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It is common to hear distributor bosses grumble: "Our wages are not lower than other companies, and benefits are not much worse, but salesmen still complain all day, saying they work hard and earn little, and that we bosses only care about making money and don't care about employees' interests..."
For distributors, doing business is of course about making money, but at the same time, they must recognize that to expand the business, relying solely on their own hands is definitely not enough. During operations and management, bosses must face the contradictions and differences with salesmen, patiently listen to subordinates' complaints, and continuously fill the gaps and loopholes in management. This will greatly enhance the sales team's cohesion and improve the distributor's operational efficiency.
Same Boat or Different Dreams
A highly executable and innovative sales team is what every distributor dreams of, and an efficient team must first establish a common goal. So, do distributors and salesmen see eye to eye?
Salesmen in the Boss's Eyes: Lazy, Incompetent, and Taking Kickbacks. Due to scale and capital constraints, distributors often find it difficult to recruit employees with high cultural quality or rich experience, leading many distributors to have low evaluations of their salesmen, even labeling them as lazy, incompetent, and taking kickbacks.
Mr. Liu from Fuyang, Anhui, has been a distributor for over a decade. Due to high staff turnover, most current employees are newcomers. In Mr. Liu's view, the salesmen are getting worse with each batch. First, in terms of work attitude, they lack the spirit of hard work, are often late and leave early, and fail to maintain customer relationships. Customers often call to say they are out of stock, while the warehouse is still full. Second, their sales ability is poor; they lack communication with customers and can't even make small talk, so how can they sell goods? Moreover, the salesmen who perform well are not honest either; they are always thinking about taking kickbacks, and some even sell the free gifts meant for customers...
The Boss in the Salesmen's Eyes: Cold, Stingy, and Giving Confusing Orders. Most distributor companies are small, with a simple structure: manager, finance, clerk, sales, and warehouse. Without middle management, salesmen often deal directly with the boss, so their impression of the boss is more direct and emotional, making the boss the primary target of complaints.
Xiao Zhao, just 20 years old, has been a salesman for a year. Speaking of his boss, Xiao Zhao's evaluation is not high. When he first entered the industry, he knew nothing about sales, and the company provided no training, so he had to learn by doing. He had to visit many stores every day, had little time off, and was even delivering goods on New Year's Eve last year. During the off-season, the boss didn't require volume but demanded that salesmen increase terminal coverage in their areas to over 80%, and greater than 60% of competitors; otherwise, no commission, and each store's commission was only 5 yuan. After half a year, when he finally stabilized, the boss gave his area to an experienced salesman recruited from another company. Now Xiao Zhao has switched to another distributor company, but the original boss still owes him his last month's salary...
Why the Boss Becomes a Punching Bag
Distributor bosses are the helmsmen of their companies, but to make employees follow them wholeheartedly, besides strong management, they need some humanized measures to ease the tense relationship. Especially in small trading companies with few personnel, information spreads quickly, and every move of the boss is magnified. If the superior-subordinate relationship is not handled well, salesmen will be full of complaints, forming a negative fixed impression of the boss throughout the team. Then, how can the boss win subordinates' respect? How to maintain team cohesion?
The more complaints, the more the boss needs to improve. To enhance management, bosses should start with the most intense complaints. So, what are the main complaints salesmen have about their bosses?
Are the assessment policies reasonable? Salesmen rely on performance for a living. Besides their own abilities, assessment policies greatly affect their willingness to hit the market. For salesmen, the first concern before work is commission and bonuses. A reasonable assessment policy naturally motivates them to work hard. Conversely, when salesmen feel their pay doesn't match their efforts, they will point fingers at the assessment policy and the boss who made it.
Is the "territory" division balanced? Where does a salesman's performance come from? Of course, from running around. Every salesman hopes their market area is as large as possible and target customers as many as possible. Therefore, how to allocate markets and divide "territory" tests the boss's balancing ability. The boss must allocate appropriately based on each salesman's ability and the difficulty of market development. If not handled well, not only will salesmen be dissatisfied, but the market will also be in chaos.
Are responsibilities clearly defined? For salesmen, no vacation or overtime pay is acceptable, but if they also have to play the roles of driver and loader, they might consider whether they should get extra pay. A large part of the reason salesmen complain about being tired is that distributor companies have unclear division of labor, or even no division at all. While the boss is calculating how much labor cost is saved, the salesman might be planning when to resign.
Is there hope for future promotion? The lack of a promotion mechanism is a common problem in distributor companies and a major reason for high staff turnover. Without the hope of promotion, salesmen see no career prospects and eventually either switch jobs or change careers. If a distributor boss prefers to be a hands-on manager bogged down in trivialities rather than involving more people in decision-making, the company will find it hard to grow and retain truly excellent employees.
Management: From Front Stage to Backstage
Management has its scientific side, with many established theories to draw from; but at the same time, management cannot be one-size-fits-all because it deals with various people. Distributor bosses' management styles and methods are mostly paternalistic. A good-natured boss might be respected as an elder brother, while a bad-tempered boss becomes a tyrant in the eyes of salesmen. This paternalistic management may play a role in uniting people during the startup phase, but in the long run, no "patriarch" can manage the company's affairs comprehensively, which will inevitably hinder further development. At this point, distributor bosses need to change their mindset, moving from the front stage to the backstage. Only by seeing everything clearly from the backstage can they make better decisions.
Equal Treatment Under the System
"Nothing can be accomplished without norms or standards." Only by incorporating management into the system can distributors expand and free themselves from heavy, trivial daily management to think about more strategic development plans. Systems can also create distance between the boss and salesmen, turning direct leadership into system guidance, so salesmen won't vent all their grievances on the boss but act according to the system. So, what are the essential basic systems for a distributor company?
- Training Mechanism. Sales personnel with weak foundations, without any training, are thrown directly into battle, relying only on "genius" and "self-study" to improve. This not only leads to resentment toward the boss but also, if they act blindly and recklessly, may cause losses in sales and reputation.
For distributors, especially small ones, training is actually the most valuable investment. Since they cannot offer high salaries to attract experienced salesmen, they must quickly turn new recruits into skilled and expert hands. In terms of content, training should, on one hand, make salesmen familiar with their job responsibilities, and on the other hand, master product selling points, prices, policies, and terminal sales skills, then continuously improve through practice. It should be noted that distributor training often lacks systematization; time should be arranged reasonably during the off-season to institutionalize and normalize training.
Salary System. How to design a salary system that maximizes motivation for salesmen is a question every distributor boss must consider. Some bosses simply set base salary, commission, and bonuses without internal structural links, so salesmen's income is not as much as expected, and they won't work with dedication. The key to salary assessment is to have gradients, reflecting salary fluctuations based on task allocation. Driven by interests, salesmen will be more enthusiastic and will also weaken complaints about the boss due to salary factors.
Morning Meeting System. The morning meeting system is very necessary for distributor companies. At the morning meeting, announce the previous day's results of each salesman, including sales volume, sales amount, number of customers visited, and number of customers closed. This creates an atmosphere of competition and mutual learning among salesmen, enhancing team spirit. Morning meetings are also a good opportunity for the boss to communicate with salesmen, promptly listen to and respond to frontline sales personnel's opinions and suggestions, and be a good boss close to subordinates.
Rules and Regulations. Disciplinary rules are essential for the daily management of distributor companies. By establishing rules and regulations, on one hand, standardize the management of lateness, early departure, sick leave, and personal leave, clarify office discipline, and ensure violators are punished; on the other hand, weaken the boss's punitive function, achieving a shift from rule by man to rule by law.
Promotion System. With the development of distributor companies, bosses need to pay special attention to the promotion of salesmen. Upgrade the original boss-salesman leadership structure to boss-sales supervisor-salesman. On one hand, this refines management; on the other hand, it retains excellent veteran salesmen. The promotion system should be linked to salesmen's performance, motivating newcomers to work hard and preventing "old-timers" from slacking off. Most importantly, it lets employees know that the boss promotes based on merit, without bias.
Use People According to Their Abilities
A wise manager, while grasping each salesman's ability and personality, grants them appropriate autonomy, and the boss only cares about results! In addition, promote some ambitious and capable salesmen with certain authority to handle a large number of trivial management affairs on behalf of the boss (such as retail route inspection, order verification, etc.). This not only reduces the boss's burden but also makes salesmen feel valued and respected, feeling that they are independently operating a task, naturally showing initiative and responsibility. While gaining a sense of achievement, they will also be grateful for the boss's appreciation.
- High initiative, high ability: Promote to sales supervisor, appropriately increase bonuses, and grant certain management authority to handle relatively trivial and complex management (especially inspection) work.
- Low initiative, high ability: Communicate more, motivate their ambition, hint that you appreciate their ability and hope for good performance. Assign them difficult and challenging tasks, reporting directly to you rather than under the sales supervisor, because such employees consider themselves capable and often don't buy the supervisor's authority.
- High initiative, low ability: Affirm their achievements at work, inform them of their skill deficiencies, use the newly promoted sales supervisor as a model to stimulate their learning desire, and provide necessary training. Assign them relatively specific and trivial work under the sales supervisor's management, but give more attention, training, and encouragement, and less reprimand.
- Low initiative, low ability: For such employees, mainly give orders. Inform the sales supervisor that this type of employee is a management point, requiring timely inspection, supervision, rewards, and punishments, and observe the results.
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