---
title: "Classified Empowerment of Distributors: From \"One Size Fits All\" to \"Precise Measures\""
description: "After the Spring Festival, many brand owners claim they will value, be close to, and support their distributors, but these words often remain slogans without concrete action. Just as a student with weak math needs targeted tutoring, distributors need an evaluation system covering capability and willingness to enable classified empowerment. This article proposes four models—heavy support, assistance, closeness, and elimination—based on capability and willingness assessments, with specific strategies for each."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-02-05"
language: "en"
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# Classified Empowerment of Distributors: From "One Size Fits All" to "Precise Measures"

> After the Spring Festival, many brand owners claim they will value, be close to, and support their distributors, but these words often remain slogans without concrete action. Just as a student with weak math needs targeted tutoring, distributors need an evaluation system covering capability and willingness to enable classified empowerment. This article proposes four models—heavy support, assistance, closeness, and elimination—based on capability and willingness assessments, with specific strategies for each.

**The eighth day of the first lunar month marks the start of work; best wishes for a prosperous year!** In recent years, I have attended many brand owner annual meetings. When chairmen and general managers spoke about distributors, they invariably mentioned that in the coming year they would value distributors, achieve the goals of valuing, being close to, and supporting distributors. **However, many such statements end up as slogans, existing only at the "metaphysical" level, never at the "physical" level.** Let's take a simple example: a student scores 50 in math and 100 in Chinese in the final exam. What should be done for the next year's study? I believe many people have the answer: focus on math, perhaps even hire a tutor to improve math, thereby raising the overall score. Similarly, among a brand's distributors, some are weak in "math," others in "Chinese," yet the policies implemented are identical, ignoring these "score" differences, leading to uneven results. **Distributors need an exam: an evaluation system.**

**Market expense investment requires joint participation from both manufacturer and distributor.** For example, if 100 yuan is invested in a market, a distributor with strong operational capability can generate 1,000 yuan in output, while a weak one can only generate 200 yuan. A distributor with strong willingness will invest an additional 20 yuan of their own, totaling 120 yuan to cope with fierce market competition, whereas a weak-willed distributor will first convert the 20 yuan into profit, leaving only 80 yuan for market competition. Thus, the same 100 yuan investment yields vastly different results. Therefore, distributors need an "exam" with two subjects: **one called capability assessment, the other willingness assessment.** A scientific evaluation system must be established to expose the "subjects" with poor scores, facilitating classified empowerment by the brand and assisting improvement.

**1\. Capability Assessment System**
Capability qualification can be divided into three major categories.
> **Category 1: Business Operation Capability.** Including: distributor's total business scale, achievement rate of performance targets, resource network coverage rate, 24-hour delivery rate, key product coverage rate, channel shelf-life compliance rate, etc.
>
> **Category 2: Hardware Configuration Capability.** Including: vehicle (business) configuration, free operating capital, warehouse configuration and management systems, war room configuration, etc.
>
> **Category 3: Organizational Management Capability.** Including: team tenure and building, distributor organizational structure, operation management system, business team numerical distribution rate, weighted distribution rate, shelf display rate performance, etc.

**2\. Willingness Assessment System**
Willingness qualification can be divided into five major categories.
> **Category 1: Brand Business Operation Situation**
>
> **Category 2: Brand Reputation and Word-of-Mouth**
>
> **Category 3: Brand Loyalty**
>
> **Category 4: Willingness to Learn and Develop with the Brand**
>
> **Category 5: Cooperation in Policy Implementation and Other Matters**

Distributors need an exam, but the test questions need to be developed by the brand's team. Based on different types, set scoring standards for measurement indicators and dimensions, thereby establishing a distributor evaluation system. This evaluation system is the first step in classified empowerment of distributors.

**Heavy Support Model: Strong Capability + Strong Willingness**
After the distributor evaluation system, we will identify a batch of distributors with strong capability and strong willingness. These distributors closely follow the brand's pace and grow together with it. How should the brand treat such customers? My suggestion is—**fully authorize the distributors.**

**As market leaders, the core work of distributors is:** market network construction, development and visits to various outlets, display maintenance; formulation and implementation of market promotion plans; management and assessment of teams and shopping guides, etc.

**As market assistants, the core work of the brand is:** market supervision and inspection, summary of sales promotion activities; brand building, implementation of company brand; daily participation in morning meetings, tracking data and process advancement; conducting market co-visits and standard training, assisting in creating models, etc. Next are a series of support tasks such as expense models, coverage models, and inspection models. It must be emphasized: **the distributor-led business model is not simple expense contracting, nor is it management by contract; rather, the manufacturer and distributor each perform their own duties, maximizing their respective efficiencies.**

**The heavy support model has two core values for the brand:** First, it can fully stimulate the subjective initiative of distributors, fully integrate the comprehensive resources within the trading company, and maximize benefits; second, it can liberate excellent brand personnel to create value. For customers under the heavy support model, the brand does not need to deploy elite personnel. If the distributor is a "commander type," then a "political commissar type" cadre is sufficient, freeing more "commander type" cadres to expand territory. This also confirms the saying: **competition between enterprises is more about competition between talents, and competition between talents is more about placing the right talent in the appropriate position.**

**Support Model: Weak Capability + Strong Willingness**
Distributors are positioned as investors and participants, while the brand team is positioned as the business leader. **The core work of distributors is:** market network construction, development and visits to various outlets, display maintenance; formulation and implementation of market promotion plans; management and assessment of teams and shopping guides, etc. **The core work of the brand is:** building systems, negotiating and formulating standardized operating systems (organizational management systems); building teams, helping distributors with daily team management, participating in morning meetings daily, tracking data and process advancement; conducting market co-visits and standard training, assisting in creating models; building brands, implementing company brand, etc.

It must be emphasized here that the brand's regional supervisor, acting as the distributor's professional manager, must first possess good operational capability. They must not only undertake the brand's various operational and management goals and act as the market operator, but also manage the distributor's team and daily operations. Therefore, their capabilities, qualities, and job responsibilities must be supported by actionable process systems. **The success or failure of the market depends on the operational capability of the brand's supervisor.**

**The support model has two core values for the brand:**
First, if the distributor is a "political commissar type," the brand deploys a "commander type" cadre, allowing mutual complementarity. Policy implementation and operational methods reach the terminal directly, improving efficiency and effectiveness; second, these distributors can grow rapidly according to the brand's ideas, becoming trading companies with brand characteristics, which is more conducive to deep market expansion.

**Close Model: Strong Capability + Weak Willingness**
This model is more suitable for weak regions of strong brands. A strong brand indicates that the product's brand power and product competitiveness are strong, attracting excellent regional trading companies (with large sales volume, complete organization, and sound mechanisms) to establish cooperation quickly. A weak region indicates that the brand's channel competitiveness and consumer competitiveness in that region are relatively weak (small sales volume, low profit, organizational mechanisms being established), requiring leverage from distributors.

At this point, the question arises: why should distributors let you leverage them? **Regardless of the cooperation, the essence is interest exchange. The essence of the close model is how to use interest exchange to make distributors who can "hold onto a big leg" serve the brand wholeheartedly.** Here are a few methods.

**1\. Enter through product structure to increase the marginal benefits of distributor products.** The purpose of operation is profit. Taking on more products is not related to profit, but optimizing product structure is. So, I offer the following suggestions on product structure:
**1\. Seasonal complementarity:** If your product peaks in summer, choose products that peak in winter to balance your profits.
**2\. Channel complementarity:** The market capacity served by distributors is limited; try to have your products cover all channels in your market as much as possible.
**3\. Item complementarity:** A certain Nongfu Spring distributor took on a sparkling water product to meet the rigid demand of some terminal stores for different items.
**4\. Major holiday gift products:** China has two important festivals: Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. During these specific times, social visits bring huge market opportunities; two months of busy work may yield more profit than a whole year.

**2\. Empowerment through the brand's business model.** Trading companies will encounter periodic bottlenecks in development. At such times, multi-faceted breakthroughs are needed. If the brand happens to have established a unique operating model that can assist the distributor's development, both can satisfy each other and achieve win-win cooperation. There are many such cases: the channel refinement and deep distribution model twenty years ago, the district and regional contracting model ten years ago, and today's separation of powers model, scenario marketing model, etc., all established by brands, with distributors growing alongside.

**3\. Brand empowerment.** In the internet age, information has become more interconnected and symmetrical. Some brand products come with their own traffic and reputation, enhancing the regional visibility of trading companies. For example, Baixiang instant noodles, with its reputation as the "pride of domestic products," has gained favor from many leading regional trading companies in China.

**4\. Short-term returns and long-term interests.** The purpose of operation is profit. The close model ultimately must return to how to balance the distributor's short-term returns and long-term interests, seeking a sustainable growth path.

**Elimination Model: Weak Capability + Weak Willingness**
First, before eliminating, one should first support or be close to the distributor. Second, the elimination model does not mean replacing the distributor; it includes four aspects:
**1\. Product segmentation:** Distributors may not have the energy to support the brand's rich product line. Segmentation can be done by SPU (Stock Keeping Unit) to match the channel structure of distributors in each region.
**2\. Channel segmentation:** Common segmentation includes modern channels, circulation channels, and special channels, leveraging each distributor's strengths. Here, full attention must be paid to price systems and cross-regional selling.
**3\. Regional segmentation:** Common practices include dividing urban and rural areas into two, or dividing large prefecture-level cities or provincial capitals into four parts (east, south, west, north) by streets, facilitating intensive cultivation by distributors.
**4\. Overall replacement:** After operating under the close or support model, if there is still no improvement within a unit of time (e.g., six months), replacement is the only option. It should be mentioned here: **replacement is not a distributor problem, nor a brand problem; to a large extent, it is a problem of manufacturer-distributor matching. If the "matching" problem cannot be solved, forcing cooperation will not yield good results.**

**Final Thoughts**
The era of "one trick works everywhere" has long ended. I suggest that major brands: **do not adopt a one-size-fits-all approach in strategy and tactics; classify and empower distributors, turning heavy support, closeness, support, and elimination into models, and integrate them into daily marketing tactical work.** Only then can we achieve synergy and resonance, maximizing the value of both manufacturer and distributor.

From March 17 to 19, the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference will be grandly held in Chengdu. At the same time, the 4th China FMCG Distributor Conference will be held, bringing together 600+ benchmark excellent distributor bosses from across the country to discuss the functions and positioning of distributors under the new order!

**【New Order · Symbiosis】**
**The 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference**
**Time: March 17-19, 2025**
**Location: Chengdu, China**


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Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671