---
title: "Beverages | Career Development in FMCG - Choice Matters More Than Effort"
description: "For sales professionals, choosing the right company or product in the next three years is crucial. In the FMCG beverage sector, competition is fierce, and since 2015, major brands have seen declining sales due to economic slowdown, health awareness, channel diversification, and the rise of Gen Z. 2016-2018 is a period of industry reshuffling, making choice more important than effort."
author: "兴明"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-11-30"
language: "en"
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# Beverages | Career Development in FMCG - Choice Matters More Than Effort

> For sales professionals, choosing the right company or product in the next three years is crucial. In the FMCG beverage sector, competition is fierce, and since 2015, major brands have seen declining sales due to economic slowdown, health awareness, channel diversification, and the rise of Gen Z. 2016-2018 is a period of industry reshuffling, making choice more important than effort.

**For sales professionals, choosing the right company or product in the next three years is crucial! Here I want to say that in the FMCG field, choice matters more than effort!!**
In the past two years, the beverage sector of the FMCG industry has seen intense competition. Since 2015, major established companies (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Wahaha, Kangshifu, Master Kong, etc.) have experienced significant declines in performance, closely related to the slowdown in the domestic economy, increased health awareness among the public, diversified promotion channels, and the rise of the post-95s (including some post-00s) consumer group. 2016 is a key year for major beverage companies to upgrade. 2016, 2017, and 2018 are three years of major reshuffling in the beverage industry. For friends in beverage sales, these three years are both painful and challenging, but also full of opportunities and development! For sales professionals, choosing the right company or product in these three years is particularly important! Here I want to say that in the FMCG field, choice matters more than effort!!!!
Currently, beverage companies are divided into foreign and domestic brands. Foreign giants: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé, Danone, Red Bull... Hong Kong and Taiwan giants: Uni-President, Ting Hsin, JDB... National brands: Wahaha, Nongfu Spring, Mengniu, Yili, Bright Dairy, China Resources, Coconut Palm, Daliyuan, Wanglaoji, Xiangpiaopiao... These companies recruit sales personnel all year round, indicating that this industry is not only labor-intensive but also has a high employee turnover rate. We won't delve into labor intensity, but from the turnover rate, it's basically divided into personal and corporate factors. Beverage sales are not as high-end as finance, IT, or real estate. The work environment is essentially an upgraded version of a courier (the average salary of a salesperson may not match that of a courier). The upgrade is mainly reflected in performance pressure and not having to pull a tricycle to deliver goods every day. So entering this industry requires a lot of mental preparation.
Small suggestion: When you first enter the industry, strive to become a salesperson for a manufacturer. Forget about distributors; they will only teach you the darker side of the industry, and eventually, you'll find a way to join a manufacturer.
After joining a company, your career development directions are:
1. Company promotion. 2. Start a wholesale business. 3. Open a supermarket. Below, I'll elaborate on these directions:
**Company Promotion**
As mentioned earlier, these three years are a reshuffling period for the beverage industry, so choosing a good company is particularly important. The characteristics of a good company are having good products, a sound corporate system, strong execution, a young and dynamic internal culture, and not too much bureaucracy...
How to identify a good product? Good products are either bestsellers or have potential for explosive growth in the next two years. The trend for tea products is low-sugar or sugar-free; high-sugar tea consumers are mainly post-95s, and such products need distinctive packaging to appeal to them. The trend for juice products is short-shelf-life pure juice. The trend for dairy products is plant-based protein milk and live lactic acid bacteria drinks. The trend for functional beverages is healthy and low-hormone. The soda sector focuses on being fashionable and young to appeal to post-95s. The trend for water is natural high-quality water... Currently, among these categories, water has the largest market share and the best momentum. The rapid rise of lactic acid bacteria drinks and functional beverages shows that consumer attitudes towards beverages are shifting from emotional to health-oriented.
You can learn about a company's mechanism and execution through Baidu Tieba and WeChat public accounts. Among the well-known companies mentioned above, those with good industry reputations include: Nongfu Spring (low-key and connotative, with strong management style and good employee discipline), Coca-Cola (industry leader, meticulous management that values both results and process), JDB (the boss is willing to share profits, simple product line), Uni-President (recent reforms are decent, but management is bureaucratic; income is good if you reach leadership)... Promotion in these big companies requires some luck, and following the right person is important. Of course, effort is even more important. The first strategic task when entering a company is to create a model route in your region. When a leader needs to follow a line, your opportunity arises. After that, you just need to maintain the model route and do some highlight projects (like impressive themed displays and end caps). The second strategic task: smooth internal relationships and get through the three major festivals (Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and the leader's birthday). If you do these well, it depends on whether your leader is supportive. Of course, the most important prerequisite is performance. You must hold onto key accounts and not easily hand them over to distributors.
**Start a Wholesale Business**
After years of local business experience, you can start your own wholesale business. Do thorough market research in the early stages. When starting out, you usually work while promoting your own products, leveraging the parent company's resource advantages. After work, you deliver yourself (provided you've done a good job with your leaders and colleagues). Unfortunately, the current national strategy is to develop Internet+, and online wholesale platforms like Huimin Wang, E-commerce Interconnection, Baisi Store, Yunma Yi, etc., have emerged... If these e-commerce platforms have sufficient funding (national brands would need at least tens of billions in investment, or China Tobacco could set up a separate entity), it's possible that small and medium-sized social wholesale businesses will be swallowed up by O2O in the coming years. If Internet+ is the trend of the times, then sorry, your efforts may be in vain after many years. At that time, starting a business will require a lot of capital and connections. Of course, at least within ten years, special channels will still have advantages as long as their nature remains unchanged (except for internet cafes turning into e-sports bars). This refers to beverages; I dare not make assumptions about other FMCG categories.
**Open a Supermarket**
Salespeople have an advantage in opening a supermarket. They are better at selecting a location and managing the business compared to people from other fields. If a supermarket is well-run, you can earn around 300,000 yuan a year, provided the location is good. While running business, pay attention to areas with development potential, the more foot traffic the better. For example, open a convenience supermarket at the entrance of a community with over 1,000 households, or a convenience store at a bus stop or market entrance... The startup capital for a supermarket is generally much higher than for a small or medium-sized wholesale business. So once you join a company, work hard and save money every day!!
In short, FMCG business is quite down-to-earth. If you don't have better development opportunities around you, this industry is still okay. Although it's hard to make big money, it's definitely enough to feed your family. If you work hard in the company and become a regional director, your life perspective will change (self-effort + luck, difficulty coefficient is one in a thousand). If you run a wholesale department well and make money, you could even become a manufacturer yourself (currently as difficult as winning 5 million in the lottery). If you run a supermarket well, you could even dominate with a chain of convenience stores (just thinking about it keeps me awake at night; in big cities, the difficulty is like winning two 5 million lotteries). As the predecessors said, in 360 lines, every line has its champion!
If you don't work hard, who will cry for you?
Therefore!
You must succeed!
Even if you can't, you must!!
**Source: Zhihu**
-END-
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