218: Build Your Sales Bridges

<p>The sales process is a process with different phases and stages.  The skilled salesperson knows how to navigate their way through these phases in the conversation with the buyer.</p> <p> </p> <p>We have a defined sales cycle in our interactions with our clients.  We build the trust, ask the key questions to understand need, present the solution, deal with pushback and ask for the business.  Of course, there is the pre-meeting preparation and the post meeting follow up, but the actual sales call runs through this cycle.  Between these key phases there are bridges we need to put in place to make the sales talk flow run smoothly.  What do you do now?  Do you have defined phases or is it looking like spaghetti, rather than a road map?</p> <p> </p> <p>One of the key bridges is the very start of the conversation.  In Japan this usually starts in the lobby or their office, as you wait for your buyer or when they enter the meeting room their staff have shown you to.  Many Western countries have gone all modern and dispensed with business cards or meishi but what a gold mine they are in Japan.  I usually receive the meishi English side up, facing me, because that is the polite format in Japan.  I read the English side and then flip it over because the Japanese side will have better information.  If the kanji for the name is a bit on the rare side, I will mention that and ask if their family comes from a particular region where that name is more common.  This is handy because it shows them I can read Japanese, I know about Japan well enough to know their name is rare and it gets them talking.  Or I might just ask them about the position they hold inside the company.</p> <p> </p> <p>Japan is pretty good at small talk before we get into the main business.  That is not how we do it in the West.  I remember meeting a high powered, foreign President of a major multi national here recently, who had just arrived from the US for his Japan posting.  I started with some small talk, got about five seconds into it when he announced