Although every Ashisuto member is a sales person, we specifically refer to some employees as "salespersons". These are people whose primary job is to visit as many prospective clients as possible every week to persuade them to buy our products. They do not spend their time answering telephones, localizing and installing products, translating or training users.
During Ashisuto's first decade, most of our employees were salespersons and they were our most important employees.
The reasons for this were:
- Most Japanese companies had not yet bought any products from Ashisuto, so our critical task was to make a first sale to them. Most of our revenues came from these initial sales rather than from additional products sold to existing clients.
- Our products were simple and not critical to our clients' daily business operations, making them easy to support. This meant the quality, thoroughness and speed of our support was not critical.
Times have changed! These conditions no longer are true. Today we face the following situation:
- A large number of Japanese companies have bought one or more products from Ashisuto. Selling additional products to such companies has become very important. In fact, more than three-fourths of our revenues now come from selling additional products to existing clients rather than from selling to first-time buyers.
- Our products have become more complex and critical to our clients' daily business operations, as well as more difficult to support. The quality and speed of our support has become critical.
- Additionally, many clients no longer are content to buy from a company that can supply only software products. Rather than buying merely tools or components, they often want to buy consulting and other services to help them solve their problems. As a result, our ability to analyze a customer's or prospective customer's requirements, to design ways to deal with those requirements, and to provide the products and services required to satisfy those needs, has become increasingly vital to our business.
This situation represents an excellent opportunity, not a problem!
Why?
In the past, the only way we could distinguish ourselves from our competitors was by providing the best products and sales performance. Now we also have the ability to offer the highest quality, most thorough and fastest support for more complex products requiring such support.
This critical support must be provided on a daily basis over an extended period of time. In a sense, this seemingly difficult situation provides Ashisuto with the best opportunity to show our clients that our employees are the most considerate, helpful, honest and knowledgeable specialists in the computer software field. By providing excellent support to our clients we will gain their allegiance and they will recommend us to other potential users.
Times have changed, and so has Ashisuto.
Now only 214 of our 820 employees (as of April 2011) are full-time "salespersons". The rest are specialists: persons whose primary jobs are to prepare written materials, localize and install products, train users and help them obtain maximum benefit from the products we sell.
Thus, we no longer encourage our employees to become salesmen. All positions within Ashisuto now are of equal importance. We want each of our members to become the most competent, helpful and considerate person that he or she can be in some technical aspect of our business. This includes translation, writing, programming and consulting. All of these skills are vital for our success.
