---
title: "2019, How Can Salespeople Survive?"
description: "As competition intensifies across industries, salespeople face unprecedented challenges, making survival increasingly difficult. This article examines the traditional tactics and questionable practices of salespeople, and outlines five key changes they must embrace to thrive in the future."
author: "戈军珍"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-02-21"
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# 2019, How Can Salespeople Survive?

> As competition intensifies across industries, salespeople face unprecedented challenges, making survival increasingly difficult. This article examines the traditional tactics and questionable practices of salespeople, and outlines five key changes they must embrace to thrive in the future.

Click the image for details.
Now, business is getting harder in every industry. Salespeople are the vanguard of sales teams, and they face unprecedented challenges. It can be said that with intensifying competition among companies within industries, the survival of salespeople will become increasingly difficult in the future.

**PART 1**
**The "Three Axes" of Traditional Salespeople**
In the past, due to weaker competition among companies, salespeople faced relatively few challenges. As long as they were diligent, they could basically achieve results. If they had a bit of skill, such as being articulate or good at managing relationships, their sales performance would stand out.

In the past, when selling products, salespeople mainly relied on the "Three Axes":

**First, personal selling.**
That is, salespeople went to the market to find and identify target customers, then "lobbied" customers to sell their products. Therefore, those who were "articulate" performed well at that time.

**Second, credit sales.**
In the past, profit margins were high across all industries, especially in the animal health products industry. So almost all companies turned a blind eye to credit sales, and some even encouraged them—because they knew that even if they had to extend credit for several shipments, as long as one shipment was paid back, they could break even and then make a profit. Under this tacit understanding, salespeople also dared to sell on credit freely.

**Third, promotions.**
When personal selling and credit sales were exhausted, the third axe was promotions. As long as customers could pay back, various means such as travel, prizes, rebates, free goods, training, and study tours were used endlessly—whatever the customer needed, they would do. Some were organized by the company, and some salespeople simply did it themselves.

**PART 2**
**Four "Dirty Tricks" for Traditional Salespeople to Survive**
In the past, most companies managed their salespeople relatively loosely. Generally, business owners had simple thinking: as long as tasks were completed, it was fine. Coupled with relatively backward management tools at the time, traditional companies had "loopholes everywhere" in managing salespeople. Against this backdrop, some salespeople had "dirty tricks" to increase their income. There were four typical ones:

**Trick 1: Holding multiple positions.**
In the past, it was an open secret that a considerable number of salespeople had side jobs. Some even worked for several manufacturers simultaneously, and when customers needed a certain type of product, they would pull out the business card of that manufacturer. Even worse, some "very clever" salespeople did it like this: they found a company that provided travel expenses, another that allowed credit sales (could defer payment), and a third that offered large commissions. They held positions with these three companies. **They used the travel expenses from the first company, the funds from the second, and mainly sold the third company's products, thus ensuring the "highest income."**

**Trick 2: Earning price differences.**
This was also a common dirty trick: salespeople quoted customers prices higher than the factory price set by the company, and the excess went quietly into their own pockets.

**Trick 3: Inflating expenses.**
They inflated various entertainment expenses, holiday gifts, customer birthday gifts, business entertainment, and other costs for company reimbursement. In reality, a considerable portion of these expenses were fabricated by salespeople, and after reimbursement, they became their income. This was very common among salespeople handling major accounts in the past.

**Trick 4: Saving on travel expenses.**
If you save some travel expenses during business trips, that's understandable. But some people simply didn't go on business trips at all; they stayed at home or in hotels, yet when they returned to the company, they listed which markets they visited and which customers they saw to claim travel expenses. This kind of "saving" is not real saving; it is essentially "fraud."

**PART 3**
**Five Changes for Future Salespeople to Survive**
With the changing competitive landscape, the survival methods of traditional salespeople have been widely criticized. To truly remain invincible in the future, salespeople need to do the following five things well.

**First, keep up with the times.**
The times are changing rapidly, and many traditional sales methods have become a thing of the past. Many experiences have become obstacles in the face of change. In fact, the so-called pace of the times is the trend. Salespeople must grasp the trend and follow it closely so as not to be eliminated by the times.

**Second, update your knowledge structure.**
One of the most important features of a rapidly changing era is the change in knowledge and technology. Overnight, you may find that some of your previous knowledge has become "antique" and can no longer meet the needs of the times. Keep learning, stay consistent with this rapidly changing era, and you won't be eliminated. Updating your knowledge structure requires not only theoretical updates but also practical updates, and combining theory with practice to ultimately form your own independent knowledge structure with practicality as the main line.

**Third, re-understand the market.**
One of the main problems for veteran salespeople is that they think they know the market very well, but in reality, using past experience or data to judge the current market is very inaccurate. The overall industry has changed in dazzling and overwhelming ways in recent years. These changes are happening right before our eyes, and the conclusions from past "experience" are mostly wrong, with few right.

**Fourth, help customers grow.**
In the past, once salespeople cooperated with customers, especially distributors, they mainly demanded sales volume from distributors—setting tasks, giving policies, and running promotions. But now these tactics no longer work. Today's salespeople must help distributors increase sales—help customers grow, and then you will be welcomed. To help customers grow, you must have real talent and knowledge, not rely on "hype."

**Fifth, learn to use resources.**
Future salespeople will not succeed by fighting alone but must learn to use various resources—both internal and external to the company. Salespeople must use their wisdom to integrate these resources and ultimately form their own unique competitive advantage. Integrating resources is not easy; it requires ability, wisdom, and proper distribution of benefits.

> Author: Ge Junzhen, founder and chief consultant of Zhenmou Junlue Enterprise Management Consulting; EMBA from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University; Vice President of Hebei Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Society; visiting professor at multiple institutions; editorial board member of "Today's Animal Husbandry and Veterinary"; former CEO of several animal health companies, with unique insights into the development of the animal health industry; specializes in marketing management, consulting guidance, and practical implementation for agricultural and livestock enterprises. Published marketing monographs on the animal health industry: "Stepping into the Door of Success", "Thoughts of a Veterinary Drug Person", "Re-thoughts of a Veterinary Drug Person", and "Breaking the Game: A Perspective on Animal Health Industry Operation and Management". Source: Zhenmou Junlue (ID: zhenmoujunlue)

New Distribution will hold the **2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference** during the Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair from March 16 to March 18. This conference will focus on the topic of **"Breaking the Game"** and conduct in-depth discussions with numerous brand owners, supply chain service providers, distributors, retailers, and others.

Compared to previous conferences, this summit will be fully upgraded. In addition to original topics such as **channel innovation, city distribution logistics, and distributor transformation**, it will add multiple parallel forums on **new marketing cases, IP + FMCG empowerment, community group buying, and innovative retail**. Through three days of ten high-density, high-quality expert sharing and exchanges, we believe every brand owner and distributor can learn the latest business models, expert opinions, and practical methods, finding new tools and methods to break the game in 2019 and return to the track of rapid growth.

Review of Previous Conferences

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