Doing On-the-Ground Sales Without Cultural Comprehension....

"Wow, this Kakegawa Noodles is really good!"

"Thanks..."

"Kakegawa is famous for tea right?"

"Yeah..."

"So does Kakegawa Noodles somehow related to the tea?"

"Nah, nothing special about these noodles..."

"I really hope Kakegawa Noodles can become a national brand name like Hakodate or Sapporo Noodles!"

"...."

As the chef/owner fell silent, no more can be heard from the little eatery with seven counter-seats besides the slurping noises of the serious-looking couple attacking away at their noodle bowls with great concentration. Slowly, the awkward yet intentionally excited-looking smile on my face slowly gave away to blankness.

Failure.

No more can be said of the situation. The chef stoically started washing the dishes of previous customers as the strangely energetic pop songs exaggerated the lack of any feelings in the little room. It was cold-hard trade of cash-for-grub. No ambitions, no extra services, no plan to become anything that it currently is not.

Conversation Over. Pay and get out. Just another routine, robotic "Thank you" at the door.

So, as I have mentioned in the previous post, I am officially a salesman for Rakuten starting this week. And being that rebellious seekers of "my own way of doing things," I decided to do something sales personnel in Rakuten have not do for years: doing door-to-door sales (the 30 shops that started Rakuten back in 1997 were all acquired this way)....well, with a slight modification: I go in as a regular paying customer, point out the bottleneck for buying desired products, and try to lead the conversation to Internet Shopping.

The results, well, were not desirable, so far. The noodle house I quoted above was a bit of an exception because I am still having a hard time determining why how would want to do Internet Shopping in the first place (ship dry noodles across the country, when the owner himself does not even believe that his noodles are special in any way?) But of the several shops I have visited throughout the late morning and early afternoon, the same issue seemed to haunt me.

Smooth conversation seems to be hampered by cultural incomprehension on my side.

Sure, given that I am not a good salesman in the first place, it could have been just my incapability to successfully connect their current business situations (i.e. unwillingness to consider ambitious business expansions) with Internet Shopping and Rakuten. But somehow I also felt that the conversations did not go because they just remained so superficially at the buyer-seller level, without evoking any sort of emotional connections that would lead to the level of friendship and trust necessary to bring about honest outbursts of desire for breaking the status quo.

Remember that I did (and mostly remained just) a customer in all of the shops I entered. The local shops, of course, have local customers. By not knowing enough about the local cultures, I am just another guy with cash, not someone who can boldly propose some crazy new idea like starting a cyber-shop and expect to be accepted. Many sharing of common values have to build up trust, and I have no ability to keep such a conversation going even if both the shop owners and I have such energy, time, and inclination....

So, what is the next step? hmmm....looks like my strategy of on-the-ground sales may have to become more straightforward. Instead of acting as if I am paying customer, I perhaps should just go in as a salesman from the start and see what happens. More direct rejections, definitely, but it would give me more freedom to talk about Rakuten as it is and perhaps even raise the possibility of getting a few shop owners actually excited about going to a national or even international market.