---
title: "Four Steps for Distributors to Move Beyond the Family Model"
description: "The biggest obstacle to a distributor's development is upgrading its management model; without a good management model, the distributor will encounter more bottlenecks. Family-style management is the biggest obstacle in the development of distributors. How to break through family-style management has become a problem that distributors must face to grow bigger and stronger. Many distributors start as a husband-and-wife shop, and as the business grows, they begin to bring in relatives. So when the company develops to a certain extent, the distributor's company falls into a family management model where the wife manages finances, the uncle manages the warehouse, and the nephew manages the business."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-07-06"
language: "en"
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# Four Steps for Distributors to Move Beyond the Family Model

> The biggest obstacle to a distributor's development is upgrading its management model; without a good management model, the distributor will encounter more bottlenecks. Family-style management is the biggest obstacle in the development of distributors. How to break through family-style management has become a problem that distributors must face to grow bigger and stronger. Many distributors start as a husband-and-wife shop, and as the business grows, they begin to bring in relatives. So when the company develops to a certain extent, the distributor's company falls into a family management model where the wife manages finances, the uncle manages the warehouse, and the nephew manages the business.

The biggest obstacle in the development of distributors is the upgrade of the management model. Without a good management model, distributors will only encounter more bottlenecks in their development. Family-style management is the biggest obstacle in the development of distributors. How to break through family-style management has become a problem that distributors must face to grow bigger and stronger.
Many distributors start as a husband-and-wife shop. As the business grows, they begin to bring in relatives. So when the company develops to a certain extent, the distributor's company falls into a family management model where the wife manages finances, the uncle manages the warehouse, and the nephew manages the business. In the early stages of development, family management can increase the company's cohesion and alleviate the problem of talent shortage. However, the drawbacks of family management are also numerous.
First, family management affects the cultivation of talent in the distributor's company. As the company grows, it needs more talent. Even if all the relatives are hired, it may not be enough, so the distributor's growth still relies on external talent. But the family management model easily makes employees feel a lack of belonging and loyalty, so it is difficult for the distributor to retain the people they recruit. When new employees enter the company, the first people they see are the boss's uncle and nephew. What they hear most is old employees talking about who is the boss's uncle, what kind of person he is, what he did today, and so on. Their first impression of the company is that it is a family company, not very formal, and they lose hope for their future in the company, let alone loyalty.
Second, family management is not conducive to forming a modern management mechanism. In family management, a few relatives get together to discuss, and basically the company's affairs are decided, with great arbitrariness. In addition, relatives often do not have clear division of labor; whoever sees something they don't like will manage it, and employees don't know who to listen to. This causes confusion in management.
Finally, family management is not conducive to the long-term development of the company. As the company grows, the founding members are almost all relatives of the boss, and disagreements over profit distribution are inevitable. Mr. Li, the boss of Shanxi Jinxin Trading, said that when his company was first established, it was only him, his wife, and his wife's younger brother. As the company grew, more relatives came to help.
At first, everyone worked together with the company's overall interests in mind, but as they made more money, the relationships among relatives deteriorated. They often sulked over small matters, affecting the company's normal operations. Finally, they even came to blows over conflicts of interest. Since they were all relatives, he couldn't show favoritism, so he had to tactfully persuade the relatives to leave. But after these people left, the company's normal business was affected, and the customer relationships built up over time had to start from scratch. The company's performance has not improved since, and this is largely related to that.
It is important to break away from the family model early, prepare early, and act early. In the early stages of entrepreneurship, the family model is conducive to the rapid development of the distributor, but the boss must realize that this development model is only suitable for the startup phase. Long-term development must rely on professional management and sound systems. Therefore, when planning to break away from family management, distributors should think about solutions early; waiting until problems arise to solve them may be too late.
Distributors should have a preliminary vision for their company's development and formulate a long-term development plan. For example, regarding business expansion, does the distributor want to become a professional distributor, transform into a manufacturer, or do channel sinking and become a terminal operator? Only by clarifying the development direction can issues such as company systems, management, and department setup be more targeted. In addition, distributors can also assess employees, especially their "relatives group," to give them a suitable position in the company's future. Breaking away from the family management model can be approached from the following four aspects.
Establish a talent cultivation mechanism
Distributors must realize that relying on relatives for help is only temporary; the long-term development of the company must rely on external talent. More external talent first meets the company's long-term development needs for talent, and on the other hand, it introduces a competitive mechanism, putting pressure on old employees and relatives, letting them know that there are always better people. This requires distributors to establish a reasonable talent cultivation mechanism from the beginning.
Now many distributors like to use the model of old employees mentoring new employees to cultivate newcomers. This can help new employees become familiar with business faster, but the drawbacks are also obvious. Old employees, for their own interests, will hold back, limiting the growth of new employees, and even causing them to resign because they find it hard to integrate into the company. In addition, if the company is under family management, family members may even use newcomers to form cliques, affecting company unity. Therefore, distributors must understand that training for new employees is necessary. Through training, the company culture must be instilled in new employees, making them understand that they work for the company, not for an individual.
The most lacking position in a distributor's company is salespeople. Whether they can find good salespeople will, to a certain extent, determine the distributor's business performance. Distributor salespeople are quite hardworking, often running around, which is also the main reason why distributors cannot recruit salespeople now. In the startup phase, the distributor's employees are all relatives. At that time, for the company's business, everyone could unite and work hard. But as the company's business expands, these relatives who used to run business have been promoted to leaders, and they all bring their own apprentices to run business. But people inevitably have selfish motives; they think it's enough if they can make money, so they don't want to spend too much effort cultivating their newcomers. This is also the main reason why newcomers in distributor companies find it hard to grow. Distributors might want to find ways to motivate old employees to cultivate newcomers, for example, by including the performance of newcomers in the assessment of old employees.
In addition, after newcomers grow, distributors should be willing to promote them, appoint people by merit, and give later employees full room to develop.
Institutionalized management, strict implementation, and the boss's word is law
To prevent the drawbacks of family management, many bosses have formulated detailed rules and regulations, but having rules and regulations is difficult to implement, making them a dead letter. Therefore, the distributor boss must be resolute in implementing the rules, fair and just, and treat family members equally.
Hire professional managers and dare to delegate power
Modern enterprise management is no longer the era where the boss handles everything personally. As the company's business expands, the various cumbersome affairs make bosses overwhelmed, taking care of one thing and forgetting another, exhausting themselves and still not covering everything. Therefore, when a distributor's company reaches a certain stage, appropriately delegating power and hiring professional managers to help manage the company is an inevitable trend. Delegating power is also an important step for the company to break away from the family model.
But the problem faced when hiring professional managers is how to handle the relationship between the boss and the professional manager. Many trading company bosses have hired professional managers, but the company's veterans and the boss's "relatives group" are not receptive to the professional manager, making it difficult to implement the manager's decisions, which has the opposite effect. Therefore, after finding a professional manager, the distributor should not rush to authorize, but first let the manager gradually integrate into the company, giving him time to adapt and understand the company, and also giving employees time to adapt to the manager. Then gradually reform, authorize step by step, and achieve the goal of full delegation.
Tailor to individual circumstances and find a way out for the "relatives group"
After the distributor's company has a sound system, how to properly arrange the "relatives group" is what really gives the boss a headache. This requires the distributor to have a basic understanding of the personal abilities and character of relatives, and find suitable ways out for these "relatives group."
For those relatives who have outstanding business ability but are difficult to manage, they can be given the opportunity to leave the company and start their own business, for example, developing the relative into a second-tier distributor, letting him be his own boss. This not only helps prevent him from relying on his ability, not obeying management, and affecting company unity, but also enhances the distributor's control over the second-tier market.
For family members with relatively less outstanding abilities, they can be given some positions that are not important but that the boss is not at ease to entrust to others, such as warehouse management, distribution management, etc.
For those relatives who have formed a negative influence in the company but are embarrassed to dismiss, the distributor boss can let them buy shares, and at the cost of shares, let these difficult-to-handle relatives leave the company to make their own living. This way, the distributor can avoid being in an awkward position and is also conducive to the company's development.
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