317: The Japanese Concept Of Shu-Ha-Ri For Sales

<p style="font-weight: 400;">The Japanese idea of Shu-Ha-Ri is a combination of three characters – 守破離.  Shu is to protect the traditional techniques, the basics, the fundamentals.  Ha is to detach and break away from the tradition, to innovate and depart from our attachments to what we are doing.  Ri is to transcend to a level where there is no self-consciousness of what we are doing, we make it our own, because we have absorbed it all and it is now part of us.  We have this same notion in the West, but I don’t think we have come up with three words to describe it as the Japanese have done.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">In sales we can see the process at work.  When we get sales training, there are so many moving parts, so much sophistication and subtlety, it can be a bit overwhelming at first.  We have to make sure we know our USPs, our unique selling propositions to differentiate ourselves from the great unwashed who represent our competitors.  We need to know how to build the trust needed with the buyer.  How do we open the conversation, how to bridge from one conversation to the next?  How do we set the agenda for the meeting?  How do we handle the questioning discovery component, deal with the pushback and ask for the order.  There are a lot of elements in a sales process.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Clients are not helpful in this process.  They will try and drag the conversation all over the place, away from our well plotted little sales track.  In the process, at the end of the sale’s call, we realise we didn’t get certain key information and we have to go back and get it which is both a waste for everyone’s time and rather embarrassing.  We also realise that our questions were too perfunctory and too superficial and didn't yield any of the gold we needed to convince this client that urgent action is needed on their part to buy our offering. </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">In the Shu stage, we have to memorise the steps we need in the sales process and keep moving along the continuum to make su