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Market Entry Guide

What 424 meetings taught us

Our own numbers from two US clients entering Japan, why one of them should not impress you, whether the market is still worth entering, and the questions we are asked most.

Updated 23 August 2026 · SpiderWave · 4 minute read

In this part

  1. What 424 meetings taught us
  2. Is the Japanese market still worth entering?
  3. Frequently asked questions

1. What 424 meetings taught us

We have run this motion for two US companies entering Japan. Across both engagements we booked 424 meetings and closed 164 deals, with first results in five weeks and one month respectively.

424
Meetings booked
164
Deals closed
5
Weeks to first results
2
US clients, both active

One of those engagements produced a 95% close rate, and it should not impress you. That client sold a product that was free to adopt: no implementation cost, no upfront commitment. When there is no budget to approve, there is no ringi to survive, and the entire dynamic described earlier in this guide simply does not apply. The close rate reflects the structure of the offer, not the skill of the seller.

We publish that caveat because the alternative is to let a number do work it has not earned. If you are evaluating any partner in this market, including us, the number on the slide is worth exactly as much as the context underneath it.

The more instructive pattern across both engagements is this: meeting acceptance correlated with introduction quality far more than with message quality. Rewriting the pitch moved the numbers slightly. Changing who was making the approach moved them substantially. In a market where trust precedes the meeting, that is not surprising — but it is the opposite of how most foreign go-to-market playbooks allocate effort.

2. Is the Japanese market still worth entering?

The honest answer is that it is worth entering for a narrower set of companies than the market-size argument suggests, and considerably more worth it for those companies than they generally expect.

JETRO's survey of foreign-affiliated companies in Japan, which drew 1,520 valid responses in late 2025, found that 61.6% expected to be profitable and around 60% planned to strengthen or expand their Japanese operations. Roughly 46% anticipated higher revenue in the current fiscal year, with more than half expecting growth in the following year. Notably, the appeal of Japan for "social and economic stability" rose 24.3 points to become the highest-rated attraction of the market — a reflection of how the geopolitical picture has shifted the calculus for European and North American firms in particular.

The same survey identifies where the difficulty sits, and it is not demand. The persistent obstacles cited are exchange rate volatility, securing talent, and obtaining office and business space. The problem foreign companies face in Japan is overwhelmingly an execution problem rather than a market problem.

That is also the strategic argument for entering. The barriers described throughout this guide are precisely why the market stays uncrowded — a foreign B2B company that establishes itself faces materially less competition than it would in a market with easy entry, and Japanese enterprise customers, once won, churn at rates that look like data errors to teams accustomed to Western markets. The difficulty is not a reason to avoid Japan. It is the reason the opportunity is still available.

3. Frequently asked questions

What is Japan sales outsourcing?
An arrangement where a specialist local firm performs the sales function on behalf of a foreign company: generating meetings, running negotiations in Japanese, navigating the customer's internal approval process, and managing the account after signature. Unlike a distributor arrangement, the foreign company keeps the customer relationship, the contract and the pricing decision.
How is it different from appointing a Japanese distributor?
A distributor buys from you and resells on its own terms, so it owns the customer and controls pricing, and it will naturally prioritise whichever product in its catalogue is easiest to sell. Sales outsourcing keeps the customer relationship and contract with you, and the partner is paid to sell your product specifically rather than to choose among many.
How long does it take to see results?
First qualified meetings can be generated within weeks when the partner already holds relationships in the target segment. Closing takes longer, because purchases pass through a ringi approval chain involving several departments. In our own engagements first results appeared in five weeks and one month, though close rates varied enormously depending on whether the product carried an implementation cost.
Should we hire a country manager or outsource sales first?
Hiring first is the more common sequence and the more expensive one, because a country manager cannot tell you within twelve months whether a thin pipeline was caused by the person, the product or the positioning. Outsourcing first turns the initial period into a diagnostic — identifying the responsive segment, the objection that kills deals at approval stage, and whether the price point survives Japanese procurement — after which the hire inherits a validated pitch and a live pipeline.
What does it cost?
Structures vary between monthly retainers, per-meeting fees and commission on closed revenue, and most partners combine them. The comparison that matters is against the fully loaded cost of a Japanese sales hire, which including salary, bonus, social insurance, recruitment fees and onboarding typically exceeds twenty million yen in the first year before producing any validated pipeline.
Do we need Japanese-language materials?
Yes, and not primarily for the person you meet. Your champion has to circulate your proposal internally to managers, IT, legal and finance who have never met you and will not read English. Material they can forward without editing is often the single highest-leverage asset in a Japanese deal.
Is our product a fit for the Japanese market?
The honest way to answer this is not with a market report. It is to take the product to twenty conversations with the segment you believe is the fit and see what the second objection is. The first objection is usually price and is usually not the real one.
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Sources: JETRO, Survey on Business Operations of Foreign-affiliated Companies in Japan (FY2025). Engagement figures are SpiderWave's own, covering two US clients between 2025 and 2026.