As the business environment changes, increasingly fierce market competition poses significant challenges to most dealers. To address management issues, our dealer friends have also been thinking and seeking many solutions. Managing enterprises in a standardized, normalized, and systematic way is an important cornerstone of modern enterprise management systems, and it is even more crucial for dealer enterprises that have just undergone transformation. Therefore, dealer enterprise owners have made significant investments, specifically hiring professional managers with many years of marketing management experience to design a comprehensive management system for these small companies with "three or five people, seven or eight guns," and also formulated a dealer company operation manual, including warehouse transportation, finance, internal affairs, business operations, and other systems, detailing employee management systems such as leave request and approval systems and job responsibilities for each person, while also establishing corporate philosophy, business purpose, corporate development vision... dozens of pages thick. Dealer owners have also solemnly arranged for their implementation to guide and execute.
But why are there still many problems?
In fact, many dealer owners in China are still in a state of "four unknowns" (not knowing how much money they have earned, not knowing how much inventory they have, not knowing how many customers they have, not knowing how their money was made), being both boss and "old mover" (doing everything themselves).
With the advent of the micro-profit era and the expansion of dealer business scale, "seeking benefits from management" cannot just be a slogan and action for manufacturing enterprises; dealer enterprises must also seek breakthroughs and changes in concepts and management.
Today, the author will focus on revealing the problems in concepts and management that dealer owners face during the transition period and the issues that should be implemented properly.
- Incomplete management systems in transitioning dealers
Due to some dealers transitioning too quickly, jumping from the "boss, driver, porter, salesperson" four-in-one role to leaders and managers, under rapid transition, it is inevitable that loopholes appear. For example, although various rules and regulations have been established, they are incomplete, or even lack operability due to lack of communication with employees during formulation, or they adopt "copycatism," or they fear enterprise standardization and institutionalization, strict management, employee turnover, etc., making the management system merely a "decoration" without real implementation, thus forming a "management vacuum," especially for trusted individuals. In the case of the dealer in the example, it is precisely because the enterprise developed quickly but management did not keep up, and management had always had flaws, allowing salespeople to exploit loopholes. Therefore, dealers must constantly reflect: as the enterprise grows, has the system improved with enterprise development? Are there management systems that are ahead of their time and unsuitable? Do salespeople understand these management systems and execute them without compromise? Have flawed management systems been promptly repaired?
- Lack of ideological basis for sustained existence in dealer enterprises
We often hear people ask for our opinions on their work or career development, such as "What should be the next step?" At this time, we often ask back: "What direction have you set for yourself?" However, many people cannot give a clear answer.
According to authoritative surveys, more than 60% of condiment dealer owners lack clear planning for their enterprise's future development, and the direction for the next step is unclear, especially the lack of ideological basis for the sustained existence of dealer enterprises.
Many dealers, especially condiment dealers, have transitioned due to business development. To date, these enterprises have achieved considerable scale, and their "development" has not only never stopped but is also developing at a rapid pace in today's market economy.
The market economy, while providing more opportunities for condiment dealers to transition, also places higher demands on our condiment dealer owners, including culture, talent, capital, competition, policy, etc. According to current market surveys, these demands fundamentally reflect the lack of concepts and culture among condiment dealer owners.
- Communication barriers between high-level and middle/grassroots levels in dealer enterprises: lack of consensus leads to insufficient execution
In the early stages of entrepreneurship, team members are often partners with good personal relationships, such as friends, colleagues, classmates, alumni, etc., who start the business together, mostly sharing similar concepts and viewpoints, united by a common "dream." As the enterprise grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for high-level and middle/grassroots levels to understand each other, which is also a problem faced by Chinese enterprises during their growth and development.
As company managers, because they stand from different perspectives, are busy, and think quickly, they often overlook the positions and perspectives of ordinary employees in execution positions, hence often complaining that talking to employees is like talking to a "cow." Employees, on the other hand, often feel that high-level communication with them is not understanding or trusting them, and they often do things themselves, unable to comprehend what is said, as if it were "cow language."
In fact, whether an enterprise undergoes partial reform or comprehensive reengineering, it will bring about adjustments and redistribution of employee interests. For upper-level leaders, they can fully recognize the importance and value of reform, but for middle and grassroots employees, this is not the case.
These issues of value recognition are actually the common management communication problems that exist today. The famous American futurist Naisbitt once pointed out: "Future competition is management competition, and the focus of competition lies in effective communication between members within each social organization and with external organizations."
Therefore, regardless of the size of the enterprise, the boss must communicate normally with a group of middle managers, shifting from past informal communication to formal communication, including some informal communication, to increase mutual understanding and exchange. Because with the development of the enterprise and the increase in knowledge workers, middle managers have this communication need.
In summary, for dealers to grow and develop, they must learn teamwork, rather than relying on the boss alone or the couple staring at each other. To make the enterprise operate well, several different responsibilities must be undertaken by someone—not working independently, but collaborating. As an enterprise manager, one of the very important tasks is to build a united team. This requires doing the following: assigning roles, empowering members, developing skills, transparent rewards, etc.
- Dealer enterprise systems and culture are "two skins," with behavior and culture seriously deviating
Nowadays, many dealer enterprises have beautifully written corporate culture programs and core values, which at first glance would make even professional corporate culture consultants hesitate. But when truly understanding them, it is found that company systems, employee behavior, and many other aspects are vastly different from these programs.
- Dealer enterprises' family-style high-level "harmony" but conflicting interests
Many dealer transition enterprises still continue the previous husband-and-wife management style, with employees basically recruited through introductions from relatives and friends. Although this method has many benefits, such as relatively high loyalty and peace of mind, it is easy to fall into the awkward situation of "easy to invite gods but hard to send them away." If it is found that a relative is incompetent, but due to the connection of being a relative or introduced by relatives and friends, our dealer owners let them be a "pretender," letting them do as they please. This result may affect other more motivated relatives. In short, appeasing one relative offends another.
Thus, these "royal relatives" employees, to secure their positions, begin to curry favor with their own connections, and even many decisions are made without brainstorming (including the couple not discussing), leading to frequent occurrences of the husband singing and the wife not following, and management personnel being harmonious on the surface but not in heart, leaving employees at a loss. At the same time, because employees do not understand the boss's decisions, they act immediately (to strive for performance), resulting in frequent poor execution and inadequate implementation, leading to deviations in results, poor overall company performance, and artificially increased management costs.
- Dealer enterprises often cannot retain talent even with high salaries
The author has a friend who works at a trading company. His income is not high, but he has stayed for ten years. His family is all in the suburbs. To go home every day, he bought a car five years ago and spends three hours commuting every day. He is unwilling to leave that company because no matter when he arrives, there is always an empty parking space. He actually gave up better job opportunities for a parking space. This example simply shows that people care about more than just compensation in a job; many times, people handle problems with emotion. It is a subtle thing because this parking space made my friend feel treated well, so just for that feeling, he chose to stay.
Then, we can well answer the question "Why do dealer enterprises often not retain people even with high salaries?"
In fact, for dealers, it is not easy to attract excellent sales talent because the primary choice for excellent talent when choosing a job is an enterprise that integrates production, supply, and sales, and it is not easy to cultivate talent because general dealers cannot provide standardized and systematic training for sales personnel. However, their elites often control sales channels, have strong practical operational experience and capabilities, and maintain good relationships with upstream manufacturers and downstream customers. Once they leave, it can bring passivity to the dealer's operations, and even lead to a large loss of downstream customers.
Conclusion: The above analysis points have all revealed the shortcomings in certain resources and capabilities of dealer transition enterprises. However, every enterprise, like a person, has its own strengths and weaknesses. Since these are current weaknesses and also weaknesses that we cannot immediately improve, please, dealer owners, leverage your strengths. Dealer enterprises have many advantages, such as valuing talent, better welfare systems, etc., to touch employees' hearts and provide an environment where employees are reluctant to leave.
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