347 Has Covid Changed The Way We Sell In Japan?

<p>If you are in the consulting or selling fields, then telling buyers that what went before is now irrelevant is an attractive way to generate revenues.  You can see numerous offerings in social media about the “new” dimension and their “out with the old” remonstrations.  Thinking about this for Japan, what has happened here, as buyer concerns about Covid begin to ebb away. The biggest difference is we are now back in the office for 70% of companies.  We can make office visits once more, after having been relegated to doing Zoom calls for the last three years. It also means that face-to-face networking events are being scheduled again, after a long hiatus.</p> <p>One thing I learnt during Covid was the importance of getting client mobile phone numbers into the database system.  When the buyers were working from home, it was almost impossible to get hold of them. The general number on their business card would throw up some mightily unhelpful junior person, designated to answer incoming calls.  Their lack of enthusiasm for that task was only surpassed by their obvious distaste for “grubby” salespeople calling the boss. </p> <p>“I will pass your information on and Suzuki san will call you back” was a typical riposte I received.  Three years later, I am still waiting for those various Suzuki sans to call me back.  Was Suzuki san actually informed that I called? Was a message passed on or did the whole promise just immediately evaporate the moment the call ended?  I will never know, but I know that nobody ever called me back.   For cold calls, they had worked out that if they put us through to the section chief or the division chief, they exposed themselves to being scolded for doing so and therefore they just shut down that option.  Again, the go to method was “I will pass your information on and someone will call you back”.  No calls were returned and in this case I strongly suspect that they did absolutely nothing.</p> <p>What about now?  Most people are back in the office today and when we call, we have a higher