252: How To Own The Sales Transition Zone

<p>New clients are so demanding.  They want to hear what we have to offer and quickly find out how trustworthy we are.  They don’t want to be wasting their valuable time either.  This can trigger some bad choices though for salespeople.  Remember that the client playbook is not our playbook. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of tracking along their preferred path.  We have our job and they have their job and both are highly specific, so we had better master ours, if we want to really help our clients.</p> <p> </p> <p>There is a transition zone in sales, which is a make or break moment for salespeople.  The new client doesn’t know us and we don’t know them.  Online or in person, there will always be some degree of small talk.  By the way, Western versions of this “small talk” can be microscopic. I was reminded of this in a meeting with the Western president of an international company here.  I had barely gotten out a few words of small talk, when he hit me with the directive – “okay, let’s get straight down to business”. After working here for so many years and adjusting to the Japanese style, I was a bit shocked.  I was thinking to myself, “oh yeah, that’s how things are in sales in the West”.</p> <p> </p> <p>What is going through the mind of the buyer?  In most cases it will be “how much is this going to cost me?”.  They are fixated on price. In sales, we are thinking about the value trade for the price impost.  From the outset we are speaking two different languages.  We need to address that gap right at the start and set the tone for our salesperson playbook version of how the meeting should run.</p> <p> </p> <p>After the initial pleasantries, we should outline the meeting agenda.  We will mention why we are meeting, just to confirm we are both clear about how our time is going to be used.  It might be, “ I appreciate Suzuki san introducing us. She thought there might be some mutual benefit to meeting, so let’s use our time together to explore what that might be.  I thought we could look at what we do and how th