Preface This article is from the first online micro-sharing session after the establishment of Fenjiu Business School. Six experts participated in the micro-sharing: Chang Jianwei (General Manager of Fenjiu Co., Ltd.), Guo Chenglin (Architect of Fenjiu Business School), Shi Wei (Famous Enterprise Management Expert), Ding Ding (Famous Fan Marketing Expert), Liu Chunxiong (Famous Marketing Management Expert), and Chen Long (Experiential Training Expert). This article is the content shared by Mr. Liu Chunxiong during the micro-sharing, with the title added by the editor. Today is the day the business school was established. The host proposed a great topic for me: "How to Ignite and Transmit the Essence." After careful thought, I found it an exciting topic. Let me start with three cases. What insights can we gain from them? > >>> Case 1 The first case involves a company where I serve as a director. This company once went eight years without growth, despite having a wealth of talent, yet sales still declined. So I posed a question to the board: "If you don't take measures, I will no longer serve as a director." The chairman asked me what to do. I said, "Take the entire management team and walk the market together." After three days in the market, at each stop I asked the salespeople two questions: First, "Tell me the three most successful cases in this market." Second, "Tell me the three most failed cases in this market." After the salespeople answered, I turned to the managers and asked two questions: First, "Can the three successful cases be replicated in other markets?" Second, "Do the three failed cases exist in other markets?" In three days, we discovered many successful cases. The boss then said we could write a marketing "Sunflower Manual." We went back, distilled these successful cases, and implemented them throughout the company. Now the company's operations are very good. > >>> Case 2 The second case: In 2009 or 2010, Uni-President was promoting its "Old Altar Pickled Cabbage" in Sichuan through the "Hundred Counties, Thousand Townships" project. I went to give a lecture. I spoke for a day, and General Manager Liu Xinhua listened for the whole day. Finally, he summarized my talk into two sentences. First, terminal promotion is the breakthrough for new products. Second, how to achieve the breakthrough? Through three precise and effective strikes. He then required that promotions follow this method. The Old Altar Pickled Cabbage promotion had good advertising and good terminal promotion. > >>> Case 3 The third case: I trained a leading dairy company in the same industry. I also lectured for a day. At that time, the company was good at urban markets but not rural markets. The training was for regional managers. After the training, the VP of sales asked the trainees two questions. First, "Was the training effective?" They said, "Very good." Second, "Was the training practical?" They said, "Practical." So the VP assigned a task: "Everyone copy the teacher's courseware and pass it down level by level, all the way to the distributors." Two months later, I was invited by a region of that company to train distributors. I found they had already modified and supplemented the courseware according to local conditions and had trained the distributors. Moreover, in the first half of the following year, the company's sales grew 40%, mainly from rural markets. > >>> Summary I summarize these three cases into three sentences. For the first case: Marketing is a practical discipline; the knowledge system of marketing mainly comes from the frontline. No matter how well or poorly a company performs, there are always lessons to learn. Internal experience has been tested by practice. Before that, companies should allow employees to make mistakes. For the second case: If frontline experience is not refined by senior management, it remains individual experience, not the company's knowledge system. Company executives must turn employees' good "optional moves" into the company's "prescribed moves." For the third case: The formation of a company's marketing knowledge system must be top-down. Frontline experience is refined by executives or experts, then transmitted downward to form the company's marketing knowledge system. Take gymnastics as an example: many moves were initially "optional moves" of outstanding athletes, then elevated to "prescribed moves" for all athletes. It is the "prescribed moves" that determine a company's basic marketing level. Excellent companies must have "prescribed moves" In some ordinary companies, everyone has methods, but the company as a whole has no shared methods. In excellent companies, there may be few methods, but everyone uses them, and they use similar methods. Therefore, an excellent company must have a set of "prescribed moves" that everyone knows; at the same time, there should be "optional moves" that only a few possess. So, we must ask: Where do "prescribed moves" come from? Is it enough to recruit a batch of "experts"? Obviously not. I believe they come from two sources: First source: Senior management learns from outside. I particularly emphasize that senior executives should learn outside because they have the ability to draw inferences, elevate methods to methodology, and deduce methods from methodology. There is a leading home appliance company that often invites experts to give lectures. After the expert speaks, the boss tells the executives: "Listen to the expert's class, but don't do as the expert says." When grassroots employees attend lectures, they often ask if there are any tricks. Experts don't have tricks; they may only talk about professional knowledge, logic, and thinking, and some practical experts can share useful cases. The president of Neusoft once said that some companies see an increase in employee turnover after inviting experts for training. Why? Because the boss doesn't attend the training. After training, employees think, "We understand, but the boss doesn't. This company has no hope," and they may leave. When I give lectures to companies, I find that more than half of the bosses do not attend. They think the problem is with employees, not themselves. But I find that most of the time, the boss's problems are bigger than the employees'. The second source of marketing knowledge: discovered by senior management from the frontline. Trout, the expert on "Positioning," wrote an excellent book, "Marketing Warfare," with the subtitle "Bottom-Up Strategies." Trout believes that "strategy is the consistent alignment of successful tactics." Promoting successful practices on a large scale is strategy. As Mao Zedong said, "From the masses, to the masses." Good marketing methods also come "from the frontline, to the frontline." Although some people call me an expert and I sometimes do training, I don't really advocate companies inviting experts to train employees. If you must invite experts to train employees, ask them to do research first and then train, as consultant-style training. If there are industries I don't understand, and the company insists on inviting me to train, for unfamiliar industries, I usually meet with salespeople first, understand the distributors, how they operate, what problems they have, what needs they have, and whether I can solve their problems. How to extract and spread the "prescribed moves" of marketing? We just talked about the marketing knowledge system coming from the frontline. So how to extract it? This is the second issue in forming a marketing knowledge system. I have three viewpoints. > >>> Viewpoint 1 First, I don't advocate "learning from Lei Feng." The so-called "Lei Feng" is usually the person who does the best. We must learn what ordinary people can learn. Most people cannot learn from Lei Feng or become Lei Feng. The main body of a company is ordinary people. Only when ordinary people can do it and learn it can it easily become a common practice. > >>> Viewpoint 2 Second, we need to find experiences with universal value and commonality. As I mentioned, experiences that ordinary people can learn and that are applicable in various regions. As in the first case, can the successful cases be replicated elsewhere? Do the problems in this market exist in other markets? This is about finding commonalities. When I served as a marketing VP, every time I went to the market and visited more than three markets, I had to find commonalities and patterns; otherwise, the visits were in vain. > >>> Viewpoint 3 Third, when we find common experiences, how do we spread them internally? I think Zong Qinghou of Wahaha did very well. It is said that he used to spend more than 200 days a year in the market, but he issued more than 300 bulletins. Although I haven't seen the bulletins, I imagine the content must be about common problems. There are two main ways for internal dissemination. > >>> Method 1 The first is internal mass media, such as official accounts, internal publications, and internal meetings. This is a routine practice. > >>> Method 2 The second is like the third case above: the marketing VP tells the regional managers, the regional managers tell the district managers, the district managers tell the salespeople, and the salespeople tell the distributors, passing down level by level. Continuous reinforcement; the process of telling is reinforcement. Finally, I want to return to a sentence from Trout's "Marketing Warfare": Good strategy is the consistent alignment of successful tactics. This strategy is usually only graspable by managers at the VP level who "go deep into the frontline." So our executives must not just inspect; they must go to the frontline to discover our marketing knowledge system, refine it, and finally transmit it. I believe this endogenous knowledge system is more useful than inviting many experts to lecture. A good marketing knowledge system in a company must be endogenous; it is difficult for other companies to imitate. [Micro-forum host] Thank you, Mr. Liu Chunxiong, for sharing. His sharing made me remember one sentence: Excellent companies have the ability to replicate highlights and amplify shining points. -END- The best learning platform for FMCG distributors in China Focusing on providing professional, practical, and actionable tutorials for companies and distributors Committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry Reply with the red number below to get the corresponding content Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base | 001 Excellent article selection | 002 Distributor market operations | 003 Terminal visit management | 004 Sales supervisor skills | 005 Sales improvement techniques | 006 Channel expansion | 007 Managing distributors | 008 Distributor development | 009 Distributor internal operations management | 010 Team management | 011 Efficient distribution techniques | 012 Sales manager's eighteen skills | 013 KA operation methods and strategies | 014 First lesson for new salespeople | 015 Internet, brand | 016 Distributor B2B transformation | [Long press QR code to follow]