Warm Tip Click ↑ on “快消品经销商专业咨询” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management. Deep distribution has become synonymous with meticulous cultivation. Many manufacturers, when aspiring to and implementing this 'intensive' model, often fall into the trap of 'refinement without precision': more people but no performance growth, more standards but declining management, intensive cultivation but no fine work, abundant harvest but not necessarily a good yield... What is the real reason? Enterprise Level: The Foundation Is Not Solid Currently, many experts or companies complain about the deep distribution system. If someone says 'deep distribution has no problems,' someone might immediately throw a brick. But when two fellow apprentices with the same boxing manual duel, one still wins and the other loses. Why? Different internal strength! For enterprises, 'internal strength' may not be profound; perhaps it's just the basic skill of stance training. In fact, it's some common frontline 'small problems' that are the universal headaches and helplessness for enterprises:

  1. Low efficiency. In a region with hundreds of blank terminals, sales representatives (reps) face constant 'closed door' setbacks during visits, hitting walls everywhere, with no place to start. Watching the task pressure grow heavier, they can only sigh at the vast ocean. In a newly entered region, without the support of brand or channel pull, relying solely on grassroots reps to support the market is like hitting a wall with your head.
  2. Severe boredom. Since terminal visit frequency is usually once a week, reps' visit actions are repetitive and monotonous, day after day, year after year. Lacking passion, reps just go through the motions, coping with work. Not only does performance fail to improve quickly, but visit enthusiasm and confidence also suffer. Especially in mature markets, when reps rarely encounter competitors, work becomes mechanical and monotonous, and new product promotions are not timely.
  3. Cat and mouse. In daily work, to cope with inspections, reps often have 'hide-and-seek' and 'counter-detective' skills, even fabricating forms and orders, inflating numbers. New supervisors paired with old reps, or incompetent supervisors, are key to this phenomenon.
  4. False prosperity. In some branches, morning meetings are strict, slogans loud, forms neat, data beautiful, supervisors confident... a thriving scene of strict management and execution. But when you go to the frontline, you find rampant competitors, widespread fraud, and even the distribution rate is fake. This phenomenon is common in companies where headquarters' 'audit work' is superficial and sales assessment is the top priority.
  5. Cost out of control. For companies implementing channel refinement, they generally use 'promotion separation' means, where terminal promotions are usually executed by the company, and costs increase year by year but market share doesn't grow. This is the result of relying on routes, weakening channels, and simply doing market through routes.
  6. Lone advance. Branches and distributors cooperate poorly, and during promotions, they don't get full support from distributors. After promotions, customer complaints pile up, either promotions are not redeemed in time or delivery is not in place. Companies and distributors blame each other, conflicts escalate, and they become enemies.
  7. Master works, servant rests. Manufacturers gradually weaken the distributor's function, become overly dependent on orders, and fall into the 'order' quagmire, unable to extricate themselves.
  8. Grassroots personnel skim the surface. After a long time of 'cultivating without refinement,' as performance declines, reps lose confidence and interest in visits, and they jump ship. Companies blame 'this batch of reps has poor quality,' so they rob Peter to pay Paul: on one hand, they need to recruit 'more quality' reps, increasing salary and training costs; on the other hand, grassroots management is unstable, leading to inconsistent system execution. Finally, the two gaps form a vicious cycle. Supervisor Level: One Incompetent General Exhausts a Thousand Troops! A qualified route supervisor must not only know how to 'fight' but also how to 'lead troops,' otherwise the tragedy of 'one incompetent general exhausts a thousand troops' occurs. As the fulcrum of enterprise marketing management, whether branches can have a batch of qualified route supervisors is the guarantee for the implementation of the enterprise's refinement strategy.
  9. Parachuted supervisors. This is common on many companies' frontlines: today it's Supervisor Wang, tomorrow it's Supervisor Li, with different management styles, so management is naturally discontinuous. Moreover, many companies rely on 'parachuted' supervisors, who bring other corporate cultures while disrupting the company's own management culture. Branches are small but are multinational forces.
  10. Sales-oriented supervisors. Route management reflects process management, but companies focus on sales orientation in assessment. To complete sales, supervisors inevitably focus on market actions related to sales, the most typical being 'pressuring, pressuring, and pressuring' in the channel. Many actions reps take on routes are not directly related to sales, so they might as well not do them! If supervisors don't pay attention for a long time, routes collapse.
  11. Report-oriented supervisors. Every day or week, supervisors report various data to superiors, such as account openings, distribution rates, etc. Supervisors think this is a task assigned from above, not a tool for their own use. For example, they never use distribution rate changes as a basis to analyze the market, like a company commander who can't read a 'map,' fighting in the dark, commanding by feel. To precisely promote their products and precisely attack competitors is just wishful thinking.
  12. Gut-feeling supervisors. With a 60% overall distribution rate but less than 20% market share, this is typical in some regional markets: originally promoting a mid-range new product, but most products are distributed to small shops and grocery stores, like putting Maotai in roadside diners, naturally no sales! Channel layout determines the efficiency of product circulation. Many market supervisors, in the process of product promotion, often follow their gut, not knowing which channels products are distributed to, resulting in products expiring and markets never being conquered.
  13. Weak supervisors. The degree of product order protection is often proportional to the supervisor's personality strength. A supervisor who dares to manage will not sit idly by in the face of chaotic price order, nor will they stick to old rules and remain unchanged. Product price order is the basic guarantee of product vitality and channel profit, and the flow of products in the channel determines the stability of price order. Exclusive distribution is an effective guarantee means, i.e., one terminal corresponds to only one delivery supplier.
  14. Achievement-oriented supervisors. The characteristics of achievement-oriented supervisors: manage routes but not the market, manage leaders but not troops. Once leaders come, supervisors busy setting 'ambushes,' trying to lead bigwigs to pre-prepared routes, with flowers and harmony, a glorious scene.
  15. Fantasy supervisors. Many route supervisors are buried in 'desk work,' holding morning meetings in offices, compiling statistics, phone communication, etc. These thorough office 'white-collar' workers rack their brains to come up with 'brilliant' promotion plans that look beautiful but end up in a mess. The above phenomena are numerous, and in many companies' frontlines, you can find counterparts. It's these 'sheep-like' supervisors that cause even a company with 'lion-like' reps to flee in defeat. If a route has been run for three months and the store owner still doesn't know the rep's name, the rep's visit efficiency must be low. Route supervisors only need to ask during inspections: Boss, do you know our salesperson's name? Employees never do what is hoped, only what is assessed! Once customer relations are included in assessment points, reps will do everything to make store owners remember their names. Rep Level: How Many Invalid Visits? A bag, a few forms, a stack of POP, every day visiting target terminals one by one in a fixed area... This is the common image of route reps shuttling through city streets. They are the 'nerve endings' of companies implementing deep distribution, carrying the strategic intent of terminal warfare. What are these 'nerve endings' generally doing? Mostly repeating the work of 'reading electric meters': greeting at the store, circling around, and leaving, or even shouting from the bike at the store entrance, 'Boss, need goods?' and upon hearing 'No,' immediately leaving. If a company falls into the quagmire of refinement, it must be these 'nerve endings' that have problems.
  16. Rep fraud. Daily form work is the basic skill of route personnel. They work on the move every day, and it's easy to not fill forms, fill them randomly, or even fake forms and orders. Once forms are untrue, the entire route management will suffer the evil consequence of 'a thousand-mile dike destroyed by forms'! Common phenomena of fake forms and orders: ★ Visit time fraud. Visit time is the foundation to ensure the quality of route work; it must be filled per store. Many route reps fill in randomly after visiting routes or during lunch breaks, making the route manual, this 'camera,' like being turned off, an expensive decoration. ★ Order achievement fraud. Reps create fake orders to complete the promotion targets assigned by supervisors. For example, an order reflects the opening of one new store for a new product. When the order is transmitted to the distributor, upon delivery, the terminal refuses: the boss is not in, no money on hand... Such 'invalid orders' are often laughed off by supervisors, who may not even know if the order was delivered, but the performance statistics show the rep achieved one new store for the new product. Thus, more reps start exploiting loopholes, slacking off here and enjoying life there. ★ Inventory statistics fraud. The purpose of terminal inventory statistics is to analyze the product status of our and competing products, obtain terminal flow speed information in time, and assist in formulating basic data such as terminal output quantity. Of course, it's also a troublesome action requiring patience. For example, at a convenience store, one product has multiple varieties and multiple competitors coexist, with products piled on shelves, under shelves, and even under tables. Many reps are annoyed by this, glance over, and fill in a number based on gut feeling. In addition, there are frauds in shelf management actions, customer complaint handling, etc., and so on. In many companies, these 'fraud' behaviors often become a trend, and grassroots personnel like supervisors mostly 'turn a blind eye,' but they easily become the root of system necrosis. There's no other way; only the military rule of 'beheading without pardon' can prevent problems before they occur.
  17. Lack of customer relations. All terminal actions of route reps are based on customer relations. Without customer relations as a backing, reps will find it difficult to move. For example, a new rep goes to a store to do shelf management and is kicked out by the owner: I don't know you, why are you moving things around in my store? What do you want? The advancement of terminal customer relations is a gradual process and can be measured by standards: First stage: Nothing to say. After the rep just introduces themselves softly, seeing the boss not even raising their head and saying 'Oh,' they have nothing more to say. Second stage: Only official talk. Many reps memorize 'scripts' and fire them off at the boss. After a 'barrage,' the boss asks confusedly: What would you like to buy? Third stage: Normal communication. Only a simple business relationship with the terminal; when there's a market activity, tell the boss; when the terminal is out of stock, the boss says so. In most companies, the so-called 'mature reps' are at this stage. Fourth stage: Say everything. A high-level rep can gain the store owner's trust in a short time, and performance naturally soars. The result of this trust goes beyond business scope, and they can treat each other as friends. The number of reps at this stage is hard for companies to demand. In advancing terminal customer relations, companies only need to grasp two points: ★ Master leads through the 'ice-breaking' door: Companies set standard visit processes for reps, establish a frontline script database, pre-answer various responses from store owners, and organize simulation drills for reps to master. ★ Key assessment: whether the store owner can call out the rep's name. Since reps from various manufacturers are all skimming the surface, most store owners can only vaguely say which manufacturer, which product, or even use the product name to call the rep. If a route has been run for three months and the store owner still doesn't know the rep's name, the rep's visit efficiency must be low. Route supervisors only need to ask during inspections: Boss, do you know our salesperson's name? Employees never do what is hoped, only what is assessed! Once customer relations are included in assessment points, reps will do everything to make store owners remember their names. For example: Boss, I'm the salesperson from ×× manufacturer, my name is Yi Xiaohu, Yi as in Iraq, if you can't remember, just call me 'Iraq Tiger'! The store owner laughs heartily and remembers from then on.
  18. Talk but don't act. Current competition has shifted to the white-hot battle for terminals, and sales are directly proportional to the number of outlets. Execution of visual merchandising is a symbol of terminal combat capability and a basic skill for reps. A qualified route rep must go through the 'three blisters' stage: blisters on the mouth, blisters on the feet, and blisters on the hands (visual merchandising execution and shelf management actions). A company's control over terminals depends not on how many people visit terminals, but on the quality of visits and the execution of visual merchandising. Headquarters (offices) should formulate detailed visual merchandising execution rules, guide reps to advance according to standards, follow up on standard achievement for inspection and scoring, and link it to reps' performance. Push competitors off the shelf, and you can push them out of the market. How to maintain the competitiveness of our products at terminals? The basic action is the rep's solid shelf management, making our products 'jump' out of the sea of competitors and suppress competitors as much as possible. When executing this work, pay attention to the visual merchandising principle: make our products seen, bought, and heard, and make competitors' products unseen, unbought, and unheard, so that our products are 'thought of' by consumers. In summary, the reasons why companies 'stumble' in deep distribution are mostly focusing on strategy, not frontline execution. In fact, the gains and losses of deep distribution are mostly not in itself, but in the company's basic management, which is a process from quantitative to qualitative change. Only by building combat-effective operational units can companies avoid falling into the trap of 'cultivating without refinement' or even 'pseudo-refinement.' ----------------------------------------------

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