“Business is tough now; upstream manufacturers' targets increase year by year, but downstream customers can't move goods. I don't know how long this consumption situation will last!” Last week, the author followed several FMCG salespeople on field visits to dozens of terminal stores, and on the way, salesperson Sister Liu lamented this. In the distributor team, salespeople are not only the vanguard of sales but also direct observers of market dynamics, and their feelings directly reflect the market's temperature. This article will start from the perspective of distributor salespeople, go deep into the frontline, analyze the internal and external factors causing their anxiety, and restore the true face of the market. A Day in the Life of a Frontline Salesperson Composed of Countless “Small Episodes” At 8 a.m., after the morning meeting, salesperson Sister Liu began preparing the materials needed for visits. At 9 a.m., I started the market visit with Sister Liu. Upon arriving at the store, after greeting the owner, the first task was to check the display, organize the products, and set up promotional materials. Handle inventory based on product sell-through. Since the company uses a visit-order system, once a shortage is found, an order must be placed immediately in the mobile system to ensure the delivery person can replenish and shelve products the next day. Next is promoting new products. Sister Liu told us that she usually selects new products suitable for the store based on location, customer profile, etc., and recommends appropriate display positions to the store owner based on product characteristics. For example, in community supermarkets, Sister Liu focuses on recommending the company's new products to small store owners. A single cheese stick from a leading brand, unlike the bagged version, is placed at the checkout counter to attract parents and children's attention. It's not expensive and has brand endorsement, so they often buy one on impulse. This job may seem simple and repetitive, but in reality, besides these standardized in-store actions, there are many unplanned things. For instance: When encountering near-expiry products, Sister Liu first negotiates with the store owner and adopts promotional tactics, such as buy-one-get-one-free, and uses the promotional tape she carries to bundle two near-expiry items together and place them in a prominent promotional area. If the store has a promotional group-buying group, she also mobilizes the owner to help promote, using community power to speed up clearing stock. As for products that indeed need to be returned or exchanged, she packs them on the spot so the delivery person can pick them up the next day. Besides product scheduling, unexpected situations at the store are also common. For example, a store adjusted its overall layout but didn't inform the salesperson to rearrange the display. Products were piled randomly, and different production dates were mixed. Helplessly, Sister Liu had to redo the entire shelf and check product expiration dates one by one. When leaving, Sister Liu looked at the time and said, “Visiting this store took 2 hours. In this situation, visiting 15 stores a day is the limit.” However, just after handling this store, the phone rang again. A newly opened store owner reported that the delivery person left after dropping off the goods without shelving the products or informing the prices. Sister Liu had to apologize and urgently coordinate to resolve it... These customer complaints caused by poor coordination undoubtedly harm terminal customer relationships. In Sister Liu's words, basically every day is non-stop. Although the company arranges sufficient lunch breaks, in reality, to complete visit tasks, apart from lunch time, they are either busy in the store or on the way to the next store. But now the market environment is not optimistic, and the assigned areas generally have low purchasing power. Working diligently for a month, effort and reward are hard to match. Shelf War: A Battlefield Without Smoke During the visit, Sister Liu mentioned that now they not only have to do their own work well but also constantly compete with competitors. During this visit, the author witnessed several such intense competition examples. Sister Liu entered the store and, as usual, found the shelf where her products were placed, but discovered that the shelf for which display fees had already been paid was occupied by competing products, while her own products were either squeezed into a corner or stacked high at the top, where consumers wouldn't notice them. When asking the small store owner, the answer was invariably: “It wasn't me; it must have been the salesperson from brand X who came and arranged it.” Facing competitors occupying the shelf, Sister Liu, though angry, had to remain calm and professional, readjusting the product layout to ensure proper display of her products. The competing products that originally occupied the shelf couldn't be piled randomly; they had to be relocated to another spot. As for the reason, Sister Liu said: “If the conflict escalates, it's hard to resolve. We need to have 'martial ethics,' and for the sake of shopping experience, we must keep the shelf clean and orderly, maintaining the overall display effect of the store.” After all this, not only emotions but also a lot of time and energy were consumed. Sister Liu told the author, “Such 'invisible wars' happen from time to time, especially in the current low-consumption market environment. Competition is no longer just around a certain terminal customer but has further refined to the fight for limited shelf space.” Order Shrinkage: Survival Difficulties and Challenges for Stores In the area Sister Liu is responsible for, the intensity of competition among retail stores is evident. The author observed that on a single street, there are four community supermarkets, one convenience store, and around the corner, a new flash warehouse. Direct competitors are within a hundred meters, and all are struggling to survive. “Now customers are tightening their wallets. They can't cut back on daily necessities, so they reduce spending on snacks and drinks. Store order sales have nearly halved compared to a few years ago.” Sister Liu knows well that consumers' wallets directly affect the survival of small businesses. “Many small stores can't make ends meet, can't pay rent, and closures are everywhere.” This also intensifies Sister Liu's anxiety as a frontline market person. However, the order crisis for terminal stores is not entirely external; it's a mix of internal and external factors. On one hand, the economy is down, consumer behavior has changed, and they are more careful with non-essential spending; on the other hand, poor internal store management, such as messy product labels, unclean environment, and unreasonable traffic flow design, also weakens the store's competitiveness. Over time, store sales decline, and cost control becomes more important. But distributors do agency business and need to maintain brand price systems. Store owners can't get low prices, so they start exploring more low-cost procurement channels. For example, on e-commerce channels, a certain product costs 5.5 yuan from the distributor, but online ordering is only 5.1 yuan. Sister Liu told the author, “In the past, online orders had no after-sales, so our competitiveness was relatively high. But now e-commerce also has after-sales, and sometimes returns aren't even needed; just destroy the product, which further impacts the traditional distribution system.” “A couple of days ago, the owner of the store I frequent told me that e-commerce was having promotions with lots of coupon subsidies, and he planned to replenish some stock online. So, my order flew away.” Even when restocking is needed, stores repeatedly emphasize only shelving, not stocking up. Even bestsellers like potato chips follow the principle of light replenishment, ordering in small quantities of 3 or 5 packs. The author asked Sister Liu and learned that not only do products in circulation stores need to be cut open, but some products in supermarket systems and modern outlets are also required by managers to be cut open and replenished less. “That's not all. To survive, some store owners have to shrink their store space. Previously connected storefronts are now walled off to save rent. Some stores just pull down the rolling shutter, run away with debts, and don't reply to WeChat messages. Payment collection is nowhere in sight.” Market Downturn: Previous Strategies Have Failed The current offline consumer market can be aptly described as “sluggish.” During the field visit, the author observed that few customers entered circulation stores, and most only headed for the fresh produce section. Products on shelves didn't move for a long time, even accumulating dust. “This year feels especially hard. In over a decade of running the store, I've never seen this,” a small store owner sighed. “Before, no matter what goods, they'd sell a bit soon after being shelved. Now, except for a few classic bestsellers, other products show no obvious change even after half a month on the shelf.” Sister Liu nodded in agreement, “In the past, Children's Day was a small sales peak, but this year's market is strange. Children's Day has passed, and the goods are still the same. I hoped to use holiday promotions to clear some near-expiry products, but that didn't work either. In the end, I had to choose to transfer or return goods.” “Some stores even have to take back bulk goods counters; the invested costs are like stones sinking into the sea.” In deep conversation with Sister Liu, she mentioned that now most stores have increasing demand for stock transfers and returns. Taking herself as an example, last month the return rate for a certain product was as high as 9%. One reason is the overall decline in purchasing power, weakening customers' willingness to buy, and slowing store sell-through. Another is that manufacturers ship late. By the time products arrive at the distributor's warehouse, a significant portion of the shelf life has already been consumed. The time window for distributors and terminal stores to sell is greatly compressed. Sister Liu said, “As long as the product's shelf life is not past half, we accept it into the warehouse.” Market downturn is both a challenge and an opportunity for industry reshuffling. We often hear the saying, “The only constant in the world is change.” The market is always changing; what we can do is adapt and evolve. Here, we also look forward to all practitioners moving from anxiety to determination, from passive response to active breakthrough, and ushering in the next spring of the consumer market. August 20-22, 2024, the “2024 6th China FMCG Conference” with the theme “Crossing the Shrinking Era” will be held grandly in Shanghai.**** ****Recommended Reading