329 Join The Buyer Conversation In Japan

Life is busy, busy today.  Communications has sped up business to an extent unthinkable even ten years ago.  Every company is a publisher now, due to social media’s pervasiveness.  Content marketing is driving original content creation and release.  LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook are favouring live video, so we have to become television talents.  Voice is the next big thing, so podcasting requires us to be radio personalities.  If you are in business, your personal information is out there, easily searchable and found.  We check out the buyers and they check out the sellers, before we meet.

When you turned up at a client meeting eighty years ago, you came with some good jokes, some market information, some competitor intelligence, etc.  You did this to break the ice with the buyer.  Even if they were an established client, you needed to break the ice for that day.  Buyers then and buyers now have a lot going on inside their heads when we turn up and almost none of it has anything to do with us and what we want.

In Japan, meeting room space is always at a premium, so getting time with buyers has some automatic limitations placed upon it with certain companies.  After thirty minutes you are given the bum’s rush, because that space has been booked for the next meeting and they are loitering with intent outside the glass wall waiting to get in for their meeting. 

That doesn't give us much time to carve out some mind space with the buyer, get into questioning mode, talk about the solution, deal with any objections and seal the deal.  If the first part of the meeting isn’t well planned then there won’t be any result.  We cannot let the first few interactions be random events.  We need to plan in detail how we are going to establish some rapport with this buyer or reestablish some rapport if they are an existing buyer.

We will have checked some of the media aggregation sites to see if there has been anything released in to the public arena about the client company, which we can then refer to.  If it is a first meeting then checking the annual report is a must.  There will be a glossy coverage of the CEO’s vision and strategy for the enterprise, with photographs in a swish corporate setting.  We are looking for things we can ask about in this meeting. 

Our objective is to get the client talking as soon as possible.  Most salespeople still cling to the idea that they have to dominate the airwaves, so they just keep talking, talking, talking.  We don’t want that.  We only have a limited amount of time, so we want the client talking as much as possible.  When we do that, the client will have stopped thinking about all of the other things going on in their work and private lives. We will be concentrated on the business at hand and that is exactly what we need.

We hopefully will be able to check whether some insight we have found is relevant to what they are doing.  We deal with that industry vertical so we are picking up ideas across companies on what is working and not working.  We share these ideas as a means of demonstrating we provide value to their enterprise.  They may not go for it, but they will go for our intention to assist them to make their business more successful.

A discussion with a drill manufacture company I called upon, prompted a suggestion by me that they copy Blendtec’s “will it blend” phenomenon, but for drills not blenders.  Blendtec’s CEO Tom Dickson video’s the blending of iPads, golf balls, whatever and post it on YouTube and they get massive views.  My idea was to copy this for Japan and create some buzz around the product line up.  They didn’t go for it in the end, but I have no doubt that I have a closer relationship with the President today, because of my effort to think out of the box for them.  I had his attention for our discussion.

Getting the full attention of the buyer is no longer a given.  They are permanently distracted today and we are competing with so much noise, more than ever before.  We need to have a strategy to get their attention.   We cannot leave it to chance or expect that, “of course they will be paying attention – we have an appointment”.  That concept is way too indulgent.

Ask well thought through questions to get them talking, bring insights and valuable market intelligence.  Today, we have to do this every time, even if they are an established buyer.  Just because we have a relationship with them, doesn’t mean we have automatically broken through all the completion for their attention.   Start fresh every time as if it were the very first meeting.  In this modern age this is the new normal.