Comment by canpan
18 days ago
Working in that area in Japan. I think I can provide some answers.
Payment: CC are mostly used for BtoC but if you are a BtoB SaaS you want invoice and a local presence (ie no tax or currency shenanigans for your customer).
Hand on sales: Don't expect customers to sign up for a free plan and convert. Your conversion rate will be close to 0. Mostly scammers. Instead: Contact form, Cold call, go out to events, lots of drinking.
Regarding language: Many people do not speak English. I think that surprises some, but Japan is big and you can live forever happily only speaking Japanese. So if you don't support Japanese it's a complete no go.
> Many people do not speak English
More like noone speaks English, plainly put
> Hand on sales: Don't expect customers to sign up for a free plan and convert. Your conversion rate will be close to 0. Mostly scammers.
Brutal! Is that true even for Japanese companies with a traditional sales force?
Your sales team can totally utilize a free plan, while communicating with the customer. But a free sign up from the website, without sales person contact, is something we only had negative experience with, so stopped doing it. (Talking about B2B, B2C might be different)
In other words, don't bother from outside of Japan unless the SaaS has been fully translated into Japanese? That's what I'm getting from this response. Is that true?
Translation alone is simply not enough. You'll need local presence, Japanese sales people, and patience (a lot of them).
Thank you. I'm already on it.