374 Japan Small Businesses Must Pick Up The Dregs Of Sales The Sales Japan Series

Japan is facing a serious shortage of staff in many industries.  The job-to-applicant ratio rose to 1.28, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare announced recently. The ratio means there were 128 job openings for every 100 job seekers.The figure has not yet reached the pre-pandemic level of 1.6 in 2019. The hospitality sector in particular, lost a lot of part-time staff during Covid and they haven’t returned in numbers sufficient to match the needs of employers.  Hotels are getting back to pre-Covid occupancy rates, but they worry they don’t have enough staff to clean rooms and run the Hotel at the standards they adhere to.  In July, the Japan Times noted 75.5% of surveyed hotel operators said they face shortages of regular employees while 78% said they lack part-time and other nonregular workers.
The Immigration Services Agency recently announced the total number of foreigners in Japan has topped 3 million for the first time. The Japanese government has created a new skilled workers No. 2 visa category, just for the construction and shipbuilding industries. The Nikkei Asia in April quoted the Japan International Cooperation Agency estimates that, given Japan’s labor shortage, reaching the government’s economic growth target for 2040 would require nearly quadrupling the number of foreign workers to 6.74 million.
This is a profound change for Japan, which as a society highly values conformity and harmony.  No “melting pot” for Japan. Foreigners in large numbers may threaten that harmony, because they don’t appreciate how things work here.  The Government is facing that labor shortage head on though and creating more visa availability for foreign labourers to enter Japan and do the jobs locals don’t want to do. 
In the white collar world, the language barrier and the weak yen, both guarantee that there won’t be a rush of foreigners coming here to take up jobs.  That means that for most multi-national companies, there will continue to be a war for talent for Japanese staff.  If you require English as well, the pool of talent available becomes tiny.  If you are a large corporation, you will have deep pockets and can offer large base salaries to attract people to join you.  If you are a small to medium size business, then the nightmare has already started and will only get worse.
The Council for the Creation of Future Education, chaired by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, has the goal for Japanese students studying abroad to reach 150,000 students seeking to earn degrees by 2033. The Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengō) conducted a survey in 2022 which showed 30% of new employees quit their jobs in the first three years. This more mobile younger group, called the Dai Ni Shinsotsu (second stage fresh graduates) will be attractive to target, especially those with international exposure, better English and a few years of work experience.  They will still need extensive training, though.
In the world of sales in Japan, the picture is very grim.  If you need English speaking capability, the pool of talent available is very shallow and we are all competing fiercely for a limited resource. In my hiring experience, I have noticed over the last seven years that salespeople are becoming more expensive and certainly very expensive relative to their ability. The vast majority of salespeople everywhere are untrained and they are working it out by trial and error.  Japan is just the same.  Assuming that someone knows what they are doing after working for a number of years in sales is too optimistic in my experience.  Bosses need to accept that they will need to give these salespeople training to get their skills to the levels required.  We teach a lot of salespeople here and we notice some common trends. They need particular work on asking questions to fully understand the buyer’s needs rather than just delivering their pitch. Also, they need help on handling pushback from the client on pr