---
title: "30 Laws for Sales Managers' Survival"
description: "This article outlines 30 laws for sales managers, covering responsibilities, human nature, problem-solving, team building, training, management, and thinking. It emphasizes that sales managers should enable ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results, manage经销商 effectively, and focus on standardization and control."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-10-05"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/30-laws-for-sales-managers-survival-c6be5553/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/30-laws-for-sales-managers-survival-c6be5553.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6atCtNnca7ocmWj1JMRcFw"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E9%94%80%E5%94%AE%E7%BB%8F%E7%90%86%E7%94%9F%E5%AD%98%E5%AE%9A%E5%BE%8B30%E6%9D%A1-c6be5553.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/30-laws-for-sales-managers-survival-c6be5553/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# 30 Laws for Sales Managers' Survival

> This article outlines 30 laws for sales managers, covering responsibilities, human nature, problem-solving, team building, training, management, and thinking. It emphasizes that sales managers should enable ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results, manage经销商 effectively, and focus on standardization and control.

**-01-** **Laws of Responsibility**
**Law 1: The sales manager's duty is to make salespeople work diligently, even if forced.**
In ordinary companies, diligence is a praiseworthy virtue; in excellent companies, it is a natural habit. Salespeople in excellent companies are initially "forced to be diligent," but later become habitually diligent.
**Law 2: The sales manager's duty is to make salespeople succeed, even if forced.**
Excellent companies do not have a team of experts; rather, they can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, making average people "forced to succeed."
Excellent companies generally have a "paperwork" system, where daily tasks are clearly recorded in black and white, making it difficult to play tricks. Under excellent managers, you may not have the opportunity to make mistakes or slack off. In the end, it's hard not to succeed.
**Law 3: The sales manager's duty is not to cultivate a few marketing elites, but to enable ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results.**
Successful management does not intend to recruit a group of marketing experts or elites. They know that in ordinary positions, experts or elites have only two paths: one is internal promotion, otherwise they will be poached by competitors.
Truly stable salespeople are ordinary people with average qualifications; marketing management is about enabling these people to produce results.
Excellent managers never let salespeople "cross the river by feeling the stones," because many would surely "fall into the river." They provide a platform for ordinary salespeople through training, standardization, modeling, and process optimization, enabling them to achieve results beyond their inherent abilities.
**Law 4: The sales manager's duty is not to rack their brains for innovation, but to discover and promote innovation.**
Marketing innovation does not come from brainstorming in the office, but from flashes of inspiration on the front lines. This is the source of marketing innovation for salespeople. Marketing innovation cannot rely on individual inspiration; it must become a process within the organization. This is the source of marketing innovation at the enterprise level.
Sales managers are far from the market front line and may lack the innovative flashes of salespeople. However, sales managers must be adept at discovering individual innovations from salespeople and, through a certain process, turn them into enterprise-level innovations and promote them widely.
**Law 5: If dealers are managed well, they are angels; otherwise, they are devils.**
Some say: "Manufacturers and dealers are tools for each other." Tools are discarded once the goal is achieved. Enterprise development is actually a process of continuously eliminating and replacing dealers. Every marketing reform will target dealers. So-called channel flattening is impossible without the determination to "kill the big players."
A realistic understanding of dealers is: if managed well, dealers are "angels." If managed poorly, they are "devils."
**Law 6: Many salespeople are model workers turned politicians, but be careful not to leave the sequelae of model workers in politics.**
Many salespeople are promoted to sales managers not because of outstanding management ability, but because of outstanding performance. Salespeople achieve results themselves; sales managers guide others to achieve results.
The sequelae of model workers in politics is that sales managers have too much of a salesperson complex, always treating themselves as "big salespeople." Whenever they encounter salespeople who do not understand their intentions, they become anxious and want to set the salesperson aside and do the work themselves, acting as the "big salesperson" and merely using the salesperson as an assistant.

**-02-** **Laws of Human Nature**
**Law 7: For excellent people, management is trust. For ordinary people, trust is management.**
For those who are self-disciplined and highly capable, management is giving them the boundaries of freedom to let them shine. For ordinary people, management is constraining their behavior within acceptable boundaries and ensuring their behavior conforms to corporate norms.
**Law 8: Humanized management is not favoritism. The greatest humanity is to make the other person succeed.**
Humanized management is not about indulging the other person and spoiling them with bad habits. The greatest humanity is to force the other person to succeed. Therefore, when punishing employees, you must not be soft, and tell them: "When I punish you, I have a kind heart." Perhaps they will resent you at the time, but soon they will thank you. Ten years later, they may still remember you.
**Law 9: A state of success is an irrational state and the most dangerous state.**
People have the lowest IQ and are most prone to mistakes in two states: the state of being in love and the state of success.
The low IQ in love is widely recognized, and mistakes made then can affect lifelong happiness. The state of success exposes human weaknesses, and mistakes made then can affect career success.

**-03-** **Laws of Problems**
**Law 10: Problems that have been discovered are no longer problems; problems that have not been discovered are the most important.**
Once you find the problem, you usually find the answer. The key is: is the problem you found the real problem?
For example, it is commonly believed that "new product development is to meet consumer needs." In reality, in channel sales, new product development is more about meeting dealers' profit needs.
Therefore, when you rack your brains for answers, it's better to spend more effort thinking about what the real problem is.
**Law 11: The instinctive reaction to a problem, even if not wrong, is usually ineffective.**
There is no simple answer without thought; truly effective answers often lie around the corner of thinking.
For example, what to do when sales decline? The instinctive reaction is usually to cut prices, promote, or advertise. Sales managers might then think: Who doesn't know to do this? Any normal adult can think of it, so such instinctive reactions are usually ineffective.
**Law 12: Admitting problems requires courage; solving problems requires wisdom.**
Finding problems is not difficult, but because behind problems lie responsibility and ability, admitting them becomes difficult.
Whether you dare to admit problems is a true test of your self-confidence. It is precisely because many people lack the courage to admit problems that the following phenomenon occurs: only when a manager is transferred does the problem become fully exposed.
**Law 13: The process for handling problems should be: first rescue, then hold accountable.**
Some companies' procedure is: first find the responsible person; whoever caused the problem solves it. Since some problems are not easy to attribute to a single person, or there are multiple responsible parties, the process of finding the responsible person can worsen the problem.
The correct process should be "first rescue, then hold accountable." "First rescue" means prioritizing customers and the market, and not delaying rescue due to accountability.

**-04-** **Laws of Teams**
**Law 14: A team is a new substance formed by the chemical reaction of members merging and sublimating with each other.**
If your team members do not have division of labor and cooperation, and each fights alone, even if they are all extremely excellent, they are not an excellent team.
A true team must have each person "needing" others and being able to "contribute" to others. That is, team members must "cooperate" and "be indispensable to each other." Team formation should be a chemical reaction, not a physical reaction.
**Law 15: An effective team can achieve that one Zhuge Liang leading three cobblers is better than four Zhuge Liangs.**
Three cobblers will always be cobblers, never Zhuge Liangs. One Zhuge Liang leading three cobblers is better than four Zhuge Liangs.
A team structure can only multiply value if it meets the following conditions: first, division of labor; second, complementarity; third, a pyramid structure.
**Law 16: Excellent teams constantly produce talent; pay special attention to sending talent to excellent teams for training and selecting talent from excellent teams.**
The best training is team assimilation. Being exposed to an excellent team is better than carefully designed training courses. Team leaders' hands-on work guidance is the best training method.

**-05-** **Laws of Training**
**Law 17: Never scold your subordinates as a bunch of idiots; otherwise, you are the biggest idiot.**
If only a few subordinates are idiots, the responsibility may lie with them. If all subordinates are idiots, the responsibility must lie with the manager.
Scolding subordinates as idiots only shows that you are "blind" and cannot select talent.
**Law 18: Training is not the responsibility of the HR department, nor of subordinates; the manager is the primary person responsible for training.**
The HR department is only the organizer of training, not the responsible department. Training is a basic function of every manager and is part of the manager's job. If training is not done well, don't blame leaders or HR; reflect on yourself.
**Law 19: The most difficult part of training is not changing people's minds, but changing their behavior.**
What determines behavior is not knowledge, but habit.
Habits cannot be solved through training; they can only be solved through daily management correction. Therefore, trainers cannot solve the ultimate problem of training; only managers can "turn training content into corporate behavior."
**Law 20: Training does not increase employee loyalty; on the contrary, training may accelerate employee turnover.**
When companies offer training as a reward, employees may not appreciate it. If employees' growth after training exceeds the growth rate of their superiors and the company, training will only accelerate employees' dissatisfaction with the company and superiors, and dissatisfaction will accelerate turnover.

**-06-** **Laws of Management**
**Law 21: In management, there is no "exception for this time only," only "take this as an example."**
Those who habitually say "exception for this time only" usually have three mindsets: first, "Who doesn't make mistakes? Punishing for one mistake is too impersonal"; second, "We should give people a chance to reform"; third, "Maybe the violator didn't understand the rules and it was an unintentional mistake; this lesson will make a deep impression next time."
The correct approach is: punish according to company rules without compromise, and set a precedent: "take this as an example."
**Law 22: "Use people without doubt; doubt people without using them." This is the employment view of agricultural society. The modern commercial society's view is: use people with doubt; doubtful people can be used.**
In agricultural society, "use without doubt, doubt without use" might be feasible because the survival radius was extremely small, and moral and ability risks were high. Modern society is a migratory society with frequent personnel changes; the cost of determining someone is "beyond doubt" is extremely high. Therefore, use people with doubt. At the same time, as long as there are good systems as safeguards, "doubtful people" can be prevented from finding opportunities, and their behavior can be constrained within acceptable limits.
**Law 23: "No excuses" might be the excuse of incompetent managers.**
The phrase "no excuses" implies a crucial premise: effective organizational support and effective leadership from superiors. Without this premise, simply requiring subordinates to have "no excuses" is just an excuse for incompetent leaders to evade responsibility.
**Law 24: If subordinates lack execution, it must be that the manager lacks management and control.**
Execution is first a goal management issue, i.e., "what to execute." All work must be planned, all people must have goals, and only do what is planned; this is the beginning of execution.
Execution also needs to solve the motivation for execution. Those who execute effectively should be rewarded; those who do not execute or execute ineffectively should be punished.
The responsibility for poor execution does not lie with subordinates, but with the manager. Or, if a particular subordinate executes poorly, the responsibility may be with the subordinate. If subordinates collectively execute poorly, the responsibility must lie with the manager.
**Law 25: The highest level of marketing management is standardization.**
Ordinary people think marketing is an art, only to be understood, not explained, and difficult to replicate. Excellent managers view marketing as a science and strive to standardize it as much as possible. Only standardized things can be replicated. Only standardized things can enable more people to succeed.
**Law 26: Only with inheritance can there be accumulation; only with accumulation can one grow. Marketing and management need inheritance, and inheritance requires paperwork.**
When you compete with P&G, you find you are not competing with current salespeople, but with P&G's 160-year history. The marketing wealth accumulated over P&G's 160 years is incomparable to younger competitors.
How is marketing and management inherited? The most common means is "paperwork." That is, all transaction processes and marketing records should be recorded in writing.
**Law 27: The ability managers most lack is usually not planning ability, but control ability.**
Planning is the primary function of management; control is the final function. Control is the guarantee of completing the plan.
What is control? Control is taking effective measures to ensure the implementation of the plan when results deviate from the plan.

**-07-** **Laws of Thinking**
**Law 28: Successful managers usually think like outsiders and act like insiders.**
The basic meaning of this sentence is: in thinking mode and decision-making, dare to break through and innovate, not constrained by traditional thinking; when doing specific things, be professional and meticulous.
**Law 29: Successful people may not have profound knowledge, but they must have unique thinking modes.**
Marketing is a competition, and competitive thinking is "opponent thinking," which means the primary consideration is not what you think, but what the opponent thinks. Zhuge Liang always outsmarted others because his thinking mode was not self-centered, but "opponent thinking," that is, deciding his strategy based on the opponent's thinking.
**Law 30: To secure your position as sales manager, rather than trying to figure out what others think, make others try to figure out what you think.**
If the sales manager plays the role of a "peacemaker" or "mediator," having to deal with both superiors and subordinates, maneuvering between them, and sometimes even having to give up principles, the result is usually that no one is satisfied.
The consolidation of the sales manager's position is not because he is liked, but because he is the most suitable for the position and can fulfill the job responsibilities better than others. Therefore, rather than trying to figure out what others think, make others try to figure out what you think.

**Final advice: If you do not have enough charisma, you should be professional enough; if you are not professional enough, you should lead by example; if you cannot even lead by example, do not be a sales manager.**

Source: Teacher Liu's New Marketing (ID: liuchunxiong1964) Author: Liu Chunxiong

Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671