few leaders. A manager runs the machine on budget, on quality, and on time. The leader does all of that and two very important additional tasks.  The leader persuades the team that the direction they are advocating is the correct one and, secondly, they build up the capabilities of their staff through one-on-one coaching.  By the way, barking out orders like a mad pirate captain doesn't qualify as coaching. OJT probably made a lot of sense up until about fifty years ago, when it started to be disrupted by technology.  By the 1980s, desktop computing became common in Japan and gradually the boss lost his (and they were mainly men) typist and had to start doing his own typing on the computer.  The advent of email in the mid-1990s was the real death blow to the boss's time management.  Now the boss had become super busy and time availability for coaching staff became much diminished. What this means is that we have had been through multiple generations of staff mainly educated through OJT and who have been short-changed on the leadership modelling by their “manager” boss.  Each corporate generation passes on how to be a manager to the next generation and unless there is some intervention through formal leadership training, there is no real progress.  Of course, there will always be exceptions who prove the rule and some managers who make it out of that gravitational pull of OJT and become real leaders.  This is the lightning strike theory of leadership development and isn't a great proposition to ensure that the firm's leadership bench is stacked with professionals. The key plank in leadership is no longer task experience.  The old model was the boss had done all the tasks of their subordinates and knew their jobs inside out.  Today, there is much more speciality and technology is making sure it isn't experience alone which will carry the day for the boss.  Many companies in Japan are moving away from the old model of age and stage and instead promoting people based on ability.  Just rotating through various jobs in the machine won't be enough anymore. Leaders have to become expert communicators and masters of environment building, such that individuals can motivate themselves.  How many leaders receive any training to assist their communication and people skills?  Very, very few and everyone else had to work it all out through trial and error. That hit and miss approach is very expensive. The younger staff want different things to their parents and the modern boss in Japan has to adjust.  The bishibishi or super strict model of leadership is now cast out on to the rubbish tip of leadership history in Japan.  Bosses still using this model will see their younger staff departing in droves.  Already 30% are leaving after three to four years of employ and that number will only get worse as we run out of people to hire and the younger generation all become free agents. The younger generation wants a psychologically safe environment and a lot of personal encouragement by the boss. One of the greatest elements to gaining engagement from staff is that they feel the boss cares about them.  The way they know that is through the boss's communication skills.  If you believe that given people are getting paid, they should be engaged, then there is bound to be a lack of the needed communication of “I care about you” going on. If you don't have well-developed communication skills, then being the boss is only going to get harder and harder.  How much communication training do bosses get?  Very little and they certainly don't get much value through OJT, because their own bosses were crap communicators, as were their bosses, and back we go through the generations. Japan needs to raise its white-collar worker productivity and investing in boss leadership and communication training makes a lot of sense.  OJT is a dead duck and won't work as the vehicle to get the needed progress on the leadership front.  We need a change in thinking about leadership here in Japan to take us forward. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.    

Prior to her Japan posting Simone was VP Marketing International Business Unit in Indianapolis, VP and General Manager Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Chief Marketing Officer Japan, Managing Director Austria, International Marketing Leader Cardiology Indianapolis, National Sales Director Germany, Austria and Switzerland, New Product Planning Manager Germany, Head of corporate Communications.  Prior to Eli Lilly with Fresenius Kabi she was Head of Area Management Japan, Head of Corporate Communications, Group Product Manager Anaesthesia, and an International trainee. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.  

Here is a handy success equation which is easy to remember: our mindset plus our skill set, will equal our results.  This is very straightforward and unremarkable, but we get so embroiled in our day to day world, we forget to helicopter above the melee and observe the lay of the land.  A great mindset coupled with lacklustre skills, won't get us very far.  A poor mindset with great skills won't do it either, so we need both. What is our mindset composed of?  How we think is critical.  Are we operating with a positive mindset?  If we are deep in depression about the circumstances of the business, we are stuck in a hole from which it can be hard to emerge.  We are what we think, so control over what we think becomes so important. That also means being strict about what we put into our minds.  Stay away for fluff, endless scrolling on social media and negativity.  Find the useful, positive and valuable and make that the diet for our mind. Our opinions influence how we see the world.  Where do these opinions come from?  They are usually the product of our access to quality, correct information.  There is a tricky balance here because a lot of the news we need to consume is laced with negativity and that can pollute our positive attitude.  So we need to curate the information we take in, to help us make informed decisions, based on correct data. Our beliefs are similarly formed from data, personal experience and what we hear from people we trust.  Our degree of success can be impacted by our self-belief. It can be a drag on our progress if we are limiting how we see our potential. We believe we are operating logically, except we often make decisions based on emotion rather than logic. Being in control of our emotion is a fundamental first step to getting ourselves into a position to be successful. Wild mood swings make us a difficult person to work with or get close to.  A short temper can have us explode in haste and repent at leisure, after we have created havoc all around us. We are all drowning is a sea of information today as the internet propels constant updates and new content at us.  When I was at University we went to the stacks in the library to find the few books available there and if someone else had that textbook you needed you dipped out. Microfiche was the big innovation to access information in a non-paper format. For the younger generation out there, microfiche was an ancient method of taking microphotographs of physical pages and putting it on to film you could scroll through, using a special microfiche reader. I noticed with my son's education, his problem is the constant assault of data and the difficulty of working out which information was valuable amongst the flotsam and jetsam battering his attention everyday. Getting insight becomes the game of success because we don't lack for content anymore. Once we have the mindset correct then we have to take action.  This is often easier said than done. We are so busy and translating insight into outcomes is not a given in this constant rabid struggle against the demands on our time. Behaviour determines outcomes and the formation of good habits is the key here. If we form the right habits then we take the right actions and we form the right default behaviour which adds to our success. The way we communicate flows from these habits and behaviours and we should be seeking inclusivity.  Business is too complex for relying on the hero worker who can do it all by themselves – that ship has sailed.  We need to be persuasive and able to garner collaboration in the workplace today.  There is so much technology available today and it spews out endless choices.  How do we get others to follow our ideas and adopt our suggestions? Our degree of cooperation from others is a compilation of our interactivity.  If we have good people skills then we can interact with other in a constructive and positive way which adds to our success. Often technical people struggle in this area because their education hasn't focused on the human interaction dimension.  Communication and people skills are new sets of complexities they need to master otherwise they will always be soldiers and never become generals. Our mindsets and skill sets combine to offer us opportunities to influence others and to direct the way forward. That is what it means to lead.  If we are busily working in our business, we may neglect to work on ourselves, so that we can work on the business.  It always good to step back and regroup around the fundamentals and refocus on where we need to put our energy and passion. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.  

I recently launched a new project called Fare Bella Figura – Make a Good Impression.  Every day I take a photograph of what I am wearing and then I go into detail about why I am wearing it and put it up on social media.  To my astonishment, these posts get very high impressions and a strong following.  It is ironic for me. I have written over 3000 articles on hard core subjects like sales, leadership and presentations, but these don't get the same level of engagement. Like this article, I craft it for my audience and work hard on the content and yet articles about my suit choices get a lot more traction.  What I take away from this is people are interested in how we present ourselves in business. The thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that first impressions are so important.  In sales, people judge us hard based on how we look, before we even have a chance to open our mouths.  If we don't get that initial visual interaction correct, then we can be playing catchup to correct an unhelpful first take on us.  “Clothes maketh the man” is an old idea and is related to this first impressions equation.  The other thesis of Fare Bella Figura is that I dress for the meetings I am going to have that day, rather than some random selection of what is back from the dry cleaners. We are going to make an impression with the buyer one way or another, so I want to be in control of that impression as much as is humanly possible.  I believe there is a direct link between how we present ourselves and the degree of credibility we can instil in the client.  If we make a mess of the fabric and colour combinations, we are screaming “unsophisticated”.  I do not recommend for men to ask their wives for advice.  Study this “dress for success” topic for yourself and become the master of your own universe. If we are turning up with ancient stains on our tie, or our suit, it is interpreted as sloppy and there is now a strong doubt about our quality consciousness. If our shoes are scuffed or not displaying a high shine finish, it says we are lazy, not detail oriented and unreliable.  The term “down at heel” means “poor” and it comes from the fact that the back of the heel of the shoe has worn down and has not been repaired.  Either we are too poor and obviously not a success in the sales profession to be able to repair it, or too indifferent and either way, it is a bad sign for the buyer. If we are wearing a brown or tan belt with black shoes or vice versa, it says “hick” and someone who lacks common sense.  The exact matching tie and pocket square colour combination is another faux pas these days.  Would we want to accept these types of salesperson as our “trusted advisor”?  I doubt it.  I certainly wouldn't take their advice on anything if they can't even dress themselves correctly. Suits too large or too small are another bad indicator.  They have either lost a lot of weight, but haven't bothered to get their suit taken in, or they are getting chubbier and haven't had the suit taken out, because they won't spend the money.  It isn't that expensive to alter an existing suit, and the difference is total. If the suit trousers are too long or too short, it looks off – go and get them altered or replace them. Style and fashion are difficult to navigate.  Suit jacket lapels get skinnier, ties get wider and then get narrower, trousers get slimmer and then get fuller, socks get discarded when wearing shoes – all sorts of temporary fashion trends take over the dictates of what is appropriate.  Suits can last more than one fashion trend and you have to debate with yourself whether that wide lapel is still going to present the right image with the client when everyone else is wearing a narrower lapel these days.  I struggle with this.  I have a favourite double breasted Versace suit from years ago and because the style is dated; I don't get to wear it much or at all and that seems a waste.  However, if I am dressing for my client, then the answer is simple – leave it in the wardrobe for a day in the future when that trend makes a comeback. My mantra when I leave the house every day is to check my look in the mirror and ask myself, “do I look like one of the most professional people in my industry?”.  If I don't, then I go and make a few changes, until I am satisfied I can pass that test.  Here is a caveat. For a lot of men in Europe, they will be wearing a jacket and trouser combination, rather than a suit and the American trend is to much more casual clothing.  In certain industries, like IT, you will hardly see anyone wearing a suit.  Now I sell in Tokyo and everyone here wears a suit.  I remember I was so surprised when met the President of a gas stand and he was wearing a suit, so men's suits are predominant here. Therefore, I dress for this business environment and you should do the same for your reality. There is a correlation between the quality of our clothing and our personal financial success.  Buyers judge us based on what they see.  If we look cheap and nasty, they won't want to trust us with their business because we don't look successful.  On the other hand, if we are overdressed, it can have a negative consequence.  It can make them feel inferior, so the balance is important.  If we roll up in our expensive Brioni or Kiton suits and Rolex watches, and they are just a salaryman tasked with purchasing goods and services for the company, they can feel inferior and experience some discomfort.  We look a bit too sharp to them and they don't want to get cut.  As I say, getting the balance right is the key. We will make an impression on the buyer based on what we wear, so we need to determine what that impression will be. We don't leave it to luck or chance. We make sure it is the right choice – the one that leads to the deal getting done. Do you need to sell more?  Is your sales manager stressing you about making your monthly sales quota? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43kQpsN ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.    

Where is the line between referencing our experiences and insights and just talking about ourselves?  I attended a talk recently where the speaker had a perspective to share with the audience, to add value to their careers and businesses.  What surprised me was how much of the talk was cantered on the speaker rather than the audience.  I was thinking about this later and wondered what the better balance would be?  When we go on about ourselves, we are getting further away from points of relevance for the listeners.  We have to remember that people are unapologetically 100% focused on themselves and their own interests and don't care all that much about our story. As the speaker, the closer we can align what we are saying to the listener's interests, the greater the acceptance of what we are saying and the bigger the impact we will have as the presenter.  That is fine in theory, but we can't just make a series of pompous statements about how things should be and not back them up with evidence.  Often that evidence is coming from our own experiences and that can be the most convincing variety.  Unveiling a lot of sexy data during the talk is interesting, but a mud and blood rendition of what happened to us in the trenches, is always more gripping and compelling. This speaker, in my mind, strayed across the line and was wallowing in too much self-indulgence about what they had been doing. How do we balance our story with the audience's need for alignment with their benefit?  What the speaker could have done was better draw out how to transfer their learnings into concrete examples, where the listeners could apply them to their own circumstances.  Instead of just saying this is what I did, and this is how it worked for me, they could have gone a bit deeper on the application for others who are not them.  When the example is too idiosyncratic, the agency for others becomes diminished or diluted. We could say, “I did this and got this result.  Now here are three ways you could take this same idea and apply it to your situation”.  We have now crossed over to the audience's application of the knowledge. By giving more than one opportunity, we are more likely to hit on what the majority of audience members are looking for.   Importantly, by prior analysis of who is showing up the talk, we can anticipate common needs and circumstances. This allows us to get closer to the mark of listener reality when we explain our examples. A simple rule of thumb should be 20% of what happened to us and 80% of the time on explaining why this will work for our audience.  Our speaker, in this case, reversed those percentages and spent the majority of the time talking about what happened to them. The problem with this is we in the audience are not them and we have to parse out what we can apply from their story.  It is much better of the speaker saves us that drama and they tell us what we can apply.  We draw out the key points we want to make for the audience, align our war stories with the points and then add a significant section in the talk on explaining why doing this is a great idea and specifically why it is a great idea bolstered with concrete cases and options.  This is an unbeatable combination.  We demonstrate in words that because we did it, they can, too.  We draw out how it will work for the audience and convince them that it has a broader application than just working for us alone.  We have to marshal the benefits of taking our advice, and the more concretely we can do that, the better. Our speaker convinced us that it worked for them, but failed to make the case that it would work for us.  They hinted at it, but statements are cheap and we sceptical folk want more evidence.  We are all risk averse, so we want chapter and verse and solid provable details. When constructing the talk, keep that 20%-80% dichotomy in mind.  Certainly use ourselves as proof, but don't rely on it exclusively.  If we can talk about others doing marvellous things with our advice, that is the icing on the cake.  We love to hear case studies and then draw our own conclusions on how much we can take from the example and apply it in our world. That idea is something we need to be constantly hammering away at too.  Keep telling them to think how they can adapt it, and apply it for themselves.  In this way, we can keep switching the focus back to the audience away from us and we will get the balance right.   Would the people who know you or meet you describe you as persuasive? Do you think you are persuasive enough? Persuasion power is the most important, but the most commonly lacking skill in the business world. Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. It is time to change things up and get that key skill.  There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/3VhvR2B ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.      

To succeed in our own business, we need three critical skills:  the ability to master our time, to clone ourselves and to be persuasive. Time: Poor time control leads to inefficiency, wasted efforts, stress and missed opportunities.  Entrepreneurs are geniuses at trying to do too much. This means they are run ragged with time demands and no good solutions. This has to be turned around and time gotten under firm control. Follow this mantra:  “I can't do everything on this list everyday but I can do the most important thing”.  Each day decide the number one priority for your business and complete that, then start number two, and so on. Delegation: Being so busy is a result of not having trusted people around us to whom we can delegate.  We must get leverage through our team.  But we don't.  We cannot find the time to develop them, so we are stuck like a rat on the treadmill.  Getting a better grip on your time will create space to spend on training your key people.  Don't fluff the delegation process, because you are clueless on how to do it.  Don't just dump stuff on people, expecting them to magically get it and somehow be able to come back with excellent work.  Stop dreaming, it won't happen.  Have a meeting with the delegatee, where you explain the task in terms of how this is designed to help them grow and succeed in the business.  Talk in terms of their interests not yours.  Inspire: Investors, potential new staff, valuable existing staff, clients, all need your persuasive ability to impress and keep them happy.  If you are an unclear, unimpressive speaker, it is hard to get people to believe in you and follow you.  You can be a tyrant, but let me know how that is working out for you?  Honey does better than vinegar, when it comes to communicating with people.  You will never work it out on your own.  Get the necessary speaking training and stop kidding yourself.  Master time, grow the leverage throughout your team and learn how to inspire people.  Get on to it. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.  

Public speaking spots are a great way to get attention for ourselves and what we sell.  This is mass prospecting on steroids.  The key notion here is we are selling ourselves rather than our solution in detail.  This is an important delineation.  We want to outline the issue and tell the audience what can be done, but we hold back on the “how” piece.  This is a bit tricky, because the attendees are looking for the how bit, so that they can apply it to fix their issues by themselves.  We don't want that because we don't get paid.  We are here to fix their problem, not for them to DIY (Do It Yourself) their way to a solution. All selling is public speaking and presentations skills.  However, very few salespeople are trained as speakers or presenters.  This is incongruous, isn't it?  We need to be able to present to the one person in front of us or to hundreds of prospects all gathered together at an event. First of all, we are selling our personal brand and then by extension the solution we are representing.  That is the correct order and just jumping to the solution won't work.  Buyers buy us first and then what we sell.  We all know we can't do good business with a bad guy or gal and our talk is a due diligence process to see if we can be trusted. The dumb way to sell from stage is to provide all of the content up front and then come in at the end with the shiny sales pitch.  There is a discernable break in the flow and the audience braces themselves for the pitch.  This isn't the way to do it.  We need to be interspersing our pitch throughout the talk, so there is no discernable shifting of gears by the speaker.  This way, there is nothing to brace against or push back on. The way to do this is to determine what are the key problems and fears confronting the audience.  We have the fix for these and can be a trusted partner for them.  Once we have determined what are the key problems, we construct our talk to address all the most high priority needs in the time allotted. The talk is broken up into specific chapters, rotating around the key issues.  We need to create hooks, which will grab the attention of the listeners. In each chapter, we outline the downside of not doing anything about fixing the problem we have raised.  We also talk about what needs to be done to fix it, but we don't reveal how to fix it.  To get the point to register with the buyers, we pose rhetorical questions about what will happen if they don't take action to deal with it.  We are painting a dismal picture for them of the future ramifications of leaving the mess as it is. The fact that we understand the problem in detail tells the audience we are an expert in this area.  If we have some visible proof of our expertise, all the better.  We might point them to our books, blogs, podcasts or our video shows.  Today, all of these things are much easier to pull off than ten years ago.  For example, Amazon prints my books one at a time if I request it and so no garage is full of unsold books, which used to be the reality for most authors. Today, creating blogs and pushing them out through social media gives us credibility at almost no cost.  The same with podcasts and videos.  There might be some small cost to recording the shows and hosting podcasts on a platform like I use with LibSyn, but really the cost is marginal.  YouTube hosts my videos and it is free.  Our mobile phones provide amazing quality for recording video and video editing software is not prohibitively expensive. Editing things yourself is possible in a way it wasn't before. This means we can project our expertise beyond the physical limits of the stage.  Let me give you a case study. Please go to LinkedIn and find my page.  You will see I am posting all the time on three subjects – leadership, sales and presentations.  If you scroll down through the feed, you will just see over three thousand posts.  My prospective buyers don't need to read them all, but they can see there is a substantial collection of my expertise there. They can read what I publish and check it for themselves, whether it is good enough or not. This substantially bolsters my personal brand.  It also allows the buyers to follow up after the talk, to check me out further before they buy what I am selling.  For risk averse buyers, this is very important. By incorporating the key hooks into the talk itself, using well-crafted questions to create fear that they may have trouble if they don't fix a problem we have flagged, we eliminate any resistance against what we are selling.  When there is an obvious transition from sharing information to now selling, there is a large barrier created between the speaker and the audience.  They are thinking, “I love to buy, but I hate being sold. Now I am getting the hard sell by this speaker”. Doing it the way I have outlined, we never have any barrier, because we have been working the crowd all the way through the talk.  If our questions hit the mark, they will want to know the “how” from us, after we have sold them the “why” and the “what”. We are aiming to create two concerns: 1. We haven't considered that possibility and 2.  We have not prepared for that possibility.  If we are successful in doing this, then we will get sales. We have caused them to self-discover their own needs without us forcing it down their throats. This is ideal in sales. Would the people who know you or meet you describe you as persuasive? Do you think you are persuasive enough? Persuasion power is the most important, but the most commonly lacking skill in the business world. Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources. It is time to change things up and get that key skill.  There is a perfect solution for you- to LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/3VhvR2B ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.    

Prior to starting the Swiss Prime Brands company in Japan, Luca was an Assistant Manager at Masuda Infinity Japan, a Junior Associate at Goldwyn Partners Group AG, a Consultant at Het Buitenhuis. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery" and his new books "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めま Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews 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, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) 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.    

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.

Are you planning to do business in Japan? Then you need to listen to this interview with Dr. Greg Story.Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, talked about studying, living, speaking Japanese, and doing business in Japan. A Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, and a 36-year veteran of Japan, he is a leadership expert with broad experience. Among his impressive business accomplishments are:• Launching a "start-up" in Nagoya• "Turning around" companies for Austrade in both Osaka and Tokyo• Acting as Commercial Minister in the Australian Embassy • Leading as Country Head for Austrade• Progressing to the role of Co-CEO at the Shinsei Retail Bank• Becoming the Country Head for the National Australia Bank in Japan• And more recently, managing, coaching, training, and consulting at Dale Carnegie Training Japan Global, #8 in revenues in 2020. A 6th Dan in traditional Shitoryu Karate, he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business issues. He is so energetic and enthusiastic! An excellent and engaging communicator! You will learn a lot about cultural adaptationand Japan. Don't miss it!

I have often thought there are so many lessons from the martial arts for our businesses.  Here are my musings after 50 years of training in traditional Shitoryu Karate.     Stepping on to the floor The dojo is the ultimate equalizer.  Whether you arrived by chauffeur driven Roller or took Shanks's mare, once you step on to that dojo floor only your ability and character separates you from everyone else.  You have had all of your wealth, privileges, educational background, society status, connections stripped away and you are left alone to rise or fall based on your own abilities.   In business, we forget this primary lesson and allow people to accrue titles, status and power unattributed to their abilities.  We need to see beyond the spin and politics and ensure that people's real abilities are recognized and rewarded.     Starting The class begins with a short meditation interval.  This is designed to focus the mind and separate the day from what is to come.  Next everyone is bowing toward the front.  The front of the class represents all who came before us.  We are not here today based solely on what we have done. Others were here before us building the art and the organization.  By bowing we acknowledge the continuum and our responsibility to keep it going.  Now we bow to the teachers, respecting their knowledge and their devotion.  Finally, we bow to each other expressing our solidarity as fellow travelers on a journey of self-discovery.   How do we start the work day?  Is there a chorei or morning gathering of the work group, to get everyone aligned and focused on the WHY we are there.  In our office we review one of the Dale Carnegie Principles each day.  We then share our scheduled meetings, our highest goals for the day, end with a motivational quote and a final rousing call to all do our best (ganbarimashoo!).     Stretching We warm-up our minds and our bodies by going through a set routine to stretch our muscles to be able to operate at the highest possible levels of performance.    If you are a sales team, are you beginning your day with role play practice and coaching or are you just practicising on the client?     Basics We repeat the same drills over and over, every class, every year, forever.  We are seeking purity of form and perfection of execution.  We are aiming for absolute efficiency and economy of movement.  We are preparing ourselves for a Zen state where we can react without pre-thought.    A large amount of our work is routine, but can we improve the systems, the execution to bring in greater efficiencies and achieve higher productivity?    Sparring There are two formats.  Prearranged sparring dictates what is coming and the order in which it comes.  Free sparring is one hundred percent spontaneous, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of ploy and counter ploy.  At a high level, this is like playing a full chess match in under one minute, but using our physical techniques with total body commitment.   When we compete in the marketplace are we a speedboat or an oil tanker?  Are we nimble, adaptive, on purpose and aware of market changes?  Are we thinking steps ahead of the opposition, anticipating their moves and constantly outflanking them, applying our brains and  speed over their brawn?     Kata These are full power set pieces, representing a battle against multiple opponents.  The forms are fixed and the aim is perfection.  The form is set and so we can release the mind into a Zen state enabling us to go beyond the form.    Are we able to keep reproducing execution pieces of our work that are perfected?  Can we refine our actions for the maximum effectiveness?  Can we eliminate mistakes, defects and rework entirely at all levels in the organisation?      Strengthening and warming down Strength training is there to build the physical power and our mental perseverance.  We do a final stretch to reduce stiffness and muscle pain by reducing lactic acid build up in the muscles.   Are our training methodologies making us stronger than our rivals in the marketplace?  Are we allocating sufficient time to grow our people?  Are we seeing outcomes from the training time invested?     Finish We repeat the bowing and this time we add our Values.  We voice carefully chosen words which represent the value system of our dojo, (Effort, Patience, Moderation, Respect).  These are the last things setting into our minds, before we go back to our normal routines.   How do we end the workday?  Do we set up for the next day by reviewing what we did today, what we achieved and what we need to work on tomorrow?  Do we reflect on the quality of our performance and think about ways to do better?   The system of the martial arts hasn't changed all that much over the many centuries and for a very simple reason.  It works.  How about your company?  Are you perfecting your systems for the ages?

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.

Yasuaki Mori Ex-CEO Of Infineon Technologies Japan: EPISODE #1 Japan's Top Business Interviews Yasuaki Mori is a European, Asia and North American technology growth executive in the disruptive mobility, automotive, IIoT and cyber security markets.  He has grown businesses from $200 to $700M and scaled organization from 100 to 200+ people, developed go-to market strategies and rebuilt, converted, strengthened organizations in sales, marketing, channel, system/application engineering, product quality, HR, finance. marcom, logistics and government affairs. He is a multi-lingual & multi-cultural executive (French, Japanese, English) with professional networks in Europe, US and Asia. Summary Points  Joint venture sales are tough because both parties are in the same market with a focus on synergies but occasionally you end up in a competitive situation. When the joint venture parties are from different cultures, e.g. Japanese and German, you need trust and understanding, however both are exercised differently in the different countries. For example, in Japan, harmony is exercised through Honne (real truth) and Tatemae (façade), but in Germany it is exercised by people giving their true opinion, so it can be tough for employees and clients to deal with. We used to have meetings where only the leadership spoke. After the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan several years ago, we held daily meetings in order to keep operations moving, and as things calmed down, we cut the meetings down to once a week and then once a month. However, when we tried to cut the meetings out altogether, the employees asked for it to be kept on as a standard part of our procedures. It become a town hall meeting where people, not just the leadership contributed. Unofficial communication in Japan is superb and it would be good to be able to tap into that to make it more corporate and help shake off the communication silos. Middle management is what tends to the blockage point, not because they wanted to block things, but because we as senior management were not paying enough attention to what feedback they were giving about our discussions about strategy etc.  What a strategy means for senior management has a totally different meaning for the lower ranks and middle management needs to be engaged and coached on how to spread the message. Push out as much information as possible unless it is strictly confidential, since unless you tell people what and why things are happening in understandable terms, it is never effective. Japanese employees traditionally ask their bosses for instructions, but I think its better to know what your value is in the company, and where you are adding value to the whole chain of the company, then you should know what you need to do – then you don`t need to ask your boss about what you should do. And by adding value to yourself, you are making yourself more valuable to the external market. Japan still works from a top-down method whereas foreign companies work in a matrix. Executives are expensive with limited time frames like 3-4 years, and because they have to get used to Japan at the beginning and settle their families, and then towards the end of their term, they need to look for a job back home, they are really only effective for 1-2 years so that is one of the problems you face by sending a novice to Japan. A good element of Japan is limited corporate greed in comparison to other countries.  Honesty is a key strength in Japan that is a good foundation to help build a business on. Although I`m not sure how it equates to taking more risk for innovation.  Big data and good data analytics can relieve many efficiency and quality problems but there is limited understanding in traditional management style Japanese companies of how to use AI because it is not just about technology, its about organizational change. Japan is very weak in terms of making deliberate organizational change to suit the technology.  There is a reluctance to go digital because the Gemba (factory floor) is so strong, but people are getting older and there are fewer and fewer workers so digitization needs to happen. But this needs fast decisions and these are not a strength of traditional corporate Japanese cultures. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules. About The Author Dr. Greg Story Your Corporate Coaching And Training Guy President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of “Japan Sales Mastery”, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.   He is also the author of the new book “Japan Business Mastery” aimed at business people who are new to Japan and want to know more about how things work here. In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year plus veteran of Japan. A committed lifelong learner, he publishes articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, and daily releases his videos and podcasts.   For podcasts and videos:  Mondays THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show podcast & THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show video Tuesday THE Leadership Japan Series Wednesday THE Sales Japan series Thursday THE Presentations Japan Series"   Friday THE Japan Business Mastery Show & THE Japan Business Mastery Show video.   Saturday Japan's Top Business Interviews Show podcast and Japan's Top Business Interviews Show video He is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business. #DCTakeCommand

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.    

Do You Have To Be A Saint When Leading In Japan?   Leadership can be broken up into two main activities.  One is making sure that the processes of the operation are all delivering what they should, when they should and where they should.  This is relatively straightforward, because usually all the processes are known and the people doing them have done them before and know what to do.  There are clear measurements around quantity, quality, and timeliness, so we can keep track of how we are doing.    The other aspect of leadership is building our people.  This means constantly skilling up to meet the changing demands of business, to make sure they are highly engaged and producing both effectively and efficiently. We need innovation in business to move forward and the people reporting to us are usually great sources of innovative ideas - if we are able to get them to care.   How we make the operation run smoothly is a choice.  We can be a tyrant and brutalise our people, using fear, retribution, punishment and potential banishment to oblivion, as tools to get conformity to our will. This can even be physical.  I saw a snippet on Japanese television recently of a Korean company, K-Technology's CEO Mr. Yang Jin Ho, beating his male ex-staff member by slapping him across the face, making him kneel on the floor and then belting him on the top of his head. Mr. Yang recorded the beating as a souvenir, which has now gotten out and gone viral on social media.  This is extreme and when you see the video, it seems incredible that this could be happening in this day and age.  Yet there are still versions of this floating around in Leadership Land, where the attacks may be more verbal, rather than physical.   In this type of environment where the fear factor is the main leadership card being played, you can guess that the “building the people” part has gone completely missing from any consideration.  The same for getting innovative ideas from the troops.  Everyone will have their head down, trying to be as small a target as possible and just doing their job and no more.   Now we may not be a tyrant or a demon like Mr. Yang, in the workplace, but we could be clinical, cold, outcome driven, extremely “business like” in the sense of no warmth for and no interest in our people.  We may be highly efficient, fully focused on getting the results and the people are just there to make sure that happens.  We are not there to mollycoddle them.  We are not there to be their friend.  If we want a friend, we will get a dog.    Everyone is an adult and they know what they need to do to make the numbers.  If they want to get ahead, they should take full responsibility for developing themselves and that has nothing to do with the boss.  We pay them, so we expect results type of philosophy. Is this bad?  Do we have to be a saint, to be indulging our people, rather than rigorously holding them accountable?   Yes, we have to be a saint or as close as we can get to it.  There are 1.64 jobs for every candidate looking for a position in Japan and it will only get worse from a boss's difficulty of hiring perspective. Recruiting people is becoming more expensive in terms of the costs of finding a replacement and the disruption of someone leaving.  There are lots of hidden opportunity costs we must pay, when there is a break in the work production process.  Keeping our people becomes only more important, so the people and communication skills of bosses are paramount in a way they have not been in the past.  Hard skills aren't enough and are not an excuse anymore for not doing what is needed in the 21stCentury workplace.   We need to take a greater interest in them as people.  This may be hard when you yourself are extremely independent, self-reliant, driven, mentally tough and need no positive feedback or support from anyone. You tend to see the world the way you are, as opposed to how your people are and how they see the world.  This gap can be pretty big.  If you want to keep your people, then you need to change.  If you can't be bothered to change in this market, then you will see recruiters lifting your people out of your organization at a rate of knots.    Communication and people skills are the two areas usually requiring the most reengineering.  Is this easy?  No!  But understanding the “build people” role makes the difference.  Your role is defined, it is part of what a modern leader needs to do, so you can't just squib it.  Disengaged people do no contribute anything to the innovation process.  They don't care about the company, so they don't care about making it more productive, through their creativity contributions.  This usually means there is a lot of untapped potential inside organisations waiting to be released.  Our job is to create a greater sense of engagement and identification with the company's competitive advantages through innovation.   There is no shortcut here either.  Each person has their own agenda, motivation, desires, dreams, goals and the better the boss understands that, the easier it is to know how to align the firm's agenda with the individuals.  It is not manipulation, but getting a good overlap between what the individual wants and what the company wants.  When we get the staff member's WHY and the company's WHY to line up, then the leading bit gets a lot easier.   How would we know all of this?  We need to want to talk to our team members, to want to help them, to want to be saint like. This is the starting point.  Put their interests first and work from there. If you can't do that, no problem, you won't be around for long, so it will all become a theoretical exercise anyway. Your replacement will pick up the torch and carry the organisation forward in your stead.  It will be out with the old and in with the new.  Which one do you choose?   Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Building Expert Authority With Buyers   “You are who Google says you are” is a quote from Timbo Reid, the host of the “Small Business Big Marketing” podcast which I follow.  His point is people check us out before they meet us, using search engines like Google.  In sales, buyers will also peruse our company website, search us out on Google and probably look us up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  What are they going to find there?  Are we in photos on Facebook, doing something stupid, fully fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol?  Are we conscious enough of how our personal brand is being perceived?  Have we got business enemies who are posting damming claims about how we didn't pay them or how we ripped them off.   Our lives in sales today are open books.  We can't miss the point that we need to control what gets written in the pages of that book.  If you have Facebook posts that are not consistent with the professional image you want to portray, then delete them all.  If it is really bad, delete the whole thing and start again.  When we look at the photos of you in your profile page, is it you with a straw hat and a cocktail in hand, in some sand and surf setting, rather than you in a suit?  Is your LinkedIn profile some pathetic job resume?  Are you raging against the other political party on Twitter, upsetting the other fifty percent of the population, including your buyers?   Personal branding in sales is gold.  Before we even get to have the meeting with the client, we want to create an image in their mind of someone who is serious, trustworthy, reliable, expert, credible, friendly and easy to work with.  This will create itself and morph into something we don't want to project to clients, unless we step in and take control of our public image.  The rule in sales is to avoid subjects like politics and religion.  This is obvious, but we may have firm views on these things and our public record is there for our clients to see.  We may be losing business opportunities because of our very privately held but widely, publically broadcast ideas on these subjects.   Have you done an audit on yourself lately?  Do a search on your own name, using a number of popular search engines and see what it throws up.  Take a good look at your Facebook and LinkedIn pages and see what you are projecting to the world about you, as a potential business partner for buyers.    It shouldn't just be from a defensive posture.  What can you do to project expert authority to buyers, by what you present on social media etc.  Post blogs about your area of expertise, offering good insight and advice to buyers of your product or service.  It doesn't have to be hundreds of blogs, but it should also not be a barren wasteland of nothing.  Extended blogs can become articles which may be suitable for publication in magazines. These can get picked up in your Google search and they add to your personal brand as an authority in this area. You can push the articles out through your weekly newsletter to clients or through your social media.  If you produce enough blogs, these may become an eBook or a hard copy book.  Again your expert authority is being highlighted and you are going to be seen as an expert in your field.   You may not like to write or maybe you are not very good at it.  You can always record what you want to say, get a transcript of it and work on editing that.  If you need to, there are plenty of editors and ghost writers available to help you polish it up.  I remember seeing an article written by a fellow I know and it was very good. I was surprised because he never seemed that articulate.  I found out later I knew the guy who had ghost written it for him. It doesn't matter. People don't care that much, they take what they see in front of them and it is either good or it isn't.  You are still making these points and it all supports your personal branding.   You can also use audio for podcasting.  This is not for the faint hearted because once you start, you have to be committed to keep going.  You also have to release episodes with reliable regularity.  You can tell the client on one hand that you are a reliable supplier and then have show episodes released at crazy intervals, that show zero ability to be consistent. Not good.    You may prefer video and that is cheap and easy today, compared to years ago, when you needed lots of equipment, a camera crew, a sound crew, video editors etc.  Today you can broadcast using Facebook Live and have no crew and no editing.  If you want to be a bit fancier, buy a device holder that screws into a tripod, buy an external microphone and set you phone or iPad and just hit record.  You may not even bother to edit out the bits of you pushing the start and stop button or get someone else to push them for you.   Video is good because it shows you in action and attracts more trust.  We can see your eyes and read your body language, to gauge if we can trust you or not, before we bother to meet you.  It allows us to demonstrate our expertise on a given subject and add value to others in the same industry.  If you know a bit about editing or have access to editing help, you can add an intro and an outro to brand yourself even better.  You can also inject slides into the video to show graphs or text to support what you are saying.   We are seizing control of our public image and we are stuffing it full of expert authority.  We know we are going to be found anyway, but we are proactively deciding just what will be found.  We are assembling content in various forms that appeal to buyers. Some like to read text, others like to listen to audio and others want to see us on video.  We marshal all of the social media available, our email list and enlist the cooperation of others who will share our content to get the greatest bang for the buck.  A little bit of planning goes a long way to setting up the sales meeting and selling the client before we even meet. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 Get Speaking Gigs To Promote Your Personal Brand   A businessman reached out to me after attending my recent speech on “The Seven Deadly Fails Of Selling In Japan”, which I gave to the American Chamber of Commerce here in Tokyo. He wasn't interested in hearing about how to sell in Japan, but he was frustrated that he was too low profile in his industry.  The consequence of being invisible in your industry sector is that people don't look for you or find you very easily.  Having people call you up to help them in their business is the preferred way to get new business. It is vastly superior to spending time and money running around trying to find buyers yourself.  Great! How do you do that?   This gentleman's business was in a very defined niche and there were rivals who were dominating that niche. They were getting the lion's share of the business as a result.  He was sick of getting the crumbs and wanted to raise his profile so that his phone would start to ring.  His enquiry to me was about doing our High Impact Presentations Course, so that he would be a more skilled presenter.  However, he mentioned he also needed to engineer the speaking spots as an expert authority, to use these speaking skills we are going to impart to him.   This “get found by buyers” aspiration is all part of our personal branding efforts.  One mental shift we have to make though, in this world of content marketing, is to understand that we are all publishing companies now, as well as being in our mainstream businesses.  By this I mean, we have the ability today, to project our ideas around the world and very inexpensively, to an extent never imagined before.  We can start by writing or talking if we can't write.  Writing blogs or recording blogs and then transcribing them into text is a good starting point.  Great Greg, but what do I write or talk about?   In your area of speciality, there will be problems facing your buyers.  You already know what they are, because when you meet your clients, this is what they talk about.  Just give yourself fifteen uninterrupted minutes sitting there with a pen and some paper. You will soon be able to come up with the most important issues in your industry.  These points can be fleshed out further into blogs.  As I mentioned, you may prefer to talk about the issues and then transcribe them.  It doesn't matter.  Get the IP (Intellectual Property) out of your head and on to paper.  You could weld all of these issues together into a longer article. This would be suitable for publication in an industry magazine. The various Chambers of Commerce also usually have their own magazines and are always looking for good content.    Submit your article for publication and expect that they will edit it for you.  This activity gets you in front of the readers, both those who actually read what you have written and those who only noted the headline and your name.  The latter outcome is also fine because you are building an association of a topic and your personal brand.  Often these organizations have an on-line version of their magazine and you will appear in that too.  This is handy for getting picked up by search engines.   Take that same article now and go back and break it up into single issue blocks.  Each of these is a blog post in itself and so add an intro and a conclusion. Load them up to your website, blast them out in your email newsletter, post them on all of your social media.    Contact event organisers who run conferences in your industry and suggest yourself as a speaker. Send them a copy of your long article, preferably once it has been published in a magazine, for extra credibility. They will be very happy to hear from you, because they are always looking for presenters.  In some cases, they might want you to pay to appear. This might be doable or prohibitive, depending on the event.    When potential clients or event organisers want to check you out, they will do a search on your name. These blogs and articles you have written, which are pieces of evidence of expertise on this subject, will pop up. It looks better to have a number of relevant posts, than just one long article, so try and populate your feed with multiple examples of good content.  You don't have to go crazy and post hundreds but more is better than less.   If you find there are podcasts on your subject, contact the podcast hosts and suggest you do a guest spot. If you have a lot of material or can consistently source great guests, then start your own podcast.  You may not broadcast it every day or every week, but you will need some degree of frequency and regularity to get any traction. You can use social media to publicise your podcast episodes.  Again, this activity can be referred to buyers or conference organisers, as proof of your expertise.  The search engines start to attach all of this activity to your name and when people search for you, up comes all of this expert authority.   These days shooting video is super easy.  Facebook live videos take away all editing and you can send them out later through social media.  Or you can shoot video on your iPhone or Ipad.  The camera quality today is excellent.  Just buy a frame to hold your device, screw the holder into a tripod, attach a separate microphone, stand about a meter away and you are off to the races. In iMovie you can edit the content and then upload it to your YouTube channel.  You can take the transcript of the video and use it for articles and blogs.  You can imbed the video itself into social media posts and add the text back in as well. The audio can be stripped out and used in your podcasts or posted in social media with a link.   All of this is multi-purposing. It creates more chances for you to be found.  When you are found, people can gauge the level of expertise you have on a subject and then make a judgment about whether they want you to speak at their event or not.  Even if you don't make it to the stage at the event, your chances of getting found by potential clients goes right up.  What does it require?  Not much money but it does take time and effort.  The best time to start all of this was yesterday and the second best time is now! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.   About The Author Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Sales Poor Performers   Are you failing in sales or do you have sales staff who are not making their numbers?  Sales is a brutal, metrics based activity where there are no hiding places or at least none that can be sustained.  Eventually, the numbers show if you are making it or you are not.  What happens then?  In the West the usual next step is you are fired and a replacement is found.  Japan is a bit different.  The social and legal bias is against firing people for poor performance.  In the case of large companies, the management is expected to move that failing salesperson into another job, where they can do better.   Smaller companies don't have that same pressure, because the courts know that survival can be impaired by underperformers.  The herd must unite together to survive, even if it means releasing one of the number. Nevertheless, internally, the other members of the team expect that the failing salesperson be given some sort of vague chance to right their ship of sales.  They don't like seeing heads lopped off, because they always feel that “but for the grace of God there go I”.   Whether it is you who are failing or one of your staff, then what should you do?  The issue usually lies with the work style of that person. What they are doing today is the product of what they have been doing for a long time and so they expect that to work. The issue often arises that when you shift companies or even industries, what worked before is no longer working.  As human beings we are sometimes so programed to keep repeating what we know and what we think will work, that we become blind to the reality.   In smaller companies and in gaishikei(foreign multinationals) the whole age and stage hierarchy gets mixed up as well. Suddenly you find your boss is younger than you or oiks, a woman or both!  For older men, this requires a level of flexibility that they have never had to find in their previous work life.  If the old dog can't learn some new tricks the gaishikei bosses will be quick to disappear them.   We have to develop higher levels of self awareness and understand that what we think is correct may not fit this situation and therefore need to find a new truth that works for us.  Smaller companies don't have other spots to move failing salespeople around to, so usually it is one last chance or imminent departure.   In the current market, where it is very hard to hire salespeople, especially English speaking salespeople, then a degree of patience is required on the boss's part.  Even if this person is not performing well enough, they are knowledgeable about the products and the clients and so have a base from which to improve.  Once the sale's problem child is fired, then we have the difficulty of finding a replacement at all or finding one who is actually better than the last.  In a tight market you tend to take what you can get and hope you can train them to be better.  Do you actually have the means of doing that though?  Who will train them?  What amount of onboard training will they get.  In small firms everything is lean so the training component tends to be Spartan.   If there are age and gender issues then the salesperson has to realise they have to suck it up and get used to this brave new world of work, which is not how it was back in the day of their long departed youth.  So what. Either learn to fit it or it will be out on your ear.  From the boss's side, at least giving people a chance to come back from the precipice fits in well with social values in Japan and the rest of the team will prefer that to casting them into oblivion.  The retention of your other performing team members is a key job of the boss in this 1.68 jobs for everyone looking world, in Japan.  People observe how you handle poor performance very minutely and forensically.   No easy answers anymore, to the poor performance conundrum in Japan.  The bad news is that is isn't going to ever improve, so we all have to navigate our way around these issues in more creative ways than before.  The failing salesperson has to reinvent themselves and we bosses have to do the same.  The market punishes those who are not able to move with the times and find the flexibility needed to thrive and survive. Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Creating Your Personal Style When Presenting   When we are writing, we can create a style of our own.  The way we use certain vocabulary, the phrasing we apply in our sentences, the types of subjects we tackle.  What about when we are speaking?  What would we like to be known for?  When people hear we are speaking, are they saying to themselves, “I need to attend that talk”?  The answer to can we create our own style is definitely “yes” and you don't have to look far for role models.   Simon Sinek launched a new career off the back of his now famous TED talk, emphasising the WHY behind what we are all doing.  Anthony Robbins is famous for his massive amounts of energy and self confidence when presenting.  Rowan Atkinson for his sly and dry wit. Brian Tracy for his very science based approach to his subjects.  Zig Ziglar for his storytelling. Locally here in Tokyo, Jesper Koll has a distinct use of casual dress, powerful rhetorical questions, data (and colour!) saturated slides and references to when Germany will win the next World Cup.    One aspect of building a following is getting numerous, sustained gigs over long periods of time, so that you become well known, like Jesper.  There are many economists in Japan, but few performers like Jesper. He can mix it up, combining dry economics with pizzazz, to make the whole event enlightening and entertaining at the same time.  I am a fan and I always attend.   What about the rest of us, who for many reasons, don't get that many chances to speak publically in a year?  How can we build a brand?  The first thing is to decide what you would like to become well known for?  Is it your sparling wit, your cutting analysis of complex problems, your supreme confidence on what you are saying, your expert authority, the quality of your data?   Generally speaking, we will have a relatively small number of content areas we will cover.  For example, I never hear Jesper speak about Japanese politics because that is outside his specialized knowledge.  In my case, I cover three topics – sales, leadership and presenting.  That is a bit unusual, but as we are a training company, it makes sense because these are our core areas of expert authority.  I write blogs, shoot video and speak on these subjects.  Here is a hint, you can do the same thing.  Your blogs can be thought leadership pieces or data heavy contributions or considered commentary on a subject.     Some friends say, unkindly, that I have a good head for podcasts, but I shoot my videos anyway. Audiences search out content in different places, so it makes sense to try and meet them where they are looking. Good head or nay, I choose to get my content out there.  It is often through our blogs and videos that we become known for expertise or interest in different subjects.  When people are looking for a speaker, they can see the quality of what we can do and this may inspire them to invite us to speak.  The impetus is on us though, to make it easy to be found.   If you are a witty type, then certainly be witty when speaking.  This is a natural extension of you and it is congruous with your presentation style.  If you are not witty, then spare the rest of us from failed attempts at stand up comedy, when speaking on business topics.  Cautionary note to Aussies and Brits – avoid all of those culture centric sardonic witticisms. They rarely translate to broader audiences.   If you have access to excellent research and quality data then make this something that you are known for.  Jesper is a well established economist in Japan, so he can easily access his own original research data and other worthy published sources.  When you go to his talk, you know you are going to get some new information. This draws a fan base of repeaters like me.  We can do the same, because in our different lines of business we come across golden nuggets of information, which are not so easily available to all the punters out there in audience land.  We can become known for the quality of our content.   The delivery is the key though.  Boring people are not attractive and won't build a following, no matter how good their information is.  So don't be boring!  Engage your audience when you speak, speak clearly and confidently.  I remember reading one of Anthony Robbins's books about how he sought out speaking spots, as many as possible, when he first started. He did this to short circuit the learning curve for himself.  I am sure many of those early speeches were horrible, but by getting the repetition done, he could find ways to become the speaker he is today.  We should do the same and grab every opportunity to speak however humble it may be.  We can improve and become better at our speaking craft and we should be committed to doing so.  The last thing the business world needs is another boring presenter! Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com   If you enjoy these articles, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our "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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.        

We Give Added Value. No You Don't!   The chocolate on the pillow, the fruit bowl or the wine bottle and glasses in your hotel room are often cited as examples of good service, adding extra value to the client. We may be doing something similar in our business, from our side for free, that we imagine is adding extra value to the buyer.  The idea is cute but the thinking is a bit fuzzy.  I am on a diet, so I don't appreciate the chocolate. I don't drink, so I can't enjoy the wine. Perhaps I have an allergy to certain fruit, so I can't eat the fruit provided.   Value is perceived value and also is only value when it corresponds with the interests and desires of the buyer.  There is the rub.  We need to know more about our buyer rather than just shotgun the possibilities.  We need to laser beam around their interests. In the hotel example, we have to book and often we do this on-line.  Our preferences could be plumbed right then.  Or we have to turn up and go through a check-in process. Our desires could be plumbed then and there.  Yes, it takes away the surprise factor, but an unhelpful surprise isn't adding very much value is it?   The secret is how can we know our buyers better, so that we can surprise them or at least delight them? Today, there is so much information floating around about us on the internet.  I have a Facebook account (in fact I have two), a LinkedIn account, an Instagram account and a Twitter account.  If you take a look at my Instagram account, I often post photos of empty wine bottle's labels and few short comments about what I thought of that particular wine.  So you could not only anticipate that I like wine, you could even provide me with one of my favourites.    My LinkedIn account has my profile and also over 1460 blogs, each with a Bio that talks about what I have done in my career and a bit about my background.  You would know that I do traditional Shitoryu Karate, so I have an interest in martial arts.  The hotel may have some martial arts themed movies in their line up.  A small note in my room pointing this out would be a simple, but nice touch and may get me to buy the movie.  “Welcome Greg, there is a great Jackie Chan movie playing in our movie lineup, which you may enjoy to watch while you stay here with us.  If there is anything else we can do to make your stay a truly great one, please let me know.  Jan (ext. 4077)”.  Now that is not hard to do, but it only works if you bother to know something about me.   Now to be fair, it is always easier to point out the shortcomings of other suppliers than our own. Hotels do their thing and we have our own clients and customers to serve.  What can we do for them?  The great book “Moments Of Truth” by Jan Carlzon, describes how he went through all the touch point that SAS Airlines had with their customers.  He and his team looked for ways to make sure at each touch point the experience was excellent.  We all need to be doing the same.     I have an open office plan layout, so I sit amongst the troops.  My desk is easy to find, it is the one with all the papers piled high upon it! Anyway, I can hear my team on the phone. Sometimes I can hear that the quality of the staff's voice toward the client isn't friendly enough.  They sound very “business like” but I want them to do better than that.  I want them to sound happy, upbeat and friendly, even if none of those things apply in reality on that day.  It doesn't matter if you kicked your toe this morning, you have to come across to the client as a positive, helpful friendly person.  This is especially so if the client is not sounding like any of those things themselves.   Another pet peeve of mine is when I call companies.  The style in Japan is to only say the company name and not your own name. So I call the number, ask for Suzuki san and get “This is Suzuki”.  How do I feel?  Am I really happy I got Suzuki san on the first go?  No. I feel guilty and bad because I didn't recognize Suzuki san's voice. I teach my staff to always answer the phone by stating the company name and then their own name and do it in a friendly voice.  This eliminates any potential embarrassment to the client of not remembering our voice when they call us and starts the conversation off on a positive note.  What is the cost of this?  Nothing. However, we have to be thinking about these things in the first place and in a busy life we can get stuck in doing things in a certain way without any time taken for reflection.   In a few days we will be having an internal systems audit.  We have many, many  systems in our company, but we have not really looked at them altogether in total, with a mind to making them more efficient or more client friendly.  I am sure when you look at your own business, you will realise “wow, we have a lot of procedures around here”.  Are they the best procedures, does technology now allow some of these to be automated, how is the client's impression of your company as a result of being on the receiving end of these procedures?   So break down the touch points with your buyers and look at where can you make this interaction more efficient and more friendly.  We accumulate systems without thinking about them as a whole.  By the way, as the boss, it is always a good practice to call yourself and see how it feels to a client when they call.  How do your staff stack up on making that great first impression. By exploring the details, we can come up with improvements for certain.  Once we get to that point then we can start brainstorming how we can add additional value to the buyer and exceed their expectations.    

Stress In Business In Japan   We know that stress is a killer.  Stress is something that sits there under the surface and it effects our health and our performance.  It runs deep and can well up in us.  We are not fixing it or diminishing it, we are just suffering it.  Japan can be stressful place in business.  Decisions take a long time and the client is never on your timetable.  You expected that payment, but it didn't turn up.  You discover that the invoice had to be in by the 15thof the month, but no one bothered to tell you that.  You are not getting paid and now cash flow issues arise.   Currency movements have now had a strong impact on your profitability and this wasn't factored in fully, when you did the business plan.  Regulatory barriers are making it hard to supply the market.  The buyers prefer the devil they know, to the angel they don't know, and that angel means you.  So how do you break into this market when nobody knows you? Then you have the problems of running your own team.  People are getting older and have all sorts of personal health issues or issues around taking care of their own parents.  You have recruit and retain issues with younger staff.  The list just goes on and on.   What do we do about these things?  There are many things blinding us to the real issues.  We are battling through a fog of confusion most of the time.  We have to cut through that and work out clearly just what is the problem.  Unless we can identify the problem, we have little hope in fixing it.  This isn't as easy as it sounds, because there could be many factors at play, but which are the really key ones?   The key here is to write them down.  Somehow the act of writing helps us to refine what we are thinking.  We need to get them into priority order.  That also forces a higher level of thinking about what we are facing.  Are there any threads or similarities?   Having sorted that out, we now have to dig a bit deeper and look at what are the causes behind these problems.  We can identify the symptoms, but what are the root causes of the troubles we are suffering? This again needs some analysis and often we are not operating with a lot of numbers we can rely on, to pick out the threads of the root causes. We often have to go on instinct and this is an imperfect science.   Having ascertained what is causing the problem, well what can we do about it?  We start digging deep for solutions, for ideas, for innovations which will provide us with a way forward.  This is a brainstorming process and the object should be to throw up as many ideas as possible.  We do this on the basis that even a crazy, impractical idea might be the trigger for a really great idea.  The excellent idea may not have emerged with out the stimulus of the crazy idea in the first place.   Having drawn out a broad range of possibilities we now need to whittle these down to the best ideas. We start evaluating the consequences of taking possible actions on these ideas.  We will distill the best solution in this way and now we have created a roadmap for ourselves.  Through action comes clarity and the solutions flow forth.  We need to get the battle plan into priority order for the execution piece.  We are trained to execute and once we get a plan together, we can start to move forward and get out of the hole we have been lodged in for some time.   Dale Carnegie wrote a whole book on this subject, called How To Stop Worrying And Start Living.  He was thinking that we needed to find a way through the worry stage and get out of that hole we have dug for ourselves.  If we don't do this we will see our stress mount up.  Once we find that way, we get on the front foot and we can exercise more control over our attitude and our circumstances.  This means we can start living in a full and complete way, because we have thrown off the yolk of stress and we are now tapping into our full potential.   If you find alcohol isn't doing it for you or you find yourself worrying while at yoga, maybe get the book and read it.  Today we know the connection between stress and illness and we can't take it lightly. The likelihood of our lives becoming less stressful in the future is slim, so we are better off finding ways to deal with it today. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 Rehearse Your Presentation   We have planned our talk, all we need do now is deliver it.  We have designed it, starting with the key punch line we will deliver in the first close of the speech, before we get to the Q & A.  This is the essence of our message and it is from this key idea that we have derived the key talking points we want to make, that will be the “chapters” of our speech.  In a thirty minute speech we will probably get to three to four of these, depending on the amount of depth we need to get into.  Finally, we develop the opening and then do the final close design for after the Q & A.  With this outline, we start to see if this will work in reality.   We have fleshed out the construct, have inserted stories into the talk to back up key points and have a first draft.  Now designing something on paper and then giving it out aloud are quite different beasts. We often find that when we run through the talk aloud, the logic of the order isn't strong enough or the points seem a bit unclear.  Unless there is some special reason to do so, we are not reading out the draft like a complete script.    We have sketched out speaking points, to which we will talk.  These are the bare bones of the talk and this is what we use for the initial run through.  When we do the speaking run through of the draft, we may find that additional or better points occur to us and this is when we do our editing.  Some parts may be weak in promoting our argument, so we need to spend a bit more time bolstering those.    As we are not reading it, we will find that we will vary the content in the delivery every time we give it in rehearsal and probably in reality.  Nothing at all wrong with that.  Only we know what we are going to say, so there are no content police to catch us out on any variations from the original.  It actually doesn't matter too much, because invariably we are refining and further polishing the speech.    So naturally this means we are running though the actual talk a number of times.  How many times?  No one answer here, but I would reckon we are talking probably between three to five times. If we have a thirty minute talk we have clocked up two and a half hours in rehearsal time quite easily.  Most busy businesspeople lack two and half hours for practice , so it is more likely to fall into the three times maximum category. Obviously the more often we give it before we bring it to an audience, the better but we have to be realistic about our time availability.  The three times realty is vastly better than the usual occurrence, which is zero rehearsal.   As we are practicing and further polishing the construct, content and quality of the stories we are going to be using, we will get a better sense of how long all of this will take. The usual no practice version of public speaking leaves most people with absolutely no clue as to how long they will need for the talk.  Most are more likely to overshoot than undershoot.  When we go too long, we run into trouble with the constraints of the occasion.  The organisers start subtly telling us to “get off”.    This practice run through is when we realize we have to prune our work of art and this is extremely difficult.  Some parts may need to be dropped altogether – oh no!  This can be painful because we love all of or children and can't bear to lose any of them.  Nevertheless, we have to be showing some tough love to our draft presentation, otherwise we can't get it finished in the time allotted .    We don't want to find ourselves in the position of having to shunt the end together in a whirlwind of download that baffles the audience and leaves everyone with the impression that we are so disorganized, we can't manage to put together a thirty minute talk.   If we have the time and resources, having others listen to our speech is good but this is often difficult. By the way, limit them to good/better feedback, because otherwise they will straight to negative critique and you won't like that at all.  If we can't do that, then videoing the talk so we can see ourselves is very good. All you need is your phone or ipad and a holder thingy attached to a tripod and you are in business and no film crew required.  If that can't be done then use the voice memo on your phone to play back how it sounds.    When I am traveling to give talks, I find the Hotel room with the lights out allows the windows in the room to become a mirror and I can see myself pontificating, gesturing, pausing and delivering with aplomb.     Time is the killer when it comes to rehearsing.  Remember the trade off though – 90 minutes of your time, versus eternal damnation as a hapless and hopeless presenter, who has just publically incinerated their personal and company brands. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Worry In Business In Japan   There are so many things we have to worry about in business. Do we have enough cash flow to pay the bills, will we have enough left over to get to the end of the next month.  Can we meet salary, do we have enough to pay our taxes, can we meet our supplier's payment invoice requests.  The one thing that will bring a business down and eliminate it is not enough cash flow.  Once that becomes insufficient it is game over.  So we need to preserve cash and that means you need a really accurate tracking system.  You do not want any nasty surprises about cash flow.   We worry about our clients mix.  Do we have the right balance of those we are farming, that is to say the regular buyers of our products or services.  They may not grow much but they are regular and sound repeat business.  We also need new clients though to replace the ones we lose and to expand the business or we need existing clients to spend more with us. This is the gross revenue side of the business.  As we all know, you only need a couple of consecutive months of poor revenue flows to have cash flow problems, so the regular sources of business are very important.   Then there is expenditure side of things.  We need to keep our fixed costs conservative, although that is not so easy in Japan. We want to see our variable costs/fixed costs ratio moving in the right direction.   Another area of prominence at the moment is retaining staff.  We are seeing a drying up of hires in Japan, as the population decline makes it harder and harder to hire new people.  If someone leaves, you are looking down the barrel of 18 months before you can recruit and train the replacement to get up to the speed of the person who left.  This means the retain part of our companies activities becomes very important.   The younger generation are becoming more aware that they are in demand and they unlike their parents, can move from job to job, with no stigma attached.  The grass always looks greener on the other side to them and so they will up and be moving to your competitor, unless they are properly managed. They are the first free agent era of workers in Japan.  This has never happened before, this is all new and there is no road map on how to navigate our way through these societal changes.    Many of them have a very starry eye view of work and so when they start working for a firm they realise this isn't as glamorous as imagined, in fact a lot of what they have to do is boring and the boss isn't all that great either.  If they walk out they have taken all your training with them to a competitor. You have just lost your investment in them, plus they are very hard to replace, so you could be short of staff for some time.   The experienced workers are getting older as people want to keep on working and because we want them to keep on working.  As they get older they have various health issues so they can't make it to work some days as they are sick.  They also face the health issues of their parents.  They have to take them to hospital or they need to stay at home some days to take care of them.  All of this is dislocating the work flow, but this is the new reality and we have to be geared up for dealing with it.  This means we need to have a lot more flexibility than before about work hours, working from home, giving people enough sick leave and recreation time to recover.   So what do we do about dealing with all this worry. Here are a few ideas to adopt to get on top of all of this.  Firstly, get clarity about what is the real problem.  When are worried we have a lot of things flying around in our brain.  We tend to be unable to get focus.  We need to stop that.  So call it out.  What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?  Name it, isolate it, focus on it.  This gives us a clear target, gives us clarity around the problem.  Next accept that it will happen.  Don't go into denial or delusion.  Expect this will hit and hit hard. Face it.  Having done that, now work on what you can do to minimize the damage.  This helps us to move to a positive mindset around the fix rather than the problem. All of that mental white out we were facing lifts and we see a way forward, this gives us hope and improves our spirit and motivation.   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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Respect In Business In Japan   Respect in Japan may be more similar to concepts in European countries rather than new world countries like the USA, Canada or Australia.  Age and stage probably carry more weight in older civilisations than in these bold new upstarts.  In Japan, a low ranking minion in a big company can have more status than the President of a small company.  The President will show a lot more respect than what we would associate with the status of the person working for the bigger player.  The individual has position power, purely on the basis of the company name. This is especially the case when the smaller company is a supplier.  The small company President will be very differential to everyone in the buyer team, no matter their rank.   Inside large companies there are many aspects of the power relationship that spill outside of the corporate headquarters.  Staff are living in subsidized company housing and there is a complete hierarchy amongst the wives based on their husband's rank.  Often the section head's wife will be the Queen Bee bossing the other wives around.  I guess this is probably a bit like the military in many countries, where families live on base.  Rank and power are institutionalised in Japan and we should understand that, when we are doing business here.   Position power in Japan is often disconnected from actual personal capability.  The higher ranked person may in fact not be particularly competent, but they are shown respect anyway.  In a country where you are promoted on the basis of age and stage rather than performance, this is bound to happen.  In societies which have a performance basis for moving up through the ranks, then age counts for little in terms of respect.  Actually, in youth culture societies like my own Australia, age is seen as a minus. Only the young know anything and the elderly are not given much respect or credence.  Japan is the exact opposite.   In Japan the position is respected.  Even if you are not shooting the lights out in performance terms, people will still show respect because of the position you hold.  In our cultures, the respect is shown for personal ability rather than age or stage.  The Japanese language also has a form of polite honorific language which is carefully calibrated to handle all of these different levels of status.  You get that wrong and there will be trouble.    When I was studying here in Japan the first time in 1979, I was talking with an older lady who was a Professor at my university.  I wasn't using the correct keigoor polite language to respect her status above mine.  Actually at that time, I was happy to be able to string a sentence together in Japanese.  How did I know I wasn't using the correct keigo?  The way she replied to me, while absolutely correct, was dripping with ice and her body language joined in, to school me on my impertinence.  I knew I had said something the wrong way, even if I wasn't quite sure just what that was.   In business, Japanese buyers don't expect you to have any Japanese, so if you try and you are not using the correct honorifics, they won't be mortally offended like my good Professor.  The truncation of ability and status in Japan means you have to keep your wits about you. If you are in a meeting and there are some younger bright sparks there and they are really engaging with you, don't ignore the older people sitting there saying very little. They will be senior, respected and will be consulted.  You can't ignore them thinking you have the ear of the decision makers.  Especially be careful of giving the fluent English speakers too much credence.  They are seen as language technicians by the hierarchy and often have no decision making power at all.   If you are going to a meeting with the client, be respectful toward the receptionist.  In the hierarchy between your two companies, she may rank above you.  The young woman, and in Japan it is usually a young woman, who brings in the coffee or tea to the meeting room is another one you should show respect to.  Do not imagine that you are some big shot from overseas, who is pretty important and you can ignore the underlings like you do at home. In Japan, and actually everywhere, show respect for people doing their job, regardless of their rank and what you perceive as their status power.  You will do better here if you do, because it is noticed.   Longevity is respected in Japan, so someone who has spent their whole life devoted to the company is shown respect regardless of how capable they may be.  By contrast in our cases, we are zigging and zagging our way up the ladder, trying to get to the big job.  In the West, if you spend longer than five years with a company, the question is raised - what is wrong with you?  People wonder if you are a dud.  If you had any ability you would have moved to a higher position in another company by now.    Not the case in Japan. If you mention you have been with the same company for many, many years that will be seen in Japan as a good thing, as a positive.  You have been reliable, steadfast, consistent and loyal in the Japanese world view. Like Europe, craftsmanship is respected in Japan.  Someone doing the same thing for decades is respected as a master of their trade, a skilled expert.  If you have spent many years with that same company certainly mention it, it will enhance your status in the buyer's eye.  Japan is highly risk averse and salespeople who come across as solid, reliable, predictable and consistent are going to be more highly evaluated.  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 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.                

Rhetorical Questions When Presenting   Are we talking at people, to people or with people when we are presenting?  The “talking at” part is easy to pick.  There is no attempt at rapport building with the audience.  No stories and lot and lots of data dump going on. Technical experts love this type of presentation, because they can spend all the time sharing the data.  Because they are an “expert” then they feel self justified to tell people stuff.  They don't put much value on this presenting lark, because it is hardly a serious activity and people are here for the information – right?  “All style, no substance” being the ultimate putdown of skilled presenters by this techie crowd.  Detail is layered upon detail and density is never thought to be an issue. Especially when it comes to their slides, which are so dense, as to be impenetrable. Jargon is preferred too because that cuts down the need for explaining what you are talking about and overall, less words are needed.  The point is not to persuade anyone but to hammer them with detail.   The “speak to people” presenters are more capable of building rapport.  They are keen to get their message across and are careful about how they do that.  They do try to engage with their audience.  They think about the slide design to make sure it is it sharp looking yet easy to understand. They avoid jargon because they know it breaks the audience into an “us” and “them” divide.  They are also aware that it also can come across as pretentious and somewhat condescending.   They are conscious they are up on stage and they want to impart valuable knowledge to the audience.   The “speak with” presenters take things further.  They get there early and try to meet the participants as they come in.  They engage with them and find out their interests and motivations for joining this talk.  They take some of these conversations into their talks and reference the people they have been chatting with earlier.  “Suzuki san made an excellent point to me earlier about ….” They know by doing this they can dispense with that mental barrier between those doing the speaking and those doing the listening. The audience and speaker have become one.  They try to get the audience physically involved by asking them to raise their hands in response to their questions.    The “speak with” presenter does all of these things of the “speak to” presenter and more.  They know that if they speak in a conversational tone this makes it easier to draw the audience in.  They use their eye contact to connect with members of their audience, so that they feel they are almost having a private conversation.  They wrap their key points up in stories to make them easier to remember and to understand on the first telling.  Where possible, they try to make those stories their own personal experience.  They are adding a degree of authenticity and vulnerability, without it becoming too much. They know where to draw the line to make the point, without the delivery becoming too clingy.   They use a mix of rhetorical questions and real questions.  A rhetorical question is posed not for the purpose of extracting an answer, but to grab the attention of the audience.  We know that audience concentration spans are becoming shorter and shorter.  Sometimes we are being ignored and we need to corral everyone mentally back into the room. The beauty of a rhetorical question is that the audience are not quite sure if they are required to come up with a response, so it creates a bit of tension in the room.  This tension is enough to grab their attention.  Real questions can't be used too often, as the act becomes tedious and creates a feeling of “ I am being manipulated” in the audience. Rhetorical questions however can be used quite a bit more, because there is no response required.  It helps us to guide the audience's thinking along a glide path of our choosing, because we control both the context and the direction of the discussion.  Framing the questions frames the debate.   So if you see your audience flagging, getting distracted or surreptitiously whipping out their phones under the desks, then hit them right between the eyes with a rhetorical question to get their full attention again.  In the battle for audience attention, it is a zero sum game.  Either they are listening to what we have to say or they are escaping from us.  We need powerful weapons to keep them focused on us and not the myriad distractions on offer. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Nemawashi Or Groundwork In Business In Japan   Nemawashi is a very important word in Japanese.  It is made up of two words “ne” which means root and “mawashi” which means to wrap around. Or wrapping up the root. A good translation however is “groundwork”, usually associated with a decision or a meeting.  In Japan they can move 15-20 meters trees from one location to another.  They dig down, cut the tap root, bind up the root ball, get a big crane, put the whole tree on a truck and transplant it to another place.  Quite amazing.   That nemawashi represents preparation before the tree gets moved.  In business the same things apply.  We want a certain decision to be taken so we prepare to influence the direction that decision will take.  We might be dealing with a client or within our company.  Japan doesn't leave anything to chance.  Prior to the meeting, you meet with the other people who are going to attend the meeting and you try to get their agreement with what you propose.  In this way, the decision is taken before anyone gets in the room.  The meeting itself is just there to formally approve what has been decided beforehand.   In a Western context, we would make the decision in the room.  Everyone would turn up expecting that there will a discussion, some debate and final decision will be reached during that meeting.  In the Japanese case, they will already have made the decision, so if you want to influence the decision you have to start early. It is no good leaving it until the meeting itself, because that will be too late and the decision will have already been taken.   If it is a client company, you need to work with your internal champion to get the decision makers to agree with what you want to happen.  Usually the decision you want is that the client uses your product or service. As an outsider you won't be in the meeting, but you have to help your champion to be persuasive with everyone when doing the groundwork or nemawashi.   Give them the data, the evidence, the testimonials, whatever it takes to make the case solid when presenting it to the people who will be in the meeting. Don't leave it too late, because it takes time to get around everyone and have those discussions before the meeting is held.   Are the other people in the meeting who want a different decision or outcome doing their own nemawashi? Yes, absolutely they are. This is why you have to prepare your champion to be effective making the argument in your favour.  They can get the meetings, but they need your help to be persuasive.  The quality of the preparation has a big impact on the final result of course.  You need to get them to nominate who is in the meeting and get an idea of what will encourage them to be in agreement with the decision you want. Your champion should have a game plan for each person and that should be put together with your help.   If you understand nemawashi represents the idea of preparation, then be well prepared.  As pointed out, don't leave this process to the last moment. You need to give yourself time to allow the nemawashi system to work in your favour.  You also need to anticipate the arguments of the other side and head those arguments off at the pass.  You are working through your champion, so the preparation becomes even more important in these cases.  Does it mean you will always prevail.  No, you will win some and lose some, but you will place yourself in the best possible situation to get a win.  If you had no idea about nemawashi you can probably begin to understand why the decision you wanted went against you.  From now on though become part of the Japanese decision-making process and exert influence from within.   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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.            

Gaining Buyer Trust When Doing Business In Japan Trust is a big issue in Japan. The people we deal with in companies are salaried employees, who have probably been with that same company their whole career.  There is an escalator system here that carries you upward over the many years of your career.  “Steady as she goes” is the mantra.  They are primarily interested in gradually moving up inside the firm by making no mistakes. The best way of not making a mistake is to do nothing new or risky.  Their aversion to risk precludes trying anything that might have a negative impact, even at the expense of denying the company significant business opportunities. There is little reward inside companies in Japan for risk taking and a big downside if things go wrong.  Everyone knows this, so everyone operates the same way – very cautiously. So when we approach a Japanese company, we have to think about how we can take away the risk for the individual we are dealing with. It might be testimonials from happy customers, statistical evidence, money back guarantees, warranties, escape clauses, etc.  This timid buyer attitude toward doing new things is summed up by the saying that Japanese buyers "prefer the devil they know to the angel they don't know". By definition you are the angel they don't know, because you are offering a new product or service or an alternative to what they are using now. And you are foreign. In the distribution system in Japan, there is a very complex food chain to work through. There are many layers and if you don't deliver, as you said you would, when you said you would, you endanger the whole interlocking food chain. Space is at a premium here, so there are not the massive warehouses full of inventory being held, as maybe we see in other more spacious countries.  Everyone is trying to get by with as little inventory on hand as possible, but with the backing of a stock supply system that is totally reliable and highly efficient.  No Japanese company want to see their distribution system set on fire by a new player, they don't know well. The people they are dealing with now, whom you wish to supplant, have shown they can supply when needed and all present and correct each time.  Therefore buyers are very conservative about introducing a new, untested supplier.  You imagine you have a strong price point advantage, which will tip the scales in your favour and help you to muscle your way into the market.  Not always true, because price is only one point of comparison being made by buyers, when weighting alternatives.  For example, when you are competing in the marketplace with the big Japanese trading companies, they take the risk away by providing very long payment terms. They will have a much higher price than what you can supply, but their offer is less risky. The company can land the product, sell it and then pay the trading company later. Your discounted price requiring immediate payment can't compete with that risk free arrangement.  You are in a hurry to get the Japan business going.  There is a lot of expectation back at your HQ and you are the one designated to make this happen.  Sadly, deals rarely get done in one meeting in Japan, so expect multiple meetings. That may mean multiple trips to Japan if you are not based here. Bosses back home don't get that. “What do you mean you didn't do a deal while you were in Japan?  You just wasted the firm's monies on that trip, with no result, except for some nice sushi meals you had while you were there swanning around on the company's dime”.  The bosses may not get it, but things take a lot longer here, because companies have to gain consensus internally, about making a change to their supply arrangements. They are risk averse remember and doing nothing is the safest course of action.  It might take years in fact, before the buyer is comfortable to give you a try.  This happens in my own training business here all the time. Companies we met four years ago, finally send one person to trial the training. It can drive you nuts, but this is how it is and if you want to play, then you have to pay. Western companies being driven by quarterly earnings and the stock price, have a hard time with Japanese long play timeframes.   Gaining trust is done step by step.  Ask for a small piece of their business to show your credentials.  Make it as low risk as possible.  They can test you and few times and then if they like what they see they can increase the volumes.  That is a much better proposition than an all or nothing approach of we went for it but we didn't get the order we wanted.  You may not like it or agree with it, but slow and steady does win the race in Japan.  And nobody cares what you think sunshine. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.      

Powerpoint Free Presentations   Visuals on a screen are very powerful communication tools when presenting.  Being able to show graphs can really drive home the point. If numbers are not so easy to follow or accessible, then proportion differences, trend lines, bars, pies, colours can be persuasive.   Explaining complex sequences with diagrams is good too.  This makes the potentially confusing more accessible.  Photos are really great for presentations.  “One picture is worth a thousand words” was used in an advertisement way back in 1918 in San Antonio Texas, although the base idea has been around for centuries.  Images are powerful communicators.  Just the image by itself or with one word, or a line of text are also spicing up the speakers communication effort.   The problem is everyone is doing it.  We all have our power point deck ready to go when we present.  We are not differentiating ourselves from other presenters.  Often the slides on screen don't actually add much to the presentation either.  There is a herd mentality going on here.  They say in banking, that it is acceptable to fail conventionally, but not by doing exotic stuff.  The same in presenting.  It is fine to be boring and dull, as long as you follow the railway track of what ever other presenter is doing.  If that boring shtick suits you, then keep doing that.  By the way, let me know how it is working out for you.   If you want to stand out amongst the average, the Lilliputians of Presenting, the nondescript and forgettable don't always go for the slide deck.  Mix it up a bit.  I saw Howard Schulz of Starbucks fame, give a presentation in Tokyo.  He had one slide.  That was the Starbucks logo.  He was able to talk with just that image in the background and he kept the interest of the crowd.  He spoke about something he knows a lot about – his company.  We actually know a lot about our subject matter too and we can do it with out any slides.   One downside of slides is that it seeps the audience attention away from the speaker.  We are shifting our eyes away from the speaker to what is on the screen.  This is often compounded as an error, by some helpful “know nothing” who switches the lights off at the same time.  Now the screen has won all the attention because the speaker has disappeared into the darkness, the void, and only their voice is apparent like some pre-recorded content for the light show.  The entire repertoire of the facial expressions and body language available to the speaker have been neutralised.   The screen based presentations have the advantage of being milestones and markers along which the presentation can flow.  You don't have to remember what comes next, because all you have to do is push a button. This is a quite handy.  You can put something up on screen and talk to the point and this flow will progress logically and smoothly.  When you are free-forming, you are up on the high wire and have no net.  We have to remember though that only we know the order.  If we mess it up and put one bit in the wrong place only we will know. The audience will be oblivious for the most part and we can just blatantly carry on, as if nothing happened. So the downside is not that great.   You can still keep your order by writing out your speech, as a full speech or as points.  This is your navigation to keep the speech on track. The key is not to read it out to the audience.  Talk to the points instead.  We want our eyes fixed on the audience members throughout. That means eliminating any and all distractions.  Ideally, we don't want our eyes dropping to glance at a page and then having to look up again.  It is not the end of the world if that happens, as long as you keep the glancing bit quick.  Better to think in silence with your chin up and looking at your audience, than with your head down scanning a piece of paper on the rostrum.   So save yourself a lot of time worrying about the finer points of slide deck creation and instead concentrate on the key messages you want to get across.  Also when delivering with no bright screen in play, the audience has nowhere to go, but to look at you.  Make sure you return the compliment by looking at them throughout the talk.  Eye contact, eye contact, eye contact is the rule. Giving an audience a change from the usual makes you memorable.  By contrast, you seem quite at ease up there on the high wire.  The audience members know they can't do that, so the respect factor for you goes right up.  Your talent and skill as a speaker stands out more powerfully and the contrast with the punters out there, chained to their slide deck, becomes more pungent. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.  

Getting Change In Business In Japan   Getting change anywhere is a difficult process, but Japan is a special case.  Often in business, we represent the change.  We are the potential new supplier and that means a change. They have been doing business with someone else and we want them to stop doing that and do business with us instead. There are many currents underpinning Japanese culture and its resistance to change. I have been training in traditional Japanese karate for 46 years and part of that process is learning set sequences called kata.  These are fixed moves that cannot be varied in any way.  There is one way to do the movement and our job is to replicate that same movement thousands of times until we have perfected it.  There is no possibility of doing it a different way - in other words no change is possible.    This is a powerful metaphor for many things in Japan where there is only one way of doing things and it cannot be varied.  This is prime change resistance in action.  I find this at home too.  My wife is Japanese and there are certain things which must be done a certain way. Being an Aussie I am pretty flexible on trying to do things in a different way, but she brooks no variation.  There is a certain way specific things must be done and that it is that.   This in the culture and here you are trying to break into the market.  By definition you are a change and there is a change resistance already here in the culture to start off with.  Anything that represents a change for a company has to get signed off by all of the stakeholders.  This is the famous ringi seidosystem of everyone applying their chop to the piece of paper to show they are in agreement.   There will more resistance to change, than enthusiasm for something better.  Part of this issue is no one wants to take responsibility if problems arise, so the safest path is to say "no".  Hence, a change in suppliers is not easy here. Risk aversion means they have worked out who is the most reliable and consistent partner in their supplier relationship.  They are the low risk option, they have track record, they have built credibility over a long time.    You however are new. Maybe you are reliable maybe you are not.  Who knows, so no change is a better path forward for people who don't want to be accountable. So we have to come up with ways to eliminate or mitigate the risk.  in our case as a training company we only ask one question - are you satisfied?  If the answer is no, then no debate, no haggling, the training is free and there is no cost to the company apart from the time they have invested.    We do this because we have to make it easy for the line manager or the HR managers to give us a chance to become a new supplier of training services to this company.  What about your case?  What can you do to take away the risk of doing business with you? Remember we are dealing with individuals who are super deep in their comfort zone.  They have reduced risk in all aspects of their life.  They are seeking the maximum efficiency, at the lowest cost and the fastest speed.    I am the same.  I get up at the same time, catch the same train to work, choose the same carriage because it will be the closest to the stairs or escalator at the other end.  I eat in the same twenty restaurants within a kilometer of the my office.  This comfort zone is a resister to change. It encourages us to keep doing the same things over and over.  We are doing the same thing in business - the fastest cheapest, safest way of doing things. That refinement makes it hard to break in when you are the Angel they don't know.  The opportunity cost of continuing with the same supplier, the Devil they know, and not gaining from a new supplier is not easily considered.    The individuals we are dealing with are worried about themselves and not getting any trouble. So the same things get done the same way with the same results.  This is just fine with them. Underperformance won't get you fired here, mistakes can.  We are new, we are a comfort zone expander, a pattern disruptor and so we meet resistance.    To persuade the company that we are the better option, all risks considered means we have to be working on more than just our champion inside the company.  There are so many people who can say no, we need to make sure we are working on them too.    It is possible to have change here, because we do get new clients.  It just takes a long time and is difficult.  It is not uncommon to create a new client we met four years, three years, two years ago.  We have been in business for 106 years, 55 years in Japan, but potential new clients still want to test us with a small amount of training first.  Japan needs patience and extended time frames, if you want to overcome the inherent resistance to 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 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Customer Service When Doing Business In Japan   Japan is probably the leading country in the world for customer service.  These are seriously picky, picky consumers here.  If you are dealing with consumers then you had better have your quality act together.  They will not tolerate poor quality.   Their expectations are extremely high and they will complain vigorously if those standards are not being met.    It is often hard to understand.  I grew up in Queensland in Australia and it is famous as a production center for tropical fruit, like mangoes.  I planted and grew a mango tree in my yard and it produced beautiful mangoes.  What you would pay for an entire box of mangoes is what you will pay here for one Miyazaki mango.  But that Miyazaki mango will be perfect, absolutely perfect.  No blemishes, no marks, perfect symmetry and the taste is sublime.  That coming from a proud native Queenslander is high praise, I can assure you.   Now in Japan they will pay for quality and this is the difference.  In the rest of the world people are more concerned with volume. In Australia, they would rather have the box at that price point, than the single perfect mango.  So our concepts about what constitutes quality are fundamentally different.    Remember that most Japanese rent or own their very small apartment, so they can't actually acquire lots of stuff, because there is no place to put it.  So you want to have the best of what you can afford, given the space limitations.  And there are few parks or sporting facilities, so they have selected two major leisure activities - eating and shopping.  They are well prepared to spend money on both.  They are quality conscious and demanding as a result.  So the consumer quality expectation transfers across to service provision as well.  Service in hotels and restaurants must be conducted at a high level.    If you are in the B2B area, then there are so many layers of distribution that the relationship between the layers become very important.  They don't hold a lot of stock each so the replenish part must be working well.  Everything is “just in time”, like the Toyota system of car production.  If you delay delivery then you are disrupting the whole system and everyone will complain vigorously up the food chain until it gets to you.  You don't want that.  The mutual dependencies here work because everyone understands the importance of quality and timeliness.   The level of quality provision is so high that the buyer expects to receive more than they are paying for.  They expect to be getting advice, very fast follow-up, that you be available all the time to answer their questions, etc.  So speed of reply to emails and phone calls become more important.  In many countries if you send an email and you don't get answer until the next day or the one after, most people are okay with that.  In Japan if they send an email to me in the morning and there is no reply, they are ringing me to find out the information.  This is again that interconnectivity phenomenon.  Everyone has promised something to someone else down the food chain. They have to keep reporting that everything is on track.  In this regard Japanese buyers have an insatiable appetite for information and reporting.    Ironically when they come to make a decision, they take an age to get there.  Things drag out interminably, nothing seems to be happening, time passes, we grow old and then suddenly the decision is reached and all hell breaks loose. Now everyone wants everything yesterday and they expect you to provide that level of service.  We tend to be "less is more" in the West and Japan is "more is better".   They like to keep in touch to a degree we can't imagine.  For example, we get gifts for Oseibo at the end of the year, gifts for Ochugen during the middle of the year. They send me X'mas cards, new year cards, start of summer cards.  They do this to keep in touch and remind you that they are there to serve you.  I am expected to be doing the same to my buyers as well.    People will drop in unannounced without an appointment.  One of my staff will come to me and say so and so is here to see you.  I think to myself “did I forget an appointment”, so I check my diary and there is no appointment.  They are just dropping by to say high and remind me that they are here to serve me.  They expect this as well from me with my buyers. This is not how we do business in the West, so it is quite a different expectation here about what it means to have a business relationship.  Japan sees Western business as "dry" and they prefer "wet".  This is the contrast between efficiency and empathy in business.  They are higher on the importance of EQ than they are on the IQ.    This is all very time demanding in a time poor world.  But that is the expectation and you have to understand the point.  You cannot over communicate with Japanese companies. Their tolerance for communication is very much higher than ours.    If you create a problem for the buyer you better get down there with a gift and a deep bow of apology. When you are trying to break into the market it is tough because you are fighting against all of these established relationships which have stood the test of time and which have demonstrated their reliability and trustworthiness.  You turn up with your airy charm and a bunch of promises.  If you screw it up, you are out sunshine. There are very few second chances in Japan for anyone - domestic or international.  On the other hand once you get in and demonstrate you are reliable then, they tend to keep using you going forward. How To Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan   How much is enough data in a presentation?  How much is too much?  Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information.  Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness.  And you just can't bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena.  You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process.  You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.   Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them.  They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another.  The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks.  Are we self aware about what we are doing?  No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better.  We can't thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation.    We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want.  There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade.  The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button.  This is because the presenter hasn't realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive.  Data, data, data just doesn't work though   At the end of the session the audience is shredded.  They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much.  They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages.  They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”.  Was this a success?  Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking?  Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?   So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out.  We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench.  We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message.  We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it.    We need a good structure to carry the presentation.  A blockbuster opening to grab attention.  A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted.  Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.   We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious.  We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.   We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it.  That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore.  But this is often what we do, when we lead with data.  Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby!  You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic.  We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail.  Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good.  Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join! 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan   How much is enough data in a presentation?  How much is too much?  Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information.  Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness.  And you just can't bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena.  You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process.  You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.   Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them.  They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another.  The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks.  Are we self aware about what we are doing?  No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better.  We can't thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation.    We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want.  There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade.  The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button.  This is because the presenter hasn't realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive.  Data, data, data just doesn't work though   At the end of the session the audience is shredded.  They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much.  They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages.  They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”.  Was this a success?  Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking?  Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?   So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out.  We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench.  We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message.  We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it.    We need a good structure to carry the presentation.  A blockbuster opening to grab attention.  A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted.  Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.   We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious.  We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.   We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it.  That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore.  But this is often what we do, when we lead with data.  Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby!  You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic.  We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail.  Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good.  Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join! 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.  

Recruiting Staff In Business In Japan Demographics are accentuating a talent shortage in Japan.  The supply of young people has halved over the last twenty years and is on track to halve again between now and 2060.  The number of young Japanese studying overseas peaked pre-Lehman Shock in the low 80,000s a year.  It dropped down to low 50,000s and has crawled back up to around 60,000 going overseas to study each year.   The flavor of their overseas experience has also changed.  Many more are going for short stays, so their level of English isn't as good and their cultural immersion isn't as deep.  This is a function of cost and also the greater concerns for personal safety in a world where terrorists roam major cities, killing innocents without warning.  This trend to go abroad less and for shorter periods is ironic because the minds of the corporate titans in Japan are now more focused globally.  Their companies  need young Japanese staff who can handle the world beyond the seas surrounding Japan. They know that they have to acquire businesses and expand in markets offshore to survive the consumer population decline.  They have to head outward. Matrix organisations have Japanese staff here leading foreign staff scattered around the world. The opposite is true too. Japanese staff here are reporting to foreign bosses located overseas.  This is new.  In the old days it was a simple model of the Japanese expat disappearing for five year to be forgotten by everyone and then HR wondering what to do with them, now they are back and pushing them into some nondescript job.  The levels of English being produced by the educational system in Japan is underwhelming.  You really have to wonder how long this is going to take to be fixed?  The system is failing young people and making sure they hate having to learn English, instead of helping them gain a facility with the language.  The Government is introducing English earlier into the system, now starting in elementary school and they are bringing in more foreign native speakers to work in the schools.  This is all good, but the benefits of this won't be seen until we have all retired from business and are on the links playing golf everyday. This is a crazy world where English capability is needed right now at the precise point that the young are opting to stay in Japan and not study overseas.  It is hard to argue with their logic, the food is seriously excellent here, there are no guns, no terrorists and no major drug problem. Everything is pretty comfortable here.  I like it and so do all the youth of this country.  Why put yourself under the pressure of dealing with foreigners with your poor English?  Better to stay here in Nippon and relax. The recruiting companies are having a field day, charging 35% plus to locate new staff for you.  If you are a mega corporation then this is probably a fleabite.  If you are a small–medium operation this looms large.  For example, a $100,000 a year position will cost you $35,000 to place. That number will get your attention every time.  When you include the social insurance and other costs associated with employing staff you add another 15% to that first year cost, which will total not $100,000 but $150,000. There are job boards, and there are recruiter/job board combinations, but regardless, none of this is cheap. In Japan young people are encouraged by their families to join very large corporates.  This seems a safe and stable selection process.  Getting them to quit their current job and come and work for us runs into opposition from their parents and even the spouse's parents as well.  If you are a major brand it might be acceptable.  If you are a small medium sized company they have never heard of, it seems risky. Foreign corporates might be angels, but in Japan everyone prefers the devil they know instead. So to encourage people to join us we must accentuate our flexibility.  Not requiring people to work overtime or stay until 11.00pm at night is well regarded. We can be more flexible than the big Japanese corporations.   Usually, there will be a base and bonus arrangement.  In the West the bonuses are performance based.  The bonuses in Japan are paid in summer and winter and are more a delayed salary payment than a true bonus.   Western companies can pay for performance though and this is a good differentiator.  In Japanese companies everyone gets paid the same and move up through the ranks together, regardless of individual performance.  It is more revolving around when you entered the company, how old you are, what rank you hold, etc.  It is very formulistic and everyone moves up together in lockstep.  So to get people to come on board you need to pay people more to compensate the risk of joining you.  And English speakers, the declining resource, come at an additional premium. One group which may become more important will be the Dai Ni Shin Sotsu group.   These are young people in their mid to late twenties who want to change their companies.  The percentage is running in the low thirties at the moment but it has been in the mid forties in the recent past. They have spent around 4 years with the company, have been trained by them and then they walk out the door.  They are hard and expensive to replace.  So we really need to work diligently at keeping the new recruits inside the company.  This is the skill of the leader and if they don't have the skills, then you will see your good people walk out the door.  This means your middle managers are going to be critical to the equation, when it comes to retaining the people you have spent some much time and treasure recruiting. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.  

Getting Paid In Business In Japan Nothing happens in commerce without a sale being made. Great to know that, but what about being paid for the sale? Now, in some countries this can be an issue.  We find ourselves swimming with sharks who are transactional in their thinking and have no hesitation in ripping us off.  Fortunately, Japan isn't in that category.   We have rule of law here in Japan, plus a very healthy moral code.  Japanese people abide by the law, they line up nicely for trains and buses, there is hardly any road rage, they consider others and they don't take other people's belongings.  You are not going to get your bag or phone stolen by some expert Japanese gang who have the lift sequence down pat.   You see those videos from foreign countries, where they work as team, one distracts you, one lifts the bag off your shoulder, one then receives the bag and makes off with it, one scouts for the constabulary. This isn't a fear here in Japan. If you drop your wallet, the chances are the wallet, cash and credit cards etc., are all intact at a police box because it has been handed in.  I have had that experience.  Or you might find it sitting on a ledge, in a prominent position so you can easily find it when you go looking, after discovering you have misplaced it. I dropped some a key holder near my house and sure enough, even a few days later it was still sitting there for me to find. Now this is not a nation of 127 million saints.  Yes there are yakuza, petty criminals, housebreakers, con men and other assorted scoundrels operating here.  However, it is a lot better than most other places and this spills over into the way business is conducted. We have been operating our business now for ten years and have never had a bad debt.  You will get paid in Japan, unless you are particularly unlucky. The issue here isn't so much about getting paid, as it is about when you get paid.  Cash flow is always of strong interest to small and medium sized companies and the timing can be crucial at different times.  If sales haven't been all that great and the expenses are as high as ever, not getting the payment when you expect it, can put pressure on the cash flow.  Run out of cash and you are out of business pretty promptly.  Reputation for reliability in business is very important here. Lose that and people won't work with you ever again.  You are toast. Counter intuitively, the worst payers in Japan are the biggest players.  The giant multi-nationals have clever CFOs who have worked out they can screw the small guys and make them wait for 60 days or more before they have to pay them.  This is might against right and you have to take it, if your want to do business with them.  We take it. Japanese major corporates pay you in thirty days for the most part.  Japanese domestic companies sometimes have tricky conditions though.  If your invoice isn't received by the 12thor the 15th of the month, then it won't get paid until the end of the next month.  Or they will not accept an invoice, until the goods or services have been received, so no payment in advance possibility.  Or they find a minor mistake in the way you have captured the company name or the name of the person on the invoice is wrong and the accounting department won't accept the invoice.  You have to re-issue it and the whole payment process timings starts from that date.  Very picky at times, but all of this adds up to delays around when you get the money. So when starting a business relationship with a buyer you have to ask the key questions: do you have any protocols about advance versus subsequent payment; do you have any specifications about by which date in the month the invoice has to be lodged; how long are your payment terms?  You need to know these things for your own cash flow planning. The good news is you will get paid in Japan and the bad new is you may not get paid as fast as you need 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 Read Faces When Presenting In Business In Japan People staring at you intently when you are presenting can be unnerving. This is especially the case when we are already feeling nervous to begin with. If some of those faces in the audience look particularly hostile, then the level of inner tension can be reaching danger point. We are stressing ourselves in reaction to how we perceive the audience and what we imagine they are thinking about us and what we are saying. “Don't judge a book by it's cover” is ancient wisdom and the same is the case when presenting. I was in Osaka a number of years ago, giving a presentation in Japanese to 100 salespeople in the travel industry on why Australia was such a great education destination for Japanese students. The idea was that I would inspire these salespeople to recommend education destinations in Australia, in preference to other competing countries, after I had fired them up with my passion for the idea. I can still remember the scene. It was a long hall and everyone wearing dark suits, mainly men and a big venue.  On my left side, about half way down, was sitting one guy who had a really angry face. Even from that distance I could tell he looked angry.  He didn't seem to buying anything that I was saying at all.  At the end of the presentation, he leapt out of his seat and came straight down to the front where I was standing. I had just come down off the podium to exchange business cards with members of the audience. I honestly thought he was going to punch me! Instead he started thanking me profusely in Japanese for my presentation, said it was really great, he really learn a lot, etc., etc.  I felt like saying, "if you liked it so much why didn't you tell your face!" I also realised that what I took for an angry face, was in fact a face deeply concentrating on what I had been saying. Now Japan throws up a few challenges in this regard, because Japan is quite a serious place, with a lot of serious people, whose faces we may misread.  Whenever I write or speak about presenting, I am always making the point to keep eye contact with each person for around six seconds and to look at people in all six pockets of a room. Those in the front, left, middle, right and those at the back again left, middle, right. We do this in a random, unpredictable way to keep audience interest in our presentation. Having said that though, not everyone is equal. If you are nervous about speaking to groups, inside those pockets pick out the people who are nodding in agreement with what you are saying or who at least have a neutral face. To maintain your confidence do not look at anyone who looks angry, doubtful, quizzical or hostile.  Ignore them completely to concentrate on those who are with you. This will help build your confidence when speaking and over time you won't need to do this but in the early stages it works quite well.  Actually thinking about it, I am totally confident presenting, but I still continue to ignore people who look hostile, because I have no particular interest in engaging with them. The part of the talk where the hostiles get to be a problem is usually during question time.  If you have been trained in how to handle Q&A, you never worry about hostiles in your audience, because you know you can handle anything they throw at you. If the whole audience looks hostile, well tough it out and keep going, bracing yourself for the Q&A where you can expect a lot of pushback. By the way we teach how to deal with hostile Q&A, so let us know if you would like to learn the secret. One key point – always specify how much time there is for questions, so that you can make a graceful departure and leave the venue with your head held up high.  If you don't, it looks like you are a scoundrel and a coward trying to flee the premises, because you can't take the heat.  We don't want that as our final impression do we.  They can disagree with you as much as they like, but you have to end the proceedings looking like the cool, calm professional you are. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 Brainstorm In Japan   Japan can only copy! This once upon a time was what we heard about Japanese innovation.  It was used disparagingly as a dismissal of Japanese capacity to innovate.  Well Japan is excellent at copying for sure.  There is a level of attention to detail here that is mindboggling.  Part of the issue was that over centuries of isolation Japan had become incredibly skilled in kaizen - small steps of improvement. The breakthrough ideas were happening somewhere else. This is an important observation, because when we are trying to come up with new ideas, we have to remember that we don't want just ideas that improve on what we did in the past, if possible, we want to leap past our competitors and go on to the next stage of development.   Japan is not the only place where we have seen this phenomenon.  Nokia was innovating by producing better and better phones.  Steve Jobs introduced an innovation, the smart phone, that killed Nokia off and let Apple dominate the global market.  The rental market for DVDs is getting killed by streaming services like Netflix.  Maybe we cannot come up with a game changer on a global scale, but we can certainly do better in pushing the innovation capacity within our firms.   There is no doubt that the way we do brainstorming does impact the success of the effort. The standard model is for the boss to wield the marker pen and write the ideas up on the whiteboard. The ideas are requested and here is where a fatal error is often made. The boss starts to comment on the ideas as they arrive: "we tried that before and it didn't work, next", "that is a silly idea, totally impractical, next", "no I don't like that idea much, next". All of these comments are crushing the perpetrators and they will retreat deep into themselves and take no further part in the brainstorming. They will be lost as part of the team generating ideas.     Japan doesn't handle personal criticism very well, given the drive for harmony in this high density living environment.  Shredding someone's ideas publically is the death warrant for further idea generation for that individual.  We will eliminate a lot of potential good ideas this way and have the noisy few, who agree with the boss, monopolise proceedings.  I hope they are really, really smart.   The key point here is to not do it this way. Instead let the ideas flow freely without any critique, judgment, evaluation or appraisal. The objective is to get as many ideas out as possible. Now of course some totally impractical and crazy ideas will pop up. Well they must pop up in these circumstances, where we have said anything goes. The joy of a crazy, unusable idea is when it gets changed slightly and is transformed into a genius idea. This wouldn't have happened though unless the first crazy idea had been proffered.   Also don't ignore the deep thinkers. They will be digesting an idea, not say anything and find the airwaves are dominated by those around them who can think fast on their feet.  This pushes them even further into the background because they consider it a crime to be putting up flakey, half thought through ideas. We are always time poor so we push the session forward unaware we are dropping ideas off the table at a rapid rate of knots.  The session is ended and these deeper thinkers are left sitting there with a bunch of quality ideas which are never captured.   Japan has plenty of great ideas and the key is to creating the right environment where these ideas can be nurtured. Fairly simple thing you would think but pen wielding, critiquing bosses still rule in Japan. Let's change that down at your shop!  We need to eliminate the instant idea critique, the hierarchy of who started at the company earlier than the others, who is older, who is more senior.  Japanese staff will always defer to others they consider their “betters”, because that is how you get on in Japan.  To get change in Japan you need enormous energy, discipline and patience.   If you want innovation, you have to give people the freedom to put forward their ideas.  To do that you need a system that allows ideas to be generated in silence to shut down the idea bullies, that go through multiple rounds until all the deep thinkers ideas have been captured and which separates generation from the judgment of ideas.  We have to keep telling everyone we are after idea volume in the first instance, not perfection.    Old habits die hard though, so you need the session facilitated by someone who can keep everyone in line.  When the critique comes too early that person needs to be told to hold that thought and remind everyone how this works.  Others can't bear the silence, because they have gotten all their ideas out quite quickly and now they want to talk.  They need to be told to stay silent, no matter who they are, and allow the others to get their ideas out too. This is a new way of doing things, so expect resistance. If we want better ideas, then we need better idea generation technologies and this new methodology represents a change.  Expect detractors, but push on because this will be so much more powerful than what is currently masquerading as idea creation, you will never go back.   So get the ideas out first and then do the selection and judgment in the second phase. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Being Persuasive In Business In Japan   Business schools are teaching put up your conclusion first in the Executive Summary and then the evidence and argument follows in the main body.  If we are writing something for others to read, then this is absolutely terrific.  If it is a report on a market's potential or how the product launch fared, this makes a lot of logical sense.  Busy people want the punch line delivered quickly, so they can allow themselves the opportunity to move on to more pressing needs. If we are talking to people, trying to win them over to our way of thinking, then this is rubbish.  Don't ever do this, because you are setting yourself up for trouble.   We do it though, don't we. We offer up our conclusion at the start and wonder why that didn't go according to plan.  We don't get immediate acceptance, as we had expected. Here is the problem in the real world.  When we tell people our conclusion, we are now up against a wall of critics, one-uppers, debaters and dilettantes. We have exposed our argument to the world, but we have left it to hang out there with nothing to defend it. You might be thinking, “no, the defence comes straight after, as we get into the evidence”.  You are so optimistic!   In fact, as soon as the opening conclusion is stated, the audience has stopped listening to you completely.   They are thinking they are smarter than you and don't need to hear anymore.  They are fully concentrated on the clever thing they are going to say, to demolish your recommendations.  Their minds are buzzing with their counter arguments, their views, how to make themselves look good  and alternative proposals.  They can hear white noise in the background, which is actually you speaking, but they are not focused on your content, because they believe what they have to say is much more important.   To avoid this scenario dump the business school model and reverse gears.  When you want to persuade someone of some recommendation you are making, start with the evidence first.  Do it in the form of a short story.  It shouldn't be too long and you are forbidden to start rambling.  Keep it tight, taut and on point. The story needs to be rich in word pictures.  We need to be able to see the scene you are describing in our mind's eye.  We need to bring in people they will know, describe locations they are familiar with and create a time sequence through reference to seasons or business milestones during the year.  They cannot intervene or tune you out, because they have no idea where this story is taking us and they are forced listen to you.   We need to promote the context behind the recommendation we are making.  By creating the scene, the audience will be coming to their own conclusions about what needs to happen.  The context is telling them that logically XYZ should happen.  This is the same conclusion you came to, based on the same evidence you are giving them and you tell them XYZ should occur. Immediately we have done that, we go into the outcome or benefit that your proposal will generate.  So the order runs this way: context, recommendation then benefit.   Because it is short, we won't lose the audience and that is why we have to practice this delivery. In any short presentation each word becomes very important, so we have to trim the talk of all fluff and surplus words.  If you try to make it too involved and go down a number of rabbit holes, you will lose the audience, who will become impatient and tune you out.  So we have to give enough powerful evidence, without getting bogged down in the gritty details.  Those gritty details can come later, but the key driver initially, is to get people to agree with your general direction.   The context first approach is great because while people can disagree with your conclusions they can't disagree with your context.  Usually they won't have as much command of the context as you have, so it is hard to debate with you over the background details.  They also have to wait until they get all the relevant information before they know what you are proposing.  They can't cut you off because they don't know if this is going to positive, negative, or about the past, present or future.  They have to hear you out before they can say anything. Genius!  Actually it is magical and this is why this construct of context-recommendation-benefit is called The Magic Formula. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.  

Educate Yourself In Sales   There are almost no sales courses at Universities.  Maybe, in the USA somewhere, a University is offering something on selling, but it would be a rare bird amongst the academic ivory towers.  By the way, who would be teaching this course and what do they know about the real world of sales? We can graduate with a bachelor degree, a masters degree or a Ph.D. in a wide range of business related subjects and never do one course on how to sell.  Why is that? Selling is a process enveloped in a philosophy. You can teach that.  We know, because as a training company, we do just that.   Okay, so you didn't get any courses at varsity on selling.  What about inside your company?  Nothing happening there either?  Are you in a Darwinian survival of the fittest environment, where it is up or out?  The company won't invest in you and you won't invest in you either?  The key path for being excellent in the professions is study. Doctors, engineers, architects, dentists etc., all have to keep brushing up their knowledge, even though they spent many long hard years at university to become qualified.  “Nothing happens in business until a sale is made” underlines the importance of the profession of selling in society.  Just like there are charlatans in any profession, there are fakers in selling as well.  They won't be around long, so let's concentrate on the honest salespeople who are just not as skilled as they need to be   There is no excuse for we salespeople not to be on top of our game. The first thing to do is to take responsibility for ourselves. The onus for professional development is placed squarely with us and we are not beholden to some outside force, like the company we happen to work for.  Today we have access to the greatest collection of readily available knowledge on sales in the history of the planet. Tremendous books, magazine articles, blogs, videos, podcasts - the list goes on and on. Yet so few access this cornucopia of wisdom and experience.   Up until 1939, if you were in sales, you could only get sales training from within your company. Dale Carnegie launched the first public classes for salespeople in that year and now there are thousands of providers all around the world offering help.  We have no shortage of gurus touring the globe holding sales rallies to pep up the troops and get them fired up to do better.   We don't lack for information.  The problem is you need to have the smarts and the desire to want to access the information and then more importantly, to want to apply it and adapt it to your own situation.  We can read the books and watch the videos etc., but we need practice to make it part of us.  We have colleagues in the sales team we can be practicing with, doing role plays in the morning before seeing clients. Yet so many don't take the chance to do that.  Knowing a questioning structure is great, but mastering the semantics and cadence of how to ask those questions are quite another thing.   Every major sports star warms up before the match. Ikebana masters strip the flower stems themselves to get their mind into the right frame. Shodo masters grind their own ink for the same reason, rather than delegating the task to their underlings. The karate master meditates before starting training. This is part of their mental preparation. Salespeople also need good mental preparation, but they are not taking advantage of all that is available to them. If we want to be great then we need to polish our craft. We also need to be searching through newspapers, magazines, web sites, social media for relevant information that a client would value and we should be offering this as part of our service as a partner in seeing the buyer's business succeed.   What surprises me are salespeople who are failing to meet their targets who won't come to the office early to study sales together with their colleagues.  They turn up at work at the appointed time as usual and then flounder through the day, making no or few sales.  They repeat this process year after year, always hoping to land a whale, that they hope will solve all of their sales quota issues.  Whale obsession has been a sickness amongst some salespeople, who haven't worked it out yet that skill acquisition and luck are polar opposites.  One you can control and the other you can't.  They prefer the one they cannot control and then whine about the lack of results.  When your whale is not landed you are left with nothing.   Building skills builds the lead pipeline, which in turn leads to better conversations with buyers. The solutions presented are better, the client hesitations are handled more smoothly and the order is always asked for. None of this is rocket science but it is difficult and it needs practice to make it work.  We need to commit to make the time to study, to do the role plays, to keep pushing ourselves to become better at serving our clients.  That is what it means to be a professional in sales. The path to professionalism starts from within.  When we watch that video, read that article or book, listen to that podcast we have gained some momentum.  Let's begin.   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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.    

Presenter Survival Tips For A Tech Meltdown   When the tech crashes, you shouldn't crash and burn with it when presenting. Absolutely ALWAYS get to the venue early and check the equipment. Remember, you are in an alien environment, being served by people you have never met before. Who knows how old the technology they have is or of what quality level is the equipment.  The people setting up the talk never give presentations.  They don't understand that if the tech goes horribly wrong, the audience will blame the speaker, not the hosts.  They also don't understand that public presentations are the arena in which reputations are built or destroyed.  They are just there to open the room up and move the chairs around. We should never rely on anyone else when we are the presenter.  I find that bringing my own laptop and a backup USB tends to eliminate a few of the technical problems which can occur. I also bring hardcopies of the slide deck, which I can refer to before the talk, if the projector, monitor, USB or computer isn't working. I can reduce my stress, because I know what I want to cover. I have rehearsed the presentation, so I know the cadence I want to achieve and the order of the unveiling of the talk. Now, importantly, in that room, I am the only one who has a clue what I am going to say and the order in which I am going to say it. If it happens that my point 6 actually followed point three rather than point five, then only I know the order was incorrect. I certainly won't be sharing that little morsel with the audience. I will brazenly charge on, as if it were all part of the bigger plan.  And that is what every presenter must remember – don't flag problems the audience doesn't need to know. I am highly perturbed that top level CEOs of big corporations can't give a speech to a business audience without reading the whole thing. The content is usually put together by people in the Marketing or PR departments and maybe the CEO worked on it before delivering the talk. Great, but why do they have to read it? Don't they know their industry, their sector, their own business? It is pathetic in my view, to see a top business leader reading line by line from the speech script. Some can at least glance at the audience as they read it, so that is less pathetic, but still not good enough.  Now if it super technical and no brain could retain the content, then reading it makes sense, but how many of those business presentations have you ever attended. In my case - none. If you are in the scientific community or some field so complex, that there is no possibility of remembering it all in your speech, then you are forced to read it. But we are in business and there are few super highly technical presentations that we will ever need to attend. They are usually more standard affairs where they talk about what is happening in their industry, the marketplace and what their firm is doing about it. I saw a terrific example of no notes, but keeping the presentation going for three hours. Think about that - three hours and no notes. He had no visible notes, as far as we in the audience were concerned. This was a professor at Harvard Business School when I was attending a week long Executive Education course. Now this was an impressive feat and the first time I had seen such a thing.  At the end of it, as we were filing out of the lecture theatre, I happened to notice that on the back wall behind us was a large sheet of paper with ten words written on it. I realised that this was the speech right there. The professor had his order on the sheet and he just talked to each of the ten prompt code words that were on that sheet.  If we get to the venue and the tech is not working, we can do the same thing.  Just jot down some prompt words, in the order you need and elaborate on those for your talk. We don't need the tech to give a presentation. Now we can't describe what a graph shows or a diagram demonstrates as well as the original slide deck, but we can paint word pictures and describe trends to illuminate the point we are making.  We can also be telling stories that draw out the key differences, the reasons for the changes or the new insights from the data, rather than having to actually show the data. So in your planning phase, always be prepared for a meltdown of the tech and be flexible about crafting your talk from the ashes. Always get there early without exception. Remember, only you know what is going to be covered in your talk and in what order you will roll it out.  Keep that secret information to yourself. No matter what happens, carry on and the audience will probably never know there was a problem. 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 Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years. 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.      

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.