---
title: "Distributors: What Should a Boss Be Busy With?"
description: "In training distributors for many companies, the author often hears distributor bosses complain about being too busy, having incompetent subordinates, and struggling to recruit and retain talent. However, the author has also met larger distributors who act like 'hands-off bosses,' managing only a few core people and spending time on strategic planning and exploring new opportunities. The key difference is that excellent distributors earn through intellect, while ordinary ones exhaust themselves physically. This article advises distributors to clarify their roles at different stages—being hands-on during startup, acting as a coach during growth, and becoming a manager during scale-up—to avoid being a 'three-mang' (busy, confused, and blind) distributor."
author: "崔自三"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-04-07"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-what-should-a-boss-be-busy-with-c6899014/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-what-should-a-boss-be-busy-with-c6899014.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fujiq6I4989BwOmm5JfhAg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86-%E4%BD%9C%E4%B8%BA%E8%80%81%E6%9D%BF%E5%BA%94%E8%AF%A5%E5%BF%99%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88-c6899014.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-what-should-a-boss-be-busy-with-c6899014/"
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# Distributors: What Should a Boss Be Busy With?

> In training distributors for many companies, the author often hears distributor bosses complain about being too busy, having incompetent subordinates, and struggling to recruit and retain talent. However, the author has also met larger distributors who act like 'hands-off bosses,' managing only a few core people and spending time on strategic planning and exploring new opportunities. The key difference is that excellent distributors earn through intellect, while ordinary ones exhaust themselves physically. This article advises distributors to clarify their roles at different stages—being hands-on during startup, acting as a coach during growth, and becoming a manager during scale-up—to avoid being a 'three-mang' (busy, confused, and blind) distributor.

In training distributors for many companies, the author often hears distributor bosses complain: they are too busy, so busy that they cannot get a moment of leisure all day; they complain that their subordinates are too stupid, always failing to do the tasks assigned well; and they also complain about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining talent. Is that really the case? The author has also encountered some larger distributors who are more like 'hands-off bosses.' They manage very few people, only a few core members, and spend more time considering the future development path and improvement direction of their enterprises. A considerable amount of their time is spent flying around the country—what for? To select projects and inspect products, that's all. In fact, they are the true bosses who know how to enjoy life; their business is thriving, and they are happy themselves.

In reality, many distributors are indeed very busy. The author deeply perceives that they even, when going out to participate in various meetings organized by enterprises, have to call home repeatedly to remotely command the company's work, as if the business at home cannot operate without them, and the enterprise cannot survive without them.

These distributor friends seem really busy, but what is the result of their busyness? It is that they are too tired, and when subordinates fail to do well, they always find excuses. It seems distributors are busy with the wrong things? But the author also finds that those who are overly busy are generally small distributors. Ten years ago, they were like this, and ten years later, they are still the same. In contrast, those who have grown bigger are always able to continuously elevate themselves to a new stage or height.

Excellent distributors earn money with their brains or wisdom, while ordinary distributors only earn money by expending physical effort! These are clearly two different concepts or realms.

So, what should distributors be busy with?

This topic sounds like child's play at first, but truly understanding it is not an easy task. The author believes that the reason these distributors work hard but get no appreciation is that they have not clarified their accurate positioning, thus doing things they should not do.

Management guru Peter Drucker once said, 'Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.' This statement hits the nail on the head. For distributors to understand this principle, it is suggested they start from the following aspects:

Do not be a 'Three-Mang' distributor. What is a 'Three-Mang' distributor? It refers to those who are stuck in trivial affairs and cannot extricate themselves. They forget to eat and sleep, work all night, and are extremely 'busy' (mang), but in the end, they find that many times they labor without results. They are diligent, but the gains are not great, and they increasingly feel that business is getting harder to manage, sometimes even out of control. Old customers may even 'defect,' and business may show a declining trend. This makes them feel 'confused' (mang), to the point of not knowing where to turn, and ultimately their actions are 'blind' (mang) everywhere: they raise the price sword against competitors, using low prices to snipe at enemy invasions; they unreasonably lose their temper and scold subordinates, but do not go to the market frontline to find the reasons for declining sales; they violate industry trends and market development laws, seeking counterfeit and shoddy products to operate, only to find that it is a 'road of no return.' In fact, as a distributor, it is not enough to just lower your head and walk; you must also raise your head to look at the road. For example, when a distributor has reached a certain scale but still habitually acts as both boss and business manager, and also as driver and porter, what does this 'four-in-one' positioning indicate? It only shows that this distributor is a boss who only knows how to 'do things' and not 'handle affairs.' This approach not only exhausts them physically and mentally, but also often makes it difficult to do things well. At the same time, doing so provides subordinates with a high-sounding excuse for not doing their work well: 'The boss did it himself!'

In fact, distributors should arrange their work priorities reasonably according to their different development stages. Only by clarifying their accurate positioning can distributors break through the existing development bottleneck and get on the fast track of development. So, how should distributors do this?

What should distributors in the startup period do? The author believes that distributors in the startup period should be business-oriented. Why say this? Because a tall building rises from the ground; everything must start from scratch. Handling procedures with industry and commerce, taxation, etc., selecting products and manufacturers, coordinating and adjusting with manufacturers after cooperation, forming a small team, renting office and warehouse space, configuring transport vehicles, and especially developing new markets and new customers—these are numerous and complicated, and no one can replace you. What to do? Do everything yourself, inside and outside, running up and down. Especially in the development of new markets and new networks, new situations and new problems emerge endlessly, requiring the boss to personally go and make decisions. At this time, the distributor is both the boss (some also serve as drivers) and a salesperson, as well as a loader and accountant. Therefore, at this stage, distributors are more business-oriented, typically balancing internal and external affairs. During this period, distributors should focus more on the market, building the foundation of their career by developing more regions and customers. At the same time, they should also do channel relationship work, providing good service, frequently going to the market, giving downstream customers more concessions and profits, tapping into their sales potential for themselves and their products, and better participating in market competition.

What should distributors in the growth period do? Distributors in the growth period, after escaping the confusion of the survival stage, enter a fast development track. At this time, the prominent feature is that the business volume expands rapidly. At the same time, with the increase in sales volume and personnel, distributor bosses will fall into a 'happy' pain. Why? The sales scope has expanded, and there are more frontline staff, but the capabilities of these people have not kept up in time. If you hire from outside at high salaries, you not only have to pay a high price, but to be honest, you may not feel at ease. So how can you effectively balance and coordinate? At this time, there is only one feasible method: put team building on the agenda, and continuously improve employees' abilities to make up for the short-board effect caused by rapid market growth. At this time, what distributors need to do is to play the role of a coaching boss. As a distributor with strong comprehensive abilities, you need to do two things well: first, be a good coach yourself, helping subordinates improve; at the same time, you can also invite external experts or lecturers to help coach your subordinates. But distributor bosses should pay attention to one issue: as a coach, you should only teach subordinates hand-in-hand, but never overstep and do the work for them. Second, the boss should establish a coaching system, such as an internal mentor system, allowing capable supervisors and managers to better help subordinates, and assess and reward them, forming an effective system of passing on experience. McDonald's is an example: because it established an internal mentor system, it promoted the healthy operation of team echelon construction. As a result, McDonald's never worries about the departure of one or several employees; this system itself continuously 'produces' excellent employees. Therefore, with increasingly fierce market competition and increasingly complex channel systems, if distributors want to better control downstream channels and increase their loyalty, they must enhance employees' ability to operate the market and must build a coaching corporate culture.

What should distributors in the scale period do? Now many distributor bosses have annual sales of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions. At this time, distributors should become manager-type bosses. What is a manager-type? In simple terms, it means being a management expert, learning to manage people and handle affairs. The so-called managing people means, on the premise of establishing corporate management and introducing professional managers, only managing down to department heads, delegating authority, and at the same time, authorizing responsibility and establishing a supervision mechanism. As a distributor boss, you can communicate and inspect across levels, but never give orders or command across levels, to fully establish the authority of subordinates. In addition, distributors should be good at handling affairs. The so-called handling affairs means grasping the big and letting go of the small, doing what the boss should do. For example, the boss should think more about strategic direction, how to better plan the future of the enterprise: business group composition, brand and product lines, product structure, management team building, how to select, use, manage, and retain people, channel system construction, etc. Do not grab everything like eyebrows and beard, managing everything but ending up managing nothing well. Those who have studied history know that Liu Bang, a former small hooligan, was able to achieve an imperial career. His greatest success was his ability to use people: letting the good at fighting, Han Xin; the good at strategy, Zhang Liang; and the good at governance, Xiao He, each do their own duties, leveraging their strengths for his own use, and ultimately achieving success. Therefore, for distributors, only by becoming a management-oriented boss can they become stronger and bigger, and become a 'carefree' big boss.

In summary, only when distributor bosses understand what they should do and what they should not do can they become a magnificent distributor, leverage their strengths, avoid their weaknesses, continuously surpass their development stage, become an excellent helmsman braving the waves of the market, and by mobilizing and stimulating employees' enthusiasm, better leverage everyone's initiative, achieve greater performance, and create greater brilliance.

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