--- title: "Distributors: Have You Noticed These Management Details?" description: "Drawing on extensive experience working with FMCG distributors, the author highlights common management oversights, such as discrepancies between delivery and acceptance amounts, and emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making and internal management for sustainable operations." author: "聪博" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-09-18" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-these-management-details-1735ce13/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-these-management-details-1735ce13.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IP4S8-Z_y8ev0y1ZJsQ4Jg" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86-%E8%BF%99%E4%BA%9B%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E7%BB%86%E8%8A%82%E4%BD%A0%E6%B3%A8%E6%84%8F%E5%88%B0%E4%BA%86%E5%90%97-1735ce13.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-have-you-noticed-these-management-details-1735ce13/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # Distributors: Have You Noticed These Management Details? > Drawing on extensive experience working with FMCG distributors, the author highlights common management oversights, such as discrepancies between delivery and acceptance amounts, and emphasizes the importance of data-driven decision-making and internal management for sustainable operations. Since I began working with FMCG distributors, I have come into contact with many of them. From initial phone conversations, gradually to door-to-door visits, and now often being stationed inside distributors for in-depth coaching, I have moved from not understanding them to understanding and becoming familiar with them. I have also come to appreciate the difficulties of the distributor industry. Many distributors say: "As a trading company, the external market is the most important; internal management is merely in service of our sales team. The sales department is the core of the company." Others say: "Company operations must be profit-oriented, and finance plays a key role in data analysis and subsequent decision-making. Therefore, finance is the core, and the finance department must be the core department." Still others say: "Trading is about making a margin. Facing manufacturers' payment-before-delivery and malls' delivery-before-payment, distributors bear enormous capital pressure. Serious capital tie-up in the warehouse plus discrepancies between books and actuals due to management loopholes can directly affect operations, so the warehouse department is the top priority!" However, a minority believe: "Sales is important, but internal management must not be neglected. Every department exists in mutual cooperation and supervision. Whether sales, finance, warehouse, or logistics, none can exist independently of company management. Sales makes money, while finance, warehouse, and logistics save money. If these two sides lose balance, the company cannot operate well. The core of operations is to carefully formulate corresponding management and incentive systems for each department and strictly implement them, providing a basic guarantee for sound operations." Different ideas lead to different actions, and ultimately different results. If outsiders' judgments of right and wrong do not resonate with one's own true recognition, then only when results appear can a verdict be made. Management is a delicate craft; some do it well, some poorly. Often, our management inspiration comes from clients. Because we only deal with this industry, every day we interact with distributors. We encounter both very well-managed and very chaotic ones. Moving among them naturally leads us to compare different clients and summarize a set of management ideas and methods suitable for distributors. Of course, the same method applied to different distributors can produce different effects. Apart from full recognition, the core is the strength of execution. Many distributors do not pay attention to data management, often making decisions based on experience and gut feeling. But in the current harsh market environment, how can today's market compare with the past? **Here, I share with distributor friends how some excellent distributors use system data for management.** Anyone who cooperates with large-scale malls knows that facing powerful retailers, many aspects are controlled by them, and they demand more complete management from suppliers. For example, retailers have strict requirements for order arrival rates; a slight carelessness can lead to fines, and over time, even direct code blocking. The losses are self-evident. Many distributors respond by robbing Peter to pay Paul, without thinking about how to solve the problem thoroughly. **Smart distributors handle such issues completely differently; robbing Peter to pay Paul is never their move. Finding a problem is not scary; where there is a problem, there is a solution.** They quickly pull order shortage data from the system, check purchase orders and manufacturer arrivals for the missing items, and determine whether it is a company purchasing issue or a manufacturer supply issue. With this direction, the problem can be effectively avoided. Additionally, dear readers who happen to see this article, have you ever seriously paid attention to the difference between your company's daily delivery amounts and customer acceptance amounts? When helping clients with data analysis, we found that some companies do not pay attention to this aspect, and the average monthly difference can be as high as 10% of sales! Companies that are very sensitive to data and have solid internal management can control the difference within 1%. Most companies maintain it between 3% and 6%. For example, for a distributor with monthly sales of 10 million yuan, **the difference between monthly delivery amounts and customer acceptance amounts can be as high as 1 million yuan,** which translates to about 33,000 yuan per day in goods being picked, counted, loaded, unloaded, loaded, unloaded, and returned to the warehouse for verification for various reasons. This does not even consider product damage or loss during handling, nor the office time spent checking and correcting discrepancy documents. **Just the warehouse link alone wastes how much cost? Those truly engaged in distribution know better than we do.** So why do we see distributors with the same business volume hiring the same number of staff, yet employee work states are vastly different? In some companies, employees work easily with high morale, while in others, they are busy from start to finish with a negative attitude. I think this state is not caused by a single factor, but it is certain that it is directly related to company management. Source: Congbo Professional Distributor Research Institution **The 3rd (CFIC) China FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting **1,000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to explore new chapters of cross-border integration! **Core topics of this conference:** > * **How can the FMCG industry leverage B2B to achieve new growth opportunities?** > > > > > > > * **How should the new supply chain behind new retail be built?** > > > > > > > * **How can intra-city logistics help B2B achieve leapfrog development?** > **Highlights of this conference:** > * **The industry's first "2017 China FMCG B2B Industry Competitiveness White Paper"** > > > > > * **Case sharing of excellent distributors in transformation and upgrading** > > > > > * **Exhibition upgrade: Hall 6 Internet Technology Exhibition strengthens networking** > > > > > * **Alibaba Retail Link, Puhua Finance, Eternal Asia Supply Chain, Best Store Plus, Yijiu Pi, Haiding—leaders from various fields will deliver speeches and share pioneering views.** > > **Registration is now open. Long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register.** Add friend with note "Conference Registration" Click the links below to review the highlights of the first and second FMCG + Internet conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671