There's a small Tokyo sales office in a Kansai-based company. Whenever a salesperson from another company calls unannounced, the sales manager sends them packing. And he does it in full view of his own team.

Yet he expects his own salespeople to be received when they call on their prospects.

When the CEO at headquarters in Kobe heard about this, she was aghast. She receives every salesperson who calls on her. Herself.

So, two leaders in the same company. Two standards. Which one do you think the Tokyo salespeople actually live by? The one they watch every day.

This week I presented the ideas from my book, Indomitable Selling Capability, at my CEO Roundtable at The Peninsula Tokyo. It's the fifth of seven books I've written this year, and one I had wanted to write for a long time. There are plenty of books on selling techniques and methods. I couldn't find one that speaks directly to business leaders about what it takes to build an indomitable selling capability.

My point to the room was simple. The standard for your salespeople isn't set by your sales managers, or HR, or your learning and development people, and certainly not by your external sales trainers. It's set by you.

Let me walk you through the seven principles, and then what the room pushed back on.

First, sales is a noble profession. Salespeople make business outcomes happen. They help patients live longer. They bring craftsmanship and beauty into people's lives. None of that reaches anyone without someone selling it. My own standard is that I always return sales calls, I always listen, and if the offer isn't right for me, I say so politely.

Second, the seller is God. In Japan we all know the phrase, the customer is God. But the customer never wants to be God. A customer tells you what they want. A good seller discovers what they need. I worked with a materials company whose salespeople walked away from a proposal because they could meet only four of five technical requirements. Their CEO wanted them to go back and ask one question. What outcome is that fifth requirement meant to achieve? Order takers process requests. Experts discover needs, and they advise, even when that advice contradicts the customer.

Third, hunt for aspirations, not pain points. Imagine asking about a gym membership, and the first question is, so, what health problems do you suffer from? Presuming damage is a terrible way to start a relationship. Companies with serious problems tend to go bankrupt or get acquired. Aspiration is the natural state of a healthy company.

Fourth, invest in the best and ignore the rest. Many sales managers pour their time into their weakest performers and leave the excellent to fend for themselves. Invest in the mediocre, and you might get a couple of percent. Invest in the best, and you can double or triple their results. One vice president I advised took over a sales division and let go 80% of the salespeople. HR insisted she'd never replace them. She had no trouble. The best people from elsewhere in the company asked to transfer in, and she was later promoted to country manager.

Fifth, focus on selling form over targets. A senior vice president of sales in a saturated market was overselling stock that came back as returns. We identified what her best salespeople did that the average ones didn't, documented it, and coached everyone in it. The overselling stopped, returns dropped, and several percentage points went to the bottom line. Results are a lagging indicator. Form is a leading indicator.

Sixth, document your own sales methodology. In many companies, the methodology lives in the heads of the best salespeople, and it leaves when they do. If you can't describe it, you can't coach it. And if you can't coach it, you can't replicate it.

Seventh, weekly role plays are your secret weapon. Selling capability is coached, not trained. At one client, the worst-performing sales team started weekly role plays. Within two months, it was the top team in the company. If your salespeople don't rehearse, they're practicing on your customers.

So what did the room push back on?

The first response came from a consumer brand CEO. When he arrived in Japan, his teams treated even their distributors like masters to be served. Every meeting was about absorbing complaints instead of creating value. So he stood up in a distributor meeting and declared the relationship equal to equal. Over time, that reset his team's mindset. I agree. The best buyer and seller relationships are peer to peer, because both sides help each other succeed.

Then came the big one. Can you really let people go in Japan? The room, including several French members who know a strict labor regime when they see one, said yes. You document, and you pay.

Here's a framework I shared, and it applies in every country. When someone needs to leave, you can do it fast, cheap, or compliant. Pick two. Fast and compliant is expensive. Cheap and compliant takes a long time. Fast and cheap risks running afoul of the law. You always have options. Meanwhile, keeping a mediocre person hurts your customers, eats your managers' time, and drives your good people to quit.

One attendee added the human side. People in the wrong role are usually unhappy themselves. I've seen people say, years later, that being let go was the best thing that ever happened to them. Most people aren't bad, and most aren't short of talent. They're just in a job that doesn't suit them.

Another attendee defended the mediocre. Sometimes people look weak because of their environment, not their nature. He described someone who seemed mediocre because she was afraid to contradict a senior supervisor. Once the structure changed, real talent emerged. I've seen that too. But another attendee drew the line. Changing the environment only works if the person wants to develop.

When I asked who had a documented sales methodology, a fair number of hands went up. Then came the honest answer. Yes, we have one. A training company gave us a PowerPoint. It's on my hard drive somewhere. A methodology that lives in a forgotten file isn't a methodology.

The room had great ideas on role plays. One CEO plans to play a difficult customer in Nagoya himself, the week before the real meeting, starting with the knock on the door. Another brings their champion inside the customer organization in to rehearse before big meetings, using the MEDDIC framework. One leader videotapes his team's role plays every quarter and reviews them in small groups. As he put it, every serious sports team records its athletes. Someone else pointed out that AI tools can now record and give recommendations. And a retail leader found her people feared criticism more than the role play itself. So a third salesperson scores it against an objective checklist. You did it, or you didn't. No judgment.

Here's what I'd add. Make it fun. When someone trips up, laugh about it, because everyone trips up at some point. Ask the seller first how it went, then the buyer, then the room. Then swap roles. And remember, frequency matters more than duration. Fifteen minutes every week beats an hour once a quarter. A mistake you only catch once a quarter means four months of customer visits repeating it.

On aspirations, one attendee asked whether this is too ambitious. Another gave a practical answer. Choose your customers. Focus on the ones who get it. Then change the questions. Instead of asking about problems, ask about priorities for the coming year, or what they'd most like to change in their business.

A retail leader told a story about a luxury leather goods brand that offered hand-painted customization. Most salespeople rarely sold it, because they assumed customers wouldn't want it. The top seller simply asked, as he handed over the bag, so, what kind of painting will you have? Customers who came in for a bag discovered they wanted a personalized one. The difference between an order taker and an expert is often just one question.

And that comes from culture. You have to like your customers. Since 2010, I've had exactly one client I found awful to work with. I like all the others, personally. They're smart, interesting people, and I care about their success.

The last thread was motivation. One attendee said motivating people is his job every day. So I separated two things that get confused. Monetary incentives and motivation. Give a mediocre salesperson a monetary incentive, and you get a slightly wealthier mediocre salesperson. Instead, hire excellent people and pay them what they're worth.

I asked one leader in the room, if I paid you $100,000 more a year, would you change anything about how you work? His immediate answer was no. Excellent people behave the way they do because it's their nature. So stop trying to motivate people. Show the way, clear the way, give them the resources, and get out of the way. As one attendee put it, create the conditions.

And if you ever want to demotivate people, run an HR exercise on motivating them.

When you strip away the tactics and stories, nobody in the room disputed the principles. The debate was about execution. And every answer came back to the same place. The leader decides.

The salesforce you have right now is the product of the leadership it has received. You set the standard.

If you are interested in more on building an indomitable selling capability, my book, Indomitable Selling Capability, is available on Amazon. The link is in the description.