This happened when I was working as a salesperson at a small company. A salesperson needs a 'business card' to meet a client's contact, right? My actual rank was assistant manager, but my card said 'manager.' It was standard practice to print 'manager' as 'senior manager,' 'senior manager' as 'general manager,' and 'general manager' as 'director' or 'executive director.' When you meet a client contact with a low title, you are often looked down on, or you are only allowed to meet junior staff at your own level, so I suspect plenty of people still do this as a sales tactic. Small companies also have less clear promotion criteria than large ones, so titles can be higher than age or experience would suggest. Looking a bit older and holding a higher title can make your words carry more weight. That is why salespeople often inflate their titles to gain more influence in business negotiations. So what about business owners?
Since 2012, I have spent about 12 years, through 2023, running 'startup marketing and sales' training and mentoring at the Youth Startup Academy of the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency (KOSME) in regions across the country. The academy supports pre-founders aged 39 or under on the application date, mostly young founders in their 30s. Exchanging business cards with them, I noticed something interesting: the job titles on the cards differ between founders with sales experience and those without. Founders without sales experience have titles like 'CEO' or 'President', literally the head of the company. Founders who had sales experience at a previous job carry other titles. Can you guess what they are? Titles like 'Sales Team Lead, Director, Sales Manager, Marketing Director'. Why is that?
When you meet a client for sales, both sides start out very courteous, but as time passes they look into each other's age, hometown, school, military service, and other background, and sort out the pecking order. When my son was in daycare and I took him to the playground, the first thing the kids who had just met asked each other was 'age'. A six-year-old would tell a five-year-old not to speak informally to him because he was a year older. Young business owners meeting customers will find that most of the people across the table are older than they are. At first the other side is very polite, but once they learn the owner is young, the pressure in negotiations keeps coming. "You're the boss, right? Let's go with a 10% discount this time. We've known each other for years, so why the fuss? I'm your senior from the same hometown. I'll take better care of you next time. Let's be flexible, come on..." Pressure like this is awkward to handle, because your cover as 'final decision-maker' has been blown. This reminds me of a movie.
'Believer' is a Korean film I enjoyed a lot back in 2018, five years ago. Part 2 is set to be released on Netflix on November 17, 2023. The content below contains spoilers for Believer, so be warned! (Spoiler alert!!!) The film is about a detective chasing a drug syndicate, and what holds the audience's attention is the existence of 'Mr. Lee'. Right to the end, you keep wondering who 'Mr. Lee' really is. Even as the villains who seemed to be 'Mr. Lee' fall one by one, the syndicate boss stays hidden until the final stretch. He turns out to be Rak (Ryu Jun-yeol), who seemed pitiful, innocent, and naive, just as in the 1995 American film 'The Usual Suspects', where the limping character played by Kevin Spacey walks off with a normal gait in the last scene and is revealed as the culprit, Keyser Söze. Why did Rak hide that he was the boss? He probably saw that staying hidden and running the business from behind the scenes was both more effective than revealing that a young man was the boss, and an easier way to dodge responsibility.
The same is probably true for young business owners. Once it's out that you are the 'final decision-maker', you have nowhere to retreat and fewer options. So what negotiation strategy do you need here? The 'make an excuse' tactic. The dictionary defines an excuse as 'putting forward some other matter as a shield to avoid an unwelcome situation or hide the facts', or 'a pitiful explanation that talks around something you did wrong'. Like Rak in the movie 'Believer', who acts as though he has no decision-making power even though he is 'Mr. Lee', you can give another reason when pressed with "Give us a discount on the supply price!" So what kind of excuse works best? If you say "I'm just the sales team lead, so I don't have the authority," the other side may persistently ask who does decide. If you name a specific person, checking with that person may expose your false excuse. So it is better to point to a vague group or organization, or to an outside person or body, rather than a specific individual.
Some 20 years ago, when I was in my late 20s and early 30s and working in sales, clients put this kind of pressure on me often. When I was pushed on price or delivery dates, I sometimes blamed the decision on the sales director or my own company's CEO. Some counterparts then tried to cut me out of the DMP (Decision Making Process), telling me to check with that person right away, or asking for a contact number so they could confirm it themselves. They dismissed me, their negotiating counterpart, because of my young age and lack of experience. After many meetings and negotiations, my way of responding gradually changed. "As you know, an organization doesn't run on the decision of one person or one department. Even if I accepted the price or delivery date you've proposed here, the domestic sales team would push back on that price, and the production team simply could not accept that delivery date. Also, given the surge in raw material prices and the exchange-rate changes I'm about to show you, we should be raising our supply price, yet we can still proceed at the existing price. That is our decision, out of consideration for the long relationship we've kept with you. We appreciate your understanding." Responses like this gradually became second nature.
To be continued