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Build a Japan Sales Pipeline with Local Outreach

We research Japanese companies that plausibly fit your product, identify the departments likely to care, and open contact through outreach designed for the local business environment — inquiry forms, Japanese email, and phone, chosen per company rather than fired at everyone.

The Challenge

B2B lead generation in Japan rarely fails at the pitch. It usually fails earlier — at working out who to approach, finding readable information about them, and getting a first message into the right hands in language that reads as professional.

  • Identifying which Japanese companies are genuinely appropriate targets, rather than the ones that happen to maintain an English website.
  • Company information often sits in Japanese-only sources: corporate sites, IR pages, industry directories, and trade association member lists.
  • Working out which department owns the problem you solve, which can differ from the equivalent function in your home market.
  • Finding a usable contact route at all, since direct details for individual staff are often not published.
  • Writing outreach that reads as appropriate business Japanese rather than translated English marketing copy.
  • Following up at the right interval, through the right channel, without the message being read as pressure.

What We Support

The areas of work that take a Japan target definition from an idea to live conversations. An engagement can use all of them, or only the parts your team currently lacks.

  • ICP & Target Definition

    Translating your ideal customer profile into criteria that can actually be applied to Japanese companies: sector, size, structure, and buying trigger.

  • Target Company Research

    Desk research through Japanese-language corporate sites, industry directories, association lists, and public filings to find companies matching those criteria.

  • Prospect List Building

    Assembling a working list with company background, the departments likely to be relevant, and the contact routes each company appears to offer.

  • Contact Form Outreach

    Individually written business enquiries submitted through corporate inquiry forms, where that is the route a company has chosen to publish.

  • Japanese Email Outreach

    Business-Japanese email written for the recipient's role and company, sent where a legitimate address and a real reason to write both exist.

  • Representative Phone Outreach

    Calls to a company's main line in Japanese, used to reach the appropriate department or to confirm how an enquiry should be directed.

  • Account Research

    Deeper background on accounts that respond: organizational structure, recent announcements, and existing supplier relationships where publicly visible.

  • Multi-Channel Follow-Up

    Sequenced follow-up through the channel a given account has used, spaced at intervals that read as normal in Japanese business correspondence.

  • Campaign Reporting

    Written reporting in English on what was sent, what came back, what the replies suggest about the segment, and what we would change.

Contact Form Outreach — What It Is, and What It Is Not

Many Japanese corporate websites route external business enquiries through a single centralized inquiry form — often labelled お問い合わせ — rather than publishing departmental addresses or individual contact details. In some organizations that form is the intended front door for anything arriving from outside, and submissions are triaged internally to whichever department the subject belongs to. Contact form outreach means writing a specific business enquiry and submitting it through that published route, in Japanese, as a person would.

This can be useful when a target company publishes no other route in, when the relevant department is not obvious from the outside, or when the subject of the enquiry is one that a switchboard could not usefully direct. It is not universal. Some companies restrict their form to existing customers, and some state plainly that sales approaches are not accepted, while plenty of sectors respond better to email or a phone call. Channel choice is therefore a decision made company by company, not a policy applied across a list.

It is worth being direct about what this is not. It is not mass-submission of a generic message to every form we can find. A form filled in without reading the company, without a reason specific to them, and without regard to what the page itself says about acceptable use is spam — and in a market where reputation travels, it damages the name you are trying to establish. Every submission is aimed at a company with a plausible reason to care, written in professional Japanese, and sent only where the company's own stated contact preferences allow it.

  • Target relevance first

    A company is contacted because there is a defensible reason it would want to hear from you, not because a form exists.

  • Individualized context

    Messages reference the recipient's business where that context is available and genuinely relevant, rather than reusing one paragraph everywhere.

  • Professional Japanese

    Written as business correspondence by a native speaker, following the conventions a Japanese reader expects from a first approach.

  • Deliberate channel selection

    Forms are one option among several. Where email or a phone call suits a company better, we use that instead.

  • Respect for stated preferences

    Where a site states that sales enquiries are not accepted, or restricts its form to other purposes, we do not submit.

How a Japan Prospecting Engagement Runs

A working sequence rather than a fixed template. Steps overlap, and the target list is revised as replies tell us what the market thinks.

  1. 01. Define the ICP

    A working session on who buys, what triggers a purchase, and what a good-fit Japanese company would look like.

  2. 02. Develop target criteria

    Turning that profile into filters applicable to real Japanese sources: sector, company size, structure, and observable signals.

  3. 03. Research companies

    Desk research across Japanese-language sources to find companies matching the criteria, with a note on why each one qualifies.

  4. 04. Verify contact routes

    Checking company by company which routes are published, and what each site says about how enquiries should arrive.

  5. 05. Prepare Japanese messaging

    Drafting the approach in business Japanese, with the variable context each recipient needs, and reviewing the angle with you.

  6. 06. Execute outreach

    Sending through the chosen channel per company, paced deliberately rather than dispatched in a single block.

  7. 07. Handle responses

    Replies read and answered in Japanese, then summarized for you in English — including the refusals and their stated reasons.

  8. 08. Follow up

    Sequenced follow-up for accounts that went quiet, in the channel they used, at intervals that read as normal locally.

  9. 09. Report results

    Written reporting on what was sent, what came back, what we learned about the segment, and what we would change.

Japan-Specific Considerations

  • Published contact routes vary

    Some companies publish departmental addresses, many publish only a general inquiry form, and some publish neither. The route often has to be established company by company.

  • Japanese-language sources carry the detail

    Corporate sites, association member lists, and industry directories often hold information in Japanese that has no English equivalent anywhere.

  • First contact sets the tone

    An approach that reads as machine-translated, or as overly familiar, can end the conversation before the offer itself is considered.

  • Silence is not always rejection

    Internal routing and consultation can take time, and a reply may arrive well after a Western follow-up cadence would have given up.

Typical Use Cases

The scenarios below are hypothetical illustrations written to show how the work can be shaped. They are not descriptions of past clients or actual engagements.

  • A software vendor with no Japan target list

    A company whose product sells well in Europe has no view of which Japanese firms share the same problem. The engagement starts with segment research before any outreach is written.

  • An industrial supplier with a narrow target set

    A manufacturer knows the handful of company types that could specify its component, but not who inside them decides. Research concentrates on department mapping and contact routes.

  • A team testing whether a segment exists

    A company wants to know whether a Japanese buyer segment responds at all before committing to market entry. Outreach is run as a read on the market rather than a volume exercise.

Example engagement. Actual scope depends on each company's objectives and target market.

Frequently Asked Questions

We start from your ideal customer profile and convert it into criteria that can be applied to Japanese sources — sector, company size, business model, and any observable signal that suggests the problem you solve is present. Candidates are then researched individually in Japanese before they reach the list. The point is that every company on the list has a stated reason for being there, which you can review and challenge.
No. Lists are built from publicly available Japanese-language sources: corporate websites, industry directories, trade association membership, exhibition exhibitor listings, and public filings. Bought databases are often stale, frequently mismatched to a specific product, and can carry consent problems. Building the list is slower, but it is also where most of the value in Japanese outbound sales sits, because the research is what makes the later outreach specific.
It should not be, and the distinction matters. Mass-submitting one generic message to every form that can be found is spam, and we do not do it. What we do is write an individual enquiry to a company we have researched, in professional Japanese, submitted through the route that company itself publishes — and not submitted at all where a site states that sales approaches are unwelcome. Relevance and restraint are the whole point.
Native Japanese business writers, working from your positioning rather than translating your English copy sentence by sentence. Direct translation of Western marketing language tends to read as either too promotional or oddly abrupt to a Japanese reader. Drafts are shared with you with an English explanation of the angle taken, so you can see what is being said in your name even if you cannot read the Japanese.
Replies are answered in Japanese, usually within the same business day where possible, and summarized for you in English. That summary includes the negative responses, because a decline that explains itself — wrong department, existing supplier, no budget cycle this year — is often more useful for refining the targeting than a polite expression of interest with nothing behind it.
Yes. If you already know which Japanese companies you want to approach, the engagement can begin at contact route verification and messaging instead. We would usually still review the list first, since target sets assembled from English-language sources tend to over-represent companies with international operations and under-represent domestic firms that may be a better fit.
We do not quote a number, and we would treat any agency that does with caution. Response rates in Japan vary with the category, the specificity of the offer, the seniority being approached, and the season. What we can commit to is transparent reporting: what was sent, to whom, through which channel, and what came back — so you can judge the segment on evidence rather than on a forecast.
Often it works better, because the target universe is smaller and the research effort per company is justified. Narrow technical categories usually reward accurate department mapping far more than volume, and a specific message that demonstrates understanding of the recipient's process tends to travel further internally than a broad one. The prospecting simply becomes more research and less sending.

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Build Your Japan Prospect List

Tell us what you sell and who buys it elsewhere. We will talk through which Japanese companies would plausibly fit and how contact could realistically be opened.

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