---
title: Your first hire in Japan should not be a salesperson
description: HQs hire sales first in Japan. Then customers ask for Japanese materials, a local contract, a support promise, and nobody has them. Hire the translator first.
image: https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales-en.png
---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

[Home](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en) [Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en) [Contact](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

[日本語](https://nobusato.jp/ja/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales)[English](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales)[中文](https://nobusato.jp/zh/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales)

[Launching in Japan](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/tag/launching-in-japan)

# Your first hire in Japan should not be a salesperson

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en)

![Your first hirein Japan should notbe a salesperson](https://nobusato.jp/hs-fs/hubfs/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales-en.png?width=1200&height=630&name=first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales-en.png)

HQ decides to enter Japan. The entity is registered, the office is leased. Then comes the question I've heard dozens of times: who do we hire first?

Eight out of ten executives say a salesperson. The logic is clean. We came to Japan to sell. Without orders, everything else is cost. Orders first, then people.

I don't see it that way. In the cases I've watched, most entities that hired a salesperson first replaced that person within six to twelve months, or kept them while the company barely moved in year one.

## One I saw up close

A foreign company entered Japan and hired a salesperson first. After he joined, it turned out the industry requires a license in Japan before you can sell your own product. The license took a year and a half. For that year and a half, the only thing he could do was resell other companies' products for a thin margin and keep the lights on.

Not his fault. He was hired as a salesperson and worked as one. He just had nothing to sell, and that was knowable before the hire.

## Sales can't sell what doesn't exist yet

HQ imagines the Japan salesperson walking in with the product. What actually happens after he walks in is that the customer asks a few questions, and he can't answer any of them.

Do you have Japanese product materials and a quote? Is the contract under Japanese law or a translation of the home version? If something breaks, who comes, and how fast? Does your invoicing and payment term match Japanese practice? Any customers in Japan? Does this need a license, and do you have it?

After sales gets in the door, the customer asksJapanese materials and a quote?HQContract under Japanese law?LegalWho comes when it breaks, how fast?SupportInvoicing and terms per local practice?FinanceAny customers in Japan?MarketingLicense required, and do you have it?ComplianceNone can be answered by sales alone

**Fig.1**Six questions a Japanese customer asks once sales is in the door. Every answer sits outside sales. Hire sales first and the questions land on the one person who can't answer them.

None of these can be solved by the salesperson alone. HQ can solve some, but HQ doesn't know what Japanese customers ask, and the sales report just says "customer is considering." Between the two sits a blank that nobody owns. Deals die in that blank.

I wrote in [What foreign companies struggle with most in Japan](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-foreign-companies-struggle-with-in-japan?hsLang=en) that the gap between HQ and the entity isn't language, it's granularity. Hiring sales first hands the coarsest period to the person who needs the most detail.

## So who is the first hire?

My answer isn't a job title. It's a capability: someone who can translate what HQ has into something a Japanese customer can buy.

Translation here covers product (which features work in Japan, which must change), compliance (licenses, contracts, invoicing, personal data), pricing (payment habits and price bands), and the delivery promise (who stands behind it). One person can't know all of it. They need to know who to ask for each piece and be able to assemble it into a proposal a Japanese buyer can read.

In Japan, this person rarely comes from sales. The three backgrounds I see most: PMO or business development inside a foreign company's Japan entity, an overseas business division at a large Japanese company, or the number two at another foreign company's Japan entity. What they share is the habit of standing between two logics.

Once this person is in place, the second hire is the salesperson. By then there is something to sell.

## Same logic, different industry

I once built an engineering team from zero in Shanghai. The first hire wasn't an engineer. It was a tech recruiter. The second was a junior engineer with little experience. The first tech lead was hire number five.

People asked why I didn't start with the strongest engineer. Simple: the strongest engineer doesn't know who in the Shanghai market can be poached, how to talk to them, or what they cost. The person who can build the team comes first. The people who produce come after. The first hire's job isn't to deliver output. It's to make it possible for the next people to come in and work.

The first hire in a Japan entity is the same. The job isn't to close deals. It's to make closing deals in Japan possible.

The intuitive orderSales1Second sales2Support3My orderTranslator1Sales2Delivery3

**Fig.2**Two hiring orders. Intuition puts sales first and support after. Mine puts the person who can translate HQ's product into something a Japanese customer can buy first, and sales second.

## Finding them, and paying them

There aren't many of these people in Japan, and they're rarely looking. They don't send resumes and don't read job ads. Their current seat is usually fine.

My method is still the talent map first. Not a list of names, but a picture of the pool: people who have been through zero-to-one inside a foreign entity in Japan, which companies they sit in, at what level. Then decide who to approach. I wrote about it in [A talent map is not a list](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/talent-map-is-not-a-list?hsLang=en).

Executives also ask what to pay. This person usually costs more than the first salesperson, and you can't backfill with commission, because their year-one output won't show up in revenue. I budget at the level of a GM candidate for a foreign Japan entity, not at the sales band. Market context is in [Japan's wages since 1945](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-wages-since-1945?hsLang=en).

## When sales first is fine

There are exceptions. If the product is already used in Japan, say through a distributor or cross-border e-commerce, and the Japanese materials, contract template and support flow have been through a cycle, then yes, hire sales first. The translation has been done.

The other case: the product needs almost no localization, the customers are your home country's companies operating in Japan, and deals are done in your language, your way. Sales first works there too. But that isn't entering the Japanese market. That's doing home-country business in Japan.

## Where I'm not sure

This comes from B2B with meaningful deal sizes and real localization needs. For consumer goods, games or pure online SaaS, I don't have enough cases to say who the first hire should be.

When your company entered Japan, who was the first hire? Were they still there six months later?

How hard your target role is to fill: check [the job-to-applicant ratio by occupation](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-job-openings-ratio-by-occupation?hsLang=en) first.

Once you hire, get your work rules right. What an employment dispute in Japan actually costs is in [Japan sees 3,400 labor tribunal cases a year](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/japan-labor-tribunal-cases?hsLang=en).

---

Shorter notes that don't make it into a full article go on LinkedIn. [Follow me there](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/).

## More in this column

- ### [What one hire in Japan really costs: 1.2x to 1.5x salary](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/true-cost-of-hiring-in-japan?hsLang=en)
  
  A ¥6m hire in Japan costs about ¥7.1m a year from year two and ¥9.2m in year one with an agency. Employer social ...
- ### [What foreign companies struggle with most in Japan](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/what-foreign-companies-struggle-with-in-japan?hsLang=en)
  
  JETRO 2025: the top challenges for foreign companies in Japan are currency, communication and hiring. Paperwork ranks ...
- ### [Picking the wrong competitors is worse than having none](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/picking-the-wrong-competitors?hsLang=en)
  
  A competitor list ranked by fame is an encyclopedia, not a decision input. Three reasons put a company on it: talent ...

[← All articles](https://nobusato.jp/en/blog?hsLang=en)

## Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[Profile](https://nobusato.jp/en/profile?hsLang=en) [Get in touch](https://nobusato.jp/en/contact?hsLang=en)

Nobu Sato

Writing about launching in Japan, in three languages.

[info@nobusato.jp](mailto:info@nobusato.jp) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/) [X](https://x.com/nobusato5888)

© 2026 Nobu Sato. All rights reserved.

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement" : [ {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en",
    "name" : "Home",
    "position" : 1
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "name" : "Articles",
    "position" : 2
  }, {
    "@type" : "ListItem",
    "item" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales",
    "name" : "Your first hire in Japan should not be a salesperson",
    "position" : 3
  } ]
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales",
  "@type" : "WebPage",
  "author" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person"
  },
  "inLanguage" : "en",
  "isPartOf" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog",
    "@type" : "Blog",
    "name" : "Articles"
  },
  "name" : "Your first hire in Japan should not be a salesperson",
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/#person",
  "@type" : "Person",
  "name" : "Nobu Sato",
  "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/realnobusato/", "https://x.com/nobusato5888" ],
  "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/profile"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Nobu Sato",
    "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/author/nobu-sato"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2026-10-23T15:47:48.252Z",
  "datePublished" : "2026-10-23T14:43:35.000Z",
  "headline" : "Your first hire in Japan should not be a salesperson",
  "image" : [ "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales-en.png" ],
  "mainEntityOfPage" : {
    "@id" : "https://nobusato.jp/en/blog/first-hire-in-japan-should-not-be-sales",
    "@type" : "WebPage"
  },
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "url" : "https://nobusato.jp/hubfs/nobusatojp-1.jpg"
    },
    "name" : "nobusato.jp"
  }
}
```