About this role
Managing day-to-day operations involves leading, coaching, and developing a team of sales development representatives who support enterprise businesses across Japan. The Sales Development Manager shapes how the organization engages prospective customers in the local market, converts product and developer interest into enterprise conversations, and builds repeatable outbound and inbound motions tailored to regional dynamics. Working closely with sales leadership, account directors, marketing, solutions engineering, and partnerships, the team turns adoption momentum into durable deployments of ChatGPT Enterprise and developer platforms.
Created as a foundational front-line leadership role within the Japan go-to-market organization, the position establishes operational rigor around activity metrics, conversion rates, and pipeline quality. Candidates who thrive here bring a data-driven approach to territory planning and account prioritization while navigating complex organizations with multiple stakeholders. The person in this seat will guide early-career talent, define scalable playbooks, and connect local execution with broader regional and global strategies.
What you will do
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of sales development representatives supporting large enterprise and strategic accounts across key Japanese industries.
- Drive high-quality pipeline generation through outbound prospecting, inbound qualification, account-based motions, and product-led signals.
- Build a tailored sales development motion for the Japanese enterprise market that includes thoughtful account mapping and stakeholder engagement.
- Establish strong operational rigor around activity metrics, conversion rates, pipeline quality, and execution consistency.
- Partner closely with account directors and sales leadership on territory planning, account prioritization, and strategic opportunity development.
- Define scalable playbooks across outbound, inbound, account-based, partner-sourced, and product-led motions.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with marketing, partnerships, solutions engineering, and operations to optimize regional pipeline generation.
What you need
- Bring six to ten plus years of experience in sales, business development, or go-to-market roles with significant focus on the Japanese market.
- Demonstrate experience managing sales development representatives or business development teams within enterprise SaaS, cloud, platform, or technology businesses.
- Possess a strong understanding of enterprise prospecting, pipeline generation, and outbound strategy in Japan.
- Understand how large Japanese enterprises evaluate and adopt new technologies while navigating complex organizations with long decision-making processes.
- Show a high level of operational and data-driven expertise in managing metrics, conversion funnels, pipeline performance, and forecasting.
- Communicate effectively with both technical and executive stakeholders while adapting communication styles across Japanese and global teams.
- Demonstrate fluency in Japanese alongside the ability to operate effectively in English within a global business environment.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What does the team do?
OpenAI’s Enterprise Go-To-Market organization helps the world’s largest companies adopt and scale our AI platform across their business—from ChatGPT Enterprise to our developer platform and APIs. In Japan, the team partners with leading organizations to build new AI-powered customer experiences, transform operations, and reimagine how work gets done.
What is the focus of the sales development function?
Sales development sits at the front of this motion where technical curiosity becomes executive engagement and enterprise relationships begin. The team focuses on generating qualified pipeline and creating strategic opportunities across some of Japan’s largest and most influential organizations.
Who will the manager work with cross-functionally?
The manager will partner closely with Japan sales leadership, account directors, marketing, solutions engineering, partnerships, and strategy and operations. They also connect the Japan go-to-market motion with OpenAI’s broader regional and global strategy.