---
title: "High-Quality JBP (Joint Business Plan)"
description: "This article discusses the importance of high-quality Joint Business Plans (JBP) in key account management, emphasizing that JBP is built on a solid foundation of basic management modules. It outlines five stages of team capability development and provides strategies for improving team professionalism and overcoming challenges in implementing JBP."
author: "曹扬Geoffrey Cao"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-05-07"
language: "en"
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---

# High-Quality JBP (Joint Business Plan)

> This article discusses the importance of high-quality Joint Business Plans (JBP) in key account management, emphasizing that JBP is built on a solid foundation of basic management modules. It outlines five stages of team capability development and provides strategies for improving team professionalism and overcoming challenges in implementing JBP.

**Editor's Note:** The continuous decline in offline foot traffic has become an indisputable fact. However, this does not mean that offline channels are no longer important, or that attention and investment can be reduced. Compared to embracing the endless stream of new retail formats, holding the basic market 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 Key Account Management Group Channels at Coca-Cola China, has launched a series of content titled "Key Account (KA) Management Practice," hoping to provide frontline channel managers with a complete methodology for managing offline key accounts in the "chaotic market."** This series consists of about 20 issues in total, and this is the ninth issue, as follows.

In reality, many sales teams and retailers cannot achieve this ideal state. What should be done?

How can customer managers or regional managers use the Joint Business Plan to maximize sales at their current level?

In this article, you will learn:

## 1. Many successful cases prove that a high-level JBP can achieve the goals of both parties, indicating that the key account management system is an effective tool and methodology for business growth.
> ## Why this conclusion?
>
>
>
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> ## The Joint Business Plan, as the jewel in the crown of the key account management system, links multiple modules of the KA management system into a complete operating model. The management system also includes basic parts such as store execution, personnel, and accounts receivable management. Without a solid foundation, there can be no high-quality JBP.

## 2. The level of creating and implementing a Joint Business Plan varies from low to high, from professional to more professional. It is a long-term spiral upward process that takes several years, which complements the capability improvement of the KA team. The team's capability can be judged in five stages. As long as the method is appropriate, sales can be maximized at each corresponding stage.

## 3. Based on the above two characteristics, enterprises can use the process of formulating and implementing a Joint Business Plan to improve team professionalism. For example, they can use a project-based approach for gradual improvement, and the key to driving the team is the boss!

#### **Two Common Situations Faced by Enterprises**
### As mentioned in the opening question, in reality, only a few enterprises and retailers can implement the Joint Business Plan, drive rapid business growth, and achieve a win-win state. Many KA teams often encounter the following two situations.

### **1. The customer does not want to do a Joint Business Plan**
When you tell the buyer that you want to do a JBP, the buyer's response may be:
1) Can you give me the schedule for the promotion two months in advance, or even one month? But you always give it in the last few days. If you can't even do that, what's the use of doing a JBP?
2) You don't ship the goods I ordered, and I can't complete my tasks. Is JBP useful?
3) Let's first clean up the accounts. Our finance department said that if the reconciliation issue is not resolved, we won't discuss anything else.
4) Where is the merchandiser you promised me? When will the support you promised arrive?

The above examples make the enterprise very embarrassed. You want to do a high-end JBP, but many basic business tasks are not done well, so you cannot build the mansion of the Joint Business Plan!

Customers want performance results, not the form of JBP!

Even if a JBP is done, if the most basic tasks such as display plans, promotion schedules, product supply, accounts receivable, and personnel management are not done well, there will be no high-quality JBP!

**The Joint Business Plan emphasizes "joint." First, you must understand customer needs. The above situations show that without meeting the customer's basic needs, JBP is impossible.**

**The customer thinks you are not capable of doing a JBP. To win respect, the best way is to improve your own professionalism!**

**2. The enterprise team is not capable of doing a JBP**
If the retailer agrees to do a Joint Business Plan, can the enterprise do it?

For many sales teams, the answer is: No!

There are two situations here:

**1) The sales team is not prepared.** For example, there is no dedicated team in the organizational structure, execution and planning are still at a preliminary stage, or there is no department specifically for planning and expense management. There are no processes for various customer business requirements, so normal customer business needs cannot be met.

**2) The enterprise internally is not prepared.** For example, there is no customer-centric concept, and non-business departments do not cooperate or support the sales department. The cooperation mentioned here is deep cooperation centered on the customer, such as finance and supply chain departments not having customer-specific assessment indicators and operational processes.

The above lists challenges from both the customer and the enterprise, focusing on one essential issue.

Whether the customer is willing or not, it reflects that the team's professional capability is insufficient, and the team cannot do the Joint Business Plan.

Next, to give everyone an intuitive understanding of the differences in capability levels, let's talk about the different stages of a team's development from junior to senior, and look at the characteristics of the team at each stage.

#### **Five Stages for Judging the Professional Capability of a KA Team**
Since 1995, retailers have started from scratch in mainland China, from the first store, gradually developing. Enterprises' sales teams have also correspondingly separated from the sales team into channel sales teams, KA sales teams, and KA professional system teams.

I define the most junior state, where no one manages and it's a free-range state, as Stage 1, and the Joint Business Plan as Stage 5. From basic to professional, from low to high, I divide it into five stages. This basically reflects the development state of most enterprises.

These five stages are also what I have personally experienced from 1999 to the present. I have seen many KA teams, from formation to growth. Some teams have changed more than ten KA department managers, some teams have declined overall due to the loss of professional talent, and some teams have gradually refined their functions. Each team's development has its own particularities, but when summarized, their development history has universality and commonality. In plain language, this is a necessary stage for the development of a KA team. The division of the five stages has no clear time boundary because each team varies according to the enterprise's situation, and experience is needed to judge which stage the team is in, but the overall trend is highly regular. There are two determining factors for team capability development: one is the internal environment of the enterprise, and the other is the external factors of the customer.

**Stage 1: No dedicated personnel, no professional operational processes**
**Stage Introduction:** This stage is easy to understand. It is the initial stage where there is no dedicated person in charge. Important and unimportant customers are managed together, with route sales representatives providing unified service and visits.

Route sales representatives are not very professional. They can handle traditional grocery stores and distributors, but not professional hypermarkets and supermarkets. They may not even understand the customer's specific terms, such as DM, TG, Retail link, CatMan. Route sales representatives have no resources. Compared to small stores, hypermarkets and supermarkets require high investment for high returns. Without resources, they cannot meet the needs of modern channel customers.

**Development Characteristics:** In terms of time, around before 2000, the vast majority of enterprises did not have dedicated KA management personnel. At that time, hypermarkets and supermarkets were still in the expansion stage, with a limited number of stores, so dedicated teams would not be formed.

**Stage 2: Dedicated personnel, dedicated agreements, route visits, limited number of customers**
**Stage Introduction:** This stage is very common. Many enterprises have dedicated personnel to manage national customers, such as Walmart, Carrefour, China Resources Vanguard, and RT-Mart. The benefit of dedicated personnel is to focus on one or two customers. Since these customers have many stores, high sales volume, and high per-store output, they are enough to cover labor costs.

There are two situations for dedicated personnel: one is a dedicated sales representative, and the other is a dedicated customer specialist or manager. This stage is mainly dominated by dedicated sales representatives. They are responsible for signing agreements with customers, formulating promotion plans, store visits, merchandising execution, orders, and accounts.

**Development Characteristics:** With the emergence of Walmart, Carrefour, China Resources Vanguard, and RT-Mart, customers' per-store sales are very large. For example, a food company can sell up to 300,000-400,000 yuan per month in a single Carrefour store. This stage has entered the dedicated management stage, but the functions of dedicated personnel have not yet been refined. Agreements, plans, and execution are all handled by one person, which is the initial stage of professionalism.

**Stage 3: Professional KA team, dedicated agreements, route visits, route inspections, business reviews**
**Stage Introduction:** In the third stage, there is already a professional KA sales team. Based on the characteristics of hypermarkets, supermarkets, and convenience stores, a route visit and inspection mechanism tailored for modern channel customers has been established.

The inspection mechanism is a distinctive feature. It not only emphasizes execution but also has an inspection system. With a dedicated annual agreement, there are relatively equal trade terms with customers.

Due to professional refinement, more refined management methods have emerged. For example, market functions and operations capabilities are separated, and what was done by one team becomes a division of labor between two teams.

**Development Characteristics:** This stage has the largest span, mainly reflected in the change in the number of customers managed and the content of management.

1. Number and scope of customers managed: If your team manages 50 customers and manages 5 customers, both are professional teams, but the team managing 50 customers has a finer division of labor and is more professional.
2. Management content: For example, in a professional team, at the initial stage, one person both holds resources and is responsible for sales, which makes the team use resources simply, i.e., buying sales with money. An advanced approach is to separate the operations (sales) and planning functions into two departments.

**Stage 4: Annual plan, rolling three-month market plan, regular business reviews**
**Stage Introduction:** When the team manages professional customers such as Walmart, Carrefour, China Resources Vanguard, and RT-Mart, and their stores have regional or full coverage, the requirements for the enterprise's planning become higher, and the team urgently needs a professional process for making plans.

Thus, making annual plans with customers becomes normalized. With an annual plan, monthly market plans are naturally strengthened, and the implementation of market plans is closely linked to business reviews.

**Stage Characteristics:** At this stage, various planning tasks become normalized and scaled, and the production process is streamlined.

**Stage 5: Joint Business Plan, rolling three, category management, senior management visits, regular business reviews**
**Stage Introduction:** Management becomes more refined. The organizational structure is divided into operations and market functions. There are dedicated personnel for store service, dedicated personnel for customer headquarters, backend support for sales teams, and personnel for planning, etc. Through the Joint Business Plan, the various modules of the key account management system are linked together, making it possible to create a high-level JBP.

**Stage Characteristics:** At this stage, the results accumulated from stages 3-4, the team's comprehensive capabilities, are systematically used to create high-quality JBPs.

These five stages reflect the implementation process of the key account management system, from initial store execution to plan upgrades, and finally to the Joint Business Plan.

In these five stages, it is not difficult to do a single module, or to do a Joint Business Plan once, but it is difficult to institutionalize, streamline, and scale the implementation of all modules.

From this perspective, you can also see the difficulty and challenges of improving driving capability!

When you understand the above patterns, how should enterprises respond?

#### **Enterprise Countermeasures**
## **1. The significance and role of the key account management system for the Joint Business Plan**
## Many successful cases prove that a high-level JBP can achieve the goals of both parties. For business growth, the key account management system is an effective methodology and tool.
## The modules of the management system can be divided into three categories: basic, advanced, and senior.

**Basic:** Route planning, store visits, orders, delivery, payment collection, promotions
**Advanced:** Annual agreements, annual plans, business reviews, promotions, model stores
**Senior:** Strategic cooperation, JBP, vertical management, rolling three-month plans, supply chain management, category management. The Joint Business Plan, as the jewel in the crown of the key account management system, links multiple modules together to form a complete planning and action system.

The things mentioned above that the buyer needs to do are all content of the basic modules, illustrating how important the business foundation is, and it is also the foundation for establishing a Joint Business Plan.

## **2. Every module of the key account management system can improve performance**
The key account management system is designed for healthy and sustainable business growth, so every module can improve performance. Here are some examples.

**In the basic modules:** Through route planning, the efficiency of personnel store visits is maximized. The actions of personnel visits are professionally streamlined, allowing sales representatives to do more things and do the right things in the same amount of time on the visit route.

For example, how many stores can a sales representative be responsible for? It is necessary to consider whether the customer is a chain, the area and foot traffic, the number of SKUs sold, and the quantity and area of displays.

The standards for store execution determine the time a sales representative stays in a store. If the display requirements are not high, 20 minutes is enough for a 6,000-square-meter store. If it is a high-standard requirement, it may take 45 minutes or even longer.

**In the advanced modules:** The terms and targets of the annual agreement are professionally matched to achieve goals while reducing costs. Through annual plan target management, monthly goals can be effectively achieved each month. Business reviews are a good communication tool that allows you and the customer to plan and execute more smoothly.

**In the senior modules:** The rolling three-month market plan is a professional tool for achieving monthly sales, requiring the division of labor and cooperation between the market and sales departments. In order fill rate, every 4 percentage point increase will increase POS sales by 1 percentage point.

Doing all the above work well ultimately achieves the annual goals. The essential difference between these practices and the common team behaviors such as channel stuffing, cross-region sales, and fraud is that they can achieve sustainable, profitable, and high-growth performance!

**3. Further suggestions**
**1. At the company level, all operations require the boss's support and promotion, and the team must be willing to change and improve.**
  * The Joint Business Plan means that for higher sales and more profits, **the team must do more things, establish processes, and break the team's comfort zone.**
  * Need the boss's recognition and promotion: Will the KA team change spontaneously? There are such cases, but very few. Within the KA team, it is okay, but when it involves multi-departmental support and cooperation, the boss's support is needed.
  * **Human nature determines that in a KA team, most people will not proactively do more things** because the challenges from customers and internally are great. Individuals are prone to staying in their comfort zone, doing what they are familiar with month after month, which easily leads to stagnation. Without the company's promotion in terms of systems, incentives, etc., this change is difficult to succeed!

**2. At the individual level: How can customer managers and regional managers improve themselves?**
### What to do if the customer is unwilling to do a JBP?
### 1) It shows that the customer has no confidence in you, and you cannot meet the buyer manager's requirements. Of course, this requirement must be legitimate. As I mentioned earlier, basic management is the foundation of the management system and also the foundation of JBP.
### 2) First, do the daily work well with the buyer, such as submitting DM promotion plans on time, store execution, personnel visits, delivery, handling after-sales issues, and resolving account issues.
3) The buyer's attention to the supplier is directly related to the supplier's performance contribution to the buyer. The more performance you contribute, the more the buyer will naturally value you. So you need to win the buyer's respect with performance.

From the enterprise's perspective, if you can do planning and execution well at the buyer manager level, you can also improve performance. You must be clear that professional modern channel customers have professional and systematic indicators, such as front-end gross profit, back-end gross profit, total gross profit, sales targets, order fill rate, promotion reporting time and content requirements, display requirements, merchandiser requirements, etc.

It should be noted that KA managers or regional managers need to meet the customer's legitimate requirements, not excessive requirements.

  * **Start with a single module:** There are many modules in the key account management system. You can choose to start with a single module, set goals and action plans, continuously follow up until the indicators meet the requirements, and then add new modules.
  * **Multi-module integration:** If you have already done 2-3 modules, you can integrate multiple modules to form a system.
  * **Act according to your capabilities:** Act according to your own conditions. You must start immediately, but the quality of the start does not need to be high. Capability improves little by little.

# **Final Words:**
## A high-quality JBP is based on multiple modules of the key account management system, and each module can improve performance.
Basic work is very important. Some people avoid it because they don't want to work hard, and want to use a high-end JBP, but in the end, they still have to return to the modules of the management system, especially the basic work.
The realization of JBP requires the boss's promotion, and improving team capability requires the boss's promotion.
## If you really want to do a JBP but lack the method, be sure to pay attention to the subsequent articles on the key account management system. Through learning each module, you will lay a solid foundation for doing a JBP.

**More Articles**
 _**-END-**_

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