2-2 | Since they are foreign-affiliated companies in Japan, you can conduct sales in Japanese —Removing biases and doubling the numbers— (2/3)

Discovering methods for demand development

After accompanying sales staff on visits, I formed a hypothesis that the reason we hadn't been able to secure orders until now was that we were not visiting the treasure trove of demand known as "foreign-affiliated companies."
I then gave instructions to everyone.

Let's start visiting foreign-affiliated companies from today.
Regardless of past transaction history, foreign-affiliated companies will reach out if they have job openings.

The background for this is that, at the very least, we should be able to secure orders.

The sales staff showed a negative reaction

The sales staff said this to me.

We might be able to get orders.
However, we cannot supply the people (temporary staff) that match those orders.
If we do something meaningless and lower our reputation, we will be unable to get even more orders.

I found a glimmer of hope here.
They said this to me:
"We might be able to get orders."

In other words, they think there is demand at foreign-affiliated companies.
However, they cannot speak English themselves, and they believe that staff with the English proficiency required by companies cannot be found easily.
This is the basis for their denial.

Removing the sales staff's biases and realizing a doubling of monthly sales through a system

They were avoiding sales activities because they thought, "If you can't speak English, you can't do sales at foreign-affiliated companies either."
However, I focused on the fact that there are always Japanese people at foreign-affiliated companies in Japan.

I taught the sales staff that sales themselves can be conducted in Japanese, and I instilled the understanding that whether a company is Japanese or foreign-affiliated is irrelevant to sales.
With this, I succeeded in removing the sales staff's judgment biases.

Thinking about supply methods

Another issue was their way of thinking regarding the English proficiency of temporary staff.
So, I explained it as follows:
• Naturally, high English proficiency is requested at the time of the request

• However, temporary staff are for temporary use
• Having Eiken Grade 2 should be sufficient
• Only specialized positions require advanced English proficiency for temporary work
• Conversations with foreign employees and supervisors are fully possible at a daily conversation level
• The important thing is that the individual has an attitude of learning the English used within the company
• Those around them will understand that "if you grow, our work will also become easier" and will support them
I first made the sales staff understand this, and then I explained it to the temporary staff as well.

With this, what they had previously considered "impossible to supply" changed to "supply is possible."

Results

• Branch monthly sales doubled from 30 million yen to 60 million yen in 4 months
• A culture was formed where both sales staff and temporary staff act spontaneously, and the entire branch accumulates numbers

Lessons learned

• By removing judgment biases, a path to achieving results in a short period opens up
• Make them understand that foreign-affiliated does not equal English proficiency, and that sales can be done in Japanese
• Temporary staff also improve their abilities through self-help efforts, leading to better employment opportunities

Reasons why it led to sales results

1. Removed the sales staff's biases and started actively selling to foreign-affiliated companies
2. Lowered the anxiety of temporary staff by telling them that daily conversation is fine and that they will get used to it
3. Provided options to temporary staff by letting them know they can choose from multiple temporary placement destinations, not just one
4. Introduced foreign-affiliated companies to the fact that we have immediately available personnel with Eiken Grade 2
5. Finally, increased the contract rate by matching supply and demand not as points to points, but as surfaces to surfaces

The reason it led to results was that I removed the biases of the sales staff and temporary staff, maximized the number of matches from the perspective of supply and demand, and created a system that produces results without depending on individual ability by incorporating the sales process into a system.

Next time, I will explain:
Why did the sales staff start acting spontaneously?
—When judgments are aligned, people start to enjoy "competition"—