342 Don’t Be In Awe Of The Buyer When Selling

<p>Listening to a young salesperson in his first sale’s role talking about being nervous to present to a high powered, senior company President, made me think about that.  As we all get older, we forget about our younger “age and stage” evolutions in business.  Somehow, we imagine that in those days, we were exactly as we are now.  A conversation like that got me reflecting whether I was the same, when I was starting out in sales?  I probably was, but it has all coalesced into the mists of time and I frankly can’t pinpoint any of the emotions I may have been experiencing.  It raises the excellent question though, about how we in sales should regard the buyer?</p> <p>Japan makes it very easy.  The buyer is not King, but GOD and that is that.  GOD knows it too and so likes to run the show when the salesperson turns up. Some enjoy pushing salespeople around as well, just to emphasise how sublime they are.  None of this is likely to end in a sale, so why put yourself through this nonsense. We would all do better to find a kinder, gentler more cooperative GOD as b<span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang= "EN-AU">u</span>yer.  In a word, someone “normal”.</p> <p>In my view, there is absolutely no place in sales for the buyer to be running the sales call.  That is our role. The seller’s job is to seize hold of the responsibility for the sales call and run that meeting along tried-and-true lines, which will result in a win-win outcome for everyone.  In Japan, the first order of business is to build rapport with some initial small talk.  Japan, as a culture, is brilliant at this, so for Japanese salespeople, this is like breathing – they don’t even think about it.  If you are awkward in social contexts, shy or introverted, then this may present some substantial problems. The simple answer is it won’t fix itself, so this barrier requires communications training and practice and really, it doesn’t require that much complexity. </p> <p>The point is to get them talking so that we can conclude which personality style they are and so better