Account Executive Manager

The Role

As a Sales Manager, you'll lead a team of Account Executives and own one of our most critical growth levers in-market: developing talent that consistently outperforms while helping Japanese sellers succeed. This role is about building a high-performance sales organization where every hire raises the bar, every coaching conversation sharpens execution, and every decision is grounded in data — all within the realities of the Japanese market.

You'll operate at the intersection of local and global. You'll adapt our global playbooks to how deals are actually won in Japan — where trust is earned over time, decisions are made by consensus, and relationships matter as much as the commercial case. You'll bring the rigor, along with the energy.

You'll be expected to coach in the work, not after it. You'll diagnose pipeline health before it becomes a forecasting problem, develop future leaders before promotions become necessary, and create an operating rhythm that enables predictable, repeatable growth in a market with long, relationship-driven sales cycles.

You'll partner cross-functionally — locally and with regional/global HQ — to improve how we sell in Japan, challenge the status quo, and continuously raise the talent bar. Success is measured not only by quota attainment, but by the strength of your team, the quality of your pipeline, and the leaders you develop.

Build a High-Performance Team

• Hire bilingual Account Executives who can run complex, multi-stakeholder deals in-market, and raise the bar with every addition to your team — competing effectively for scarce sales talent in Tokyo.
• Develop a culture of ownership, accountability, continuous learning and high standards, balanced with the trust and cohesion that Japanese teams are built on.
• Identify future top performers early and create development plans that accelerate their growth.
• Ramp and retain talent in a competitive local labour market where strong bilingual sellers have options.

Co-Sell on Complex Deals

• Sell alongside your team in discovery, business case development and negotiation on your most important pursuits. 
• Engage senior stakeholders directly — including owners, operations and finance — and help your team multi-thread and navigate consensus-driven, bottom-up decision-making rather than selling to a single champion.
• Bring commercial judgment to pricing, deal structure and competitive displacement against local players. 
• Advance the deal while leaving the AE more capable of running the next one without you.

Coach Through Data & Business Intelligence

• Lead your business through rigorous pipeline inspection, forecasting and performance diagnostics.
• Use leading indicators to identify performance gaps early and coach reps toward sustainable improvement.
• Turn data into action by identifying trends, diagnosing root causes and driving measurable improvements across your team.
• Forecast accurately on long-cycle deals, which depends on stage integrity rather than optimism — and account for local cycle length and relationship-building phases.

Drive Operational Excellence

• Establish predictable operating rhythms around forecasting, pipeline management and business reviews.
• Build disciplined execution that creates consistent, repeatable revenue outcomes.
• Continuously improve how your team sells by refining processes, simplifying execution and eliminating friction.
• Build repeatable plays for how this segment is won in Japan — from acquisition through implementation and expansion.

Lead Through Influence

• Partner closely with Sales Leadership, Marketing, Enablement, Operations, Partnerships and Product — locally and at regional/global HQ — to improve the customer journey and strengthen commercial execution.
• Act as a two-way bridge: bring global best practice into Japan, and bring the Japanese customer voice and field intelligence back to shape strategy and influence product evolution.
• Use customer insights and local market knowledge to localise strategy for Japan's cashless transition (the national push toward ~65% cashless by 2030) and the merchant landscape.
• Lead through change by helping your team adapt quickly while maintaining high performance.

You Have

• 6+ years experience as a sales manager, including time leading teams selling into complex, multi-stakeholder accounts with cycles measured in months.
• Native or business-level fluency in Japanese, plus professional business-level English — able to lead in-market in Japanese and collaborate effectively with regional/global stakeholders in English.
• Deep knowledge of the Japanese market — including the Seller landscape, buying behavior, business etiquette, and consensus-based decision-making — and ideally experience in payments, fintech, SaaS or a related B2B category.
• An understanding of the Japanese cashless/payments environment and competitive dynamics (e.g. QR-code wallets, card networks and bank-led offerings), and how these shape merchant decisions.
• Experience hiring, ramping and retaining Account Executives who can run considered, competitive deals — ideally within the Japanese talent market.
• Experience developing already strong performers into people who win larger and more complex deals.
• Proven track record in collaborating across different teams, including across a local–global structure, with the ability to inspire change.
• Leadership and coaching experience and a desire to help others be their best.
• Expertise in creating structure around sales metrics and managing yourself and others to achieve these metrics, including forecast accuracy on long-cycle deals.
• An understanding of how to refine decision-making and consider the downstream and upstream effects of potential decisions.
• Experience localising global sales playbooks and enablement for the Japanese market.