Your Japanese deal has not been rejected yet. Here is how to check.
Three things to look for after the silence starts, and the one message that settles it.
One-line answer: Silence after “検討します” is usually not a refusal and not a decision. In a large share of cases nothing has been decided at all. You can find out which situation you are in, because the thing that separates a live deal from a dead one is a document that either exists or does not.
The misread
The silence arrives and you pick one of two readings. Either it was a polite no, or they need more time. Both readings produce the same behaviour: courteous follow-ups at widening intervals until you quietly stop sending them. Three months later you still do not know what happened, and the pipeline still carries the deal because nobody ever closed it.
The cost is not the lost deal. The cost is the weeks you spent on a deal that ended in the room, plus the deals you did not work because this one still looked alive.
“They just have no obligation to reply” is not the answer
This objection comes up every time the topic does, and it deserves a straight response, because it is half right. Nobody owes you a rejection. That is true in every market.
It does not explain the variance. The same buyer who goes quiet for six weeks will, in another deal, come back unprompted asking you to sign an NDA. Politeness is constant across both. Something else is different, and it is not culture in the vague sense. It is whether a specific internal document has started moving.
In a Japanese company of any size, a purchase that commits budget is normally carried by a circulated approval document, the 稠議書 (ringisho). It exists or it does not. That is the whole test. It turns an argument about culture into a question of fact, which is why it is worth building your read around it rather than around tone.
What is actually happening: three states, not two
Foreign sellers usually model two states, yes and no. There are three.
- Decided against. The refusal is real and “検討します” carried it out of the room without anyone having to say no.
- Genuinely under consideration. Something internal has started. Evidence is being assembled so somebody can defend the purchase to somebody else.
- Nothing. No decision of any kind was made. The phrase ended the meeting.
The third state is the one that gets missed, and it is more common than the English-language coverage suggests. I know because I have used it. Years ago I sold tablets and mobile wifi door to door in Japan. When vendors later called on me in my own job, I said “検討します” to them, and nothing had been decided. It was not a refusal I was softening. It was a way to end the conversation and get back to work.
That is why reading the words harder does not help. All three states are delivered with the same sentence.
The threshold: three checks, and when to call it
Do not judge from tone. Judge from these three, and give it two weeks from the last substantive contact.
Check 1. Did the pause come with a reason you could verify?
A real consideration names something checkable. A timeline, a comparison, a budget cycle, a person. “We want to compare two other vendors” and “we need to see whether this is needed this quarter” are both verifiable. You can ask about them later and the answer will be consistent.
A closed door names nothing. The pause arrives bare.
The clearest example I have is two visits with the same product. One buyer told me exactly why she was pausing: she wanted to know whether it was needed right now, and she wanted time to compare other vendors. She called me later and we signed. Another buyer, an operations manager at a construction firm, said “検討します” and named nothing. He was ending the meeting, and I knew it while I was still standing there.
Check 2. Does contact still land?
Not “do they reply”. Reply speed varies for reasons that have nothing to do with you. The question is whether contact reaches them at all.
A live deal that has gone quiet still accepts contact. Calls connect. Messages get acknowledged even when the answer is “still internal”. A dead deal stops being reachable. With the construction firm I called and could not get through, went back in person and he was out, left a message, and that was the end of it. The failure was not that he said no. It was that contact stopped landing.
Check 3. Has anything been asked of you since?
Internal movement generates requests. A security questionnaire. An NDA. A revised quote in a different format. A name you have not met before, usually from procurement, legal, or IT. If a ringi is being assembled, someone has to gather evidence, and gathering evidence means asking you for things.
Nothing moving generates nothing.
The call. If two of the three are negative two weeks after the last substantive contact, treat the deal as over for planning purposes. Not as rejected. As no longer worth what it costs you to keep working.
The message that settles it
The purpose of this message is not to push. Pushing produces a firmer version of the same non-answer. The purpose is to make it cheap for them to tell you the truth, and to move the question from the air onto the record.
Send this, in Japanese, to your contact.
〇〇の件、社内でご検討いただいている段階でしょうか。
もし今期は難しいということでしたら、その旨お知らせいただければ、こちらで一度クローズいたします。
またタイミングが合う時期がありましたら、改めてご相談させてください。
In English, roughly: “Regarding the 〇〇 matter, is it currently under internal review? If this quarter is difficult, please let me know and I will close it on our side for now. If the timing works better later, I would welcome the chance to raise it again.”
Four things are doing work here, and each one is deliberate.
- It asks a factual question, not an emotional one. “Is it under internal review” is answerable. “What did you think of our proposal” is not, and invites another soft phrase.
- It offers to do the closing. This is the part most foreign sellers leave out. People go quiet instead of refusing because issuing a refusal is costly and permanent. If you perform the close, they do not have to.
- 今期 puts a boundary on it. Not forever, just this quarter. A no becomes small, which makes it easy to give.
- It keeps the relationship open. The final line is not politeness for its own sake. It is the reason they will answer honestly rather than not at all.
What that one message triggers on their side
This is the part almost nobody writes down, and it is the reason the message works.
If a ringi has been raised, your contact has a status to report and answering is easy. Replying costs them nothing because the answer already exists somewhere. You usually get a real response, and often a rough timeline with it.
If nothing has been raised, you have handed them a way to end it in which no one has to issue a refusal. Many people take it. That is a good outcome, not a bad one. A clean no in week three is worth more than a maybe in month four.
If they are trying and are blocked internally, you often get the blocker named for the first time. Your message gave them a reason to explain themselves, and “budget is frozen until April” or “our IT team has concerns about data location” is a different deal from silence. Those are workable. Silence is not.
If nothing comes back at all, that is your answer, and it is the same answer as check 2. Contact is no longer landing. Stop.
The honest limit
This tells you whether you are still in the game. It does not win the game.
The two deals I can trace all the way to a decision were both settled on price and specification. The one I won had the lowest monthly price available at the time. The one I lost was beaten by a competitor on price and specs together. Reading the room does not beat being more expensive with a weaker product.
What reading the room does is stop you from spending three months on a deal that ended in week one. In my case it would have saved the calls, the return visit, and the message I left, all of which came after the answer was already visible.
FAQ
Is “検討します” always a no?
No, and this is the most expensive place to be wrong. It is often reported in English as a soft refusal, which is right often enough to feel true and wrong often enough to cost real deals. Use the three checks instead of the phrase.
How long should I wait before sending the message?
Two weeks after the last substantive contact. Earlier reads as pressure. Much later and you are the one keeping the deal alive on paper.
Is asking this directly rude in Japan?
Asking for a decision would land badly. This does not ask for a decision. It offers to close, which is the opposite, and it is why the phrasing above avoids any request for a yes.
My contact is friendly and keeps saying it is progressing. Is that check 3?
No. Check 3 is about requests made of you, not reassurance offered to you. Warmth is not evidence of internal movement. A security questionnaire is.
What if they are a small company with no ringi process?
Then the decision maker is usually the person in front of you, and the three checks still apply. The buyer I closed was junior, and the purchase was hers to make. Seniority is a poor proxy for authority. Ask who signs.
One signal at a time
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