From Chiba to Goldman Sachs

The notes take up Toki Daisuke’s Why I Learned Sales First, the story of a man they introduce as a former president of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1961, they write, graduated from the third cluster’s social-engineering course at the University of Tsukuba, and took a master’s in operations research at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. After returning to Japan he passed through NKK and Nikko Securities, and in 1990 joined the Seoul office of Goldman Sachs, where he worked in stock futures and derivatives. In 2001 he became head of the Tokyo office, and from 2002 to 2011 he served as president of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

A timid nature, and a method of talking

By nature, they write, he was timid and quiet, and seemed a poor fit for sales. Only by throwing himself into the work did he make a method of talking he calls his own weapon, an absolute way of speaking. Sales, he came to see, is not the selling of a thing but the winning of a customer’s heart, and that is possible only when a strong trust sits underneath. Across a sales life of twenty-one and a half years, they say, he held the highest place by a single mind for the customer.

The book, they write, also sets out a three-step way of persuading that he learned among highly able people at Goldman Sachs, the method of catching a person in a minute and moving them to a decision in ten seconds, and the leadership of a manager who builds a strong team. The author presents those skills as a working guide for people who want to succeed on a wider stage. The book is divided into three parts, each with methods and cases.

One minute, then ten seconds

Of the three parts, the one that most impressed the writer is part 2, on the method of talking that, they say, produces the best results: the force of a one-minute talk and a ten-second talk, and a three-step training for using that method. The writer had wondered whether it was even possible to catch a person in a minute and settle a decision in ten seconds, and this part, they say, answered that question. Even if a salesperson has given a customer accurate information for a full minute, that is only the start of a conversation. Why then does it matter? The one-minute talk is used again, according to the other person’s response, in order to know what they think. And at the decisive moment a move is made, and the matter is settled inside ten seconds. The notes leave the subject there. The same Korean report, in a longer form, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Student notes on Toki Daisuke, Why I Learned Sales First, and on a one-minute way of talking.

Last updated 15 November 2026