Click to read the original article for details. When chatting with colleagues, some veteran colleagues always thank me for painting a bright future for them over the years, which kept them with the company for over a decade without experiencing much workplace turbulence. I reflect on the past decade-plus journey, thinking how wonderful it would have been if I had learned better management methods earlier, avoiding many detours. The company might have developed much better than it has now, and the veteran colleagues who stayed would have fared better too. Trust Method – The boss sees those who are willing to work hard; he won't let trusted people suffer losses. In the early days of our company, we had few clients and few agency products. The boss hired three supervisors. After a few months, the two more experienced and active supervisors left, leaving only me—inexperienced but willing to work hard. When we hired later, I became the sales manager. The next year, the boss promoted me to deputy manager, hoping I would take full responsibility. What followed was predictable: I had to take full charge! Now I think the boss wanted to cultivate management talent himself, and I was lucky. Today, the boss cannot have insight into everyone; selection must rely on systems. Target Method – When non-management people manage, target-based appraisal doesn't work; early on, only aspirations can be used. During the company's expansion, we needed more people to handle more tasks. Since I didn't understand management, I could only lead a few people personally. At that time, the appraisal was target-based: if business achieved sales and met collection targets, they got bonuses. But often it backfired; some people went months without bonuses or got very little, and team morale gradually soured. To prevent business from stagnating, I handled business issues during the day and held meetings at night, explaining requirements, precautions, and reminding them to do things one by one. Efforts paid off, and performance improved somewhat. I repeatedly told everyone that the company was good and there would be development if we did well. I talked about business, aspirations, and development every day. When calculating monthly appraisals, since there was no evaluation or assessment of the process, I often wrote special approvals on the appraisal forms. The boss would remind me to maintain the rigidity of the appraisal. The result was predictable: employees didn't always expect the manager to get bonuses through special approvals, and turnover was inevitable. Competition Method – Optimizing the appraisal is imperative; the competitive appraisal method seemed like a step forward. Often, some people worked hard but didn't get bonuses, while others who didn't put in much effort had good performance. The randomness was quite high. This was definitely a management issue, so I began to think about adjusting the appraisal system. The boss gave me guidance: the appraisal system can be adjusted, but from the employees' perspective, don't make them feel they're losing out. The boss is truly a wise man. From another angle, I couldn't let the boss lose out either, so I thought of keeping the total bonus pool unchanged but creating competition within the team: whoever contributes more gets a larger share of the bonus, based on the proportion of collections. This controlled the total and fostered competition. The competitive appraisal method seemed very reasonable. In the first month, because a certain client performed well, that salesperson got the lion's share of the bonus. In the second month, it was the same. Why was the actual bonus so different from the simulation? The seemingly reasonable appraisal system didn't work well again. Analyzing the reasons, the businesses were not in a zero-sum relationship. The core purpose of appraisal is to guide everyone to do their best in every task. Balance Method – The balanced KPI appraisal guided the team's direction but was still not clear enough. Every historical progress comes at a heavy price. We groped along the management path, suffering many losses. Now I think, how wonderful it would have been if someone had guided us on how to appraise. A few years later, we comprehensively upgraded the company's appraisal system, re-examining what the company's goals were, how to achieve them, and what employees needed to do to best reach those goals. As a distributor company, sales targets, product distribution, product display, promotion implementation, return management, and collection management were all included in our KPIs. We also thought product shelf placement was important, and taking photos was important too. Then we added these to the appraisal system, with rewards and penalties for each item. Through presentations and learning, everyone knew what needed to be implemented. In the following years, team execution improved significantly. Distributors find it hard to recruit, but because the industry circulated that Sunflower Company had good management and you could learn things, recruitment and retention improved markedly, and the company's reputation grew. The company proposed the slogan "Leading Brand Market Solution Provider" during this period. More manufacturers approached us, and the speed of taking on new products accelerated noticeably! Independent Method – A good appraisal is one where everyone knows the bonus progress during the process. In later discussions with management, a question arose: our appraisal system seemed comprehensive, but because each KPI had rewards and penalties, and items were added and subtracted, people didn't know how much reward they would ultimately get for doing well on which item! Our aspiration was to use KPI indicators to guide business work. The aspiration was good, but salespeople still didn't know how much return they would get for doing well on which key task. When calculating bonuses at month-end, they were unwilling to analyze; they knew there were flaws in the appraisal but couldn't articulate them. What to do? What to do? We fell into contemplation again. Later, we focused on one point: the appraisal should enable salespeople to calculate their monthly bonus progress during the process! It was an epiphany. We adjusted the calculation method: each item was reward-only, no penalties, so items wouldn't offset each other, and salespeople could calculate how much bonus each KPI would bring! This small change took us at least 5 years to achieve. This method undoubtedly promoted management better and allowed the team to move forward bravely under the appraisal! Profit Method – A better appraisal should also be linked to profit margins. On the road forward, you never know what a better appraisal system looks like. When the market faced difficulties, to curb sales decline, we needed to do a lot of promotions. The original 10% discount promotion, when a client boldly proposed a 40% discount, your salesperson could easily convince you to do a 20% discount. Sales might be maintained, but the result is unacceptable: the company faces losses! Why does this happen? You begin to suspect the salesperson's selfish motives: to achieve sales targets, they stand against the company, causing large-scale profit erosion. Obviously, large discounts are loss-making. They might say the promotion is a loss, but normally it's not. However, they don't take responsibility for the frequency of promotions or the company's profits! In reality, salespeople cannot have comprehensive management capabilities; they just work under KPI guidance. The company began to introduce gross margin appraisal. For any position where gross profit contribution could be calculated, we added gross margin appraisal, bringing all positions back to a united front. Since introducing profit appraisal, it was easy to form consensus internally, and the original difficulties could be overcome together. That year, the company's profit grew by more than 30%! By 2019, the company's development was more stable and faster. In today's FMCG market, which is undergoing accelerated transformation, achieving this is not easy. When asked to say something about appraisal again, a sentence clearly surfaced in my mind: Distributors without a good performance appraisal system, with only a desire for growth, won't work! We need to learn more, learn more good management methods, to cope with more uncertainties in the future.