[Last Mile Labor Union] CEO Makoto Watanabe's "Make Customers Turn Right" Emotional Marketing Training

Sales is the job of understanding customer challenges, accurately explaining the details, pricing, and terms of products or services, and helping customers make a rational choice for themselves.

However, according to information provided to our union by current employees of Last One Mile Inc., during sales training at Last One Mile Inc., Representative Director, Chairman, and CEO Makoto Watanabe taught employees not how to support customers in making rational decisions, but rather how to exploit their emotions and steer them in the direction the company desired.

Using the customer's emotions to make a sales pitch

It is a technique called emotional marketing. It's a field where you make sales pitches by appealing to the customers' emotions.

Emotional advertising and sales techniques are widely used in society. Generating a sense of security, anticipation, empathy, or aspiration is not necessarily problematic in itself.

However, Makoto Watanabe expresses that purpose as follows:

Here is how to make customers turn right when you tell them to.

Customers are not objects to be made to follow a company's orders; they are independent agents who decide of their own accord whether to buy products, continue contracts, or choose another company.

If the representative director teaches in a company-wide training that making customers obey orders is a sales technique, employees will prioritize securing contracts over understanding or convincing customers.

To the client, "Establish dominance and pin them down so they can't escape."

Before the start of another training session, remarks were also confirmed to the effect that, regarding business negotiations, one should assert dominance over the other party and back them into a corner from a different angle so they cannot escape.

I need to one-up them on something, pile it on at that moment, and put them in their place once and for all.

We need to corner them so they can't escape, even if it means coming at it from a different angle.

It is the job of sales to demonstrate a company's strengths in negotiations and persuade the other party toward closing a contract. However, if the goal is shifted from convincing the other party to backing them into a state where they "cannot escape," it risks leading to aggressive solicitation, insufficient explanation of important matters, and obstruction of cancellation.

Sell to the employees, advertise to their families

We should sell them to our employees as well.

"Have you been running ads targeting employees' families this whole time?"

Offering products at employee-benefit prices to staff members is not a problem in itself. However, when selling to employees who are under the influence of the representative director or their superiors, and even targeting their families for sales, it must be made clear that declining to purchase will not affect their evaluations or interpersonal relationships.

When the order is given to "sell to our own employees too," the workers are in a position of being employed before they are customers. It becomes impossible to distinguish whether they signed the contract because they genuinely wanted to buy or because it was hard to refuse.

What happens when a sales culture that exploits emotions is turned inward toward its own employees

Make customers fall entirely in line. Assert dominance over business partners and lock them in so they cannot escape. Sell to employees and their families.

If this sales philosophy is applied not only outside the company, but also in giving instructions to subordinates, handling employees who wish to resign, and changing working conditions, will employees be able to express their own will?

Words meant to improve sales performance risk turning into workplace harassment or obstruction of resignation within the company.

Public questions for Last One Mile, Inc.

1. Do you have a track record of selling company or affiliate company products to employees or their families?
2. Did you explicitly state that an employee's refusal to make a purchase would not affect their evaluation, assignment, or interpersonal relationships?
3. Regarding the sales technique of "making them face right by commanding 'About Face'," were there any rules to ensure the customer's freedom of will?
4. Can you disclose the number of complaints regarding aggressive solicitation, insufficient explanation, and cancellation obstruction?
5. Did you verify sales quality through recording, monitoring, or customer surveys?
6. Does the Board of Directors evaluate this sales training as an appropriate customer-first sales policy?

Don't try to make customers come to you; be chosen by them.

If a product is truly valuable, there is no need to make customers move as commanded. You just need to accurately explain the content, price, risks, and cancellation terms, and let them choose after comparing it with other companies.

Sales that prevent customers from escaping are not strong sales.

Being chosen even when customers are completely free to walk away is a company's true sales capability.