236: Salespeople To Avoid

<p>If you meet any salesperson who doesn’t ask you questions before explaining their widget run!  This person is not a professional in sales, so don’t bother talking with them because you should only deal with professionals in any business and sales is no exception.</p> <p> </p> <p>Salespeople in their forties, who have been selling their whole careers are professional salespeople.  They are not Johnny Come Latelys who found themselves washed up on the shore of the sales profession or people who wandered through the wrong door and found themselves in a sales job.  They have been in the game for decades and have acquired vast experience.  Or so you would assume, but Japan always has a surprise or two up its sleeve.</p> <p> </p> <p>My wife contacted a very large multinational insurance company here to buy some cancer insurance.  The company reps were coming around on the weekend to get me to sign the dotted line for my component of the policy.  Why they needed to send two people was a bit of a mystery to me, but this is common in Japan.  Being a sales guy myself, I am always nice to fellow salespeople and treat them well.  The policy was wrapped up and the documents duly signed and completed when they bridged into a cross sell.</p> <p> </p> <p>We had now moved away from their insurance range of products to an annuity product.  It wasn’t announced as such, but I quickly realised what it was because we used to sell these when I was at the Shinsei retail bank.  Actually they are a good idea for Japan because the Government pension scheme will collapse in the future when there are not enough young people paying in, to support the retirees taking the money out. </p> <p> </p> <p>Being a “best selling author” of Japan Sales Mastery you can imagine my interest in seeing how these seasoned Japanese insurance sales guys were going to conduct the sales process with me.  The brochure was immediately produced and we were walked through the details.  Dollar cost averaging got a lot of attention and there were graphs and tables t