Why this seat is different in Japan
Sales leadership in Japan is channel leadership more often than not. Industrial, medical and technology products reach customers through distributors and trading companies (代理店, 商社), and the customer's own decision runs through an internal approval circuit (稟議) that rewards patience and relationship over pitch. A leader who has only run a direct enterprise team will underestimate the time and the channel economics.
The best salespeople often do not want to manage. Japanese compensation structures rewarded individual contributors with stable pay and modest bonuses for decades, and the move to a sales-leader seat with a large variable component is a bigger step than it looks. Enterprise software companies arriving with 50/50 on-target-earnings plans find that the pool of people who have lived on that plan is small. In one recent software search for a Sales Director we approached more than 370 people.
If this role is the top commercial seat with no Managing Director above it, say so. It changes the candidate from a sales leader to a country leader in waiting, and the pay and profile change with it.
Purpose of the role
Own the Japan revenue plan and the team that delivers it: strategy, segmentation, pricing discipline, channel management, forecasting and the development of a sales organisation that performs year after year.
Key responsibilities
Revenue and strategy
- Build and deliver the annual revenue plan and quota structure for Japan, by segment and channel.
- Set pricing and discounting policy inside group rules, and protect margin in a market that erodes price.
- Run forecasting with the discipline the regional leader needs and the accuracy finance needs.
Channel and key accounts
- Manage distributor and partner performance, agreements and conflict, and decide when to go direct.
- Own the top accounts personally where the relationship requires it.
Team
- Hire, coach and performance-manage the sales team, including sales engineering and inside sales where present.
- Build a bench of future managers and keep attrition in a tolerable range.
Operations
- Keep the CRM accurate and used. Design incentive plans with HR and finance that drive the behaviour the plan needs.
Interface
- Work with marketing on demand generation and with regional leadership on business reviews, in English.
Candidate profile
Must have
- Ten or more years in sales with at least five leading a team in Japan for a foreign-capital company.
- A track record of hitting or beating plan across multiple years, with the numbers.
- Experience of the channel model you run: direct, distributor or both.
- Hiring and exiting salespeople in Japan, which is harder than elsewhere.
Preferred
- Industry proximity, interpreted broadly. Adjacent technical industries transfer well.
- Experience of a regional reporting line and quarterly business reviews in English.
- Pricing or channel restructuring delivered.
Language
- Japanese at native level for customers, distributors and the team.
- English at business level: forecasting calls, business reviews and written reporting run in English.
Decide before you post
- Player-coach or pure leader, and how many of the top accounts the person carries.
- Direct, distributor or mixed, and whether the channel strategy is open to change.
- The compensation structure and whether it matches what Japanese candidates have lived on. A 50/50 plan needs explaining in the JD.
- Whether a Managing Director sits above the role.
- Team size, open seats and attrition over the last two years. Candidates ask.
How hard is this hire
Moderate to hard depending on the comp model. Industrial and healthcare sales leaders with distributor experience form a reasonable pool; enterprise software leaders who can carry a large quota on a high-variable plan form a small one. Expect three to five months. The common failure is promoting the brief from "sales manager with a team" to "VP" without changing the pay.
Interview questions that separate candidates
- Give me three years of plan versus actual for the team you led, and explain the year you missed.
- Tell me about a distributor relationship you restructured and what it did to revenue in the following year.
- How do you forecast, and how far off were you last quarter?
- Describe a salesperson you had to exit. How long did it take and what did it cost?
- What would you change in our channel model in your first six months?
