Think about the companies doing successful business in Japan such as Taylor Hobson, Carl Zeiss, Hewlett Packard, IBM etc, all of them are selling their company and philosophy. They are always trying to let their customers understand and appreciate what they think and what they do. Many American and European companies, who try to sell their products only and let their partner in Japan prepare catalogs showing the product name and specifications only, failed. Select the best person to take care of your partner to keep good communication and mutual understanding. Communication is the most important key for success.
Communication skill is different from engineering skill or marketing skill.
Do not terminate the business relationship with your partner by their sales record. Terminate the business relationship when you judge that you cannot keep good communication and understanding level with them. There are companies having 100 good salesmen trying to do everything by themselves, and there are companies having only 5 salesmen each having 100 networking channels. As described before, nobody can cover an entire market alone. There is a specialist in fiber-optics, but there are no specialists covering all optical technologies.