Regional managers, as local lords, wield authority over their territories. Many regional managers believe that as long as they maintain good communication with higher-ups and leaders, secure favorable market policies, and keep smooth cooperation with distributors, enticing them with benefits and using 'abacus' tactics to win them over, regional market performance will steadily rise, and they can rest easy. However, this is not the case. Even if a regional manager has 'three heads and six arms,' it is impossible to ensure that every good decision or plan is effectively implemented and perfectly executed, and that no marketing detail goes wrong.
Doing market work is like soldiers attacking a hill. A wise general can train a group of mediocre soldiers into a 'tiger-wolf force,' while an incompetent general can turn a group of brave warriors into a 'flock of sheep.' As a regional manager, how can you turn a 'flock of sheep' into a 'tiger-wolf force'? Or make the 'tiger-wolf force' even more ferocious? The performance lever is particularly important here. And correctly implementing the 'One Center, Four Basic Points' performance lever often gives your team an extra boost.
One Center: Centered on Incentive Principles
Sales personnel are the frontline staff in the regional market. Their enthusiasm and combat effectiveness directly affect the achievement of various sales task indicators in the regional market. A sales team without enthusiasm and combat effectiveness is unlikely to make the regional market detailed, refined, and solid. So how can we better enhance the enthusiasm and combat effectiveness of the sales team? A performance appraisal policy centered on incentive principles often plays a role in fueling the fire.
For the motivation of sales personnel, besides daily spiritual encouragement and material rewards such as naming them 'Model' or 'Top Scholar' and issuing 'Commendation Orders,' the most direct, effective, and most readily accepted method is undoubtedly combining it with salary distribution. Linking sales performance directly to salary ratio, adhering to the principle of 'more work, more pay; less work, less pay,' is often the most primitive yet most effective performance appraisal method.
As a regional manager, you can vividly describe the company's development prospects and the promotion prospects for sales personnel, but all of this must be based on material incentives as the leading factor. Otherwise, everything is a mirage, unattainable for sales personnel. The ultimate effect will be counterproductive.
Four Basic Points
Ensure Survival
As sales representatives, they are almost always on the front lines of the market 365 days a year, without obvious holidays or weekends, braving wind and rain. They not only have to do well in distribution, in-store image, promotion, and price management, but also carefully maintain customer relationships. The hardship and difficulty are imaginable. But due to various reasons, the results are not always satisfactory, and this often occurs during new market development and product introduction periods.
Some regional managers have very simple assessments for sales personnel. The relationship between the regional manager and sales personnel is purely economic, adopting a full commission system. Based on the sales personnel's collection amount, they receive a percentage commission, and beyond that, there is no basic salary, travel expenses, communication fees, transportation fees, or entertainment expenses. This method may have some adaptability for regional market management in newly established companies or during the mature stage of a product in the regional market. However, this performance appraisal method that only values volume has obvious drawbacks: sales personnel lack loyalty to the company, regional managers cannot effectively control sales personnel's sales behavior, part-time jobs are common among sales personnel, and the market is completely controlled by sales personnel...
Therefore, when regional managers conduct performance appraisals for subordinate sales personnel, they must first adhere to the basic point of ensuring the basic living of sales personnel. They should provide sales personnel with basic business development and living expense guarantees. These expenses include 'basic salary,' 'communication fees,' 'travel allowances,' 'position allowances,' etc.
Grasp the Key
There is a fable: Black Bear and Brown Bear both like honey, and they each kept a box of bees, with similar numbers. One day, they decided to compete to see who could produce more honey. Black Bear believed that the amount of honey produced depended on the bees' 'visits' (the number of flowers contacted). So he formulated a performance appraisal system that could accurately measure each bee's daily workload, published the results quarterly, and gave heavy rewards to the bee with the most visits. Brown Bear believed that the amount of honey produced depended on the nectar each bee brought back daily. He also formulated a performance appraisal system, but unlike Black Bear, he formulated a system that could measure the amount of nectar each bee brought back daily and the total amount of nectar brought back daily, and published the results daily. He also formulated reward measures: the bee that brought back the most nectar each month received heavy rewards, and if the total amount of nectar brought back increased compared to the previous month, every bee would also be rewarded. Several months passed, and Black Bear's honey was less than half of Brown Bear's. Black Bear was puzzled: his visits increased by 10% each month, but his honey decreased by 10% each month. He even suspected someone had stolen his honey...
What caused the huge difference in performance between Black Bear and Brown Bear? It was the performance appraisal system. And the most important factor was whether they grasped the most critical and decisive appraisal indicators. The key to determining honey production depends on nectar, not 'visits.' Black Bear's use of 'visits' as the key appraisal indicator directly prompted bees not to focus their main energy on the honey that played the key role, because the more honey the bees collected, the slower they flew, and the corresponding visits would decrease.
Returning to real regional marketing management work, the key performance appraisal indicators that regional managers set for subordinate marketing personnel are like a weather vane, directly affecting the work direction, work focus, and work performance of subordinate sales personnel. If the key indicators set by the regional manager deviate, the work of sales personnel often becomes top-heavy, lacking direction and goal orientation. Often, many things at the market terminal only bloom but do not bear fruit. Sales representatives spend most of their time each month like itinerant quacks, going from one distributor to another, handling trivial small problems, and not truly playing a role in boosting terminal sales.
Emphasize Process
Performance appraisal, as the name implies, 'performance' refers to work results, i.e., the employee's work performance. 'Efficiency' refers to efficiency, i.e., the employee's work results. So performance appraisal is the assessment of 'performance + process.' Only when employees perfectly execute various decisions and policies in the work process can their performance be more excellent and outstanding. As a regional manager, the assessment of subordinate sales personnel should not only assess results but also pay attention to the process. Process is an attitude issue; only with a good process can there be a good result.
Returning to real sales assessment, it means implementing the principle of combining soft and hard indicators. In the assessment of sales personnel, besides hard indicators such as 'sales volume' and related 'collection amount,' soft goals such as 'channel management,' 'price system management,' 'customer relationship management (CRM),' 'information feedback,' 'work attitude,' 'customer satisfaction (CSM),' and 'market share' should also be considered in performance appraisal, because these soft goals are often an important part of process management and are the guarantee system for hard goals.
When regional managers formulate performance appraisal items, if they only assess sales volume or sales collection, it may lead sales personnel to excessively apply to the company for policies to please distributors, induce and pressure distributors to stock up, and develop distributors desperately without considering the overall or future development of the market, resulting in the company's products being stockpiled at distributors, the company's products expiring and deteriorating, increased complaints from company distributors, and the collapse of the company's product market.
Set Up Models
After regional managers, with incentive principles as the leading factor, establish the basic living security system for sales personnel and stabilize morale, formulate key performance indicators that determine regional performance, and assist with process management, the next step is how to implement and execute. As the saying goes, 'The power of example is infinite.' The process of setting up sales models is also a process of implementing the performance appraisal system and conveying the performance appraisal culture. This process is not just institutional preaching, but using the real, co-working colleagues around sales personnel as performance reference points. Lead by example, encourage and call on everyone to work hard for a common goal.
As a regional manager, correctly and timely setting up sales models, using the dual push of spiritual and material encouragement, often plays a demonstrative and promotional role in shaping the sales team and solving sales difficulties. For example, when facing the problem of credit sales to regional distributors, in order to correct the mentality of subordinate sales representatives and correct the erroneous concept that sales cannot be made without credit, setting up models and examples of cash sales among sales personnel, while giving corresponding spiritual and material rewards, and promoting and developing their personal experience, often plays a positive role in promoting the mentality of sales representatives.
Finally, nothing in the world is absolutely fair, only relatively fair. As a regional manager, when implementing the 'One Center, Four Basic Points' performance management policy, you must, on the premise of adhering to the sustainable development of the assessment policy, try to be fair, just, and open. Only in this way can the building of a 'tiger-wolf force' achieve twice the result with half the effort.
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