351 Make The Buyer The Hero When Selling

<p>When we meet the buyer in Japan, it will be extremely rare that they are the final decision-maker. Usually, there are other people sitting behind the meeting room wall, who will have an interest in any changes or new initiatives.  A collective decision will be reached about whether or not they will proceed with you.  Japan likes this splitting of the authority because if things go bad, the blame gets spread far and wide and people feel better protected.  “We are all responsible, so no one is responsible” type of logic.  This means that our contact is going to be the messenger to the rest of the group and our job is to help them make a sterling effort promoting our idea.</p> <p>Normally we are concentrating on extolling the benefits of our solution for the business and we focus in right there in our explanation.  Of course we have to do this otherwise there will be little point in the buyer using us.  We should also not neglect to find out what success would mean for the buyer individually.  This is rather more complicated in Japan than in the West.  Most expat multi-national executives will tell me “I will get a big bonus” or “I will get a big promotion” or something very specific about their own glorious career. Japanese executives don’t talk about themselves.  They will say things like “the team will be happy” or “the company will benefit”.  We shouldn’t take those types of answers verbatim.  That is just typical Japanese modesty.  We have to think about how we can help them advance in their ca<span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang= "EN-AU">r</span>eer and to marshal a success for the firm.</p> <p>The nenko joretsu (<span lang="JA" xml:lang="JA">年功序列</span>) escalator system of staged career progression, based on age and years in the company is starting to break down.  Even the peak industry body the Keidanren has recognised that individuals should be promoted based on ability rather than age and stage.  This means that where once upon a time the individual buyer had little prospect of being recognised for a successful