---
title: "Enterprise Digital Transformation Starts with Digital Sales, and Digital Sales Starts with Regional Managers!"
description: "In the current era, digital transformation is a journey without a final destination, but a key milestone is the smooth implementation of digital systems in the sales department. For FMCG companies, regional managers are pivotal in this process, and this article discusses the significance of digital sales and the challenges regional managers face."
author: "曹扬"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-06-27"
language: "en"
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# Enterprise Digital Transformation Starts with Digital Sales, and Digital Sales Starts with Regional Managers!

> In the current era, digital transformation is a journey without a final destination, but a key milestone is the smooth implementation of digital systems in the sales department. For FMCG companies, regional managers are pivotal in this process, and this article discusses the significance of digital sales and the challenges regional managers face.

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In the current era, I believe every company of scale is more or less attempting digital transformation, with each company's strategy, approach, and path being different.
Everyone involved in digital transformation might have this thought: with digitalization every day, is there a standard answer for successful digital transformation? Is there a standard result?
**Frankly, there is no standard answer!**
Digital transformation has only a starting point, no end. Because I believe digitalization will be the basic configuration for every enterprise's operation in the future. But if we need a milestone for phased success, I think it is: **the smooth and unimpeded implementation of digital systems in the sales department.**
For FMCG companies, many beautiful wishes and ideas are realized by the sales department. The quality of a company's operations is measured by revenue, and revenue comes from the sales department's performance!
Looking further down the sales department, **I believe the key role in the sales department is the regional manager**. That is, the phased success of a company's digital transformation is measured by regional managers. **Regional managers are not only commanders of the frontline combat units but also the key force connecting the upper and lower levels of the enterprise.**
**Based on this, I will jointly launch "Regional Manager Digital Sales Management Practice" with New Distribution, analyzing the essential courses for enterprises in the digital business era, and how regional managers can leverage digital tools or systems to achieve business growth.**
I also hope to empower regional managers in the implementation of digital business, establishing a systematic understanding and methodology for digital sales.
This is the first article, discussing the significance and value of digital sales in enterprise digital transformation, and the importance of building regional managers' digital sales awareness and capabilities.
**1. What is digital sales?**
**2. Key challenges regional managers face in digital sales**
**3. The sales department is the touchstone for testing whether digital systems are effective**
**What is digital sales?** First, why do I propose the concept of digital sales?
Although many regional managers have had the awareness or concept of data analysis in the past, I still want to use the concept of digital sales to distinguish it from traditional sales.
The purpose of distinction is to better help regional managers establish a new cognitive framework. Traditional sales, although mixed with simple data analysis and data insights, I think most decisions are still based on habitual experience. Experience is still important, but the future market must be built on the foundation of digital sales, combined with past experience for judgment and decision-making. **What is digital sales?** **It is data-based, integrating data into the analysis, judgment, decision-making, and execution of market, sales, and management.**
For regional managers, the logic of sales has not changed; what has changed is using new thinking and new methods to do sales, making market sales work more refined and efficient, ultimately maximizing sales output. For example: using multi-dimensional data to clearly know whether your market is "losing" or "winning"; being able to formulate a market development plan through data and gradually achieve goals;
Communicating with customers using multiple data types such as share, sales, and display, formulating cooperation plans in a language customers understand, and achieving annual goals together with customers;
Integrating data into team management, standardizing action execution, quantifying execution assessment, etc.
In the practical application scenarios of digital sales for regional managers, I believe it is mainly reflected in **four levels**:
**1. Understand and skillfully use various types of data**
Not only sales and execution data, but also market share data, customer retail data (POS), gross profit data of the enterprise and customers, etc., doing sales with strategic thinking and a business perspective.
**2. Use data to make promotion plans**
Not only use "simple and crude" low-price promotions, but also through **analysis of historical data, discovering opportunities, and effectively allocating resources**, elevate the level of promotion plans.
For example, when submitting plans for approval, include promotion effectiveness analysis, not only predicting sales but also evaluating the input-output results.
**3. Use data for store execution**
**Quantify execution standards, thereby quantifying assessment, and quantify tracking during execution; this quantification is dataization.**
**Use outcome indicators and process indicators**, for example, determine visit time at each store based on store area and the number of displayed products, and scientifically and systematically arrange visit routes.
Determine the number of sales representatives and merchandisers based on the number of outlets; these need to be quantified through professional visits, calculated through data and experience.
**4. Develop joint business plans with professional customers**
Different channel customers have vastly different requirements for plans. Most distributors and traditional grocery stores do not require sales representatives to make a professional and detailed business plan.
However, hypermarkets, supermarkets, and convenience store customers have strict KPI indicators, requiring suppliers to meet indicators such as front-end gross profit, back-end gross profit, sales revenue, and order fulfillment rate.
Based on a win-win mindset, customers hope to achieve common goals with suppliers; this is the joint business plan, and one of its key elements is reflected in data.
In the digital era, as a business entity, enterprises need to think holistically about how to conduct digital operations. **Returning to the individuals within the enterprise, especially the regional commanders in the sales department, they must integrate into the digital wave and learn to use data to guide market sales work in their regions.** Of course, for regional managers, building the above-mentioned digital sales awareness and capabilities is a long-cycle process that requires continuous iteration and upgrading. First have goals and direction, then paths and methods.
**Key challenges regional managers face in digital sales**
Recognizing the importance of digital sales and clarifying the sense of purpose in digital sales is the first step, but in daily work, achieving iteration and upgrading is not easy. The advantages of regional managers are obvious: they are down-to-earth and steady, and many regional managers have gradually risen from grassroots sales representatives, fighting their way up step by step. **They have rich practical experience, and no matter what method they use, they can always get things done, achieving a win-win situation for the company and customers through maintaining customer relationships.** Of course, facing the new system of digital sales also brings many challenges and pressures. Regional managers with outstanding practical experience often tend to habitually rely on experience. This manifests as poor planning ability and weak data application ability. Rather than making plans in the office, regional managers prefer to run to sales points.
In terms of channels and customers, distributor sales generally account for more than 70% of total volume. **Regional managers are good at managing traditional channels like distributors, but not good at modern channels like hypermarkets and supermarkets, as well as local e-commerce platforms, generally lacking operational experience with such professional customers.**
**Digital capabilities are clearly insufficient, and the focus for achieving goals is still placed on distributors.**
In the face of survival and development, achieving monthly goals often presents a choice between survival and development, and regional managers often choose survival. Compared to digital sales, past sales experience is tangible, while digital sales takes time to adapt to and master, feeling somewhat vague, and worrying that digital sales may not solve survival problems.
**Thus, every month they struggle for survival, habitually focusing on short-term goals, without time to think about digital sales, and over time they are unwilling to use data for sales.** In terms of learning awareness, frankly, self-learning ability is limited, and this phenomenon accounts for a significant proportion of regional managers. When facing the use of new methods such as data analysis and planning, they often show a fear of difficulty.
These challenges are the key obstacles for regional managers in applying digital sales. Of course, this is also the core point that this column will address later. Specifically, how to use digitalization in sales management, and truly implementing digital sales in each sales module, will be the focus of this column's content. Although facing key challenges, digital sales capabilities must be established no matter what; otherwise, the enterprise's promotion of digital operations will be a castle in the air, and the enterprise will encounter difficulties in market competition.
Returning to the regional manager as an individual, if they cannot master the cognitive system and methods of digital sales, they will also lose their core competitiveness in their future career path.
Speaking with data and doing market work with data are the basic abilities that every sales manager must possess in the current era.
**The sales department is the touchstone for testing whether digital systems are effective**
From the enterprise perspective, the current digital capabilities of enterprises are basically still at the headquarters level. **Building a system is not the purpose; using the system is the key.** If the frontline team's enthusiasm for using the system is not high and actions lag, even the best system will be of no help.
Frankly, when enterprises promote digital operations, they will change the original work forms and work processes. Sales managers tend to be experience-oriented, which creates a natural opposition.
Frontline sales managers bear performance pressure and heavy execution pressure every day. Under such circumstances, they also have to break existing process operations, change their habits, and may even lose some benefits. It is indeed not easy! **But similarly, the direction of digital operations is a certain trend. It must be done, and it has to be done.** This requires that in the process of promoting digitalization, enterprises must always pay attention to the usage experience of the sales department and regional managers, proceed step by step, test in small steps, and iterate quickly. Company management must also be fully mentally prepared. For FMCG companies, digital sales is a key component of digital operations. Applying digital tools and systems to the frontline team is the starting point for system implementation and also the end point of system application. **In summary, the implementation of digital operations is facing huge challenges. The sales department is the key department for digital transformation, and digital sales is the entry point for digital operations implementation. Regional managers become the key figures in achieving digital sales, and it is urgent for the entire sales department to build a systematic understanding and capability of digital sales!**
**About the author:** Cao Yang, expert in key account and modern channel management, has worked from the frontline to headquarters in a world-renowned Fortune 500 company, serving as Regional Manager, Key Account Manager, Group Key Account Director, and National Key Account Channel General Manager. He localizes world-class marketing experience and explores the path of industry change. Willing to exchange ideas with peers for mutual progress, and willing to use years of accumulation and precipitation to help those who are still striving! The above articles only represent personal views.
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