---
title: "Competition among FMCG manufacturers is fundamentally a contest of frontline marketing team capabilities"
description: "The competitiveness of an enterprise is often a competition of talent: good strategy plus high-capability talent leads to rapid growth; good strategy plus low-capability talent leads to compromise and failure; bad strategy plus high-capability talent can correct course; bad strategy plus low-capability talent results in a struggle for survival. For FMCG, building a high-capability marketing talent team is not just the responsibility of HR, but a matter for every marketing unit to consider deeply. So what does a high-capability marketing talent team include?"
author: "海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2024-12-31"
language: "en"
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# Competition among FMCG manufacturers is fundamentally a contest of frontline marketing team capabilities

> The competitiveness of an enterprise is often a competition of talent: good strategy plus high-capability talent leads to rapid growth; good strategy plus low-capability talent leads to compromise and failure; bad strategy plus high-capability talent can correct course; bad strategy plus low-capability talent results in a struggle for survival. For FMCG, building a high-capability marketing talent team is not just the responsibility of HR, but a matter for every marketing unit to consider deeply. So what does a high-capability marketing talent team include?

Recently, I have been thinking about what constitutes a qualified team. The competitiveness of an enterprise is often a competition of talent:
> **Good strategy + high-capability talent: business will inevitably advance by leaps and bounds; Good strategy + low-capability talent: business will inevitably compromise and fail; Bad strategy + high-capability talent: can definitely correct mistakes and set things right; Bad strategy + low-capability talent: the inevitable result is a desperate struggle.**
For FMCG, how to build a high-capability marketing talent team is not only the responsibility of the HR department, but more importantly, a matter that every marketing unit must deliberate on. So what teams does a high-capability marketing talent team include? My conclusion is that there are four parts: **high-capability brand owner team, high-capability distributor team, high-capability sales promoter team, and high-capability social force team.** Next, I will analyze each one.

**The core of a high-capability brand owner marketing team**
Simply put, the brand owner marketing team has three core tasks:
**1. Customer relationship management:** Manage relationships with market partners, including distributors, retailers, and special channel customers. Brand owners need to establish a complete distributor capability and willingness evaluation system, selecting distributors with strong capability and willingness to lead regional market operations. **For distributors lacking capability or willingness, brand owners need to empower and rectify them.**
**2. Marketing implementation management:** Formulate and execute marketing strategies, including brand positioning, market segmentation, target market selection, and market entry strategies. As market facilitators, the core work of brand owners is market supervision and inspection, summarizing sales promotion activities; brand building, implementing corporate brand; participating in daily morning meetings, tracking data and process advancement; conducting market joint visits and standard training, assisting in creating model stores, etc.
**3. Product and brand management:** Responsible for shaping and maintaining brand image, including advertising planning, public relations activities, and consistency management of brand image, including corporate brand implementation and consumer education program formulation, etc.
Essentially, brand owner teams are doing these three core tasks, but the execution quality varies. From a results perspective, the ultimate goal of these three core tasks is benign performance growth and benign profit growth for both brand owners and distributors, but in reality, it often does not go as planned. **Some "old-timers" in enterprises habitually rely on "experience" and are no longer adapted to today's market competition environment.** Here, I will take "how to use channel digitalization to assist distributor business" as an example. Making distributors money is a necessary prerequisite for the benign development of FMCG brand owners. Ten years ago, money was "earned"; today, money is "calculated." A high-capability marketing team of a brand owner needs to possess the following three basic digital capabilities.
**1. Digitalization drives distributor profitability.** Distributor profitability generally includes the following three aspects:
**a. Digital adjustment of business structure:** Mainly by calculating the optimal channel structure and product structure to maximize sales and profits;
**b. Digital stabilization of product price system:** Mainly by calculating the optimal channel policy, balancing the relationship between sales and profits, and also warning against channel transshipment;
**c. Digital calculation of rebates:** Mainly by calculating to ensure that situations like not getting rebates for unmet targets or not getting full rebates for unmet SKU targets do not occur.
**2. Digitalization enhances distributor cost-effectiveness.** Generally includes two aspects:
**a. Spend money where it counts.** Including optimization of coverage costs, sales costs, fixed costs, and financial costs, etc.;
**b. Minimize operating capital.** Including rapid verification of market advance expenses, efficient management of channel receivables and accounts receivable, adjustment of inventory structure, etc. Here, I want to emphasize two concepts: 1. Monthly inventory turnover rate = monthly sales amount / average monthly inventory amount. The faster the turnover, the lower the cost-effectiveness ratio; 2. Monthly inventory turnover days = 30 / monthly inventory turnover rate. The lower the days, the lower the warehouse cost allocation. These two points should be calculated as accurately as possible to ensure maximum utilization of operating capital.
**3. Digitalization enhances distributor personnel efficiency.** Generally includes three aspects:
**a. Digitalization of distribution mechanism.** Basic salary: quantification of attendance is not just clocking in and out; performance salary: grassroots focus on process indicators, management focus on result indicators; team incentives, e.g., market action breakdown scores, quantified indicators; welfare subsidies: linked to years of service, attendance, etc.;
**b. Digitalization of team cohesion.** 360-degree evaluation, comparing scores; scores for acquisition, contribution, belonging, and development;
**c. Digitalization of organizational performance:** 1. Performance assessment, 2. Team development, 3. Organizational cost-effectiveness, 4. Staffing, 5. Work planning, 6. Business operations.
Ideals are full, but reality is harsh. Many brand owner executives only understand channel digitalization at a macro level and have almost no concept of micro-level channel operation data governance and strategies.

**High-capability distributor team**
Whether a distributor team is high-capability largely depends on the guidance of the brand owner. The premise of high capability is "matching" between the manufacturer and distributor. Here I mention the word "matching." Many distributors like the "nanny-style" service from manufacturers, where they don't have to worry, the team has support, and after-sales is guaranteed. Is this necessarily the best way? Not necessarily! One of the core aspects of business is creating profit. Nanny-style service essentially allocates more resources to organizational building and after-sales. Due to cost and pricing constraints, the total product cost space almost doesn't change, so the expenses for market competition will inevitably decrease. This is not what all brand owners and distributors want. Therefore, I have summarized the six-force indicators for evaluating high-capability distributor teams:
**1. Distributor supply chain capability (warehouse area & logistics vehicles):**
**Warehousing is not about being as large as possible; it's about being sufficient. Logistics is not about being as fast as possible; next-day delivery is sufficient.** "Sufficient" and "next-day delivery" also have standards, which need to be determined based on the brand owner's product attributes, peak and off-peak sales and safety stock, order quantity, and service radius. Of course, I have seen some distributors with excellent supply chain capabilities: intelligent warehouse location management, accurately knowing the quantity and freshness of each SKU, using automated or semi-automated systems for product storage management, and improving warehouse efficiency.
**2. Financial capability (capital strength & capital utilization):**
**Capital strength is hard power.** Here, capital refers to self-owned funds. Several distributors I have served would repay debts at the end of each year, and capital shortage caused severe sales losses. Secondly, the ability to utilize capital is also important. Capital turnover rate is the standard for measuring profitability. Inefficient capital turnover will lose profits. If distributors don't make money, cooperation cannot continue.
**3. Channel coverage capability (number and quality of outlets):**
Each distributor has its own unique channel coverage model, some directly serve outlets, some serve through sub-distributors, and some use third-party services. These are all service processes. From a results perspective, the distributor's outlet coverage rate must meet standards, and the quality of outlets (in-store SKU count, merchandising layout) must also meet standards. Excellent distributors, in terms of channel coverage strategy, not only have fixed result and process indicators but also set additional phased task indicators, such as new product distribution, product display, high-profit single-item sharing, etc., and set corresponding reward amounts.
**4. Operational efficiency (operational capability and efficiency):**
This needs to be treated differently. If the brand owner defines the distributor as a logistics and service provider, then the distributor's operational efficiency is mainly reflected in the quality of distribution services. If defined as a business partner, then the distributor must have its own operational efficiency to complete various indicators assigned by the brand owner with quality and quantity guaranteed and on time.
**5. Organizational capability (team size & management capability & cohesion):**
FMCG offline business cannot escape the "human wave" tactic in the short term. The core value of distributors lies in this area. Team building, management capability, etc., are important indicators for measuring distributor value.
**6. Digital capability:**
Brand owners should objectively view the importance of digital transformation, especially traditional senior executives. They must first maintain an open mindset, not rely on past empiricism and departmentalism, and embrace digitalization. Only then can they see and evaluate the distributor's digital capability.
**Summary:** The six-force indicators of distributors are a microcosm of brand owner evaluation of distributors. They need to be set one by one according to their own operating conditions. It must be emphasized that the evaluation of distributors should match their own channel coverage model. More often than not, choice is more important than effort, rather than simply setting indicators and conducting assessments to change the status quo.

**High-capability sales promoter team**
For many FMCG sales promoter teams, I have summarized four points:
Personal opinion 1: The success of a promotional activity is at least 60% attributed to the sales promoters, but many FMCG companies do not give them enough attention.
Personal opinion 2: 80% of sales promoters are not treated fairly like salespeople (in non-income aspects). The mindset of "part-time work" runs through the entire promotional activities of both parties.
Personal opinion 3: 99% of FMCG companies do not include the recruitment and use of sales promoters in the HR department's scope. Instead, the marketing department simply supervises while delegating to grassroots sales organizations, or even the decision-making power for recruitment and use is determined by grassroots operators, often leading to relatives and friends filling in the numbers.
Personal opinion 4: Many brand owners only care about the tens of thousands of expenses invested in floor displays, end caps, special displays, etc., but ignore the management of sales promoters, which has the least investment but the greatest effect. As a result, thousands of display expenses are spent but the effect is greatly reduced due to the failure of a one or two hundred yuan sales promoter.
In general: **The "temporary worker" mindset cannot solve the problem of building a high-capability sales promoter team.** Sales promoters have three core functions. First, product experience: through tasting, let consumers feel the quality, with the focus on consumer acquisition; second, product recommendation: sweeping buildings and streets, using the logic of "goods find people" to actively seek consumers and introduce brand and product information, with the focus on consumer repurchase; third, product promotion: combined with promotional activities, promoting hard next to floor displays and shelves, with the focus on increasing consumer average order value. For details, you can refer to my previous articles on sales promoter teams.

**High-capability social force team**
Sub-distributors, wholesalers, B2b, Meituan Flash Purchase, and other social forces should be united. In today's economic situation, in terms of operating costs, it seems that sticking together is better than fighting alone. What I mean by a high-capability social force team is how to efficiently develop and utilize these social resources for our own use. There are two suggestions:
**First, do not reject or avoid them.** For example, in the first year of the pandemic, community teams were extremely popular. Many traditional marketers were very annoyed, saying they disrupted prices and market order, but they failed to see that some companies used community teams for many new product tasting experiences and promotions, with low cost and high efficiency. So we need to see the dual nature of things. Water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it. It is best to guide according to the situation. Many times, the reason you reject and avoid them is because you don't understand them well.
**Second, formulate relevant policies to promote the continuation of benign cooperation between both parties.** Taking sub-distributors as an example, in remote townships, appropriate channel support strategies and constraint clauses can be set independently. This can better serve the market, reduce distribution costs, and improve personnel efficiency.

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


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