You sell to, buy from or co-develop with a Japanese company. The relationship is genuinely good — and the deal still will not move. We help European deal teams locate the internal pathway their proposal is actually travelling, and redesign the engagement around it.
Does this sound familiar?
What European sales, procurement and partnership teams tell us in their first call.
Every meeting ends warmly. No meeting produces a decision.
Positive signals, no formal commitment — for months.
The contract has been “in review” since spring.
You cannot tell which department is reviewing it, or against what.
They keep asking questions we have already answered.
Slightly reworded, from people you have never met.
We cannot work out who actually decides.
Your contact is helpful, senior-sounding — and never commits in writing.
The negotiation resets every time we think it is closing.
New considerations appear at the moment you expected signature.
A competitor is in the same process — and we cannot read our position.
Silence from the Japanese side reads as rejection. It usually is not.
The usual fixes
Most deal teams have already tried these before they call us. Each one is standard practice in Europe — and each one tends to add distance in Japan.
If the blockage is internal alignment, a better price does not remove it — it restarts the review with new numbers to check.
In most Japanese organisations the decision is settled before any meeting is scheduled. Demanding the meeting first reverses their sequence.
Senior contact rarely means faster decisions — it usually embarrasses the person doing the internal work on your behalf.
Deadline pressure signals risk. Risk triggers more internal checking, not less — and it is remembered after the deal closes.
The problem is not effort. It is that the effort is aimed at the people in the room — not the pathway that actually carries the decision.
What is actually happening
In a Japanese counterpart, a deal advances when internal agreement is assembled across every function that carries its risk. Your material either equips that process — or sits outside it.
A simplified decision pathway. “We are checking internally” almost always describes the highlighted stage — and the four-month silence is usually not deliberation, but a conversion task nobody has started: turning your persuasive proposal into a document their organisation can approve.
It is: which functions still need to hold a position, what operational risks are unanswered in writing, and what does our contact need from us to carry the proposal inward safely?
Once your material answers the risks their people personally carry — in a form that survives being read without you in the room — the pathway that looked frozen starts to move.
How we help
We take one stalled engagement — a negotiation, a contract renewal, a co-development agreement — and locate exactly where it is sitting and why.
For deal teams preparing the negotiation that matters. We map the counterpart's real stakeholders, rebuild your proposal so it can travel internally, and rehearse the meeting before you walk into it.
Typical route: Initial Conversation → Diagnostic → JSRP - Alignment Sprint → ongoing JSRP - Advisory
Client work
How a strategic supplier manager learned to read Japanese decision-making — after starting direct dialogue with a long-term Japanese supplier, without the trading company in between. →
This program helped me better understand the cultural and business subtleties behind my interactions. As a result, I have seen clearer communication and greater effectiveness in my day-to-day engagement.
A field guide to Japanese decision pathways for European deal teams: what the silence after a positive meeting actually means, and what to send next. Free PDF.
Bring one concrete case to a 30-minute call. We will tell you whether it is something we can help with — and honestly if it is not. No consulting, no pitch.
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