Doing Business in Japan Overcoming Cultural Difference

1
Doing Business in Japan- Overcoming Cultural
Difference -

• Toshikata Toshi Amino
• Executive Vice President (Retired)
• Honda of America Mfg., Inc.
• Visiting Professor, St. Andrews University,
  Osaka, Japan

2
How to Make Your First Meeting with Japanese
Company Successful?

• Be Prepared like Boy Scouts
• Chinese Proverb ?????????
• Know your enemy, know yourself, then
• you never loose your battle.

3
Preparation

• Study thoroughly about the company which you
  are going to deal with
• Company history
• Corporate value and culture
• Corporate leadership and organizational structure
• What they are proud of
• Their unique technology, Market penetration

4
Preparation

• Know their weak points
• Problems which they are currently facing
• Their obsolete technology
• Loosing market
• Financial weakness
• Their current products and services
• Some actions needed
• Buy their products or service and analyze them to
  find their strong points and weak points

5
Preparation (Continued)

• Visit their retailer if available and ask their
• opinions
• Meet customers to get their feedback

6
Rehearsal

• Attention to the Detail
• Team play
• Who is the chief presenter?
• Who add comments?
• Who answer to what kind of questions from them?
• Time keeper
• Seeing is believing
• Charts, samples, audio/visual material and
  equipment

7
Presentation

• Try not to be too fancy Fortune 500, Sales
  revenue, number of employees
• Focus to the substance (What kind of benefit we
  can bring to you)Technology, products, services,
  quality,Consumer opinions

8
Presentation

• Ask some intelligent questions to give them a
  chance to be involved in your presentation
• Let them ask you a question to which you need to
  make a home work for them.
• For example
• Do you have an academic research report
• About this technology?
• Yes, we are happy to send it to you once we
  go back home (Follow-up)

9
Building Trust First

• For example Meeting
• Try not to go into a hard business talk soon.
• Friendly, informal introductory chatting is
• Appropriate
• Prepare some topics such as your first impression
  of Tokyo, last night sushi dinner
• However dont spend too much time for just a
  chatting. They are busy.

10
Typical Decision Making Process in Japanese
Company

• After your presentation
• Careful and thorough study about your
• presentation at staff level
• Departmental examination to come up with
• department level consensus
• Presentation to higher level (Board members)
• Approval by CEO
• Usually very time consuming. Be patient

11
Language Barrier

• Better have your own professional interpreter.
• Get your interpreter in your rehearsal to make
  him/her familiar with your
• Technical terminology and products
• Dont rely too much to your own employee who
  claims Japanese language capability

12
Thank you for your listening

• Any question?
• My e-mail address
• aminousjpn_at_aol.com