Episode #143: Really Understand Your Expectations Of Your Sale's Team

Senior leaders in Tokyo (東京 — Tokyo) and across Japan are facing a costly pattern: you hire salespeople, performance lags, you replace them, and the cycle repeats. In today’s market, especially for 日本企業 (Japanese companies) and 外資系企業 (foreign-affiliated companies), replacing underperforming sales talent is harder than ever. So the real question is: are your expectations, systems, and incentives helping salespeople succeed — or quietly setting them up to fail?

Many organizations assume a new salesperson will be proactive, hunt for clients, and start producing revenue quickly. But when months pass and the numbers don’t come in, leaders often blame the individual.

In reality, the mismatch is frequently structural:

• You may be hiring one type of salesperson but expecting another.

• Your “time-to-performance” expectations might be based on hope, not data.

• Your incentive system might reward the wrong behaviors.

Mini-summary: Underperformance is often a system problem, not a people problem. Clear role definition, realistic ramp-up norms, and aligned incentives reduce failure.

Are you hiring “farmers” when you actually need “hunters”?

A classic hidden trap: you say you want hunters, but your hiring process tends to attract farmers — and in Japan, farmers are statistically more common.

• Farmers grow and manage existing accounts.

• Hunters create new business from scratch.

If you hire a farmer and expect them to hunt, you’ll be disappointed — and the hire will look “bad” even though they were never the right fit.

Mini-summary: If your business needs new-client growth, you must explicitly hire for hunting — not assume it.

Instead of relying on vibes, ask candidates about the origin of their current clients:

Ask:
“Where did your buyers come from?”

Listen for:

• Farmer signals:
  “Marketing generated leads,” “orphan clients,” “my boss handed accounts to me,” “I inherited clients from colleagues.”

• Hunter signals:
  “I personally found new clients,” “I opened new territories,” “I built relationships from zero.”

Neither is “better” — but they are different. You need to know which one you’re bringing in.

Mini-summary: Client-origin stories reveal whether a candidate hunts or farms. Hire accordingly and adjust expectations.

Leaders often expect immediate results because costs arrive fast while revenue arrives slowly. But most expectations are based on:

1. hope,

2. personal experience (“I did it fast”),

3. not nearly enough comparative data.

A more objective approach:

• Look at every salesperson you’ve hired over the past 5–10 years.

• Track monthly revenue from their Day One.

• Calculate averages (remove extreme best/worst if sample size allows).

• Use those quarter-by-quarter norms as your benchmark.

This replaces guesswork with reality.

Mini-summary: Build ramp-up norms from your own historical sales data to set fair, realistic performance expectations.

Japan rarely uses pure commission models. Most sales roles are fixed salary plus bonus — but many schemes unintentionally reward farming over hunting.

Common problems:

• No special reward for new business.
  If hunting and farming pay the same, people farm.

• Base pay is too high.
  In risk-averse Japan, high guaranteed pay reduces motivation to stretch.

• Targets are unrealistic.
  If the number feels impossible, people disengage and underperform.

You want a balanced model:

• slightly lower base salary,

• clear commission or bonus tied to new business creation,

• targets that stretch but feel achievable.

Mini-summary: Incentives shape behavior. If you want hunters, your pay and targets must reward hunting specifically.

High turnover is rarely caused by “lazy salespeople.” It’s often caused by leaders:

• expecting the market to behave like the past,

• expecting people to ramp like the top 5% performer,

• assuming hiring fixes shortcomings that leadership should solve first.

If expectations outstrip both market reality and human capability, turnover becomes the predictable outcome.

Mini-summary: When expectations are misaligned with the market and your systems, turnover is inevitable and expensive.

• Most sales underperformance comes from expectation and system mismatches, not talent alone.

• In Japan, you’re more likely to hire farmers unless you deliberately screen for hunters.

• Data-based ramp-up norms create fair performance benchmarks.

• Incentive design must reward hunting if new business growth is the goal.

Founded in the U.S. in 1912, Dale Carnegie Training has supported individuals and companies worldwide for over a century in leadership, sales, presentation, executive coaching, and DEI. Our Tokyo office, established in 1963, has been empowering both Japanese and multinational corporate clients ever since.