In the FMCG business, offline channels remain the focus of sales. Why do many good brands, products, ideas, and marketing strategies fail to achieve perfect results? The reason is simple: the channel chain is not connected, and disconnection leads to pain. Offline channel chain: brand owner - distributor - salesperson - outlet - consumer. If one link has a problem, the whole cannot operate efficiently. Without a good distributor, delivery (funds, warehousing, capability, willingness) has issues; without good salespeople, market execution has issues; without high-quality and high-quantity outlets, the "place" in the people-goods-place framework has issues; without good promotional staff, the experience scenario has issues. Therefore, brand owners with good offline sales must have upgraded and perfected their channel chain to match their own development. Step 1 in optimizing the channel chain: Empowering distributors If a market invests 100 yuan, a distributor with strong operational capability can generate 1,000 yuan, while a weak one can only generate 200 yuan. A distributor with strong willingness will invest an additional 20 yuan, totaling 120 yuan to cope with fierce market competition, while a weak-willed one will first turn the 20 yuan into profit, leaving 80 yuan to face competition. With the same 100 yuan investment, results are vastly different, so distributors need empowerment in both capability and willingness. 1. Capability empowerment falls into three categories. Category 1: Business operational capability. This includes: the distributor's total business scale, achievement rate of performance targets, coverage rate of resource outlets, 24-hour delivery rate, coverage rate of key products, and channel age compliance rate. Category 2: Hardware configuration capability. This includes: vehicle (business) configuration, free operating funds, warehouse configuration and management systems, and war room configuration. Category 3: Organizational management capability. This includes: team tenure and construction, distributor organizational structure, operational management systems, numerical distribution rate, weighted distribution rate, and shelf-facing distribution rate performance. 2. Willingness empowerment falls into five categories. Category 1: Brand business operation status Category 2: Brand reputation and word-of-mouth Category 3: Brand loyalty Category 4: Willingness to learn and develop with the brand owner Category 5: Cooperation in policy execution and other matters The era of "one trick works everywhere" is long over. It is recommended that brand owners: Do not use a one-size-fits-all approach for strategy and tactics. Classify distributors for empowerment, and turn the models of valuing, supporting, assisting, and eliminating distributors into daily marketing tactics. Only then can you resonate and maximize the value of both manufacturer and distributor. Step 2 in optimizing the channel chain: Team empowerment I believe team empowerment should start from four aspects. First, empower the grassroots channel management team. This role plays a key part in the quality of a market. Many brand owners recruit a manager for a market, and this person's daily work can be summarized in eight characters: standard, truth, check, and incentive. Its core value is to complete the brand owner's performance targets and assist distributors in organizing and managing grassroots salespeople. If grassroots management has problems, all brand owner strategies are empty talk and will not be implemented. Second, empower the frontline channel operations team. This team's work is more specific, and daily work can be summarized in eight characters: outlets, display, visits, and sell-through. Its core value is the efficient implementation of various operational standards. Then, empower frontline channel promotion staff. This team's target is consumers. Brand communication, trial and experience, and the three scenarios of consumption, transaction, and communication are mainly undertaken by them. Frontline promotion staff are key nodes for consumer interaction and key executors of the trinity of awareness, transaction, and relationship. Finally, empower grassroots social forces in the channel. In the era of involution, strengthening channel competitiveness requires uniting all forces that can be united, including wholesalers, distributors, B2b platform operators, flash warehouses, and community group buying. However, many brand owners seem not to have paid attention to this, or only have "metaphysical" strategies without key "physical" tactics. These forces are either your "friends" or your "enemies," and need empowerment and team building in equal measure. Step 3 in optimizing the channel chain: Outlet empowerment Outlets have four core values: 1. Sales output: This type of store is classified by monthly or quarterly sales. 2. Brand communication: This type of store focuses on building brand image and doing offline brand communication. 3. Profit output: This type of store is used to generate profit. 4. Hitting competitors: This type of store mainly focuses on attacking competitors. At the outlet level, I suggest doing four things well: First, pay attention to numerical distribution rate, i.e., coverage of effective outlets. "Effective" here means salespeople use limited energy to serve valuable outlets, not biting off more than they can chew. Second, pay attention to weighted distribution rate, i.e., high-capacity and high-momentum outlets, striving for in-store sales share to exceed 50%. The 80/20 principle is very practical for sales, and focus becomes prominent. Third, manage outlets by category, usually divided into four types: basic stores, standard stores, NO.1 stores, and core stores. Basic stores are cash machines; controlling more basic stores is the cornerstone for improving sales and brand power. Standard store construction is a magic weapon for effectively improving single-store quality. NO.1 store creation is the trend for grabbing valuable outlets. Core stores are the market high ground, not only enhancing the manufacturer's market position and competitive advantage but also promoting long-term business development and stable growth. Fourth, fully utilize digital tools to comprehensively improve outlet quality. At the display level, I suggest paying attention to guided display and competitive display. What is guided display? In short, it reduces the time consumers spend making purchase decisions in front of the shelf, quickly presenting the product's ability to meet user needs to hesitant consumers. This requires brand owners to guide the design and distributor teams to execute. What is competitive display? An important feature of differentiated products is how to show the uniqueness of your product and its advantages compared to main competitors. This is a key issue for distributor displays. At the visit level, I suggest paying attention to visit efficiency, designing scientific and reasonable visit cycles and routes based on outlet sales level differences, and then scientifically and effectively improving visit success rates and average SKU per visit order. At the sell-through level, I suggest paying attention to trial and experience effects. Many distributors think this is the brand owner's business, and these concepts need to change. Second, pay attention to the organization of promoters, and how to differentiate and improve the efficiency of shopping guides (full-time, part-time, and partner guides) to improve the primary productivity of sell-through. This deserves joint decision-making by manufacturers and distributors. Step 4 in optimizing the channel chain: Promotion empowerment Let me give an example: A ham sausage brand distributor, previously considering labor costs, invested in 20 promotion staff in the area they served. Due to the product's short shelf life, the return rate generally stayed above 8%. Later, they increased the number of promoters to 50, and the short-term return rate dropped below 3%. With continuous optimization, it may reach 1.5%. The loss caused by a 10% return rate versus 1.5% is much higher than the labor cost of 100 people. So how to evaluate the value of promotion? Promoters must fully understand the product's differentiation, usage, purpose, function, value, and benefits to customers, and provide the best advice and help. They are the communicators of information between the enterprise and product and consumers, and also the bridge between the two. Their main value can be summarized in six points: 1. One-on-one influence on consumers, zero-distance communication of product differentiation points, accelerating the process of product entry into consumer needs. 2. New product recommendation, encouraging first purchase through consumer promotions. 3. Cultivating loyal consumers and encouraging repeat purchases. 4. Significantly improving sales performance within a certain period, playing an important role in attacking and suppressing competitors. 5. Reducing product return rates, maintaining fresh shelf life and batch numbers, reducing profit loss while increasing product competitiveness. 6. Improving corporate image and driving sales of other single products. Such an important team, but it has not attracted high attention from manufacturers. The current situation of many brand owners' promotion staff is: 1. They are in a temporary worker state, the team is unstable, and shopping guide abilities are uneven. 2. When the enterprise does not need promotions, original guides may do part-time promotions for competing brands, posing a risk of promotion information leakage. 3. Temporary guides are frequently changed, experience is not accumulated, training costs are high, and there is no brand loyalty. If the promotion team does not change, consumer reach is empty talk.

In Conclusion

I hope that the four major empowerments driving manufacturer and distributor business development are no longer just a slogan. FMCG overcapacity is severe, product homogenization is serious, and competition and involution are inevitable. If you want to carve out a place in the offline market, start clearing the channel chain as soon as possible. Due to space limitations, I will elaborate on these four modules of empowerment at the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference and the 4th China FMCG Hard Discount Conference & the 4th China FMCG Distributor Conference, to be held in Chengdu from March 17-19. Interested brand owners and distributors can come to the scene for in-depth communication with me, to jointly discuss channel changes and business opportunities for manufacturers and distributors in the new environment. If you are interested, don't miss it!** 【New Order · Symbiosis】 The 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference Time: March 17-19, 2025 Location: Chengdu, China