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Five years ago, I wrote an article titled "Without the Courage to Slash Your Own Wrists, What's the Point of Transformation?" The core idea was to abolish the pig-teammate marketing department in traditional enterprises, then reorganize and revive it, renaming it the Communications Department (or IP Department).
Now, most enterprises have completed this transformation. The Marshal Tianpeng of the marketing department can now ride the clouds (master the internet) and go up to heaven and down to earth.
So, what is the current state of the sales department, which has tens of thousands of troops and is all-powerful?
-01- The Troubles of the All-Powerful Sales Department
Recently, a meme went viral on social media: 60,000 graduate students and 170,000 undergraduates are delivering food. This only counts those with high education in food delivery, not including couriers and riders. If you include delivery guys, the number is even more terrifying. And just Meituan alone has about 4 million delivery guys.
From another perspective, many HR and sales executives are sighing: there are no successors, and it's increasingly difficult to find grassroots sales representatives. Looking at domestic FMCG brands with billions in revenue, almost all have a huge sales department, with tens of thousands of sales reps galloping across the battlefield, using ant-like soldiers to maintain channel operations.
Go to the front lines of these enterprises, and you'll see these large teams shuttling through streets and alleys every day. Some are diligent, some are just going through the motions, and some even work for other brands part-time, or even engage in corruption and embezzlement!
Reports fly around daily, data is fabricated, meetings are endless, and WeChat groups multiply...
The once all-powerful "kamikaze" sales department is showing signs of fatigue: on one hand, there are no successors and wages are soaring; on the other, management is inefficient and bloated!
If we look back, the marketing process in the past was a process of connection, and the connection methods varied across different periods and industries. In the era of material scarcity, enterprises didn't need salespeople; anything produced would be bought, so the sales department was still sleeping in the womb. Later, as competition intensified, enterprises needed to go out and find people to help sell, which led to distributors. Because there were financial transactions and reconciliation, there were also salespeople whose main functions were to handle customer contact and accounting. As customers increased, so did the number of salespeople.
Thirty years ago, solving the problem of B (distributors) was enough. Later, it became necessary to manage the distributors' secondary wholesalers, because if manufacturers didn't control the secondary wholesalers to pressure distributors, they could be strangled by the primary wholesalers, leading to congestion or disobedience!
Later, just solving the secondary wholesaler problem wasn't enough, because the b (terminal) side rose and gained a voice. Manufacturers then launched vigorous deep distribution campaigns. The ultimate goal of deep distribution was to control terminals. Manufacturers established terminal control organizations with two control models:
1. Centralized control model: The manufacturer forms a team of sales reps to take orders and maintain terminals, while distributors become delivery workers.
2. Distributed control model: The manufacturer outputs the model, driving distributors to form teams to control terminals and cooperate with the manufacturer's targets.
The former is mostly called deep distribution, and the latter is sometimes called deep co-selling.
Some have proposed the concept of deep marketing, which generally means strengthening promotion and communication, making consumer work an important means, and coordinating with terminal operations to achieve land, sea, and air operations. This concept is mostly seen in industries with higher added value, such as the liquor industry.
A common industry saying is that for every 200 terminals, there is one salesperson, plus a distributor's delivery person. If promotional activities are needed, there may also be promotion staff... The sales department has grown step by step, and it's normal for many big brands to have teams of over 10,000 people.
But should this team continue to operate inefficiently and old-fashionedly?
-02- What Made the Sales Department Become What It Hates?
Where people are, sales must go; that's the duty of the sales department brothers. As long as there are distributors (later terminals), the sales department's engineers will spare no effort to build channels and bring the product's water. After bringing it, they can't just relax; they must regularly inspect to see the water flow speed (sell-through), check for leaks (channel order), and also try to destroy competitors' channels to slow their water flow and make their channels inefficient...
In this operating system, what does the boss care about most?
1. Where does the water flow? That is, the flow of this product in the channel. If it can't be tracked and managed in time, the water can't be scientifically distributed, leading to uneven distribution—some areas dry, some flooded.
2. The number and total cross-sectional area of the canals. This is directly related to water flow (sales). The more canals, the greater the water flow; the larger the total cross-sectional area, the higher the sales. The boss must track the number of canals built, their size, and even inspect them on-site to see if they are obedient; if not, rebuild them.
3. Where is the water? How much is there? In other words, where is the product? Is it in the best position in the terminal, or sleeping in the distributor's warehouse? Which SKU, how many cases, where, and for how long?
These issues are the core of sales management. Because the country is vast, even if the boss has a keen eye and can somersault 108,000 miles, he can't see everything with his own eyes. Even if he could, counting would make his head spin.
So, reports are submitted layer by layer. Over time, these "table brothers" (professional form-fillers) learn to please the boss by reporting only favorable data, even fabricating it layer by layer. Even if the boss sends imperial inspectors to investigate openly and secretly, it's ineffective... The channel embankment gets higher and higher. After a few years, the enterprise's "above-ground river" of channels starts to require promotions to sell, and even with promotions, it may not sell. The enterprise must maintain it desperately, or it will flood and cause disaster.
Holding the boss hostage with the above-ground river, the sales department with tens of thousands of troops takes the highest wages and enjoys top treatment, but its color is getting darker and darker, until it's gray.
"I once dreamed of wielding a sword to travel the world / To see the world's prosperity / Young hearts are always a bit wild / Now you are already very fake."
The traditional organization-driven deep distribution system can no longer accurately see the channel status and flow rate of this product. Cases of overstocking and collapse are common.
If there were an automated system that could connect all terminal owners and accurately reflect the position, variety, and quantity of this and competing products in the channel, how much would the sales department's role be reduced?
This system is the marketing digitalization system. The place where you can see the whole picture is the middle platform, a dispatch center built on digitalization for data filtering and analysis. Here, no power is needed, only data.
-03- First Half 2B, Second Half 2C
B(b) has a magical role; it can change your brand admiration without you noticing. For example, when you're thirsty and want water, you won't stop drinking because a certain brand isn't available, nor will you drive from the east to the west of the city for a two-yuan bottle of water. Most likely, you'll grab a bottle from the nearest terminal and drink it.
Also, if you make a shopping list and go to the supermarket, you'll find that after shopping, you have many unplanned items. This magic attracts massive resources and almost all forces from manufacturers. Even though offline has less than three-quarters of the cake left, they don't give up.
The first half was an era of relative material scarcity, with the serve in the manufacturer's hands, so they used 2B (including b) tactics to the fullest. The characteristic of this era was: the contradiction between people's growing material and cultural needs and backward production!
In the second half, the serve changed; it's no longer the manufacturer's serve. When consumers serve, many manufacturers can't receive it. Especially today, when e-commerce accounts for a quarter of the total, community convenience stores in every neighborhood are about to be replaced by express delivery stations. In 2020, the total number of express deliveries is expected to be 74 billion.
Unfortunately, the sales department, which thrived in the 2B era, doesn't have the 2C gene. In the channel's "heavenly river," the C-end is naturally disconnected.
Questionnaires are hard to get, but everyone knows how reliable they are. E-commerce is naturally 2C, but for most enterprises, the e-commerce department is like a teacup dog vs. a Tibetan mastiff in front of the sales department. Although both are canines, the level gap is huge. The teacup dog has no say in front of the mastiff except for being cute.
To give the sales department C-end capabilities, the WeChat ecosystem's communities once had great glory and made significant contributions. They gave terminal sales reps the ability to create or manage groups, or be undercover in groups, with one foot in the terminal and the other in the community.
This hybrid play between offline and online brought dividends to many small and medium brands, but for big brands with millions of soldiers, it's like trying to put an elephant in a refrigerator—it doesn't work.
Adding communities to the front line is a tactical micro-action. Even if you master it, you'll find that these brothers are still practicing B-end products. These products can compete offline with strong muscles, but online they are silent and can't exert force.
The root of this problem is that the boss's butt is sitting crooked. He watches the 2B mastiff wolf down food and smiles, but despises the e-commerce department's teacup dog's pitiful sales, even finding someone to foster it. He knows the serve is in the consumer's hands, but still plays the 2B game with his ears covered...
-04- Use Data to Abolish the Sales Department
The sales department loves data but also fears it most; true and false mix, muddy water makes it easy to fish. Transparency is the biggest feature of marketing digitalization, a bit cute and a bit bad.
In traditional offline marketing, some places are fragmented. From the perspective of enterprise management and connection theory, some places are naturally impossible to connect.
For example: Many enterprises invest heavily in channel inventory management, but because distributors' systems are diverse, it's hard for enterprises to control the status of this product in the channel. This leads to enterprises not seeing the product's status or flow speed, which can easily become a barrier lake...
C-end data roughly refers to consumer data. E-commerce naturally achieves C-end connection and data capture. B-end data roughly refers to channel (distributor and terminal) data, which is the basic skill and basic data of traditional offline marketing, F2B data.
Most brand owners can capture data mainly based on their own product's inventory management data. For 2b data, it's basically like hitting a mountain from afar—that is, capturing data through distributors or terminals. For 2c data, it's basically disconnected. The most traditional method of capturing C-end data is research, with the classic representative being the questionnaire!
BC-linked data is the most critical. If technology can achieve status monitoring of products in the channel and clearly see the product's status and flow speed, then the highest level of marketing digitalization is basically achieved!
Data can enrich the portrait, and the portrait drives intelligent decision-making, ensuring the enterprise's "marketing" (营) is guaranteed! BC-linked data can strengthen management and promote the implementation of "sales" (销)! To achieve BC linkage, there must be an overall operation logic of BC integration.
Sowing online and harvesting offline is the ideal model for brand owners. If any enterprise's online share is below the industry average, the boss should hit the wall and reflect: if his butt is sitting crooked, he will fall!
Doing C is marketing (营), doing B is sales (销); marketing is sowing, sales is harvesting. Four years ago, we emphasized abolishing the marketing department because it was a serious sales support department that didn't know how to plant grass. Today, we have to face an inefficient, gray, bloated sales department that doesn't even want to harvest and can't do it well.
Abolish the sales department, then arm it with digitalization, replacing the fire stick with a sniper rifle that automatically aims and shoots... The next decade's war won't be a war of human waves. Drones open the game, various automated weapons follow, and special forces finish. That's how we fight this battle!
Source: New Beer (ID: newbeer_BJ), Author: Fang Gang