In Japan, hand leads to sales on behavior, not on score

Your Japan team reports that this month’s MQL target was met, yet pipeline barely moves and local sales says the leads do not land. If you keep responding by tuning the scoring model, the complaint will not go away.

In Japan, as everywhere, sales does not act on a score. It acts on whether there is a reason to move now.

Define the handoff on the buyer’s evaluation behavior, not on attribute score.

Why “MQLs are up, pipeline is flat” happens

Marketing says it passed the lead because the score crossed the threshold. Sales says the buyer is not ready to pursue.

Both are right, and they do not connect, because the two sides never agreed on what a passable lead is.

The split shows up in the data.

A Softbrain survey conducted in October 2024 (159 sales and 139 marketing respondents, 298 total; a vendor-run survey with small cells, so read it as directional) found the top complaint from sales about marketing was “the lead information is insufficient,” at 42.1%, and the top complaint from marketing about sales was “no follow-up improvement,” at 47.5%.

Sales and marketing that said cross-team coordination was “not working well” ran at 29.5% and 37.4%. The handoff, not the tool, is where it breaks.

For a foreign SaaS entering Japan, this is worse

Two things stack on top of the usual gap.

First, the score threshold your headquarters designed encodes a US buyer’s signals. A Japanese buyer researches, compares, and circulates internally before ever engaging a rep, so the same score does not mean the same readiness.

Second, an attribute-only or single-action definition (right title, right company size, one whitepaper download) tells your local rep nothing about where the buyer is in that internal process.

The buyer is further along than the score suggests.

A joint survey by IDEATECH and Hiroyasu Kitagawa (published April 2026, n=307, limited to buyers who participated with at least one colleague in purchases of 3 million yen or more, so it reflects larger, multi-stakeholder deals; it is also a vendor-sponsored survey) found that by the time serious conversations with a vendor begin, the buying process is on average about 40% complete.

What your rep needs is not a higher score. It is the behavior that shows the buyer is actively evaluating.

Draw the line on behavior

Do not refine the score first. Put the reason for passing into words first.

Write the handoff criteria on one page. Go beyond title and company size to concrete evaluation behavior: viewed the pricing page three times, multiple people from the same company visited, requested a comparison document.

Next, let sales decline a lead without penalty, but require a reason from a fixed list (timing is later, no decision authority, budget mismatch); those reasons become the raw material for revising the definition.

Then hold a short weekly session that adjusts the definition on one input only, which behaviors actually turned into opportunities, not on opinions.

Localize this for the Japanese buying process on top of Japan GTM and messaging work.

Define the handoff on the buyer’s evaluation behavior, not on attribute score. If your team cannot explain in one line why a lead was passed, the criteria are not yet written down.

Common mistakes

• Reusing the global scoring model unchanged. A threshold tuned to US signals misreads a Japanese buyer who has already done 40% of the process privately. Redefine the passable lead on local evaluation behavior.
• Passing on attributes or a single download. Right title plus one whitepaper is not a reason to act. Require an evaluation behavior your rep can act on.
• Answering the complaint with a new scoring build. If nobody can say in one line why a lead was passed, the problem is undefined criteria, not an imprecise score. Pull ten recently passed leads and write the reason for each; the ones you cannot explain show you where to start.

Related reading

Whether “attended” and “downloaded” count as evaluation behavior is a separate question, handled in your Japan webinars fill up, your pipeline does not move.

Other notes on the same problem are collected under Demand generation.