---
title: "FMCG Manufacturers Need More Than Just a System—They Need a Great Coach"
description: "A recent visit to an FMCG brand revealed that while SaaS vendors pitch powerful features, brands often remain confused about their own needs. The article argues that brands require not just a system but a coach who understands their operational pain points, and as dealers increasingly become the end users, vendors must also grasp dealer economics to ensure successful adoption."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-12-31"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FWKFDOMY5idb55RQSSkhKA"
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# FMCG Manufacturers Need More Than Just a System—They Need a Great Coach

> A recent visit to an FMCG brand revealed that while SaaS vendors pitch powerful features, brands often remain confused about their own needs. The article argues that brands require not just a system but a coach who understands their operational pain points, and as dealers increasingly become the end users, vendors must also grasp dealer economics to ensure successful adoption.

Recently, I visited an FMCG brand and sat in on a product presentation by a sales director of a terminal system software company. During the meeting, he held a promotional flyer and fluently introduced the powerful features of his system, firmly believing it would greatly help the brand's channel digitalization.

After about an hour of discussion, the brand's head only sighed and said, "I'm completely confused; almost all SaaS pitches sound the same."

I felt this deal was unlikely to succeed. So what kind of system does a brand actually need? Today, I'll discuss system requirements from the brand's perspective.

**Most brands struggle to articulate their true needs**

System vendors often subjectively tell brands what features they have, but do they understand the brand's real needs? The key issue is that brands themselves don't know what they need.

It's like a patient who feels unwell but doesn't know the cause; the system vendor should act more like a doctor.

Broadly speaking, **the sales department of a brand has only two needs: business growth and personnel efficiency.**

However, specifying how to achieve growth and efficiency is harder to describe. Each brand has its own pain points. Let me give a simple example of a pain point for frontline workers.

Frontline workers mainly focus on execution, which involves outlets, displays, visits, and sales promotion.

**I. What work do brands do around outlets? How can systems address their needs?**

**1. Outlet tiering:** Sales vary; don't treat all equally—support the strong and limit the weak.
**2. Outlet fee rates:** Market budgets are never enough; for over-budget outlets, reallocate resources from high performers to low performers.
**3. Outlet SKUs:** Different products should match different outlets; don't force fit.
**4. Outlet inventory:** Manage stock reasonably; transfer goods internally based on sales trends.
**5. Outlet relationships:** Develop key accounts that serve as sales boosters and competitive intelligence posts.
**6. Outlet quantity and quality:** Core to horizontal and vertical sales growth.

**II. What work do brands do around displays? How can systems address their needs?**

**1. Brand display:**
- Core: Stand alone, undisturbed.
- Conditions: Consumer awareness and brand power in certain regions, channels, or outlets.
- Purchase condition: Consumers have established brand preference and buy by "ordering" their desired brand. If these conditions aren't met, brand display shelves become a product graveyard—uniformity is just self-amusement.

**2. Category display:**
- Core: Leverage strong brands, ride on traffic, find advantages, create competitiveness.
- Conditions: Weak consumer awareness and brand power in certain regions, channels, or outlets.
- Purchase condition: Through strong contrast, highlight product advantages to sway loyal customers of competitors (same price, larger volume, higher alkalinity, plus a "buy one get one" offer).

**Category display is currently the most cost-effective and efficient display method, provided you choose the right benchmark products and use vibrant materials to amplify comparative advantages.**

**III. What work do brands do around visits? How can systems address their needs?**

**1. Regular visits:** Fixed times and routines give store owners a sense of security.
**2. In-depth communication:** Thoroughly explain products and policies to reduce misunderstandings.
**3. Visit frequency:** Base frequency on output, not equal treatment.
**4. Number of visits:** Reasonable, not overly ambitious; plan routes and in-store time.
**5. Visit quality:** Use terminal systems to score visits and focus on key tasks.
**6. Visit success rate:** Focus on closing deals and steadily improve.

**IV. What work do brands do around sales promotion? How can systems address their needs?**

**1. Consumer communication:** Simple content, core message, high-frequency dissemination.
**2. Scenario display:** Give products a soul to escape price wars.
**3. Consumer experience:** Seeing ten times is not as good as doing once; hearing ten times is not as good as giving a sample.

Summary: The above only lists the daily tasks of frontline workers. On the surface, there are four tasks, but each has its imperfections.

Thus, brands' needs are often their biggest confusion. Of course, if they understand their needs, they also know their shortcomings, and improvement can lead to sustained growth.

At this point, brands need not just a good system but, more urgently, an excellent coach based on system services.

The core competitiveness of a good system vendor is deep understanding of brand needs, using technology to solve operational pain points.

**System users are increasingly becoming dealer teams**

China's market is vast, and with rising labor costs, no company can cover channels with its own team alone. Thus, dealers' value is increasing, and they will gradually become direct system users.

In this shift, how much do system vendors know about dealers' businesses? What do dealers care about most? If they can't "read the pulse," users will resist, and adoption will fail.

Essentially, dealers care about three things: **how to make money, how to spend money, and how to improve personnel efficiency.**

**I. How to make money includes four points:**

**1. Adjust channel structure; growth must bring profit.**
Focus resources on high-margin channels to generate more sales, become the NO.1 in that niche, and strive for absolute market share leadership, far ahead of the second.

**2. Adjust product structure, focusing on high margins.**
- Prioritize key high-margin products, increasing their sales share (margins are relative).
- Promote new products: Dealers should understand that brands offer the highest channel margins when launching new products. Though challenging, it's the most profitable time.

**3. Stabilize pricing with an optimal price system and combat cross-region selling.**

**4. Obtain manufacturer rebates, including understanding rebate rules, setting goals, and tracking progress.**

**II. How to spend money includes two points:**

**1. More precise cost investment.** For example, optimize coverage costs: How many people does your business really need? How to optimize?

**2. Minimize operating capital.**
1) Advance market expenses: Simplify reimbursement processes, speed up submission, rely on system data interpretation, and adopt paperless reimbursement.
2) Channel receivables: Aging alerts—collect or limit supply; digitally analyze channel sales and profits to improve cooperation.
3) Adjust inventory structure and improve service levels:
   - Monthly inventory turnover = monthly sales / average monthly inventory; faster turnover means higher efficiency.
   - Monthly inventory turnover days = 30 / monthly turnover; lower days mean lower warehouse costs per unit.

**III. How to improve personnel efficiency includes three points:**

**1. Compensation mechanisms include:**
- Base salary: Quantify attendance beyond just clocking in/out.
- Performance pay: Process indicators for frontline, result indicators for management.
- Team incentives: e.g., market action score breakdown, quantified indicators.
- Benefits: Linked to tenure, performance, etc.

**2. Team cohesion includes:** 360-degree chat-style assessments, scoring on contribution, acquisition, dedication, belonging, development, to reduce turnover.

**3. Organizational performance:** Performance appraisal, team development, organizational expense-to-sales ratio, staffing, work planning, business operations.

Summary: In the future, system payers and users will gradually separate. More brands will pay for terminal systems and let their dealers use them.

Therefore, good system vendors should focus on dealer operations, understand their daily routines, and ensure smooth system adoption.


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