Why You CANNOT Reach out to the Right Customer?
As explained earlier, my London sales team had such a hard time dealing with Japanese companies. Here is why & how to deal with it.
PROBLEM with Cold Calls = Lack of Data
In order to achieve your goal, you have to understand who actually controls the budget.
It is share-worthy that,
you MUST reach the right department, not the person you know. Because the budget you are after does not belong to the individual. It belongs to the department that your contact is in. When he/she leaves the department, it remains with the department.
Unlike other parts of the world, Japanese company employees are assigned to different section within a company every 3 to 5 years. This is called “Job Rotation.” Its purpose is to have employees experience many sections of company to learn what others are doing. This is based on the premise that the person stays at a company for a long time, ideally until retirement.
Once he/she moves to another department, one has nothing to do with their previous position. With our database, the sales team never reached a right person.
Even worse, Japanese company employees would never forward your call to the person you would like to speak unless you know the current department name. That is simply how they are educated. “Never patch through the call from Stranger!”
The only solution is to make sure you include the name of the department/section on your DB. This department is actually who have control of the budget, not an individual.
PROBLEM with Advertisement = No Media Space
There are’t many media space available for events, especially for industry verticals. Historically, printed industry papers/publications were the mean to distribute the event schedules though, its influence is so small now a days. It should be replaced by online media platforms, but with the introduction of internet, each organizers has its own event site.
Result is ; “FRAGMENTATION” of event info.
In order to tackle this problem, tech companies came up with “Ad-Network” to reach out to those who may be interested in certain industry segment, or services. The technology chases audiences who had shown interest in the past, and distribute appropriate advertisement depending on audiences attributes. With the introduction of such technology, now the organizer of Gas event can reach out to CEO of Exxon while he is reading the entertainment section of New York Times online.
BUT the fundamental problem is; People are not interested in advertisement while they are reading articles.
