Podcast

Episode #167: Happy Holidays! How To Massacre Your Brand Promise

The end of year holiday season is a time of great retail commercial activity around the world. Brands work ...

Episode #166: 2020 Ushers In New Deals - Are We Ready To Get Our Share

Greek myths don’t have too many happy endings or uplifting messages. Mostly they are cautionary tales about...

Episode #165: Reflecting On Your Learnings In Sales

You are as only as good as your last sale is harsh but true as a synopsis of our sales life. Bosses are not...

Episode #164: Leading An Intentional Sales Professional Life In 2020

The targets for the year are already set or will be set shortly, no matter when your financial year begins. ...

Episode #163: Why "Okay, Send Me Your Proposal" Is A Bad Idea In Japan

Getting to the request for a proposal stage is usually thought of as significant progress in Japan. This me...

Episode #162 Selling Yourself Before You Meet The Client

I have been recruiting new staff over these last few months. One of the younger candidates breezily told me...

Episode #161: How To Sell To A Buying Team

Selling to companies in Japan usually means sitting in a meeting room with a single buyer or perhaps two peo...

Episode #160: Nine Major Mistakes By Japanese Salespeople

We see Japan as a modern, high tech country very advanced in so many sectors. Sales is not one of them. Co...

Episode #159: My Clients Never Call Me Back

Today in business, reaching anyone by telephone is nothing less than a miracle. Japan is particularly good ...

Episode #158: The One Minute Pitch

If you have been following me for a while, you know how down I am on pitching. This is the standard modus o...

Episode #157: Add Some BANTER To Your Next Sales Call

I am a permanent student of sales. I study the books and tapes from the greats – J. Douglas Edwards, Charli...

Episode #156: Success Negotiating - Part Two

In Part One we covered the four steps involved in negotiating: Analysis, Presentation, Bargaining and Agreem...

Episode #155: Success Negotiating Part One

Our image of negotiating tends to be highly influenced by the winner takes all model. This is the transacti...

Episode #154: How To Present To A Diverse Buying Team

This is very tricky in Japan. Because of the convoluted decision making process here, there will be many vo...

Episode #153: The 80-20 Rule Of Selling

We are all familiar with the 80/20 Pareto Principle, where 20% of buyers account for 80% of the sales and 20...

Episode #152: How To Disagree But Still Keep Your Customer

The Customer is King. How do you say “no” to the King? In ancient times, if you said “no” to the King, you...

Episode #151: Survival Tips For Stressed Out Salespeople

When we are under stress our concentration and productivity levels are much lower than normal. Sales has to...

Episode #150: In Sales We Need To Create Super Re-Order Customers

Here is an important mantra: We don’t want a sale, we want the re-orders. That task however is getting hard...

Episode #149: Sales Bad News Travels In Threes

Our financial year ends in August and we are up over 20% on last year’s revenue results. I should be ebullie...

Episode #148: Why No Omotenshi From Some Chinese Retail Service In Tokyo

This is a controversial piece today, because I am singling out one race, one group in isolation. It is also...