DJ Selects: What You Need to Know To Sell Services (and Saas) in Japan

Selling services in Japan is very different than selling products or software.

Everyone knows that relationships are important in Japan, but not many people understand why they are so important, and how you can use that understanding to build a successful business here.

Today Sriram Venkataraman explains how he grew InfoSys Japan from a one man operation to over 1,000 employees and how understanding why Japanese enterprises must trust their vendors far more than companies in other developed countries.

And we dive into what that means for the new generation of SaaS startups.

Our conversation is basically a blueprint for how to grow a startup from nothing to thousands of people in Japan, and I think you’ll enjoy it.




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Transcript
Welcome to disrupting Japan straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Tim Romero and thanks for joining me.

I’ve got another great Disruption Japan Selects show this week.  And this show, well this was one of those conversations that have really stuck with me over the years. In fact, if you are interested in selling to large Japanese enterprises, then this might well be the most insightful conversation that’s ever happened on the topic in English.

Over the course of a decade, Sriram Venkataraman grew Infosys Japan from one employee to well over 1,000 before retiring to work with startups. In this episode, we cover why so many foreign companies have trouble selling to Japanese enterprise, and the one critical thing you need to do if you have any hope of building a long-term business.

And afterward,  I’ve got an update for you. I caught up with Sriram the other day and I mentioned that the recent popularity of SaaS products seems to contradict some of the advice he’s about to give. But it turns out it doesn’t.

The successful Japanese SaaS companies are playing by very similar rules to those we outline in our conversation. and I’ll give you that update at the end of the episode.

So please enjoy the show.
First Intro
Today we’ve got some amazingly good advice for anyone who wants to sell services in Japan. Selling products or software is challenging enough, but selling services where relationships mean everything and where the quality expectations for service is perhaps the highest in the world, that provides a host of very special challenges.

Today we sit down with Sriram Venkataraman, as he explains how me manages to scale Infosys, which provides outsourced Indian development services, from 2 people, to over 1,000 people in Japan. In a very real sense, he did it with a strategy that is pretty much the opposite of what you would expect from an Indian software services company.

This is a real insight into the mind and the buying decisions of Japanese enterprise customers and Sriram has a different, very compelling perspective, on why so many foreign companies have trouble gaining real trust in the Japanese market. We talk a lot about finding the right people here in Japan, and how to avoid the hiring traps that western firms commonly fall into. Really, this interview is basically a blueprint of how to grow from nothing to 1,000 people in Japan.

But, you know, Sriram Venkataraman explains that much better than I can. So let’s hear from our sponsors and get right to the interview.
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Interview
Tim: I’m sitting here with Sriram Venkataraman, of Infosys, and you have been with Infosys from the very beginning in Japan, and you’ve seen it grow from a tiny team to over 10,000 employees here now, haven’t you?

Sriram: Not 10,000.

Tim: No? That was on the website.

Sriram: Our total Japan business is probably about 1,000 people today. But given the business model, not all of them are here. Roughly 65 to 70% of the teams are in India and the b...