---
title: "Culture Right Under Your Nose: What Kind of Culture Do Distributors Really Need?"
description: "Recently, the author spoke with a distributor friend who, after attending a training session at a manufacturer's annual distributor conference, was excited about building a team culture. However, when asked how he would implement it, he planned to just create slogans and hang them on walls to \"fool\" his employees. The author argues that distributor culture is \"culture right under the nose,\" where the boss's actions matter more than words, and it should prioritize emotional bonds, financial rewards, and future prospects in that order."
author: "韩锋"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-07-31"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/culture-right-under-your-nose-what-kind-of-culture-do-distributors-reall-35fe4570/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/culture-right-under-your-nose-what-kind-of-culture-do-distributors-reall-35fe4570.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/s4pgLqwiww6XkQ3Re5XNFg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%9C%BC%E7%9A%AE%E5%BA%95%E4%B8%8B%E7%9A%84%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96-%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86%E5%88%B0%E5%BA%95%E9%9C%80%E8%A6%81%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E6%A0%B7%E7%9A%84%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96-35fe4570.md"
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---

# Culture Right Under Your Nose: What Kind of Culture Do Distributors Really Need?

> Recently, the author spoke with a distributor friend who, after attending a training session at a manufacturer's annual distributor conference, was excited about building a team culture. However, when asked how he would implement it, he planned to just create slogans and hang them on walls to "fool" his employees. The author argues that distributor culture is "culture right under the nose," where the boss's actions matter more than words, and it should prioritize emotional bonds, financial rewards, and future prospects in that order.

Recently, the author spoke with a distributor friend. He and his wife (the boss and boss lady) had just attended a training session at a manufacturer's annual distributor conference. They were thrilled, emotional, and felt it was quite useful. During the session, the trainer said that distributors should build a culture for their teams, not just talk about money with employees, but also discuss future development, how to make employees follow the distributor boss wholeheartedly, have long-term plans, and retain excellent employees. This distributor was in a dilemma where he had nothing to talk about with his employees except money. Hearing about building a distributor team culture felt like an epiphany, like grabbing a lifeline. When the author asked this distributor friend how he planned to build his culture upon returning, he said he couldn't articulate it right now, but he would come up with a few slogans and mottos, then publicize them to his team, "fool them a bit," and also put the culture on the walls so all employees could see them. That would basically be mission accomplished. The author disagreed and quoted Han Han's description of officials: "Chinese officials are extremely split; they attend meetings in the morning and go to clubs in the evening..." Before the author could finish, the distributor burst into laughter. He realized that building a distributor team culture with the mindset of "fooling employees" is fragmented, self-deceiving, and won't have a positive effect.
The biggest difference between a distributor building culture and a manufacturer (enterprise) building corporate culture is that distributors must build "culture right under the nose," while enterprises build "culture beyond the nose."
The origin of this difference lies in the number of employees. For manufacturers (enterprises), they may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands or tens of thousands of employees. For example, Himin Solar, which the author has served, has thousands of employees; Haier Group has tens of thousands; Walmart globally has hundreds of thousands. For companies with such large workforces, rules and regulations alone are insufficient; they need strong corporate culture because not all employee behavior is visible to the boss. Employees may not see their boss all year. For enterprises, only by establishing corporate culture can they regulate and constrain all employee behavior, forming an "invisible hand" to control employees' thoughts and actions, guiding them toward a path beneficial to the company's development and the highest state of "unity of purpose leads to victory." For the vast majority of Chinese distributors, teams range from a few to dozens of people. Distributors with over a hundred employees are rare, accounting for a tiny fraction. Distributor employees' actions are basically all under the boss's nose, and the boss's actions are also within the employees' sight. Employees understand culture by observing the boss's words and deeds. The boss's behavior is the most direct embodiment of culture. So, if the distributor boss preaches one "culture" but practices another, employees will ultimately recognize the culture of the boss's actions, not the culture he verbally promotes or posts on walls. If so, it will inevitably lead to a "two skins" culture, where employees' words and actions become fragmented, and they learn to say one thing and do another, engage in deception, and flatter. Ultimately, the distributor boss himself suffers, and it defeats the original purpose of building culture.
Whether it's corporate culture or distributor culture, the author summarizes that it must solve three problems, which the author often calls the "three heads" issue: prospect (奔头), profit (赚头), and sentiment (念头). First, employees should feel there is a "prospect." For employees, prospect may be hopes and satisfaction in knowledge, skills, income, position, space, vision, career, etc. A good boss has the ability to "draw a pie" and make employees believe it's achievable. Second, employees should feel there is "profit." The boss eats meat, and employees drink soup; this is the basic corporate ethics for harmonious coexistence between employees and boss. Most employees clearly understand this basic ethic and don't have excessive ambitions. The fear is that the boss deprives employees of even the right to drink soup, leaving them to drink the northwest wind; then employees will definitely stop playing with you. "When wealth is dispersed, people gather; when wealth is accumulated, people scatter." No boss doesn't understand this principle, but few truly practice it. Taking money out of one's own pocket to distribute to employees is a great test for every boss. Not many pass the test, so successful great entrepreneurs like Niu Gensheng and Ren Zhengfei are rare. Third, employees should feel there is "sentiment." Here, sentiment means thinking of kinship, friendship, and human warmth. Humans are emotional creatures; they don't show emotion to strangers but do to relatives and close ones. Emotion is an excellent interpersonal adhesive. Therefore, "fighting tigers relies on brothers; going to battle relies on father and son"—enterprises or distributor husband-and-wife shops are easier to survive and grow in the early stages because of blood relations. Relationships like "served in the army together, studied together, or worked in the countryside together" (quasi-blood relations) also tend to succeed because, besides monetary interests, emotion plays a significant role.
This "three heads" culture, for enterprises, is ordered as prospect, profit, sentiment. For distributors, it's the opposite: sentiment, profit, prospect. Corporate culture naturally addresses the enterprise's vision and mission; with these, employees get a good "prospect," and the boss's dream becomes the dream of all employees, making it possible to achieve the highest state of "unity of purpose leads to victory." Profit solves the salary structure, benefits, and income issues; good incentive and profit-sharing mechanisms ensure the achievement of corporate goals. Sentiment ranks third in corporate culture; the larger the company, the less it can emphasize emotion, personal connections, or kinship, and instead must emphasize systems, norms, and processes; otherwise, chaos ensues. The larger the company, the more rigidity and less flexibility. This is inevitable and relatively easy to understand.
For distributors, this "culture right under the nose," distinct from corporate culture, must be ordered as sentiment, profit, prospect. The first culture a distributor boss should talk about is kinship, friendship, and human warmth—these "three emotions" are the most effective adhesive and stimulant for managing the team and winning hearts. For distributors to retain and motivate excellent employees, sentiment ranks first. Second is employee income and benefits. Third is the prospect—the future development space and platform. Because no matter how big the distributor boss's space and platform are, compared to enterprises, they are insignificant and incomparable.
In summary, distributor culture, distinct from corporate culture, is "culture right under the nose," relying more on the boss's words and deeds and leading by example. Distributor bosses should build and maintain culture following the order of "sentiment, profit, prospect." Understanding this, distributor bosses can establish effective culture; otherwise, they blindly learn culture, do it for culture's sake, and end up "drawing a cat but it looks like a dog," going in the opposite direction.
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