Over 30 industry experts, 100 B2B platform founders, and 800 manufacturer and distributor friends gathered in Fuzhou to discuss the internet transformation of the FMCG industry.
Future-Oriented Direction: Change Your Stride
In the first half of 2014, to help Hengan International Group, the leader in China's tissue and maternal and child hygiene products industry, implement and advance sales management transformation projects in areas such as small-region deep cultivation, balanced development of weak categories, and distributor and team management, my team and I spent a lot of time in Guangdong.
During our time in Guangdong, we were surrounded by sanitary napkins and diapers, and fought side by side with Hengan's sales colleagues. Here are a few points related to this book ("From Trends to Action: New Business Ecology in the Next Decade + Enterprise Transformation and Change Road") to share with you.
First, we might use WeChat for daily sales management, but we may never have thought about optimizing business and sales management processes based on mobile internet.
Like many companies, within Hengan's sales system, numerous WeChat groups were created based on hierarchy, region, category, and channel type. People reported on promotional events, new store expansion, new product entry, order progress, and shared photos of improved displays, or exchanged information on inventory and distributor purchases.
But the problems are obvious: everyone posts photos of well-done terminal displays to solicit praise, lacking before-improvement comparisons or comparisons with strong competitors, and failing to expose poorly performing issues. Faced with data that remains unchanged or even zero day after day, upper management typically just reads reports in WeChat groups without direct follow-up or accountability. Even when mobile phones and WeChat become daily management tools, we might never think of making small improvements and optimizations even in order processing.
For example, instead of having salespeople collect orders all day and then summarize them the next morning at the morning meeting to pass to distributors or sales logistics, they could take a photo of each order and send it to the distributor or sales logistics in real time. Even such a small change can greatly improve the timeliness of terminal delivery and order fulfillment rates.
Second, promotional expenses and materials have never been effectively deployed, but we might never have thought of using mobile phones to solve this problem.
Hengan conducts channel promotions with fixed monthly rates and distributes materials matching new products and terminal promotions. However, due to distributor interception or misuse of funds, delays in activity implementation, or poor communication, some promotional expenses never truly reach second-tier wholesalers and terminal store expansion and shelf placement, and some materials rot in warehouses.
Why can't we extract the mobile numbers of the responsible persons for A, B, C, and D class stores from the database (provided such a database is established), and push relevant channel promotions and material information to corresponding terminal merchants via WeChat or even SMS, which is increasingly less used? Is this difficult? It's something a clerk in an office can handle!
Instead of the old way: printing DM flyers stating "free gift with purchase" activities, relying on sales supervisors to notify each distributor one by one, or having salespeople inform each terminal one by one as they visit. Past facts and experience have already told us this is unreliable.
A small clue reveals the big picture. At this point, I remind everyone of a basic fact: in the increasingly deepening mobile internet era, the barriers created by layers of organizational or channel hierarchies between us and mid- and low-level marketing management personnel scattered across markets, even the lowest-level frontline salespeople, between us and distributors and their sales teams, and between us and the myriad of small and large terminal stores, are no longer insurmountable as before, no longer as distant as "a thousand miles away" from our daily work. Instead, we can now face them "face-to-face" through mobile internet platforms, technologies, and tools.
The era of "the emperor is far away" is over. When we can bring the most remote partners and the lowest-level salespeople almost right in front of us, when we can directly listen to and observe the real situation from the frontline, what we need to do is change our posture, and change it again, in the direction of the future, using future-oriented methods to transform and respond to reality.
Only then can we make ourselves more comfortable in the future.
Go Deeper, Feel Better
Around 2011-2012, when we were serving China's leading health product companies By-Health and Qianlin Great Health, we had in-depth discussions with senior executives like Qianlin's General Manager Yao Zhuangmin on how to convert members held by chain terminal systems into corporate members.
At that time, what we could think of was: first, by sponsoring or helping chain terminal companies conduct health lectures and related services, and through repeated direct contact with terminal members, attract consumers; second, build a matrix to absorb member "fans," converting consumers and terminal members into followers of corporate Weibo and blogs, and obtain purchaser data by entering platforms like Tmall; third, by paying promoters and terminal staff two yuan per consumer information, grasp individual consumer data...
With limited technical means, we simply couldn't think of effective ways to quickly and massively directly grasp consumer data, directly manage and serve consumers, and directly operate on consumers.
But in today's increasingly mature mobile internet technology, if we launch 1 million bottles of liquor (or other products) with QR code labels, we might obtain 500,000 real consumer scans and their data. Of course, the premise is that we give the QR code attractive and sticky content.
Once we have the mobile numbers and WeChat IDs of these 500,000 consumers, we can push targeted precise communications; we can direct them to our WeChat official account, PC or mobile official mall, and on the micro-community developed from the WeChat official account or in specially created WeChat groups, communicate face-to-face with consumers, listen to their suggestions or requirements on product development, packaging, promotions, and other aspects.
Once we obtain consumers' preferences for product categories, price points, purchase quantities, purchase locations, purchase times, and other consumption behavior preferences, we can segment and manage them into smaller niches, and thus tailor specific products and promotional plans for groups of consumers with similar preferences, or even individual consumers.
When we know that 5,000 of our consumers live in a large community in a certain city, we can even specifically target that community and its surrounding retail terminals with specific product categories, carrying out dedicated promotional and marketing activities.
When we can face a large number of consumers directly, we can also bypass distributors, wholesalers, and terminal retail stores to transact directly with them.
These were unimaginable in the past; this is the huge change that will occur in the next decade. From the above, we should know that in the mobile internet era, the corresponding platforms, technologies, and tools have broken traditional barriers, allowing us to directly control the lowest-level frontline salespeople, the most terminal stores, and consumers.
And when we truly achieve these, the impact on product R&D and production, promotion and marketing, distribution channels and terminal stores, corporate organization and business management processes is equally unimaginable, even a disruptive reconstruction.
Now, I want to remind you: stand higher, look farther, be pragmatic and deeper to embrace the future. These are what I strive to present in this book.
The Collective Exercise Team Is Growing: Is There Still a Place for You?
In the early years of the e-commerce wave, there was a widely influential phrase of twelve characters: "Can't see, look down on, can't understand, can't keep up."
"Can't see" means not seeing where the opponent is. Just as Wanda, in commercial real estate, couldn't imagine that its competitor was not other real estate peers but Taobao and the like, and Suning, in home appliance retail, couldn't imagine its biggest rival was not Gome but JD.com, as consumers shifted from traditional offline consumption to online, the competitive landscape twisted, causing many companies to encounter opponents they never thought of or never considered as rivals.
"Look down on" means even if we perceive that a new business species might be our opponent, we rely on our decades of mainstream competitor status, and with the habitual awareness that consumers' past consumption paths and "changing consumption habits is hardest," we look down on opponents that have just shown their potential.
"Can't understand" means not understanding why opponents can become so strong and successful. Outside the new business gameplay reconstructed by e-commerce and the internet, we can't even figure out their business logic and models.
"Can't keep up" means when you can see, look at, understand, and want to enter the track to compete, you find you can't keep up with the leading opponents. Even if you want to catch up or might be able to, you'll find today's threshold is much higher, and even investing several times more than your previous opponents may not guarantee the same success.
At the same time, we also find that as more existing and potential opponents crowd into the track to the future, the track becomes a square, and the transformation and change of companies on the track is like a collective exercise.
But we should remind ourselves: when everyone rushes in because they see, look at, or understand, the dividend period of enterprise transformation disappears, and the collective exercise ranks may become so crowded that you can't squeeze in or find your place.
This is like the earlier e-commerce. When laggards in clothing, department stores, audio-visual books, etc., joined the e-commerce team, they could no longer enjoy the high-speed traffic growth dividends of online shoppers, nor the low-cost traffic conversion dividends experienced by pioneers, and faced higher entry barriers, higher intensity, and higher cost competition.
That is, during this wave of major transformation and change in China's entire business society, transformation itself is a competition. And this competition, as we have perceived and felt confused and anxious about, is more led by the internetization of consumer behavior and the internetization of traditional businesses and enterprises.
In some respects, in the big square and collective exercise team of transformation and change, when and how we enter is crucial. I believe that whether it's what I've seen, participated in, or promoted, or what you've seen, there are already some extremely traditional companies around us that have begun transformation and change in the mobile internet era. Even among distributor groups, which many people consider to have generally poor quality.
Speaking of this, I can't help but think of Distributor Boss Liang I met in Guangyuan, Sichuan. Boss Liang is the local distributor for Liby Group in the daily chemical industry and Hengan International Group in the tissue industry. Perhaps influenced by Hengan equipping its sales team with mobile phones installed with SFA (Sales Force Automation, a sales management software) to manage salespeople and business processes, at the end of 2013, he spent over 100,000 yuan to introduce a "mobile order management system" with similar functions but simplified modules. By fixing salespeople's daily terminal visit routes, making terminal visits and sales processes transparent, making the number of visited terminals and order volumes transparent in real time, and enabling timely warehouse preparation for orders returned to the backend, the daily terminal visit data of his company's dozen or so salespeople more than doubled. As for sales, how much do you think they increased?
You will see more details of Distributor Boss Liang's transformation case in my book ("From Trends to Action: New Business Ecology in the Next Decade + Enterprise Transformation and Change Road"). I won't elaborate here. However, I want to remind everyone: when the "local troops"—distributor groups and some small terminal store owners, whom we consider poorly corporatized—are keeping up with the mobile internet era and starting transformation and change, we are still lost in direction, confused about transformation, puzzled about change, or even lying in the comfortable warm water we're used to, being slow to react or even unaware.
If we are not "dead pigs unafraid of boiling water," we can only become "stupid pigs" scalded by the increasingly boiling water of the mobile internet era, and we won't become the "pigs" that can fly, lifted by the wind of trends.
Now, run, brothers. Even if we are a bit slow, if we can win a little time and space for a running start, it's good, because then we can fly better in the next decade!
Reprint note: This article is originally the preface of Mr. Li Zhengquan's new book "From Trends to Action: New Business Ecology in the Next Decade + Enterprise Transformation and Change Road". During publication, the editor made changes.
New Food Era · New Distribution
—— 2016 China "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum ——
This is a grand event focused on how FMCG industry channels should transform under the general trend of Internet+ transformation
Conference Agenda
08:00-09:00 Registration 09:00-09:05 Host opening 09:05-09:35 2016 China FMCG Industry Trend Analysis Report - Zhao Bo 09:35-10:05 FMCG Enterprise Transformation Strategy and Path - Liu Chunxiong 10:05-10:35 Opportunities and Challenges of FMCG Channel Transformation - Liu Zhao, CEO of Waiqin365 10:35-11:05 Reconstructing Distribution Channel System, Promoting Urban Retail Upgrade - Tian Yuan, General Manager of Alibaba Retail Link Backend 11:05-11:25 Channel Efficiency in the Internet Era - Fu Xiaoyun, Vice President of Benlai Holding 11:25-12:00 Roundtable Forum - Brand Transformation: Improvement vs. Reconstruction? Guests: Liu Zhao, Liu Chunxiong, Fang Gang, Chen Feng, Shi Zhengchuan, Deng Xia 12:00-13:30 Lunch 13:30-13:50 Distributor Transformation: City Distribution Trends - Wang Qi, CEO of Weijie City Distribution 13:50-14:20 Roundtable Forum - Why Distributors Should Do Logistics in Transformation Guests: Zhao Bo, Wang Qi, Liu Zhongmin, Tang Guangliang, Wang Cheng, Sheng Yan 14:20-14:40 How FMCG Enterprises Leverage the Internet to Take Off - Wang Hui, E-commerce Operations Director of Xijiu 14:40-15:00 Detailed Explanation of Zhongshang Huimin's One Machine, Two Wings Strategy - Su Xiaoxin, Vice President of Zhongshang Huimin 15:00-15:20 Category Value and B2B E-commerce Development Strategy - Wang Chaocheng, CEO of Yijiupi 15:20-15:40 Supply Chain Finance as Lubricant for B2B Driving Traditional Business - Chen Xian, CEO of 51 Order 15:40-16:00 Zhanghe Cloud Factory Helps Upgrade FMCG Supply Chain - Yang Lixiang, CEO of Zhanghe Tianxia 16:00-16:30 Integrating Small and Micro Retail, Reconstructing Business Ecology - Miao Dong, Vice President of Quanshi 16:30-16:50 B2B Investment Principles and Ideas - Zhao Mingwei, Vice President of Junlian Capital 17:00-17:30 Roundtable Forum - Who is the King in FMCG B2B Models? Guests: Fu Xiaoyun, Zhuang Jianzhong, Jiang Tao, Zeng Weiqin 17:30-19:30 Dinner
For manufacturer and distributor friends who want to transform, this grand event is not to be missed. Interested friends can long-press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register.
Registration: Long-press the QR code below or click "Read Original"
↓↓↓ Click "Read Original" [Register]