Debating My Last Months in Japan: Is Sales Skills truly Trans-National?
As my planned departure from Japan getting final approval from the company, the last days of my (current period of) working life in Japan has truly become a matter of question. Amid my lack of motivation and the company's lack of incentive to give me any significant work, I wonder if staying here until I truly must depart for England is in any way a wise decision....unfortunately, so far, the answer to the question has been mostly a big, absolute "No."
Here is the current situation. After informing my superiors that LSE will start for at the end of September, I was frankly told that my stay in sales position will last until the day I physically leave the company. The rationale is that, rather than transferring me to another department (even if one where I can immediately be put to use), I should master the "art of sales" so that next time I look for a job anywhere in the world, I can immediately put my "negotiation and speaking" skills to effective use.
Beautifully and logically flawless, it seems..."suffer now and be rewarded later." But, looking at the statement more carefully, it actually rests on a premise that we cannot help but doubt the truthfulness: the border-less nature of sales skills. Sure, it would make sense that sales learned at Rakuten can be transferred to any other Japanese company, because often the same Japanese people are targeted.
But, if I am to seek a job outside of Japan in the future (much more likely than coming back to Japan), does being a good salesman in Japan actually a usable asset? With different language and different cultures, it is hard to believe that a good salesman in Japan can automatically become equally so in a non-Japanese environment. I mean, for any non-Japanese who looks at my resume with "Salesman in Japan" on top, the only positive thing they can probably say is, well, I have a pretty good command of the Japanese language.
Also, come to think of it, I did have a full-time summer job as a salesman back in high school. It is true that i was not a good salesman back then (as I am now), but either way, the intensive sales training I received back in San Diego seemed to have absolutely no usefulness when I started sales in Rakuten. And just as American sales culture is not applicable to Japan, Japanese sales culture will not be successful outside of the islands without some fundamental localization.
And with proliferation of foreign-language call centers (English ones in India, Japanese ones in China, etc), we can further ask, why hasn't all sales in developed countries like Japan and the USA be exclusively outsourced to these low-wage states? With their absolute linguistic fluency, intensive sales training, and higher motivation for work, these young white collars in developing countries would have easily made the concept of "sales associate" disappear in rich states.
Culture is the element that stopped globalization of sales. The localization of sales, in my opinion, has little to do with sales expertise per se, but much more with understanding local culture. It is not something that a foreign national can do in a short period of time, simply because the cultural nuance is so deeply ingrained in the shared cultural memories of the local people. In other words, since culture is not globally uniform, sales skills cannot be expected to be so.
Yes, business analysis and operations can be outsourced to any country, as the effective way of cost-cutting and revenue generation can easily be tweaked in each locality by adjusting some numbers. But for sales, the cross-sharing of knowledge on a global scale cannot be relied on a bit of number-crunching. To let foreigners experience Japanese sales is certainly good for toughening them up mentally, but to ask to apply the skills in Japan to their native countries, well, will have to be thought out more carefully...
Here is the current situation. After informing my superiors that LSE will start for at the end of September, I was frankly told that my stay in sales position will last until the day I physically leave the company. The rationale is that, rather than transferring me to another department (even if one where I can immediately be put to use), I should master the "art of sales" so that next time I look for a job anywhere in the world, I can immediately put my "negotiation and speaking" skills to effective use.
Beautifully and logically flawless, it seems..."suffer now and be rewarded later." But, looking at the statement more carefully, it actually rests on a premise that we cannot help but doubt the truthfulness: the border-less nature of sales skills. Sure, it would make sense that sales learned at Rakuten can be transferred to any other Japanese company, because often the same Japanese people are targeted.
But, if I am to seek a job outside of Japan in the future (much more likely than coming back to Japan), does being a good salesman in Japan actually a usable asset? With different language and different cultures, it is hard to believe that a good salesman in Japan can automatically become equally so in a non-Japanese environment. I mean, for any non-Japanese who looks at my resume with "Salesman in Japan" on top, the only positive thing they can probably say is, well, I have a pretty good command of the Japanese language.
Also, come to think of it, I did have a full-time summer job as a salesman back in high school. It is true that i was not a good salesman back then (as I am now), but either way, the intensive sales training I received back in San Diego seemed to have absolutely no usefulness when I started sales in Rakuten. And just as American sales culture is not applicable to Japan, Japanese sales culture will not be successful outside of the islands without some fundamental localization.
And with proliferation of foreign-language call centers (English ones in India, Japanese ones in China, etc), we can further ask, why hasn't all sales in developed countries like Japan and the USA be exclusively outsourced to these low-wage states? With their absolute linguistic fluency, intensive sales training, and higher motivation for work, these young white collars in developing countries would have easily made the concept of "sales associate" disappear in rich states.
Culture is the element that stopped globalization of sales. The localization of sales, in my opinion, has little to do with sales expertise per se, but much more with understanding local culture. It is not something that a foreign national can do in a short period of time, simply because the cultural nuance is so deeply ingrained in the shared cultural memories of the local people. In other words, since culture is not globally uniform, sales skills cannot be expected to be so.
Yes, business analysis and operations can be outsourced to any country, as the effective way of cost-cutting and revenue generation can easily be tweaked in each locality by adjusting some numbers. But for sales, the cross-sharing of knowledge on a global scale cannot be relied on a bit of number-crunching. To let foreigners experience Japanese sales is certainly good for toughening them up mentally, but to ask to apply the skills in Japan to their native countries, well, will have to be thought out more carefully...
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