When someone comes to us for advice, accepting every request is not always the honest thing to do. If we take on work where we cannot genuinely help, both the client and our employees end up suffering. This idea — that saying yes to everyone is a form of dishonesty — runs deep in how serious Japanese firms think about service, and it may sit uneasily with the Western instinct that the customer is always right.
Choosing your customers does not mean turning away people you dislike. It means looking honestly, at the very first point of contact, at whether this is a relationship in which you can responsibly deliver value. That judgment is also a management responsibility: a duty to protect your employees, your existing clients, and the trust your company has built.
Key points of this article
- Choosing customers is not about exclusion. It is about being clear on the value you can provide and the trust you must protect.
- Customer orientation does not mean accepting everything. It means building healthy value together with the customer.
- A company has a responsibility to protect the time, quality, and psychological safety of its employees and existing clients.
- In real estate, where assets, contracts, and management span many years, you should not force a relationship that lacks mutual trust.
What does it mean to choose your customers?
Choosing your customers does not mean looking down on anyone. It means choosing the relationships in which you can responsibly deliver value. This is a distinctively Japanese reframing: in many Western markets the question is how to win and retain every customer, whereas here the starting question is whether the relationship can be served with integrity at all.
No company can meet every expectation. There are areas where we are strong, and requests where we can be of little help. Sometimes a foundation of trust is difficult to build from the very beginning.
If we take on the work while leaving this ambiguous, it becomes revenue in the short term. But later come the mismatched explanations, the gaps in expectations, and the exhaustion on the front line. In the end, it does not become good work for the client either.
Choosing your customers means being honest at the entrance. We state clearly what we can do and what we cannot. When something does not fit, we do not force ourselves to take it on. This judgment, too, is the company's responsibility.
Customer orientation is not appeasement
Customer orientation does not mean accepting everything the customer says. It is the stance of choosing, together, the decision that serves the customer over the long term.
Japan's Consumer Affairs Agency (消費者庁, Shōhisha-chō, the national regulator for consumer protection) promotes "consumer-oriented management" (消費者志向経営, shōhisha-shikō keiei) as management that raises social value by co-creating and collaborating with consumers. What matters here is that a business is conscious of its social responsibility and shows, through its core work, what kind of society it aims to build.
In other words, customer orientation is not "management that does as it is told." It is management that, while valuing the customer's satisfaction and trust, builds value that is desirable for society together with the customer.
Suppose, for example, that in a property sale a client says, "Just make it look as expensive as possible and sell it fast." In the short term, it might be easier to ride along with that expectation. But thinly justified explanations and inflated expectations destroy trust later on.
As I wrote in The Importance of Building Trust in Real Estate Sales, honesty is the foundation that sits before results. Customer orientation is not the posture of saying only what is pleasant to hear.
Why does choosing customers protect your people?
Choosing your customers is also a way of protecting your people — what we at INA call 人財 (jinzai, literally "human assets," a deliberate rewriting of the ordinary word for "personnel" to signal that people are treasured, not consumed). A company has a responsibility to protect an environment where employees can work with integrity.
The people on the front line stand at the very edge of the relationship with the customer. They explain carefully, coordinate, sometimes apologize, and face difficult demands. That work carries an emotional load.
Of course, receiving complaints and dissatisfaction matters. There is much to learn from the customer's voice. But when the content or method of a demand is unreasonable by ordinary social standards and harms the working environment of employees, it becomes an issue to be treated as customer harassment.
The Consumer Affairs Agency, in its public-awareness materials, describes "customer harassment" (カスタマーハラスメント, kasutamā harasumento, often shortened to kasu-hara) as conduct from customers or business partners whose means or manner of pursuing a demand is unreasonable by social norms and harms the working environment. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (厚生労働省, Kōsei-rōdō-shō, MHLW) also supports the creation of countermeasure manuals tailored to each industry. Unlike markets where "the customer is always right" is treated almost as law, Japan has begun to draw an explicit line where customer demands cross into harm.
If a company keeps saying "it can't be helped, they're the customer," its people wear down. The most sincere employees blame themselves. That is why a manager must draw the boundary line.
Protecting your people is not the same as making light of the customer. On the contrary, it is the precondition for continuing to provide good service.
The responsibility of choosing customers in real estate
The responsibility of choosing customers weighs heavily in real estate because it is work that does not end with the contract. The sums involved are large, and the relationships last a long time.
Real estate carries the weight of large amounts of money. Housing, inheritance, rental management, business-use assets, relationships with the local community — each is deeply tied to people's lives and wealth. So if you proceed without mutual trust, it turns into a serious problem later.
For example, even when there is a request to entrust us with management, our way of thinking about repairs and tenant relations may not match at all. If a client will not hear the necessary explanations and judges only by short-term cost, we cannot protect the quality of the work on the ground.
At such times, a company must have the courage to say so: "With our approach, we may not be able to be of help to you." This is not running away. It is the judgment to avoid forcing a relationship that would make both sides unhappy.
As I touched on in Why the Wealthy Do Not Trust Their Advisors, trust is not born from convenient words alone. Telling the truth honestly — including the possibility that we are not a good fit — is what leads to long-term trust.
The boundary line INA values
The boundary line INA values is not a line for rejecting people. It is a line for refusing to blur the values we must protect.
We want to be honest with our customers. That is precisely why we do not say we can do what we cannot. We do not stoke groundless expectations. We do not force unreasonable burdens onto our employees just to paper over the moment.
Because this boundary exists, people can take on challenges with peace of mind. Employees feel that the company will protect them. Customers come to see us as a company that will tell them facts that are hard to say.
Once, there was a request that looked attractive if you judged it by its conditions alone, yet I felt a strong sense of unease about how it was being approached. Rushing to a contract would have meant revenue. But the premises of the explanation did not line up, and consideration for the people involved was lacking. So we paused once, and proposed organizing the premises before moving forward.
As a result, the speed of that moment slowed. But later we were told, "I'm glad you stopped us at the start." The responsibility of choosing customers sometimes means having the courage not to proceed.
As I wrote in The Human Work That Remains in Real Estate, what remains in the age of AI is the responsibility of judgment. With whom, in what kind of relationship, and what to protect — that is where human work lies.
A company that chooses its customers is also chosen by them
A company that chooses its customers ends up being chosen by customers in turn. The clearer a company is about what it values, the easier its judgment is to trust.
A company that bends to everyone looks kind at first glance. But when its standards are vague, both employees and customers become lost, because they cannot see what the company truly values.
A company with standards, on the other hand, is strongly trusted by the people who fit it. Honest explanations, a clear line between what it can and cannot do, and care for long-term relationships — such a company attracts customers who share the same values.
Of course, choosing requires care. You must not judge by prejudice or personal likes and dislikes. Rather than drawing lines by attribute, judge by values, trust, purpose, and the value you can provide. Get this wrong, and it becomes not responsibility but arrogance.
That is exactly why the words "choosing customers" carry such weight.
Conclusion | To choose is to protect
Choosing your customers is not exclusion. It is protection. It is a management decision to protect the customer, protect your people, protect the company's trust, and protect value that lasts.
Customer orientation does not mean accepting everything. It means building healthy, sustainable value together with the customer. For that, you sometimes need the courage not to take a job on.
INA faces every consultation with sincerity. But we do not accept every request unconditionally. Is this a relationship in which we can deliver value? A relationship in which we can protect our people? A relationship that leads to long-term trust? We look at this carefully.
The responsibility of choosing customers asks a question of the company's character. I would rather be a company that is honest about the values it must protect than a company that looks good to everyone. That is what I believe.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. Isn't choosing your customers rude?
A. It is not rude; it can be the sincere judgment. Forcing a relationship in which you cannot deliver value is more dishonest.
Q2. Don't customer orientation and choosing customers contradict each other?
A. They do not contradict. Customer orientation is not appeasement; it is the stance of building healthy value together within a relationship of trust.
Q3. What kinds of customer relationships should be reconsidered?
A. Relationships where purpose and premises cannot be shared, and which harm employees' working environment or the quality delivered to existing clients, need to be reconsidered.
Q4. What criteria should a real estate company use to choose customers?
A. Not attributes, but purpose, trust, understanding of explanations, and whether long-term value delivery is possible should be the criteria.
Recommended reading
Citations and references
- 消費者庁 (Consumer Affairs Agency, Japan), "Understanding Consumer-Oriented Management"
- 消費者庁 (Consumer Affairs Agency, Japan), "Public Awareness Activities for Preventing Customer Harassment"
- 厚生労働省 (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, MHLW), "Industry-Specific Corporate Manuals for Customer Harassment Countermeasures"
