Senior Manager, SMB Sales

Are you a seasoned sales leader who thrives on building high-performing teams and shaping market strategy? Zendesk is seeking a driven Senior Sales Manager to lead our SMB sales team in Japan—a pivotal role at the intersection of people leadership, market growth, and operational excellence.

About the Role:

As Zendesk’s Senior Sales Manager for SMB Japan, you’ll drive one of our most strategic and high-growth markets. Based in Tokyo, you’ll lead, coach, and inspire a team of talented sales professionals focused on growth in the SMB segment across Japan. You’ll report directly to the VP, APAC SMB Sales and collaborate closely with regional and global leadership.

Native-level Japanese fluency is essential to build deep connections with customers and partners. Your strategic mindset and operational discipline will help the team exceed targets in a competitive landscape. If you’re passionate about scaling businesses, mentoring future leaders, and delivering results in SaaS, this role offers the platform to make a significant impact.

What you’ll be doing:

• Drive revenue growth for Zendesk’s Japan SMB segment, achieving targets in new customer acquisition, expansion, and retention.

• Lead a team of SMB Account Executives, fostering a culture of accountability, learning, and high performance.

• Hire, coach, and build development plans for your team to accelerate skills and career growth.

• Act as a trusted advisor to C-level stakeholders in customer organizations.

• Analyze market trends and customer insights to refine go-to-market strategies and capture new opportunities.

• Engage directly in high-stakes customer meetings, product demos, and negotiations. Be capable of leading from the front. 

• Partner cross-functionally with Marketing, Product, and Customer Success to execute strategic initiatives and enhance the customer experience.

• Continuously improve sales processes through innovation, automation, and data-driven insights.
  Maintain strong knowledge of Zendesk’s solutions and the competitive landscape.

• Own pipeline health and deliver precise forecasting to enable proactive business planning.

• Monitor sales effectiveness by building Salesforce dashboards, generating reports, and analyzing customer data to identify buying signals, expansion opportunities, and churn risks

• Champion Zendesk’s inclusive, collaborative culture and serve as a role model for company values.

• Represent Zendesk, a global leader in customer service solutions trusted by over 100,000 customers worldwide.

• Bring cultural sensitivity and adaptability to lead effectively in Japan’s business environment while working in a global organization.

We hope you’ll decide to build a career as a Zendesk sales leader for the long term. We use the following leadership criteria - applied to key sales activities - to assess, reward and promote sales leadership.

Innovate: Build your sales team to think creatively and adapt quickly to new ways of working. Adjust to the changing needs of your customers, your market and our CX/EX product portfolio.

Collaborate: Work with your peers and partners across Zendesk to identify priorities, share customer data and proactively seek to improve our ability to deliver value to our customers.

Operate: Know your business, know your customers, know your tools and know your data. Fill your funnel, track your opportunities and convert. Be prescriptive and focused to minimize the number of variables between your customers and their outcomes.

Navigate: Study the future of our industry and the emerging needs of your customers. Coach and develop your team to be ready for the future and coach to convert today’s opportunities.

Inspire: Use your unique insights and voice to move people into action. We are creating the future of CX and EX.

Champion: Build relationships with your customers to proactively sense and respond to their business needs. Help everyone at Zendesk connect emotionally with our customers and put their best work into solving their needs.

What you’ll bring to the role:

• Based in Tokyo, with significant experience leading sales teams in Japan and selling into the Japanese market.

• Native-level fluency in Japanese (Mother Tongue / Business level, spoken and written) and strong English communication skills.

• 7+ years of sales experience, including at least 4 years in sales management, ideally in SaaS or related technology sectors.

• Proven track record leading teams to exceed quotas in high-velocity, sales environments.

• Experience driving growth through both direct sales and channel partnerships, through ownership of the segment performance. 

• Extensive sales experience, preferably within SaaS, Customer Support, Sales, or CRM software

• Proven track record of consistently achieving 100%+ of quota as an individual contributor and sales manager. 

• Skilled at coaching and developing early-career professionals, fostering a positive team environment.

• Strategic thinker with strong operational discipline, balancing big-picture vision and execution.

• Confident engaging senior stakeholders internally and externally, with excellent presentation and influencing skills.

• Analytical and data-driven approach to managing pipeline, performance and forecasting.

• Proficiency in Salesforce and modern sales tools, comfortable building dashboards and analyzing metrics.

Please note that anyone hired into this position must be physically located in and plan to work from Tokyo, Japan.

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Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.