How To Select Data For Presentations In Business In Japan

How much is enough data in a presentation?  How much is too much?  Generally speaking, most presenters have a problem with too much, rather than too little information.  Your slide deck is brimming over with goodness.  And you just can’t bring yourself to trim it down. After all the effort you went to assembling that tour de force, you want to get it all out there in the public arena.  You have spent hours on the gathering of the detail and making the slides, so you are very heavily invested in the process.  You want to show the power of your thought leadership, your intellect, your insights, your experience.

Here is the danger though. We kill our audience with kindness. The kindness of throwing the entire assembly at them.  They are now being buffeted by the strong winds of new data, new information, new insights, one after another.  The last one is killed by the succeeding one, and it in turn is killed by the next one. We go into massive overload of the visual senses and the memory banks are being broken through, like a raging river spilling its banks.  Are we self aware about what we are doing?  No, we are caught up in data mania, where more is better.  We can’t thow that graph out because it took a lot to create it. We need to have that extra bullet point, even though it is not adding any extra dimension to the presentation. 

We have forgotten our purpose of doing the presentation and are now firmly fixated on the mechanics, the logistics, the content and not the outcomes we want.  There are different key purposes with a presentation: to entertain, to inform, to persuade.  The majority of business presentations should be to persuade but are often underperforming and are only hitting the inform button.  This is because the presenter hasn’t realised that with the same effort and drawing on the same data resource, they can move up the scale and be highly persuasive.  Data, data, data just doesn’t work though

At the end of the session the audience is shredded.  They cannot remember any of the information because there was way too much.  They cannot remember the key message, because there were too many key messages.  They walk out of there shaking their heads saying “what hit me?”.  Was this a success?  Did we convert anyone to our way of thinking?  Did they leave with any valuable takeaways so that they feel some value from attending? Or did they leave dazed and diminished?

So as presenters, we have to be like Mari Kondo with her housekeeping advice - keep only the bits we love and throw the rest out.  We have to make some hard choices about what goes up on that screen and what remains relegated to the depths of the slide deck reserve bench.  We have to winnow out the key messages and whittle them down to one central message.  We need to take that key message and assemble a flotilla of support with evidence, proof, data, comment, etc., to support it. 

We need a good structure to carry the presentation.  A blockbuster opening to grab attention.  A limited number of key points we can make in the time allotted.  Strong supporting data and evidence to back up the key points. We need to design powerful close number one as we finish the presentation and also a powerful close number two, for after the Q&A.

We have to keep the presentation itself short and snappy, rather than long and laborious.  We want to leave them tonguing for more rather than leaving them feeling sated or saturated.

We want them to get our key message and have it firmly planted in their brain, so they get it, remember it and believe it.  That is different to stuffing the fire hose down their throats and hitting the faucet to turn it on full bore.  But this is often what we do, when we lead with data.  Always remember when it comes to presenting, less is more baby!  You can always flesh out the points more in the Q&A and after the talk, for those most interested in the topic.  We want to impress the audience not bury them under detail.  Getting the balance is the presenters skill and art and that is why there are so few presenters who are any good.  Plenty of room at the top folks, so come and join!

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Presenting In Business in Japan

Japan has some particular ways of doing things.  We say "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".  That would be extremely bad advice when it comes to presenting your solution to buyers here.  Japan is the country of Zen, which holds simplicity at it's centre.  You would never know that though, when you look at typical business presentations.  The slide deck is a mess.  There are slides with five different colours on offer.  You will see four to five different fonts on the same screen.  The text will be dense, small font sizes and impenetrable.  If there are four graphs, then they are all shown on the same slide. 

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, when one of my team showed me the slide deck from a recent presentation he attended.  This event hosted by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce,  had about 150 hopefuls in the audience, keen and eager to learn how to do presentations properly.  The instructor was a Japanese business consultant and his slides were terrible. There were too many details on each slide, too much text, too many diagrams cobbled together on screen.  He was using four different fonts on each slide. It was ugly and hard to follow. He was someone, supposedly an expert on presentations, showing the faithful how to do it.  Sadly the lack of knowledge here on how to present is legendary.

I had been asked to give a series of presentations for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government on how to start a business in Japan.  They showed me what the previous speaker, a Japanese business women had been using. I just laughed to myself when I saw it. It was florid, drenched in too many colours, too small sized fonts, too much text, a total disaster as far as a professional business presentation goes. The officials at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government obviously thought that this mess passed muster.  How could that be?

I don't know why because this is the country of high aesthetics of zen simplicity?  If you ever take a careful look at a Japanese kimono, however you will find an amazing array of colours juxtaposed together. Often these colours don't seem to go together, as far as Western concepts of colour spectrum matching goes. Maybe there is more of a kimono mind at play here, than any zen sensibilities?

Even smart people do the craziest things.  One of my ex-staff now works for a Robotics company founded by a mad professor type. The founder is very, very smart. I attended his presentation and boy oh boy where did the smarts go?  The slide show was the same thing.  Too many colours, too much information crammed onto one slide, totally dense and hard to follow.  It was just overloaded with diagrams, detail and graphs.  So don't follow the Japanese model, instead do professional presentations, be concise, precise, clear, sparse.

Also in Japan, it is quite common for people to sit down when they present.  You will find they have prepared a desk, chair and low microphone stand for you.  Don't follow this pattern.  Stand up so that you can position yourself on the audience left of the screen.  We want them looking at our face first, then reading left to right across the screen.  We know that our face is the most powerful tool there is, when it comes to presentations and we want to be in the best position to use it.   Also when we stand up ,we get to use the full capacity of our body language to drive home the key points we want to make.

In Japan however, if you stand above the audience, it is implying your eminent superiority over all of those sitting.  Well you simply can't imply that with buyers, because they are God and there is nothing higher than them.  So you need to make an apology that you are going to stand up, but explain that this will make it easier for you to give the presentation.  Now this applies to foreigners and to Japanese alike. 

The key is stand up, but apologise first, so you can get permission to not sit when presenting. For foreigners, we are freed up from a lot of restrictive conventions to do with the culture, because they just think we are ignorant and don't know any better.  This apology idea though, travels very well across audiences and across nationalities.  Even if you have Japanese team members doing the presentation in Japanese, get them to apologise and stand up and present.

If you are presenting to a buying group do not just imagine you can engage with the main person and do the deal.  The way decisions are taken here, there will be all of the stakeholders in the room. Few people will want to say “yes” to anything new because that is risky, so they are there to make sure this is safe or to make sure it doesn't happen.  You need to engage everyone. 

Don't make the beginners mistake of talking to the person with the best English. They are rarely the decision maker.  They are just a minion who is there, because they have good English.  Engage with everyone, just as you should be doing in any presentation.

If you are using consecutive interpreting you need to learn how to speak in brackets.  Speak part of your thought, stop, wait until the interpreting has finished, pick up the thought and continue.  This may sound easy, but trust me it is not easy at all. Your thought process can get hijacked during the consecutive interpreting break and you lose your train of thought or you go off on some unintended tangent. 

One of the best people I ever saw using consecutive interpreting was Murray Rose.  He was a swimming icon in Australia, multiple Olympic medalist and a boyhood hero of mine.  I had the pleasure to meet him when I was Consul General for Australia in Osaka. He was here to promote the Sydney Olympics. 

He gave the most impressive and moving speech on the meaning of the Olympics.  I can tell you it brought a tear to my eye it was so sincere and Aussie boys don’t cry. I wish we had been smart enough to record it.  The other thing that struck me was how skilled he was to start a thought, hold it and continue perfectly.  That takes work. You also have to remember not to talk for too long.  You need to give the interpreter a chance to remember what you said so they can repeat it. You often see people who are not used to interpreters waxing long and lyrically, completely forgetting the talk now has to be switched into Japanese. The interpreter just cannot retain that much detail, so whatever you said will only be partially transferred to the listeners. Go for short brackets so that nothing is lost.

How To Read Faces When Presenting In Business In Japan

People staring at you intently when you are presenting can be unnerving. This is especially the case when we are already feeling nervous to begin with. If some of those faces in the audience look particularly hostile, then the level of inner tension can be reaching danger point. We are stressing ourselves in reaction to how we perceive the audience and what we imagine they are thinking about us and what we are saying.

“Don't judge a book by it's cover” is ancient wisdom and the same is the case when presenting. I was in Osaka a number of years ago, giving a presentation in Japanese to 100 salespeople in the travel industry on why Australia was such a great education destination for Japanese students. The idea was that I would inspire these salespeople to recommend education destinations in Australia, in preference to other competing countries, after I had fired them up with my passion for the idea.

I can still remember the scene. It was a long hall and everyone wearing dark suits, mainly men and a big venue.  On my left side, about half way down, was sitting one guy who had a really angry face. Even from that distance I could tell he looked angry.  He didn't seem to buying anything that I was saying at all. 

At the end of the presentation, he leapt out of his seat and came straight down to the front where I was standing. I had just come down off the podium to exchange business cards with members of the audience. I honestly thought he was going to punch me! Instead he started thanking me profusely in Japanese for my presentation, said it was really great, he really learn a lot, etc., etc. 

I felt like saying, "if you liked it so much why didn't you tell your face!" I also realised that what I took for an angry face, was in fact a face deeply concentrating on what I had been saying. Now Japan throws up a few challenges in this regard, because Japan is quite a serious place, with a lot of serious people, whose faces we may misread. 

Whenever I write or speak about presenting, I am always making the point to keep eye contact with each person for around six seconds and to look at people in all six pockets of a room. Those in the front, left, middle, right and those at the back again left, middle, right. We do this in a random, unpredictable way to keep audience interest in our presentation. Having said that though, not everyone is equal. If you are nervous about speaking to groups, inside those pockets pick out the people who are nodding in agreement with what you are saying or who at least have a neutral face. To maintain your confidence do not look at anyone who looks angry, doubtful, quizzical or hostile. 

Ignore them completely to concentrate on those who are with you. This will help build your confidence when speaking and over time you won’t need to do this but in the early stages it works quite well.  Actually thinking about it, I am totally confident presenting, but I still continue to ignore people who look hostile, because I have no particular interest in engaging with them.

The part of the talk where the hostiles get to be a problem is usually during question time.  If you have been trained in how to handle Q&A, you never worry about hostiles in your audience, because you know you can handle anything they throw at you. If the whole audience looks hostile, well tough it out and keep going, bracing yourself for the Q&A where you can expect a lot of pushback. By the way we teach how to deal with hostile Q&A, so let us know if you would like to learn the secret.

One key point – always specify how much time there is for questions, so that you can make a graceful departure and leave the venue with your head held up high.  If you don’t, it looks like you are a scoundrel and a coward trying to flee the premises, because you can’t take the heat.  We don’t want that as our final impression do we.  They can disagree with you as much as they like, but you have to end the proceedings looking like the cool, calm professional you are.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.

Being Persuasive In Business In Japan

Business schools are teaching put up your conclusion first in the Executive Summary and then the evidence and argument follows in the main body.  If we are writing something for others to read, then this is absolutely terrific.  If it is a report on a market’s potential or how the product launch fared, this makes a lot of logical sense.  Busy people want the punch line delivered quickly, so they can allow themselves the opportunity to move on to more pressing needs. If we are talking to people, trying to win them over to our way of thinking, then this is rubbish.  Don’t ever do this, because you are setting yourself up for trouble.

We do it though, don’t we. We offer up our conclusion at the start and wonder why that didn’t go according to plan.  We don’t get immediate acceptance, as we had expected. Here is the problem in the real world.  When we tell people our conclusion, we are now up against a wall of critics, one-uppers, debaters and dilettantes. We have exposed our argument to the world, but we have left it to hang out there with nothing to defend it. You might be thinking, “no, the defence comes straight after, as we get into the evidence”.  You are so optimistic!

In fact, as soon as the opening conclusion is stated, the audience has stopped listening to you completely.   They are thinking they are smarter than you and don’t need to hear anymore.  They are fully concentrated on the clever thing they are going to say, to demolish your recommendations.  Their minds are buzzing with their counter arguments, their views, how to make themselves look good  and alternative proposals.  They can hear white noise in the background, which is actually you speaking, but they are not focused on your content, because they believe what they have to say is much more important.

To avoid this scenario dump the business school model and reverse gears.  When you want to persuade someone of some recommendation you are making, start with the evidence first.  Do it in the form of a short story.  It shouldn’t be too long and you are forbidden to start rambling.  Keep it tight, taut and on point.

The story needs to be rich in word pictures.  We need to be able to see the scene you are describing in our mind’s eye.  We need to bring in people they will know, describe locations they are familiar with and create a time sequence through reference to seasons or business milestones during the year.  They cannot intervene or tune you out, because they have no idea where this story is taking us and they are forced listen to you.

We need to promote the context behind the recommendation we are making.  By creating the scene, the audience will be coming to their own conclusions about what needs to happen.  The context is telling them that logically XYZ should happen.  This is the same conclusion you came to, based on the same evidence you are giving them and you tell them XYZ should occur. Immediately we have done that, we go into the outcome or benefit that your proposal will generate.  So the order runs this way: context, recommendation then benefit.

Because it is short, we won’t lose the audience and that is why we have to practice this delivery. In any short presentation each word becomes very important, so we have to trim the talk of all fluff and surplus words.  If you try to make it too involved and go down a number of rabbit holes, you will lose the audience, who will become impatient and tune you out.  So we have to give enough powerful evidence, without getting bogged down in the gritty details.  Those gritty details can come later, but the key driver initially, is to get people to agree with your general direction.

The context first approach is great because while people can disagree with your conclusions they can’t disagree with your context.  Usually they won’t have as much command of the context as you have, so it is hard to debate with you over the background details.  They also have to wait until they get all the relevant information before they know what you are proposing.  They can’t cut you off because they don’t know if this is going to positive, negative, or about the past, present or future.  They have to hear you out before they can say anything. Genius!  Actually it is magical and this is why this construct of context-recommendation-benefit is called The Magic Formula.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. The self-motivated are inspired. Inspired staff grow your business but are you inspiring them? We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. Want to know how we do that? Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com

If you enjoy these articles, then head over to dalecarnegie.comand check out our "Free Stuff" offerings - whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. Take a look at our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules.

About The Author

Dr. Greg Story: President, Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Author of Japan Sales Mastery, the Amazon #1 Bestseller on selling in Japan and the first book on the subject in the last thirty years.

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making and become a 30 year veteran of Japan.

A committed lifelong learner, through his published articles in the American, British and European Chamber journals, his videos and podcasts “THE Leadership Japan Series”, "THE Sales Japan series", THE Presentations Japan Series", he is a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. Dr. Story is a popular keynote speaker, executive coach and trainer.

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.