THE MODEL: the Japanese B2B sales funnel, explained

Why Japanese SaaS teams know this book

Fukuda joined Oracle's Japan unit in 1996, moved to Salesforce in 2004, and spent nine years at Salesforce's Japan unit as a senior executive. He then became president of Marketo's Japan unit. THE MODEL draws on that experience. Its subtitle calls the process a 共業 ("working together") of marketing, inside sales, sales and customer success, which suggests the split is a means, not the goal. Salesforce Japan calls the process model used there "The Model".

English readers will recognize the ideas. Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler's Predictable Revenue (2011) argued for splitting prospecting from closing; in a SaaStr Q&A, Ross puts it as "prospectors who prospect, closers who close." THE MODEL takes the split across the whole customer life, from first visit to renewal, and puts the weight on the numbers that connect the stages.

Who should use it, and when not to

It fits B2B companies with a repeatable sale: a defined customer type, enough inbound or outbound volume to keep specialists busy, and a contract that renews. It helps most when marketing and sales argue about lead quality, when revenue misses and nobody can say where, or when you're planning the next hires.

It fits poorly with very few, very large deals, where one team works each account end to end. It is also wrong for a founder doing the first sales, where splitting roles creates handoffs with nothing to hand over. For a single deal, use a deal review instead.

The core concepts

Four stages, one chain. Salesforce Japan describes each department with a base, a success rate, and a goal, where one department's goal is the next one's base:

Handoff definitions. Every arrow between stages needs a definition both sides accept, written as facts that can be checked. Many teams call the first handoff a marketing-qualified lead (MQL), a lead marketing judges likely to buy. The next is a sales-qualified lead (SQL), one ready to talk to sales. The labels matter less than the definition and what happens to a rejected lead: it goes back with a reason.

Time and capacity. Rates alone hide two problems. A lead called a week late is not the same lead. A team with more leads than hours drops the rest quietly. So each stage also gets a time metric and a capacity: people times what one person can handle.

The bottleneck. Salesforce Japan's guidance is to aim KPIs at the bottleneck that blocks the overall goal. Working backward from the target through each rate shows which stage can't carry the volume needed. That stage is where the next fix goes, the same logic as the Theory of Constraints.

A worked mini example

Illustration, made up for this page. A company sells scheduling software to physiotherapy clinics. Last quarter, 200 sign-ups matched its clinic profile and went to inside sales. Two inside sales reps, who also do outbound, can each work about 55 inbound leads a quarter. They reached 110 of the 200, with a median first contact of 4 business days. Of those 110, 40 became opportunities. Two account executives won 12 of the 40. The target for next quarter is 18 wins.

Working backward: 18 wins at a 30% win rate need 60 opportunities. At 40 opportunities from 110 contacted leads, that needs about 165 contacted leads. Marketing already sends 200, but inside sales can contact only 110. The bottleneck is inside sales capacity and speed, not lead volume or the closers.

The three fixes match the three kinds of cause. First, a handoff rule: the 110 highest-scoring leads go to inside sales the same day, and the rest go to email nurture. Second, capacity and time: outbound hours move to inbound for a quarter, and first contact happens within one business day. Third, measurement: "not contacted after 5 business days" goes on the weekly table. The next limit is already visible: the two account executives top out at about 60 opportunities.

Common mistakes

• Splitting too early. Specialists need volume. With too little, each one drifts back into doing everything.
• Handoffs in adjectives. "Hot" and "qualified" start arguments. A definition both sides can check ends them.
• Each team chasing its own number. Marketing pushes volume, sales complains about quality, and the shared target slips. Review one table together.
• Fixing the worst-looking rate. A low rate can be caused by the stage before it. Fix the stage that limits output.
• Copying another company's rates. Benchmarks from a different market mislead. Compare with your own history and target.

How to set up the stages

1. List the stages and owners. Map today's steps from first contact to renewal onto marketing, inside sales, field sales and customer success, with one owner per stage.
2. Write each handoff as checkable facts. Define what makes a lead ready for inside sales and an opportunity ready for field sales, who accepts it, and how a rejection goes back with a reason.
3. Count one period per stage. From the CRM, take what came in, what moved on, and the conversion rate for a recent quarter, and mark any missing count instead of estimating it.
4. Add time and capacity. For each stage, record the time metric, such as time to first contact or sales cycle length, and capacity as people times what one person handles.
5. Work backward from the target. Divide next period's target by each stage's rate to get the volume each stage must handle, and set it next to actual volume and capacity.
6. Name one bottleneck. Choose the stage where needed volume exceeds capacity or work waits longest, and write the evidence in two or three sentences.
7. Make three fixes with owners. One for the handoff rule, one for capacity or response time, and one for what gets measured weekly, each with the metric it should move and a check date.
8. Review one shared table weekly. All stage owners meet over the same numbers, including rejected handoffs and their reasons.

Where it comes from

THE MODEL was written by Yasutaka Fukuda and published by Shoeisha in its MarkeZine BOOKS series in January 2019, in Japanese. The four-department description with a base, a success rate and a goal is from Salesforce Japan's own explainer. Predictable Revenue is by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler (2011). This page is an independent summary in our own words. It isn't written, reviewed, or endorsed by the author or the publishers, and THE MODEL is named only to credit the book. More frameworks are in the strategy books index.

Questions

What is THE MODEL in sales?

THE MODEL is a Japanese book by Yasutaka Fukuda (Shoeisha, 2019) and the name Japanese SaaS companies use for the process it describes: marketing, inside sales, field sales and customer success as separate stages, each with a defined handoff and its own numbers. Salesforce's Japan unit used this way of working.

Who wrote THE MODEL?

Yasutaka Fukuda, who worked at Oracle and at Salesforce's Japan unit and was president of Marketo's Japan unit when the book came out. Shoeisha published it in Japanese in January 2019. An English book on a similar split is Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler (2011).

What is the difference between inside sales and field sales?

Inside sales works leads remotely, by phone, email or video, and turns them into qualified opportunities. Field sales takes those opportunities to a signed contract. Salesforce Japan measures inside sales on opportunities created and field sales on wins.