---
title: "Digitalization Transforms Marketing Management"
description: "Digitalization is transforming marketing management by providing real-time third-party data, visual management tools, and precise work arrangements, which will fundamentally change how sales teams are managed, from traditional 'lone wolf' models to data-driven, flat organizations."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-03-29"
language: "en"
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# Digitalization Transforms Marketing Management

> Digitalization is transforming marketing management by providing real-time third-party data, visual management tools, and precise work arrangements, which will fundamentally change how sales teams are managed, from traditional 'lone wolf' models to data-driven, flat organizations.

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**-01-**
Traditional marketing management is like a game of "cat and mouse." No matter how rigorous the processes and monitoring, salespeople are "out in the field" with significant "discretion."
Digital management, with real-time third-party data and full-channel transparency, along with visual management tools, will bring about major changes in personnel management.

**-02-**
The sales management difference between leading FMCG companies and SMEs is mainly the difference between "lone wolf" operations and "team management." The sales force of SMEs is basically "lone wolf," where one sales rep covers several counties, cities, or even provinces. Leading companies typically have a team responsible for one city, or they "buy out" (the manufacturer pays for personnel costs) a county-level distributor's team.
On the surface, the difference lies mainly in personnel density. Leading companies have high personnel density, while SMEs have low density. This significant difference stems from different staffing principles. SMEs "staff based on sales volume," so because sales are small, they have fewer staff.
If too many staff are assigned, they can't be sustained. SMEs often use "commission-based" compensation. Leading companies generally "staff based on expected market size," so initially they may have excess staff, but because of high density, sales quickly catch up.
These are two different staffing principles. SMEs have fewer staff because sales are small, and because staff are few, sales remain small. Leading companies, even in weak markets, can grow sales because they have more staff, and because sales grow, they can support more staff.
The article starts with personnel density because differences in density naturally lead to different management models. Low-density staffing inevitably leads to a "lone wolf" management model; high-density staffing leads to team management.

**-03-**
In the "lone wolf" model, the following phenomena inevitably appear in management:
1. Except for regular (e.g., monthly meetings) and ad-hoc meetings, salespeople work alone. There is an organization but no team. Or, they are a team during meetings but lack coordination during work.
2. Salespeople's work is in a "black box." "Work diaries" were once popular, but they either became a formality with no one checking, or the diaries were falsified, providing no management reference value.
3. Both the management process and results are essentially meaningless. For the process, visiting 2 customers a day is meaningless. For results, sales from channel stuffing are meaningless.
4. Performance appraisals are typically monthly. Under the channel-stuffing system, the first half of the month is often "off-season," with concentrated shipments at month-end.
5. New hires in "lone wolf" mode, aside from ritualized onboarding training, often go through a "survival of the fittest" natural selection. They cross the river by feeling the stones, and most fall in. It seems the "drowned" are the new hires, but in reality, the market is damaged. It seems employees' income is low, but in fact, the company's costs are high. Because the "3-month probation period" also costs money.
6. "Lone wolf" management typically "replaces management with incentives." Because there is no management, incentives are emphasized. The so-called incentives are mainly commission-based, where more work yields more pay. Incentives are effective only for capable people. For those who are incompetent, no amount of incentive works.
7. As a result of "lone wolf" mode, because there are a few "capable people," the company doesn't die; but because there are only a few "capable people," the company can't grow big.
8. Companies that don't die indicate the product has a market; companies that can't grow big indicate management lacks "grip." The main "grip" for channel-driven growth is personnel management.
9. Because of "lone wolf" mode, one cannot discover one's own problems. It's often "I've done everything I should, but there's no sales."
10. The Chinese market is driven by both brand and channel. With brand drive but no channel drive, the brand slowly declines; with both, the brand slowly rises. With dual-wheel drive, it leaps forward.
11. Under traditional management systems and tools, the "lone wolf" model is unsolvable. Progress for SMEs often begins with establishing local advantageous markets, locally high-density staffing, and good local personnel management.

**-04-**
The key to high-density staffing in leading companies is achieving centralized team management. Centralized management brings a sense of on-site management. Therefore, centralized management has the following characteristics:
1. The management cycle is daily. With daily morning or evening meetings, as long as managers are conscientious, both process and results, problems and achievements are addressed.
2. Leading companies often place great emphasis on data and speak with data. Although data may have some "water," the "water" is often a "consensus" between managers and the managed. As long as on-site management is responsible, detecting data inflation is not difficult.
3. In central cities, companies typically operate direct sales. Direct sales require facing many terminals, but running terminals is hard work, so direct supply to KA and large terminals, while "fostering secondary wholesalers," is common. "Secondary wholesalers" become space for operational policies.
4. County-level "bought-out" distributor salespeople may be out of control. After all, with dual management, the brand owner may not have an advantage in the struggle for control.
5. Although the management cycle for centralized management is daily, there is still "discretion" within a day. Moreover, most activities are routine, so management can easily become a "formality."
6. Leading companies often equip SFA management systems, but SFA has fatal flaws. Data and information mainly come from employees' own entry or capture, so data distortion may be significant. After all, requiring "self-incrimination" in management is against human nature.
7. Although leading companies value data, traditional data management lacks analytical tools.

**-05-**
Marketing digitalization will change all of the above. We discuss marketing management at three levels: organizational, personnel management, and user. From the organizational perspective, digital management is the biggest challenge to traditional management, as it shifts from hierarchical management to true flat management based on data platforms. In the past, channel flattening inevitably led to internal organizational hierarchy. Each reduction in channel level added an internal level. Internal levels + channel levels = constant (6 levels).
Recently, ByteDance's flat structure has been widely discussed, where employees become tools and the organization becomes an efficiency system.
Indeed, in the face of data, whether hierarchical management is still necessary is a question. Whether middle management's role of transmitting information up and down is still necessary is also a question. This confirms Teacher Fang Gang's prediction: either become a super individual or become a "human component" of the platform.

**-06-**
Employee management has traditionally followed various logics, such as result-oriented or process-oriented, all stemming from the lag and non-quantifiability of employees' processes, intermediate results, and final results.
Marketing digitalization brings several changes: first, more accurate and real-time data sources; second, data-based visual management tools; third, data-based "precise" work arrangements.
First, look at the accuracy of data sources. This topic was controversial not long ago, but in the future, it won't be.
1. In marketing digitalization, data comes from online sources. Online data is real-time and updated instantly.
2. Traditional data inflation stems from employee self-entry, such as SFA, which relies mainly on employee-entered data, leading to data falsification. Marketing digitalization includes third-party data, such as logistics and warehousing data. It also makes it easy to compare data from different sources.
3. Online data can be shared. Salespeople, frontline managers, and senior managers share data.
Now look at data analysis tools.
Dashboards and data visualization are basic tools for data analysis. Relying on real-time data, according to the designed management model, efficiency and input-output analysis can be performed on any indicator—team, individual, region, store, problem, SKU, route—with real-time rankings.
For example, daily individual efficiency rankings put significant pressure on sales reps. It is also possible to set "red lights" for unqualified data, alerting both employees and managers. In traditional deep distribution, sales reps spend much time and energy on "channel stuffing." Channel stuffing has some effect, but it only redistributes existing inventory and hardly creates incremental growth.
In a data-driven management environment, sales reps would focus on channel stuffing only if the orientation is channel stuffing. Therefore, through data management, it's easier to focus on core work—work that generates incremental growth.
Third, look at marketing's "precision" strike. Traditional deep distribution has terms like "blind visits" and "street sweeping," meaning going door-to-door for relationship building, shelf management, and other basic tasks. Whether or not a store has problems, it is a work target.
Obviously, in an environment with low labor costs and large growth space, this method is feasible. But it is inefficient and unsustainable. Data-based deep distribution work, first, uses data to identify work targets; only stores with "abnormal" data are the main targets. Second, there is preparation before visits; data can guide solutions. Therefore, we call data-based channel management "precision strike."

**-07-**
For customer management, there was CRM in the past, but FMCG CRM rarely reaches the C-end. For B-end management, in the face of digitalization, the B-end is almost transparent. Even the value of the B-end is no longer just transaction (sales), but has become connection (reaching C-end) and cognition, and these processes can also be digitized.
For C-end management, as long as you reach users and users are online, it's no longer personnel management but MA (Marketing Automation). Marketing digitalization brings not just data, but the application of data. Data-algorithm is a pair of twins.
So, in the future, for customer management, people may only be executors. Of course, in Chinese business, interpersonal relationships play an important role. That's exactly where personnel and distributors can add value.

Source: Teacher Liu's Digital New Marketing


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