Kentaro Okabe

Background

About Kentaro Okabe

With over 20 years of experience within the high-tech sales sector in APAC, my tenure started as a direct sales representative which eventually led to various leadership roles leading sales teams across APAC at FARO Technologies and then also at Mahr GmbH. The journey has been full of challenges from being in the actual spot to develop customers from scratch in my early years to leading teams both internal and external from different cultures to drive for sales growth to scale up business operations. My drive for delivering quick results comes from my early years with FARO where I was given demo equipment and a car and thrown into a region in Japan to start selling based off of commissions. This triggered my innate entrepreneurial spirit which is generally translated in the way I step up, constructively disrupt and take ownership. Both of my careers at FARO and Mahr also were in times of change which required a cultural and emotionally intelligent approach. As an example, one of my biggest challenges was when I had to directly compete with an ex-mentor and balance out the power distance with actual business tactics. As a bilingual leader (fluent in Japanese and English) who has built teams from the ground up and developed business across APAC, I have a tight pulse check on diverse stakeholders which I leverage to foster a collaborative environment that drives collective success.