---
title: "From a Mom-and-Pop Shop to a Hundred-Person Team: How Can Distributors Maximize Their Team's Strengths?"
description: "Most 'outstanding people' are not generalists but specialists. During market research for a multi-billion-dollar company, the author visited distributors in several provinces and found that many had grown from small family operations into large teams. This article shares insights on evolving from a 'gang' to a 'team' to an 'organization,' effective motivation strategies, and how to maximize team strengths."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2023-06-26"
language: "en"
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# From a Mom-and-Pop Shop to a Hundred-Person Team: How Can Distributors Maximize Their Team's Strengths?

> Most 'outstanding people' are not generalists but specialists. During market research for a multi-billion-dollar company, the author visited distributors in several provinces and found that many had grown from small family operations into large teams. This article shares insights on evolving from a 'gang' to a 'team' to an 'organization,' effective motivation strategies, and how to maximize team strengths.

**Introduction: Most 'outstanding people' are not generalists but specialists.**

**Author** | Hai You
**Review** | Gou Gou
**Layout** | He Wen

In May and June, while conducting market research for a multi-billion-dollar company, I visited markets in Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Shaanxi, and Jiangxi. One part of the research involved in-depth interviews with distributor owners and their professional managers. Among the more than ten distributors visited, many were top-ten clients of the company with annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan. But they were once very small, mostly starting from scratch, growing step by step from a mom-and-pop operation to a team of over a hundred people. All their management experience comes from practice, forming a unique and efficient system. Here, I share what I saw and heard.

**From a 'Gang' to a 'Team' to an 'Organization': Step-by-Step Development**

Speaking of gangs, teams, and organizations, one distributor had great insights, explaining in detail from his entrepreneurial experience. It makes a lot of sense and is worth learning from for many FMCG manufacturers and entrepreneurs.

**The so-called 'gang'** refers to the initial stage of entrepreneurship when a few people come together for a common belief to do things. This belief can be short-term money-making or a long-term career. One thing to emphasize: the belief must be highly recognized internally. This is the driving force for the project. There are not many rules and regulations, nor much mature management experience. Relying on this belief, everyone strives 'by any means,' pushing the company forward.

**The so-called 'team'** is the standardized and upgraded version of the gang. As the team grows and members increase, full flatness is no longer suitable. Two or three levels of management emerge, requiring processes and systems for support and constraint. At this time, there will be a major divergence in business thinking: the founding team knows the early hardships and the difficulty of today's achievements, so they may be cautious in operations, belonging to the conservative faction. Later-joining members are bold and daring, belonging to the open faction. The two will clash in thinking, and management styles will differ greatly. Therefore, processes and systems are needed to regulate, constrain, and collide with each other, driving the company's development.

**The so-called 'organization'** means giving corporate culture on the basis of the team. When there are many team members, culture is needed for self-regulation. You will find that the more team members, the higher the demand for personalized management. You can't keep increasing reward and punishment systems. Also, the team needs different types of members, such as the hardworking 'old ox' type who are continuous strivers, and the indomitable 'little strong' who are self-reliant pioneers. The underlying logic of managing these members is different. At this time, the value of corporate culture under common cognition will play the greatest role: first self-regulation, then institutional rewards and punishments.

**Summary:** Gang, team, and organization are inevitable stages in the development of an entrepreneurial team. I believe in the saying: Time can be compressed, but history cannot. That is, you can shorten the time of each stage of team development, but you cannot force it prematurely. If you forcibly add processes and systems to a gang in the early stage, it will inevitably cause chaos and unrest.

**How to Achieve Effective Motivation?**

My view is: without cost awareness and people-oriented principles, team motivation is a very easy thing. The biggest difficulties in incentive design are two:

1. Clarifying the logic of incentives;
2. Improving the effectiveness of incentives.

**1. Clarify the logic of incentives:** First, implement the principle of 'transform management into incentives!' That is, goal-oriented. Design corresponding incentives so that every 'action' of frontline staff is related to their own interests. Only then can the eight-step visit truly be implemented. If you want employees to do something, your management must match with corresponding incentives. The core reason employees don't act is whether it relates to their immediate interests. Compared to acting, employees prefer to talk. This is easy to understand: for example, if you want employees to pay attention to product age management, carry out periodic channel age freshness PK incentives. Where the incentive is, there the employees' attention will be.

Second, incentives must grasp employees' inner needs, find their pain points, link needs with pain points, truly stimulate employees, and satisfy them in appropriate ways. Otherwise, it is not effective motivation. A trading company designed an incentive for its sales champion like this: they learned that the champion had always wanted to take his family to the seaside for a vacation. He had no problem with travel expenses, mainly lacked time. So they set a plan: if quarterly performance reaches a certain level, reward him with 5 days of paid leave and reimburse family round-trip transportation costs.

**2. Improve the effectiveness of incentives:** A distributor recalled his incentive iteration journey. When the average monthly salary was 5,000 yuan, a 500 yuan incentive worked well; employees would give 100% effort because the incentive accounted for 10% of their income. When the average income reached 10,000 yuan, a 500 yuan incentive seemed ineffective for high-paid employees. It seemed like incentives hit a dead end: too low is ineffective, too high is costly, and giving money doesn't solve the problem. We must find a way to break the deadlock.

**To motivate employees, you must understand their motives or needs.** First, clarify two basic questions: one, there are no identical employees; two, at different stages, employees have different needs. The same money has different value to employees with different incomes. Also, for some people, money is always extremely important, while for others, it is never that important. So when setting incentive plans, you don't have to focus solely on money. You can also consider:

**a. Respect incentives:** Gain praise from colleagues and leaders by achieving targets.
**b. Position incentives:** Gain promotions by achieving targets.
**c. Training incentives:** Gain opportunities for further training by achieving targets.
**d. Spiritual incentives:** Gain honor certificates and industry recognition by achieving targets.
**e. Travel incentives:** Gain a chance to travel with family by achieving targets, which is both a reward and can increase family members' support for the employee's work.

This reminds me of a quote from Mr. Liu Run: In the 1920s, the U.S. National Science Council conducted an experiment at the Hawthorne plant. To study the relationship between working conditions and productivity, researchers constantly changed lighting, wages, rest times, lunch, etc. But no matter how external factors changed, the productivity of the subjects kept improving. The results were not as expected. Why? Researchers found: **The increase in worker productivity was not due to external conditions, but because they were given a special identity. During the study, they were respected, and their suggestions were adopted.** Therefore, their motivation to work increased.

Why does productivity increase when people are happy? The book *The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization* concludes that many employees are social beings rather than economic beings. Economic beings are rational; they work to meet survival and safety needs, to earn money. Social beings are emotional; money is not the only purpose of work, but also the need for self-realization and social relationships. Like the Hawthorne workers, when you give attention, understanding, and respect, they are more willing to work for you.

**How to Maximize Team Strengths?**

**1. First, I want to talk about the short-board principle and the long-board principle.**

The 'short-board principle' is a well-known theory: a wooden barrel is made of several planks, and the shortest plank determines its water capacity. This means the upper limit of a team's comprehensive ability depends on its shortest board. The 'long-board principle' offers another way of thinking: even if other planks are short, if one plank is very long, you can tilt the barrel and fill it with enough water.

**How can distributors maximize their team's strengths?** One distributor answered: In the early stage of entrepreneurship, when competing fiercely with main rivals, your shortcomings easily become targets for opponents. A thousand-mile dike collapses due to an ant hole. So they spent great effort to improve the weaknesses of employees in each position, making them 'all-around soldiers.' But the actual effect was not as expected; individuals differ, and the value and effect of training differ. Rather than having the team strive in areas they are not good at, it is better to fully leverage their strengths. Those good at developing new stores focus on development; those good at maintenance focus on maintenance; those good at communication, the so-called 'social butterflies,' focus on consumer communication. In a highly specialized modern society, most people only undertake part of the work, and their effort level is far from reaching the point of discussing the shortest board (talent ceiling). There are 360 trades, and each has its master. **Most 'outstanding people' are not generalists but specialists.**

**For business, in the period of intense market competition, distributors need 'specialists' in each operational segment.**

**2. Flat organizations can also be achieved this way.**

A flat organizational structure is not just about reducing management levels! No matter the management system, with continuous technological progress and changes in information exchange and command coordination systems, it will gradually move toward a flat organizational structure. The benefits of flat structure are obvious: after reducing management levels, there is greater market sensitivity, faster response, quicker decision-making, and smoother information flow. The drawbacks are also clear: typical is that grassroots employees find it hard to 'get ahead.' After working in one position for a long time and becoming skilled, they lack novelty and eventually choose to leave.

We all understand the principle, but how to solve it? Knowing is easy, doing is hard! Many trading companies have their own methods. Management positions are divided into two types: one is the full-time management post, which belongs to the company's senior management, performing only management functions. The other is the non-full-time management post, which belongs to the middle and lower management, with management functions and also their own area to visit and serve (needing to adjust the time conflict between visiting service and management). This not only retains the benefits of a flat structure but also solves the problem of grassroots employees finding it hard to 'get ahead,' killing two birds with one stone.

**Final Thoughts:** I just want to say one thing: no matter what confusion you encounter, go to the market and talk to distributors. Even if it doesn't solve the problem immediately, it will definitely give you enlightening inspiration.

**Further Reading**


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