How to Build a Japan Team with No Full-Time Employees
Introduction
Entering a new market is a big commitment. Establishing an entity and hiring locally is an even bigger commitment. Setting up an entity and making local hires can cost you half a million dollars over two years (and this is with a minimal and modest team). Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to derisk setting up an entity and making local hires?
Outsourcing and finding fractional help can be a solution to validating the Japanese market before a full-on commitment. Note that this approach will cost money, but likely a lot less than outright hiring a local team. Validating the market and understanding the market traction before a full commitment may be cheap to get further conviction in the Japanese market or can be a cheap way to mitigate any potential future and larger losses. It is also important to understand which phase of the entry you’re in.
Outsourced and Fractional Help
There are ways for companies to generate substantial revenue in the Japanese market without any full-time employees. There are agencies that help with localization and marketing. There are ways to do sales without any full-time salesperson by working with resellers and partners. Depending on the relationship, and as long as the incentives are aligned, these resellers and partners may handle customer support and success. If you can effectively work with these outsourced parties, the initial entry efforts can be done without a full-time hire.
ローカライゼーション
Localization is an important part of the early market entry efforts. There is a clear difference in how end users perceive localized vs. non-localized products. Fortunately, there are agencies that provide localization as a service (Nihonium can help with localization, as well). There is no need to hire a Japanese team member for the localization efforts, as most of the work can be outsourced. If you do have a Japanese speaker on the team, you can take on this effort in-house.
The downside of not having a Japanese-speaking employee is that there is no way to check if the translations are appropriate or accurate. The best alternative is to work with agencies or translators who understand or have specific knowledge of the niche.
Marketing
Marketing is an important aspect of go-to-market for any market to build local awareness and attract leads. Some local teams and agencies can tap into these channels. For SEO, you can work with local marketing agencies that can help you do the initial research on the types of keywords that would perform well. Localizing based on these keywords can help build a foundation for inbound leads in the long run. It is important to understand the local keywords rather than localizing content blindly.
Some marketing agencies go beyond localizing existing content. In actuality, most marketing initiatives can be outsourced and can run pretty smoothly if you find the right partner. For example, case studies and social proof play a big role in the Japanese selling process, and having a few can make a huge difference. Agencies can create case studies on your behalf. Once these agencies get connected to your customers, they’ll conduct the interview and put together a Japanese case study.
Trade shows, thought leadership, SEO, SEM, and other marketing initiatives can be done by working with external partners. The key is finding a partner that understands your product. This understanding will be the base of the GTM strategy and help identify the appropriate channels to go after.
Sales
Sales is another key aspect of GTM. If there is a language barrier, there is really no selling that can be done. There are a few ways to approach selling in Japan.
Leveraging Resellers
The first approach is to leverage resellers and partners in Japan. By sharing revenue with resellers, they will help with the sales process (if not own it entirely). If the reseller is properly incentivized, they will sell to their customer base.
If you hand over leads to them, they may decide to take ownership of selling into the leads. By sharing the leads, you are able to create a win-win relationship. You can outsource sales entirely and pay only if deals close and the reseller can obtain leads with zero marketing costs. For the leads that the resellers close, they will provide support and customer success.
If the reseller relationship develops in the right direction (the reseller is able to sell a lot of your product), they may take a proactive approach and may take on the localization and invest in marketing your product.
These relationships with resellers are extremely rare, but if you’re able to get one to work, you’ll essentially be able to build a sales team with no upfront costs.
Outbound Sales
Outbound sales can be outsourced relatively easily. Many agencies will make cold calls on your behalf. This can be an easy way to attract leads while the inbound funnel warms up. If you don’t have access to resellers but want to create a list of leads, finding an outbound agency and putting together a script can be an effective approach.
Demos and Onboarding
The hardest parts of the sales process to outsource are demos and onboarding new customers. This is difficult because it takes time to learn about a product enough to do a demo. Without a reseller, it may be hard to find someone willing to make this upfront commitment and sell your product on your behalf. Luckily, this is something that Nihonium can take on. If you’re looking for someone who will take the time to learn about your product and conduct demos, Nihonium may be a good option for you.
Engaging Nihonium
Much of the Japan entry initiatives can be outsourced to partners. Finding partners itself is time-consuming can may be difficult for companies. The language barrier is a key component that makes the research and engagement of external partners difficult. Many marketing, outbound sales, and resellers primarily operate in Japanese. They may be able to handle English communication, but finding them in the first place can be difficult, as their website and content are primarily in Japanese.
This is where Nihonium comes in. Nihonium’s goal is to be your one-stop fractional Japan team. There are services that we offer in-house (localization, marketing, customer support, and sales for inbound leads). We can also find potential partners (outbound sales agencies, resellers, etc.). We may not be able to guarantee that we’ll be able to bring on resellers on your behalf (resellers only chose to sell about 10% of companies that come their way), but we can navigate the Japanese landscape on your behalf.
Conclusion
Building a Japan team using external partners can be the right approach if you want to explore the local market but want to commit to setting up an entity and hiring a local team. This option provides market exploration/validation at a reduced risk and cost. Someone will have to be the central point of contact to manage the initiative and coordinate with the external partners and agencies. This could be someone on your team or you can work with us! If you’re interested in diving deeper into the Japanese market, book a free consultation here.
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