I had a meeting with a client I have been chasing for business for the last ten years. They have had the same President right throughout and we get on very well, but this has not resulted in any business coming my way. Over the years, I had been introduced by him to his various HR people, and that is where it has always floundered. Maybe they had their own internal solutions and didn’t need us or the HR people didn’t like me or didn’t like the President trespassing on their turf. Actually, I have no idea why we have never been able to crack the code, but finally, I thought we were getting somewhere.

I was to have yet another meeting with the President from last year and it kept getting postponed and postponed. Finally, we had our meeting in January and he said wait until June and we will continue the conversation. I was somewhat surprised when his assistant reached out to me to have that June follow-up meeting before I did the follow-up from my side.

I expected he would be in the meeting with the new HR head he had recently hired, but he did not appear. They had three executives there for the meeting, including one based outside Japan who was visiting. Naturally, I had notes for the January meeting and I was working off the basis that this meeting was a continuation of the previous meeting direction with the President.

So, I get straight into outlining the solution for them based on my understanding from my previous discussion with the President at our January meeting. That was a mistake. I assumed he had briefed them on our talk, but it gradually dawned on me that wasn’t the case.

My approach was wrong. What I should have done was to first ask them what they understood the situation to be around what the President wanted. I didn’t do that and so wasted a lot of time and effort early in the meeting barking up various wrong trees.

I could see this genius, transformational idea of mine, wasn’t going anywhere. They kept asking me rather tactical questions. This totally confused me because the President had been operating at the strategic level. In the course of them getting frustrated with me not getting the picture, they explained the problem from their point of view. I was floored.

The things they wanted were the most basic requirements. I couldn’t initially get my head around what I was hearing, because it didn’t correspond with the image I had in my mind. This firm has been around a long time and they have been very successful. They have many branches and, therefore, I assumed, they had all the basics well and truly nailed down. Their ducks were in a row, I thought, but not true.

Being a 112-year-old training company and being here since 1963 in Japan, I have a huge curriculum resource at my command and can operate at the most basic or sophisticated levels. In other words, I could give them what they want once I understood it.

I was reflecting on why this meeting was initially so hard. I see that I had a direction for them in my mind based on the meeting with the President and I forgot to do the sales basics with them. I assumed we were advancing on a previous conversation going on to the next level. I was operating above the fluffy white clouds and they were down a deep mine shaft.

What I should have done was to expect that the busy President had not briefed them at all or not to a very distinct degree. I should have ignored what I thought was happening and should have dealt with what I had in front of me – three people I didn’t know and should have assumed that I had no idea what they wanted. I wish I had been that smart.

If I had started that way, it would have been obvious to me that I needed to focus down on the basics for them. This hand it over phenomenon from the President to the working level staff is a common enough thing in business for busy senior executives. I will make it my rule from now on to ignore what I think is happening and check to see what they think is going on and what they need to fix their issues. I promise to do better.

I don’t like doing RFPs in Japan. We are translating concepts and intangibles into text in a document, which a lot of people we will never ever meet will be reading and making decisions about us. I prefer to work on my champion and have them marshal the approval through their byzantine internal processes to get the agreement to go ahead. It feels more in control than launching a bunch of words into space and hoping for the heavens to align.

I had a case like that recently. I had met a person from the company at a networking event and when I followed up they directed me to the person who would become my champion. I met them, understood what they wanted and came back with some alternatives from which they could choose. They made a selection and asked for a simple proposal, with pricing, which I put together.

Unbeknownst to me, someone higher up in the hierarchy didn’t like what they had selected and said they should have a demonstration training first before committing to the delivery of the option they chose. I could tell my champion was annoyed by this, but we did the demonstration more as a fig leaf to get approval to move forward as planned.

In the case of an RFP, the champion receives it, but it is a much more formal process, no doubt involving procurement, compliance and a host of other entities who will need to scrutinise the document. None of these people will have had a chance to get the necessary “passion” inoculation from me about how this will be so great for their company. It is a very dry affair all round.

Because so many people we will never meet will be looking at the content we have to really lay on the detail. Anytime we write something down, there is the danger of misinterpretation or lack of understanding of what they are reading. We are experts in our business, but often the people behind the scenes are not experts and they don’t know the lexicon or the content or the concepts. Often, what we are covering is quite complex as well, which makes it hard for them to gauge what they are reading to weight it up against rival submissions.

There is the danger we produce something so complete, so water tight, that it is impenetrable for them and they go for a competitor application because it is much less sophisticated and less complex, allowing them to make a decision. Where do we strike the balance between full details and a lighter version with enough data to get a yes. We have a varied audience, so some will prefer a light version and others want every detail.

Creating a version within a version could be the answer. We can have the executive summary bit and we can have the heavy details as well. In this way, the reader can choose to skim or do a deep dive. Japan always skews toward wanting more detail, so by definition a Japanese RFP will be relatively dense.

Supporting documents are always a good idea. Often we have Flyers or catalogues or white papers or whatever, which we can attach to the submission. No one may have the time to read it all but it does show a depth of command of the subject and that your firm is well organised on this topic.

We should never underestimate the Japanese preference for risk reduction, which usually translates into a desire for ALL the information they can get their hands on. Somehow, by collecting a lot of information, they feel immunised from making a mistake through a lack of knowledge or perspective.

The RFP evaluation process results in a yes or a no and when you get the no, it is perplexing to understand why you were not selected. In Japan, there is no mechanism for sharing with you why you missed out because the system doesn’t want to get into a debate about the decision. Therefore, it is very hard to learn from the process and it becomes a bit of a black box procedure. Was it the content, was it the money, was it the timing – what was it? Did our competitor offer something we don’t have or didn’t think about? You can lose a lot of sleep trying to parse what happened and it usually leads nowhere.

If you can get together with your champion unofficially, it is worthwhile trying to get some insight. They may be reluctant though to do that because there is no upside for them and they don’t want to compromise the organisation’s decision or decision-making processes.