Click the image for details. For distributor friends, the current hot topics are still transformation and upgrading, B2B, joint warehousing and distribution, new retail, new marketing, IP, cloud warehousing and distribution, digital management, and empowerment. There are many concepts, and before they have time to try one or two, community group buying becomes popular again, with some company raising millions or hundreds of millions in financing. It feels like not just the wolf is coming, but all the wolves, jackals, and tigers have arrived, forcing us to visit and learn everywhere. The information overload is immense, and the pressure is heavy. We want to do it too, and do it quickly, fearing that if we don't, we'll fall behind. It even feels like our companies are in crisis every day, and we have no idea how long we can hold on. But when it comes to actually implementing these ideas in our own companies, we find difficulties everywhere. How is it that others look glamorous and are about to become unicorns, but when it's our turn, we face nothing but obstacles? It's not the same at all. We don't know where to start, and some even think about liquidating and going home to raise the kids. There's a classic metaphor in the industry: "This arena is like swimming in the ocean. Those swimming in the sea use various strokes—butterfly, etc.—and it's spectacular. Those watching from the shore are eager to jump in, not realizing that those swimming are performing with their lives, forcing a smile, and might sink at any moment." Recently, Mr. Liu Chunxiong posted: "For small organizations, tactics are the visible line, and strategy is the hidden line. For large organizations, strategy is the visible line, and tactics are overshadowed by strategy. Why is strategy the hidden line for small organizations? Because small organizations have limited resources, and if the strategy is grand, there's an asymmetry between resources and goals. Only high-efficiency tactics can establish a logical relationship with strategy." I have learned a lot from this. Recently, most clients and friends have been talking about being pragmatic. I have many insights, and the core that resonates in my mind is: "Great truths are simple, stay grounded, build talent, and focus on execution." In other words, the topics everyone discusses are not right or wrong; they are only about suitability. If resources match, they are suitable; if not, they are unsuitable for your company, and you shouldn't do them, at least not in the near future. Otherwise, you might step into a pit and not be able to climb out. A distributor friend, with annual sales of nearly 200 million, owns a park, represents several major brands, and has stable cash flow and profits. We often communicate with the boss. I've never seen him talk about these concepts. When we bring up such topics, he mostly smiles or says they can be observed, and it's best to have them. What he talks about most are budgets, final accounts, salesperson management, promotions, promotion expense management, and deep cultivation of the region. The essence is customer relationship development and maintenance, in-depth salesperson marketing, internal management, execution, and talent building. As the saying goes, "Great truths are simple, and all roads lead to the same destination." The essence of business is buying and selling, transactions. You may have 72 transformations, but my core move is "solidly manage salespeople, warehousing and distribution, and serve customers well." Business scenarios differ, methods differ, but whether you are B2B or B2C, the result is to develop customers and receive orders. Just like corporate culture, you can't just learn it and use it for your own company. Only changes that suit your own situation are good upgrades and transformations. Let me briefly explain some of this friend's management experience: how to reduce warehousing and distribution costs from 5 points to 1.7 points.

  1. Reasonable product mix: Originally only operating grain, oil, and non-staple foods, they added beverages, instant noodles, and other categories, increasing daily delivery volume from 2,000 to nearly 5,000 pieces, achieving a reasonable mix of light and heavy, large and small batches, high and low value, and high and low profit products.
  2. Contractor system for warehouse keepers and drivers: They have a base salary of a few hundred yuan, with more pay for more work. Each vehicle delivers 18,000 pieces per month, and each person picks 1,000 pieces per day in the warehouse. Average wages are far above industry levels.
  3. Application of new energy vehicles.
  4. Use of high-rise racks, saving nearly 50% of storage space.
  5. Cost accounting: From large items like personnel wages to small items like vehicle charging electricity records and ballpoint pen purchases.
  6. Budget management: Insist on monthly comparison of budget and actual cost errors, with PDCA cycle improvement.
  7. Report analysis: The warehousing and distribution department alone has over 100 reports, quantifying all work.
  8. These efforts started 5 years ago, with stops and starts in the first 2 years, but persisted for 3 years, reaching 1.7% only last year. All this was achieved using only a simple inventory management system. A few days ago, I visited a veteran in the B2B and warehousing and distribution industry in Wuhan. He is somewhat well-known in the industry, having served as a senior executive and partner in several large companies. Now he is on his second startup, transforming into joint warehousing and distribution, doing the hardest and most tiring work, but he is full of confidence and believes he will succeed. He has been operating for half a year, and the momentum is good. I fully believe he will succeed. Why? He mentioned a few points:
  1. Don't talk about concepts first; start with infrastructure, process formulation, standardization, and the combination of flat and three-dimensional warehouses.
  2. Talent building: Department heads are recruited as practical, compound talents who have done big jobs. They manage their own department personnel, following processes and systems.
  3. Information system selection: Don't talk about high-end things; focus on aligning with your actual business scenarios, not wanting this and that. Focus on connecting well with customers. Talk about automated warehouses, unmanned warehouses, big data, and supply chain finance only after 2 years. This is what is meant by "accumulating thickly and bursting forth thinly." The distributor with GMV over 200 million mentioned earlier also has internal problems. Business is managed well, but warehousing and distribution still have issues, common to many distributors: expiration date management is not in place, causing significant losses; inventory is inaccurate; and order fulfillment rate needs improvement. He mentioned a "fish" theory: Business and procurement management are the fish head, dual-driven; the fish body is warehousing and distribution management, doing the basic inventory and delivery management well, providing accurate data and service support for procurement and sales; finance is the fish tail, managing budgets, final accounts, receivables/payables, and performance to achieve reasonable profits. Through integrated digital management, optimize internal supply chain management. The improvement of distributor management can generally start from the following aspects: 1. Increasing Revenue

Mobile visit sales for salespeople: Salespeople use an APP to expand stores, visit, maintain customer relationships, and fully activate users; mobile APP orders with system control on varieties and prices; real-time inventory synchronization; real-time control of store visits, promotions, and display fees automatically generated based on company policies; orders automatically transmitted and integrated with backend data; GPS precise positioning of terminal addresses, coordinated delivery, and precise navigation for drivers. Vehicle sales management: Through the APP, solve requisition applications, on-site sales, Bluetooth receipt printing, on-site settlement and payment collection, and return of remaining goods to warehouse; in some areas, vehicle sales drivers can also be converted to an Amoeba model, where the company gives a certain price policy to drivers, and they convert sales into profits; The combination of these two models serves as an important supplement to solve terminal sales management in low-frequency or remote areas. Remote areas do not lack sales; rather, the company's relative costs are too high. Vehicle sales are also a supplement to the business segment. KA and other key account management: Effectively screen and cut off non-quality customers, following the 80/20 principle; elite customer managers serve key accounts offline, and promoters go deep into hypermarkets. Seamlessly integrate customer self-service ordering APP (not to mention high-end B2B platforms): Seamless integration with the backend, no need to repeatedly maintain cumbersome product, customer, and price information; customers order independently; product prices and inventory are synchronized in real-time; promotions reach customers directly; activate customers and improve efficiency. 2. Internal Control Refined product management: Combine production date, shelf life, and batch management to make inventory visible in real-time, reduce inventory costs, reduce human losses due to poor expiration date management, and adapt to the special requirements of large supermarkets for high-quality shelf life; systematically analyze product turnover, slow-moving and fast-moving items, ABC classification, providing strong data support for procurement. Flexible price control: Combine product prices with customer ABC classification and customer channels; minimum price control, custom price systems, and historical price memory assist management. Comprehensive customer management: GPS positioning of customer addresses, graphical display of customer distribution, providing data support for sales; automatic distribution of customer orders to the nearest warehouse (front warehouse) based on customer area, achieving minimal cost and highest delivery efficiency. Visit route setting, regular customer visits, better service, and higher customer satisfaction; customer credit limit management, process control, reducing bad debts caused by personal factors; customer account period management; customer contribution analysis, deep mining of customer value. Digital warehouse management: Timely coordination of order data flow and information flow; combination of flat and three-dimensional warehouses to meet the requirements of high-volume, fast-in-fast-out products like beer and beverages, as well as regular products like condiments; standardized management of storage areas, picking areas, full goods areas, split-picking areas, and receiving areas; receiving strategies, picking strategies, and full-process barcode RF scanning operations; Adopt different picking methods for different customer terminals, such as multi-person picking for large orders, aggregate picking for regular orders, improving operations, precise to batch, shelf life, and location; for the review process, pick and check simultaneously or check after picking; meet different business scenarios, improve inventory accuracy through refined warehouse management. Strengthen delivery management: Through salespeople collecting terminal latitude and longitude, dispatchers can graphically assign vehicles; collecting product logistics attributes such as weight and volume also provides data support for dispatchers to arrange vehicles, reducing unreasonable loading and improving vehicle fill rate. The driver APP supports on-site return processing; difference receipt settlement; solves some actual receiving problems; delivery routes can be automatically matched to drivers; drivers can freely assign and schedule orders, reducing dispatch pressure, making delivery more convenient and efficient. Lightweight driver mobile app: Supports drivers to schedule independently, reducing dispatch tasks; one-click signing or photo taking, timely feedback on signing status, providing basis for dispatch to arrange subsequent tasks; confirm terminal address navigation, accurate location, allowing new drivers to quickly get up to speed; real-time upload of vehicle location, precise dispatch management. Standardize financial management: On-site signing management for drivers, solving the heavy handover between drivers and documentation personnel when returning to the warehouse; invoice management; price adjustments; prepayments, receivables, and account periods fully managed, with no data blind spots; terminals collect payments by document, some key accounts settle by product category; forming complete intuitive reports of receivables and payables. 3. Comprehensive Reports and In-depth Analysis Data analysis by day, month, year, or any time period; all key data such as procurement, sales, inventory, product gross profit, customer gross profit, salesperson gross profit, costs, and expenses are tabulated, with multiple graphical representations generated instantly, reducing the heavy statistical work of finance and business departments, allowing financial personnel to do more valuable work like budgeting, final accounts, and performance management. Based on the analysis of the above business scenarios, it is actually about returning to the essence, using supply chain thinking to solve enterprise problems, or it is also the urgent problem that most distributors need to solve now. No matter how many business models or commercial models there are, if internal skills are not practiced well, the faster the development, the more hidden dangers, and eventually it will explode. The author believes that there are no traditional enterprises, whether in trade or logistics, only enterprises that do not change; micro-innovation, controlling costs to the extreme, and improving efficiency to the extreme is also innovation! With talent and strong infrastructure, let the bullets fly for a while, and don't let external uncertainties interfere with the steady development of your own enterprise. Once the supply chain is done well, talking about business model innovation will come naturally. The current new environment has fierce business competition, and you still need a solid foundation! The debate on whether distributors are useful or useless has been going on for a long time. China is vast and rich in resources, unlike most European and American countries where the population and area are only the size of one or two Chinese provinces. It is difficult to quickly form a situation where a few companies dominate. Let's work for another 10 years, develop our own characteristics and style, and realize corporate and social value!