Editor's Note: The continuous decline in offline foot traffic is an indisputable fact. However, this does not mean that offline channels are no longer important or that attention and investment should be reduced. Compared to embracing the endless array of new retail formats, holding the ground of offline channels is more critical in the current volatile market environment. How to hold it? Only through meticulous cultivation and professional management to increase volume and efficiency. To this end, New Distribution, in collaboration with Mr. Cao Yang, former General Manager of Coca-Cola China's Key Account Management Group Channel, has launched a series of content titled "Key Account (KA) Management in Practice," aiming to provide frontline channel managers with a complete methodology for managing offline key accounts in a "chaotic market." This series consists of about 20 issues, and this is the eleventh issue. When it comes to store execution, are you familiar with the following scenario? The director @someone in the work group: Today's store visit found execution issues at XXX store; solve them within 24 hours. In traditional channel outlets, 24 hours may indeed be enough to solve the problem, but in modern trade stores, it may not be resolved quickly. Because in modern channels, many hypermarkets and convenience stores are professional clients, and many issues are related to agreements, processes, and systems, making it difficult to fundamentally resolve them within 24 hours. For example, it is difficult to get a new product listed in a national chain customer within 24 hours, and retail prices are hard to change because customers have strict operational procedures for pricing. So, what you see solved within 24 hours are either minor issues or temporary fixes. Moreover, if subordinates cite these reasons before solving the problem, the boss may think they are making excuses and shirking responsibility. This is a communication skill issue with the boss, not the focus of this article. This article will provide an in-depth understanding of four approaches to solving store execution issues in modern channels. Execution issues are directly related to human factors and capabilities. First, when addressing execution issues, we must first rule out personal factors, mainly personality and temperament. Execution problems caused by personal grudges can be easily solved by replacing the person. For example, whether the customer manager or KA sales representative's personality is suitable for serving the client—if their temperament and personality are not suited for sales, they may never cooperate well with the client during store execution. These personal factors are not within the scope of this discussion; we focus on common, universal problems, which is the focus of this issue. Second, store execution is directly related to team capabilities! For the same store problem, a highly capable customer manager or sales rep can solve it, while a less capable one cannot. Also, what a customer manager cannot solve, a department manager can. To improve capabilities, companies need to provide training and coaching, and on that basis, frontline teams need to continuously improve execution capabilities through deliberate practice! Finally, in actual work, there are a hundred solutions to a hundred execution problems. Due to space limitations, we can only introduce some approaches. You can learn and think, and apply them flexibly according to specific situations. Through years of customer service practice, we have summarized the solutions to execution problems into four parts. 01 The Key to Solving Individual Problems is Communication Many execution issues require customer managers to coordinate with clients, coordinate internally, or have procurement coordinate internally, so communication skills are crucial. In practice, some responsible customer managers and sales reps, in order to solve problems and achieve performance targets, adopt a persistent "nagging" approach with clients—if you don't agree, I'll keep bringing it up, soft and hard, until you agree. Actually, communicating with procurement requires first understanding the client's needs, then combining them with the company's requirements to gain client support to achieve execution goals. Let's take uncovering client needs as an example to introduce four steps to understand client needs. 1. Ask the client questions Use open-ended and closed-ended questions to let the client speak freely, obtaining more information. Open-ended questions allow the client to share the most important information, while closed-ended questions guide the conversation direction. Key point: Let the client talk about what they think is important, rather than making them feel you are deliberately "digging a pit." Through questioning and conversation, make the client feel very comfortable, and the communication appears natural, appropriate, and proper. This questioning skill requires professional training and extensive practice. 2. Listen to the client Listening allows you to find key valuable information from a large amount of information. It is a very important step in uncovering client needs. Mastering listening skills requires a lot of effort. It is best to take notes while listening, as this action easily makes the client feel that you value what they say, and it also accurately records the client's requirements. Key point: Companies with stronger brands are cultivating customer managers to express their own ideas or, bluntly, to preach the company's requirements. Not being willing to listen to the client's thoughts is a common problem that needs to be corrected through professional training and repeated practice. 3. Discuss with the client After obtaining enough client information, you need to discuss the issues the client has raised, sort out the client's information, and gradually find the gap between the client's current situation and expectations—that is, find the client's needs. Key point: Discuss the client's needs from their perspective, and change your speaking habits through role-playing exercises. 4. Confirm needs with the client After the above three steps, you have found the client's needs. Don't forget to confirm with the client. This step is important and prepares for uncovering business opportunities later. So, through the four steps of asking, listening, discussing, and confirming, you can find the client's true needs! Let's highlight the key points: Many customer managers and sales reps only know the company's requirements but are not clear about what the client wants, cannot remember what the store manager wants, and do not know what the procurement manager wants. Once you understand the client's needs clearly, communication becomes much smoother. Then combine the client's needs with the company's needs to solve many execution issues. It must be emphasized that communication skills are not acquired in a day or a month; they require continuous practice and coaching to gradually improve. 02 Regular Business Reviews Are an Effective Method to Institutionalize Problem-Solving We know that some execution issues accumulate for months without resolution, and when they reach a certain level, they erupt as major problems, especially when discovered by senior management, increasing pressure on customer managers and procurement alike. Under heavy pressure, human weaknesses manifest as self-protection, blaming the other side from one's own standpoint! At this point, pressure leads to emotions and conflicts, which are even less conducive to problem-solving. I have seen small issues escalate into confrontations between companies and clients. Is there a way for both the company and the client to resolve execution issues calmly? Ideally, shift the company and client from an adversarial stance to a cooperative one, focusing on sales targets and solving problems together. This professional method is the regular business review, held monthly, quarterly, and annually. How does a business review work? Communication should occur in the month the problem occurs or the following month, allowing both parties to calmly and leisurely solve the problem without arguing over positions or right and wrong, focusing on problem-solving. The business review has the following four steps:

  1. First, both parties prepare the previous month's target achievement, analyzing problems and solutions based on results.
  2. Second, both parties meet to summarize and review the previous month's targets and various indicators, pointing out what each did well and what they did poorly. This exchange of opinions centered on targets is crucial!
  3. Both parties reach a consensus on execution issues that each needs to solve and formulate improvement plans.
  4. Both parties reach a consensus on the next round of promotions and display plans. Let's highlight the key points: In KA management, many methods may seem "simple (low)" and are considered to lack high-end "technical content." But in reality, they are very effective in solving problems. Business reviews can institutionalize the resolution of store execution issues for a single customer manager, and for a group of customer managers, they can scale up to systematically solve store execution issues. 03 Improving Operational Processes is a Systematic Way to Thoroughly Solve Common Problems Anyone who has done store execution knows that store problems pop up every day; after solving one, new ones appear. Problems solved two months ago may recur this month. Why do the same types of problems keep recurring, making customer managers firefighters? One possibility is that the operational process is wrong. Such problems need to be solved from the process perspective. For example, promotional deductions: some promotions use post-supplement pricing. To facilitate and quickly obtain subsidies, customers deduct from the payment for goods, causing discrepancies in the company's financial reconciliation and failure to receive payment, prompting a recommendation to stop shipping immediately. This happens because during promotion negotiations, the process follows the customer's operations, and the company did not confirm and align with the customer's process. Another example: some stores have small-volume but important products, called small-variety items, which are prone to out-of-stocks. There are two situations: one is that the company has stock, but the shelf life exceeds the customer's acceptance period, e.g., warehouse stock is 10 months old, but the customer requires 6 months. Even if delivered, the customer will not accept. The other is that the company warehouse has no stock, so orders cannot be fulfilled. These are warehouse inventory and shelf-life management issues. For small-flavor products with low sales but consumer demand, inventory management is troublesome, and without process and system management, problems arise. This needs to be solved by modifying processes and establishing indicator assessment systems. 04 Improving the Quality of Planning Some execution issues arise from poorly made plans, leading to problems during execution. Improving the quality of plans is key to solving such issues. For example, a promotion starts on September 2nd in 100 stores. Due to insufficient time for preparing promotional gifts, only 60 stores received the gifts by the start date, and the other 40 stores started the promotion two days late. The root cause is that the promotion plan itself did not allocate enough time, and the production time for promotional items had no flexibility, so it had to be delayed. Whether it's a promotion plan, display plan, or execution standard, poor quality can create the "cause" that ultimately leads to the "effect" of execution problems.

In Conclusion:

Execution issues are highly valued by the entire company, from top to bottom. On one hand, they continuously track team execution indicators. If the team doesn't "shout," and costs are insufficient to meet quality assurance, resources are continuously invested.

On the other hand, management does not know the problems frontline teams face in stores or what methods they use to achieve execution indicators. This can easily create management blind spots, and managers must be clearly aware of this!

By using the four approaches to improve execution, namely improving communication efficiency to solve individual problems, institutionalizing problem-solving through business reviews, scaling problem-solving through process improvement, and improving execution levels through better planning quality. Among these four aspects, three methods—communication, business reviews, and planning—require teams to improve skills through coaching, training, and deliberate practice to gradually enhance professional capabilities. What execution issues are you facing? What good solutions do you have? Welcome to join the discussion group to learn and exchange ideas! PS: If you are interested in KA management topics, please long-press to add the enterprise WeChat account, and be sure to note "KA" to apply to join the New Distribution "KA Exchange Group." __