---
title: "First Steps as a Manager: A Small Trial, Impressive Results"
description: "In June 2014, the company insisted I develop the catering channel for herbal tea, and after a month of being a scapegoat, I resigned. By September, the manufacturer had replaced the distributor in B county of A city with a dealer, and a friend of mine took over. After several managers failed to improve performance in four months, he asked me to help. In the first month, I followed the sales routes daily, observing and analyzing, but didn't participate in negotiations. After receiving my salary, I presented my analysis and strategy, focusing on a single product (large peanut milk) for the wedding banquet season, adjusting policies to undercut competitors, and successfully boosting sales by 120,000 yuan, making it the top-selling product in the region. In December, I organized a large order conference, leveraging the manufacturer's additional channel funds, achieving 600,000 yuan in sales, six times the previous period, and causing the main competitor's sales to plummet by two-thirds."
author: "丙哥"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-06-22"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/first-steps-as-a-manager-a-small-trial-impressive-results-01e1e9ca/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/first-steps-as-a-manager-a-small-trial-impressive-results-01e1e9ca.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AQZjhuAr6ZxSRX94XwELWA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%88%9D%E5%81%9A%E4%B8%BB%E7%AE%A1-%E5%B0%8F%E8%AF%95%E7%89%9B%E5%88%80-%E4%B8%9A%E7%BB%A9%E5%93%8D%E5%BD%93%E5%BD%93-01e1e9ca.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/first-steps-as-a-manager-a-small-trial-impressive-results-01e1e9ca/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# First Steps as a Manager: A Small Trial, Impressive Results

> In June 2014, the company insisted I develop the catering channel for herbal tea, and after a month of being a scapegoat, I resigned. By September, the manufacturer had replaced the distributor in B county of A city with a dealer, and a friend of mine took over. After several managers failed to improve performance in four months, he asked me to help. In the first month, I followed the sales routes daily, observing and analyzing, but didn't participate in negotiations. After receiving my salary, I presented my analysis and strategy, focusing on a single product (large peanut milk) for the wedding banquet season, adjusting policies to undercut competitors, and successfully boosting sales by 120,000 yuan, making it the top-selling product in the region. In December, I organized a large order conference, leveraging the manufacturer's additional channel funds, achieving 600,000 yuan in sales, six times the previous period, and causing the main competitor's sales to plummet by two-thirds.

In June 2014, the company insisted I develop the catering channel for herbal tea, and after a month of being a scapegoat, I chose to resign. Time flew to September. Because B county in A city was performing poorly, the manufacturer cut off the distributor and replaced them with a dealer. Now, a dealer brother went over to become the dealer. Several managers had been changed, but after four months, performance showed no improvement, and the market didn't get better either. I had some contact with this guy before, and he seemed decent. He found me, and since I wasn't doing anything, I went over to help.

In the first month, I followed the sales routes every day. In the urban area, I observed store product assortments, business negotiation methods, and store attitudes... to judge customer quality and make statistics. In the countryside, I focused on understanding key accounts and estimating market capacity for various products, but I never participated in closing deals! In the first month, I "did nothing" and didn't report any "battle results." The boss only saw me staying up late every day, organizing a lot of notes! He didn't ask me anything and gave me a salary of 3,000 yuan. Actually, he probably was willing to spend that little money hoping I'd create another miracle.

After receiving the salary, I had to deliver results. The next day, I discussed with the boss and reported my analysis.

Step 1: Establish a foothold. Develop channels + generate sales.
Step 2: Make a specific product the core product for the coming year, concentrate all human, material, and financial resources to build it into a profit and volume product, gain market initiative, and truly establish ourselves.

Specific analysis:
Entering winter, there are many banquets, which is the peak season for peanut milk, and the market capacity is staggering. Abandon the traditional competition in winter gift boxes and focus on the banquet product: large peanut milk.

Specific actions: Adjust policies, significantly adjust the policy for key accounts ordering 100 pieces, with the post-policy price at 43.85, 5 yuan lower than the main competitor and 1 yuan lower than parallel imports. Use this product to attack key accounts in wholesale and banquets, opening up channels. Don't worry about the rest; expand after the channels are open. Monthly goal: close deals with 80% of key accounts, out of 38 key accounts, hopefully 30, totaling 3,600 pieces, aiming to achieve 150,000 yuan in sales on this single product. Opening up wholesale and banquet channels lays a foundation for the Tetra Pak Spring Festival gift boxes; at the same time, the manufacturer will take better care of us and approve more channel expenses.

The dealer followed my deployment.

Salespeople focused, with 80% of their energy on key accounts + low prices, and things went smoothly. This single product sold nearly 4,000 pieces, and other shipments gradually increased steadily without decline. The dealer's anxious heart finally settled! Although he didn't make much money, it was better than losing money before. With channels and sales up, there are many vertical expansions possible in the future! Overall, it was good, with sales increasing by 120,000 yuan. This wasn't a big deal, but suddenly the per capita sales of large peanut milk surged to first place in the region. The boss still had a gross profit of 5 yuan per piece.

In the blink of an eye, the third month was December, and this month was mainly about organizing an order conference. The manufacturer, under the guise of commendation, approved an additional 10 percentage points of channel expenses! We played big, directly putting the policy for 500 pieces at 41. The order conference, combined with Tetra Pak, pushed performance to 600,000 yuan, six times the sales of the same period. The main competitor's sales on this product directly plummeted by two-thirds, and by April of the following year, they were loaded onto trains and transferred to other regions for sale. This established the foundation of trust in me, allowing me to do more seemingly rule-breaking things!

-END-

The best FMCG dealer learning platform in China
Focusing on providing professional, practical, and actionable tutorials for enterprises and dealers
Committed to helping Chinese FMCG dealers grow rapidly
**The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry**
Reply with the red number below to get the corresponding content
Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base
| **001** Excellent article selection | **002** Dealer market operations | **003** Terminal visit management | **004** Sales supervisor skills | **005** Sales improvement techniques | **006** Channel expansion | **007** Managing dealers | **008** Dealer development | **009** Dealer internal operations management | **010** Team management | **011** Efficient distribution techniques | **012** Sales manager's eighteen skills | **013** KA operation methods and strategies | **014** First lesson for new salespeople | **015** Internet, brands | **016** Dealer B2B transformation |
[Long press QR code to follow]


---

## 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