---
title: "Boss, How Long Has It Been Since You Personally Visited Clients? Are Your Clients Yours or Your Salespeople's?"
description: "As distributors grow, they become increasingly dependent on employees, but few bosses can effectively direct them. The basic profit model for distributors is simple: buy from manufacturers and sell to downstream clients for a margin. Downstream clients choose to buy from a distributor based on factors such as product strength, recognition of the boss, recognition of the sales staff, and the distributor's operational systems. To sustain growth, distributors must build operational systems that reduce reliance on individuals, starting with rebuilding personal relationships with clients and centralizing client management."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-11-07"
language: "en"
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# Boss, How Long Has It Been Since You Personally Visited Clients? Are Your Clients Yours or Your Salespeople's?

> As distributors grow, they become increasingly dependent on employees, but few bosses can effectively direct them. The basic profit model for distributors is simple: buy from manufacturers and sell to downstream clients for a margin. Downstream clients choose to buy from a distributor based on factors such as product strength, recognition of the boss, recognition of the sales staff, and the distributor's operational systems. To sustain growth, distributors must build operational systems that reduce reliance on individuals, starting with rebuilding personal relationships with clients and centralizing client management.

> As distributors grow, they become increasingly dependent on employees, but how many bosses can truly and effectively direct their staff?

The basic profit model for distributors is generally simple: buy from manufacturers and sell to downstream clients, earning a margin in between.

**Why should downstream clients buy from your distribution company? There must be certain underlying factors, such as:**
1. The product's inherent strength or the influence of the product brand;
2. The downstream clients' recognition of the distributor's boss;
3. The downstream clients' recognition of the distributor's sales personnel;
4. The distributor's customer management and market operation systems, which enable effective product operation and customer management.

**In any case, a distributor must have at least one of these four. Typically, the order of importance is as follows:**
1. In the early stages, it mainly relies on the distributor boss's personal efforts to gain client recognition at the individual level, thereby achieving customer development and market expansion;
2. To grow, a distributor often partners with a major brand manufacturer or products with exceptional strength. In such cases, even if the distributor's own operational systems are inadequate or staff quality is low, downstream clients may tolerate working with them due to the product and brand;
3. In Chinese business, one must first build relationships before doing business. If downstream clients have a certain level of personal recognition of the distributor's salespeople, they may give business out of interpersonal courtesy and face-saving. Thus, some business is sustained by the personal face of the salesperson;
4. Of course, the boss's time and energy are limited. Even if they want to do business well, they simply cannot manage everything, and employees bring many uncertainties, with work quality and turnover rates not guaranteed.

**For a company to enter a stage of sustainable development, it must establish corresponding operational systems. Based on market context and customer needs, these systems integrate various operational execution processes and problem prevention and resolution, achieving semi-automated operations to a certain extent, allowing the boss to use people without being dependent on them.**

1. Products and brands are in the hands of manufacturers, and contracts are not ironclad. Who knows if the manufacturer will switch distributors next year? Or even the best products and brands can be eliminated by the market;
2. How many distributor bosses still insist on visiting end customers? Perhaps many end customers no longer even know the distributor boss. Business is more often in the hands of the distributor's salespeople. Who can guarantee the work quality and turnover rate of salespeople? Or that they won't sell their own goods on the side? Or even start their own business after accumulating customer resources?
3. Employees are even more uncertain. How many bosses can truly and effectively direct their staff?
4. As for operational systems, most distributors have not established them. The current products can still be sold mainly due to the manufacturer's brand, product strength, salespeople, and other factors.

The distributor's business is like driving a broken car on a highway—it looks fast from the outside, but the boss can no longer effectively control the vehicle.

Bosses might as well return to their entrepreneurial roots, personally visit and contact end customers one by one, starting with building end customers' personal recognition of the distributor boss, and gradually establishing an operational system.

Centralize customer management at the company level, implement mechanisms for employee separation and substitution, strive to build the boss's personal influence and the company's brand image, and ultimately achieve fully self-directed business promotion.

Having started as a private business owner, I have managed a family-owned distribution company for many years, during which I also served as a business manager and trainer in several manufacturing companies. My research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, back-office setup, and the integration of demobilized military personnel into private enterprises. I continuously break down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises, maintaining ongoing material collection and solution updates.


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