---
title: "Distributors Can't Push New Products? 80% Is a Frontline Sales Issue"
description: "Adjusting the product mix is more about increasing the proportion of high-margin products, especially new and premium products, to improve overall profitability. In simple terms, it's about eating well on top of being full—not just selling old products that don't make money, but focusing more on selling high-margin products. The ideal is beautiful, but reality is harsh. Although everyone knows the necessity and benefits of product structure optimization, it's too difficult to implement. Salespeople always emphasize various difficulties: poor market environment, economic downturn, restrictions on official consumption, new products not selling well, premium products not moving, insufficient company investment, limited consumer purchasing power, and uncooperative terminals."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-09-01"
categories: "Dealer Operations"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-can-t-push-new-products-80-is-a-frontline-sales-issue-a3064124.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/iS10EPUQR0vmz9DlpYuZDQ"
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citation: "潘文富. “Distributors Can't Push New Products? 80% Is a Frontline Sales Issue.” New Distribution, 2019-09-01. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-can-t-push-new-products-80-is-a-frontline-sales-issue-a3064124/"
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---

# Distributors Can't Push New Products? 80% Is a Frontline Sales Issue

> Adjusting the product mix is more about increasing the proportion of high-margin products, especially new and premium products, to improve overall profitability. In simple terms, it's about eating well on top of being full—not just selling old products that don't make money, but focusing more on selling high-margin products. The ideal is beautiful, but reality is harsh. Although everyone knows the necessity and benefits of product structure optimization, it's too difficult to implement. Salespeople always emphasize various difficulties: poor market environment, economic downturn, restrictions on official consumption, new products not selling well, premium products not moving, insufficient company investment, limited consumer purchasing power, and uncooperative terminals.

**Adjusting the product mix is more about increasing the proportion of high-margin products, especially new and premium products, to improve overall profitability. In simple terms, it's about eating well on top of being full—not just selling old products that don't make money, but focusing more on selling high-margin products.**

The ideal is beautiful, but reality is harsh. Although everyone knows the necessity and benefits of product structure optimization, it's too difficult to implement. Salespeople always emphasize various difficulties: poor market environment, economic downturn, restrictions on official consumption, new products not selling well, premium products not moving, insufficient company investment, limited consumer purchasing power, and uncooperative terminals.

To this end, the boss has also spent a lot of effort: various challenge-target pep rallies, pumping up morale, building a wolf-like team, heavy incentives, and so on. But even after all the pep talks, and even with negative incentives like being dragged out and bombarded for not meeting targets, the actual effect is still limited. **The actual sell-through rate of premium and new products remains worrying. The adjustment of the product mix is talked about every year, but the actual adjustment effect has not fundamentally changed.**

China's market space is vast, with a huge consumer base, more wealthy people, and even more who dare to spend. Any product, at any price, has opportunities. The product mix can be changed, and the difficulties can be resolved. **The current problem is that the adjustment process is too simplistic. The boss hopes to achieve product mix adjustment through simple actions or incentive-driven approaches, which is too idealistic.**

Product mix adjustment should be a systematic project involving multiple internal and external links, and the related rectification measures need to be sequenced and promoted step by step. Here's a brief outline:

**Main Reasons for Current Difficulties**
1. Internal reasons: employee reasons—either they don't know how to sell or they don't want to sell.
2. External reasons: customers don't cooperate—the customer relationship is not in place, they don't give face, and they don't even give a chance to try.

**Basic Promotion Principles**
1. Employees can be replaced, but customers cannot.
2. The cost of changing employees is often higher than recruiting and training new ones.
3. Things beyond employees' capabilities cannot be solved by incentives or negative incentives; the company must step in.
4. Employees' willingness, enterprising spirit, and ability to overcome difficulties are limited. When customers are unwilling to sell premium products, most salespeople will not rise to the challenge. No one wants to drive a broken car; unless the boss fixes the car first, employees won't drive it.

**Start with External Customers**
Customers' unwillingness to sell premium products often stems from insufficient company-customer relationships. Problems usually lie in the following areas:
1. The company doesn't know customers well enough (incomplete files) and doesn't maintain close contact (no customer service specialist).
2. There are unresolved historical issues, leaving customers with resentment.
3. Poor service attitude from salespeople leads to customers' overall denial of the company.
4. The company lacks systematic customer relationship management measures, resulting in cold interpersonal relationships.
5. Salespeople take advantage of the loose connection between the company and customers to do private business and sell private goods.

**Technical Training for Salespeople**
1. Employee issues boil down to two points: unwillingness to work and inability to work.
2. First, solve the technical problem of not knowing how to do it through technical training. The boss cannot subjectively assume everyone knows how to do it or try to solve technical problems through simple mentoring.
3. Of course, those who resist learning, emphasize the uselessness of learning, or don't apply what they learn can basically be categorized as unwilling to work.

**Emotional Management for Salespeople**
So-called emotional management is about whether employees are willing to work hard. Of course, when employees first join the company, they also want to work hard, but often due to the boss's lack of personnel management capabilities, employees become resentful. Solutions mainly include the following:
1. Clarify employees' entry orientation—why they come to work; it's not always for money.
2. Publish local salary levels to avoid employees comparing themselves and feeling underpaid.
3. The boss should proactively repair trust with employees.
4. Avoid inadvertently offending employees.
5. Clarify future development directions with employees; employees need something to look forward to.

**Job Rotation**
1. Rotate salespeople to swap their assigned customers, which can also serve as internal blood transfusion.
2. The smoothness of the rotation process directly reveals salespeople's actual work capabilities and legacy issues.
3. After two or three rotations, the standardization needs of related work will clearly emerge.
4. Continuous rotation also weakens the personal relationship between employees and customers, while highlighting the establishment of company-customer relationships.
5. For individual employees, rotation helps to some extent dispel their self-inflation; after you're replaced, business still goes on.

**New Employees and Blood Transfusion**
1. While rotating, start recruiting new employees.
2. Whether for premium or new products, more hope should be placed on new employees.
3. After rotation, employees who maintain good work performance can be retained. Those who resist rotation, have many problems during rotation, or experience significant performance decline after rotation should be considered for dismissal.

**Specific Measures for Product Mix Adjustment**
1. Based on external customer rectification and internal blood transfusion, consider product mix adjustment measures.
2. Consider a specialist system for premium products.
3. Independent assessment for premium products, or linked assessment with old products.

Author: Pan Wenfu
Originally a private business owner, he operated a family-owned distribution company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several manufacturing companies. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and the integration of retired military personnel into private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and keeps updating material collection and solution development.

Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 潘文富
- Published: 2019-09-01
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-can-t-push-new-products-80-is-a-frontline-sales-issue-a3064124/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/iS10EPUQR0vmz9DlpYuZDQ

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