Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Wake up call for the foreign B2B interiors products business in Japan

Aug 14, 2004 15:24 pm / Add a comment

For­eign based com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors prod­ucts com­pa­nies (B2B) in Japan are chron­i­cally seek­ing account man­agers and sales staffs. They will never suc­ceed in hir­ing and retain­ing capa­ble employee they seek, let alone pros­per in sat­is­fac­tory way unless they change they way they do business.

Why? Here’s a list of skill require­ments for the candidate:

1. Good com­mu­ni­ca­tions skill
2. Flu­ent in Japan­ese and strong (mostly) in Eng­lish lan­guage
3. Enthu­si­as­tic
4. Keeps up with gen­eral busi­ness news and trends
5. Abil­ity to under­stand and sat­isfy the needs of clients at these lev­els: enduser, client facil­ity man­ager in Japan and head­quar­ters (for for­eign com­pa­nies), client pro­cure­ment man­ager in Japan and head­qurters, archi­tects and design­ers, sales deal­ers
6. Abil­ity to fol­low the local objec­tives and goals and stay true to the global objec­tives and goals
7. Under­stand and exe­cute the plans and strate­gies of bosses who come from out­side of Japan with no clue about the sys­tem and peo­ple behav­ior in Japan
8. Abil­ity to under­stand and work with the com­pli­cated prod­ucts, man­u­fac­tur­ing, order­ing, global con­tracts sys­tem
9. Quickly learn all of there is to learn about the mar­ket, prod­uct, busi­ness, and teach it to a boss who just arrived in Japan, or who came from another industry

Of course the salary level is based on those at the com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors prod­ucts sales indus­try, which is remark­ably low. But if some­one was capa­ble of doing 5 and 6, that per­son may well qual­ify to become a man­age­ment con­sul­tant. If some­one had rea­son­able abil­ity in all of the above, that per­son may well qual­ify at part­ner level for a pres­ti­geous global con­sult­ing company.

Prac­ti­cally all of for­eign based com­mer­cial inte­ri­ors prod­ucts com­pany fail to expand with healthy sales and profit growth in Japan, because most of peo­ple who man­ages Japan over­look the fact that back in their head­quar­ter coun­try, the sales rely heav­ily on the staff level peo­ple who make ends meet despite of all the prob­lems that are so fre­quent that they accept it as norm, such as delay in pro­duc­tion, wrong color, wrong quan­tity, wrong spec, etc. If all the pro­duc­tion was done locally, then it might be a dif­fer­ent story. But with most of pro­duc­tion being done off­shore, these prob­lems can not be fixed espe­cially with extra com­mu­ni­ca­tion link in place. It’s amaz­ing how man­agers brush this off as, oh, but only 1 out of 5 prod­ucts are ordered to off­shore site. Maybe they think clients will for­give them if only 20% of the prod­ucts were not deliv­ered and installed as promised in some way? Not in this age and day of six sigmas.

Good news is, any­thing can change for the bet­ter. Yes even in B2B inte­ri­ors prod­ucts indus­try. Who is going to be the first?

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