Vol.2 -First Steps in JapanRealistic Expectations and Early-Stage Strategy

Marc Einstein, a technology analyst with over 15 years of experience in Japan, shares his insights on the critical “first steps” for foreign companies entering the Japanese market. Drawing on his work with both Japanese and international firms, Marc explains why expectation-setting, hiring, and operational readiness are the foundation for long-term success.
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how Japan’s market is changing and how to decide whether to enter at all. In this second conversation, we zoom in on the early phase after that decision: the first 1–2 years, when expectations, first hires, and basic operating models are put in place.

Why the First Steps Matter

Q: Marc, why do you place so much emphasis on the initial phase of entering Japan?

A: Entering Japan is very different from entering most other Asian markets. It’s a big decision with big implications—for investment, for time, and for internal politics. If you get the expectation-setting wrong at the beginning, headquarters can very easily jump to the conclusion that “Japan is too hard” or “Japan isn’t growing as fast as we expected.”
The flip side is also true: if you use those first steps to align around things like “How long will this really take?” and “How committed are we willing to be?”, you can avoid a lot of problems later on. From day one, you want to set the tone that your company is in Japan for the long term, not just to chase a quick win and then disappear.

The Expectation Gap: HQ vs. Japan Team

Q: What kinds of misalignment do you see most often between headquarters and the Japan team?

A: One of the biggest issues is how HQ and the local team think about time, especially in the first 1–2 years after entry. Japan is one of the largest economies in the world, so HQ often assumes, “If it’s our third-largest economy, it should quickly become our third-largest revenue market too.”
In reality, Japan has one of the longest sales cycles in the world. It takes many meetings and a lot of trust-building before a customer is ready to sign with a new vendor. If that time horizon isn’t shared, you end up with a structural conflict: HQ wants results in 1–2 years, while the local team is still working on brand awareness and initial relationships.
On top of that, Japan has very specific employment practices, compensation norms, and a very tight market for certain skill sets—especially bilingual technical talent. If HQ isn’t aware of this reality and just works backwards from the revenue number, the expectation gap only gets wider.

The Hiring Trap: Why Sales-First Can Backfire

Q: Many companies hire a sales leader first. Why can that be a trap in Japan?

A: It’s very common for foreign companies to open a Japan office by hiring a salesperson and telling them, “Start generating revenue as quickly as possible.” On the surface that sounds reasonable, but in Japan it often doesn’t work—and it’s one of the most common early-phase mistakes I see. Because the sales cycle is so long, you need multiple meetings and touchpoints before you get anywhere near a contract. Even if the salesperson is very energetic and does a great job in meetings, deals can still stall during technical evaluations or proofs of concept if you don’t have the right support behind them.
That’s why the question of who your first hire is becomes so important. Instead of focusing only on short-term sales, you want someone who can bridge language and culture between HQ and Japanese customers, build relationships with the expectation that you’ll be working together for years, and understand Japan’s decision-making processes and HR practices.
Your “first person” in Japan shouldn’t be just a quota-carrying salesperson. Ideally, they’re someone who embodies your company’s promises and values in this market.

Turning a Long Sales Cycle from Risk to Asset

Q: Japan is known for having one of the longest sales cycles in the world. How can that be a positive?

A: Honestly, nobody wants to hear that a market has a long sales cycle. Everyone wants quick results. In the early phase, that can feel like “nothing is happening.” But in Japan, that “length” has an upside.
Once you do the hard work to build trust, customers tend to stay with you for a very long time. I still work with clients I first met 15 years ago. Some of them have followed me even when I’ve changed companies.
Winning new customers is hard, but once you win them, they’re much less likely to leave. In many countries, price is the dominant factor; in Japan, people are much more willing to pay for quality and reliability. If you present two proposals—one for $50,000 and one for $75,000—Japanese companies will not automatically choose the cheaper one. They may very well decide that the more expensive option is better because they expect higher quality.
If you treat Japan as a short-term “deal factory,” you’ll be frustrated. But if you see it as a base for long-term recurring business, the long sales cycle becomes an asset. Long-retention customers stabilize your revenue and give you strong reference cases that help you in other regions, too.

The “Plastic Food Sample” Rule: Deliver Exactly What You Promise

Q: You’ve compared Japanese business culture to the plastic food samples in train station restaurants. What do you mean by that?

A: If you go to a restaurant inside a Japanese train station, you’ll see plastic models of the dishes in the window. Let’s say the plastic display for a sushi set shows tuna, salmon, shrimp, and octopus. When the actual plate arrives, it’s almost exactly the same.
What matters is not “roughly similar,” but “the same.” If the real dish shows up with a piece of egg instead of shrimp, or the order is different, the customer feels something is off.
Business works the same way. If you promise to deliver a 50-page report, it should really be 50 pages—or more. “It’s only 49 pages, but close enough” is not acceptable. The same applies to deadlines. If you say you’ll deliver by 6:00 p.m. Tokyo time, that doesn’t mean 6:00 p.m. in London or New York; it means 6:00 p.m. in Tokyo.
That’s where the golden rule comes in: “The golden rule for success in Japan is simple: do what you said you would do.”
You can extend that further into an “under-promise and over-deliver” mindset. For example, you might promise a 50-page report, but if you discover lots of valuable information during research, you deliver 60 pages instead, at no extra charge. Designing your business that way—where exceeding expectations is built into your model—goes a long way in Japan.
The opposite is also true. You can lose trust very quickly by being late, delivering less than promised, shipping something that doesn’t match the agreed specification, or charging extra for every small change. In Japan, those behaviors are easily seen as “not sincere,” and once you lose that trust, it’s very hard to regain.

Preventing Invisible Friction: HQ vs. Japan Back Office

Q: Beyond revenue targets, where do you see concrete points of friction between HQ and the Japan team?

A: Revenue targets are the obvious one, but the next big area is HR and back office.
In one company, a Japanese employee asked HR, “How many days do we get off for Obon?” The HR person at HQ looked up the Japanese public holiday calendar on Google and replied, “Obon isn’t an official public holiday, so you don’t get any days off.” From the Japanese employee’s perspective, that’s unthinkable; from HQ’s perspective, it seemed perfectly logical. That’s a classic clash of assumptions.
In another case, the company’s back office was in Malaysia, so people there couldn’t read Japanese receipts. As a result, a lot of unnecessary expenses were going unnoticed. When the company switched to a Japanese partner, they suddenly saw things like frequent use of first-class seats on trains or expenses that weren’t really business-related. They tightened controls and saved a significant amount of money.
The lesson is: if you apply the same rules you use elsewhere without understanding Japan’s context, you pay for it later—in both time and money. For HR, legal, compliance, and accounting, you really need either a proper Japanese team in-house, or a trusted external partner who truly understands the Japanese environment. There isn’t much middle ground that actually works.

Enter When You’re Ready, Not Just When You’re Fast

Q: Many people believe “the earlier you enter, the better.” But you often say, “Readiness is more important than speed.” What do you mean by that?

A: I usually tell companies this: “It’s much cheaper to enter Japan when you’re ready than to rush in unprepared.”
If you enter unprepared and your very first big customer project goes badly, that failure will be remembered for a long time. It may also spread informally through the market.
When I say “ready,” I roughly mean three things:
A value proposition you can adapt to Japan (not just copy-pasted English messaging, but a story that clearly explains quality, support, and long-term reliability)
Resources to handle localization and operations (your own team or a trusted local partner, but someone needs to be clearly responsible for what happens after the deal closes)
A realistic timeline and budget that HQ understands (accepting that it may take at least a year just to build brand awareness and relationships)
If those three boxes are checked, you can make a much more evidence-based decision about when to enter. If one or more are missing, it may be worth spending more time building track record in other Asian markets, cultivating potential partners, or hiring people who understand Japan before making the move.

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