---
title: "Hou Xiaohai of China Resources Snow: The Unknown Distance Ahead Is a Horizon Worth Braving"
description: "Hou Xiaohai, General Manager of China Resources Snow Breweries (China) Co., Ltd., believes that in front of shrewd and pragmatic leaders, all rhetoric is hollow without performance; and in front of honest and hardworking subordinates, instructions without management tools are meaningless. As the largest consolidator in China's beer industry, China Resources Snow's sales volume ranked first globally with a 5.4% share, and its 2015 sales volume grew 573% compared to 2005."
author: "小镇青年朱迪"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-07-20"
language: "en"
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# Hou Xiaohai of China Resources Snow: The Unknown Distance Ahead Is a Horizon Worth Braving

> Hou Xiaohai, General Manager of China Resources Snow Breweries (China) Co., Ltd., believes that in front of shrewd and pragmatic leaders, all rhetoric is hollow without performance; and in front of honest and hardworking subordinates, instructions without management tools are meaningless. As the largest consolidator in China's beer industry, China Resources Snow's sales volume ranked first globally with a 5.4% share, and its 2015 sales volume grew 573% compared to 2005.

Introduction
**Hou Xiaohai, General Manager of China Resources Snow Breweries (China) Co., Ltd., believes:** In front of shrewd and pragmatic leaders, all rhetoric is hollow without performance; in front of honest and hardworking subordinates, instructions without management tools are meaningless.
Mid-year, as the largest consolidator in China's beer industry, China Resources Snow Beer's sales volume ranked first globally with a 5.4% share, and its 2015 sales volume grew 573% compared to 2005. (Data source: Euromonitor) On China Resources Group's official website, Judy saw that by the end of 2015, China Resources Beer had 97 breweries and annual sales of 11.683 million kiloliters, becoming "the single beer brand with the largest sales volume in China and globally."
Looking at the development of China Resources Snow Beer over the past decade, it can be described as a process of "turning 35 beer cats into one tiger." "Whenever you want to drink a bit of beer, you can basically find Snow." This seemingly casual comment from a consumer is undoubtedly a great compliment to Snow Beer's sales staff. The one who trained the cats into a tiger and sold Snow Beer to every street corner is Hou Xiaohai, the pioneer of non-Olympic marketing and General Manager of China Resources Snow Beer (China) Co., Ltd.
"In the marketing department of China Resources Snow Beer, I am not the smartest, nor the most diligent; I am below average." But among ordinary people, he is the most stubborn at heart—"Let performance speak."
**All Win or All Lose: No Middle Ground**
**Hou Xiaohai became an FMCG professional halfway through his career.**
In 1995, after four and a half years of training, Hou Xiaohai, a statistics graduate from Renmin University, paid back 4,000 yuan in training fees and resigned from Shougang. Reports say that when Hou Xiaohai left Shougang, he had only 2,000 yuan left. He spent 1,000 yuan on a pager, which was essential at the time, over 500 yuan on a professional suit, leaving only about 400 yuan for food.
Hou Xiaohai's drive was evident even during his student days. He says that in life, one needs impulse. He says that impulse enriched his life experiences but also cost him dearly.
**First impulse: opening up the world.** During high school, Hou Xiaohai ranked in the bottom ten in his freshman year, but in his sophomore year, his grades soared, quickly becoming top 3 in his grade. Recalling that almost frantic effort, Hou Xiaohai was most proud of participating in the college entrance exam as one of three sophomore students, and on the enrollment form, he solemnly wrote "Renmin University, Journalism Department." This was his first impulse, with the fearlessness of a rural kid, he came to the capital Beijing.
**Second impulse: experiencing life.** Life is always full of hardships and trials. After graduating from university, Hou Xiaohai went to Shougang Group, which had nothing to do with his major. The time spent with workers taught him the simplicity of grassroots employees and again inspired him to "read almost crazily, drawing warmth and hope from books."
**Third impulse: expanding capabilities.** After four and a half years, relying on his own expectations, after sending out his 50th job application, he received an invitation from the well-known foreign company Gallup and became a project manager. At Gallup, Hou Xiaohai first learned about management structures and how to be an excellent manager.
**Fourth impulse: encountering love.** Life always has romantic chapters. Once, while on a business trip in Chengdu, he met a girl. It was love at first sight, so he resolutely gave up his high-paying job, ignored his leader's retention and colleagues' persuasion, and came alone to Chengdu, where they quickly married. For his beloved, Hou Xiaohai joined PepsiCo's Sichuan region.
**Fifth impulse: pursuing excellence.** As if another calling, just as Hou Xiaohai, with his professionalism and creativity, achieved a 71% market share, the highest for Pepsi in Sichuan, he again decisively resigned and chose China Resources Snow. With solid professionalism, his career moved from the Sichuan region to the whole country, creating one miracle after another for Snow.
**Brand Unification: China Resources Trains Cats into a Tiger**
China Resources Snow Beer Company shifted Hou Xiaohai's work from more "execution" to more "innovation," innovating in distribution models suitable for the company's development, such as enhancing channel controllability, increasing partners, focusing on terminals, and achieving win-win with distributors.
Around 2003, China Resources Enterprise increased investment and acquired local breweries, which is why there were more and more "beer cats." At this stage, Hou Xiaohai invited Kotler Company to lead the "brand positioning" work, unifying China Resources Beer and Snow Beer, paving the way for the national market.
In 2004, Hou Xiaohai proposed and refined the brand portfolio strategy of "national brand + regional strong brand + regional tactical brand," gradually transforming the "1+n" model of one national brand coexisting with multiple local small brands into a "1+1" model of one national brand and one regional strong brand coexisting for a long time.
In August 2005, Yanjing Beer and Tsingtao Beer successively signed sponsorship agreements with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, almost simultaneously becoming domestic beer sponsors for the Beijing Olympics. In May of the following year, China Resources Snow's non-Olympic marketing strategy was officially launched, lasting 3 to 5 years. This was a tough battle for Hou Xiaohai in the fiercely competitive beer industry. At that time, Hou Xiaohai, then Marketing Director of China Resources Snow Beer (China), stated that China Resources Snow had never participated in the competition for the 2008 Olympic Games beer sponsorship, but it would invest the same amount as other beer sponsors in beer consumers. This gave China Resources Snow the dividend of differentiated marketing.
After more than ten years of searching for cats, China Resources Snow Beer's strategy has gone through six stages. From the "start-up period" of "three lacks—no strategy, no management, and no team," to the "initial period" exploring the "mushroom strategy," to the "rapid period" of "three haves—strategy, management, and team," to the "optimization period" of expanding scale and sales, to the "refinement period" of strengthening mid-to-high-end products, and finally to the "high-end period" facing the future.
**Standards: The Gene of Leading Half a Step in Sales**
In sales, the most important things are sales tools and techniques. When setting sales targets and issuing sales instructions, it is even more important to teach subordinates how to achieve goals and execute instructions.
In managing terminal sales, Hou Xiaohai believes that mindset and ideology are important for corporate development, but increasing sales volume cannot rely solely on ideology and mindset. Hou Xiaohai says that for marketing team management, tools are more important than instructions. In his view, managers must not only make subordinates clear about "what to do," but also make employees "willing to do," and more importantly, teach them "how to do it." Hou Xiaohai's focus is on improving salespeople's ability to drive sales and how to help them easily achieve sales targets.
When Coca-Cola was still thinking about how to compete with Pepsi for first-tier market share, Hou Xiaohai began implementing his "vehicle sales model," which he spent a year researching in second-tier rural markets. In Hou Xiaohai's "vehicle sales model," salespeople are very relaxed. They don't need to consider competitors; they just combine with delivery vehicles, along designated routes, at specified times, and complete the set work according to the steps and methods in the "vehicle sales manual." With such a seemingly simple "tool," Hou Xiaohai's team, with the marketing concept of leading "half a step," achieved sales of 12 million cases in 2000, leaving competitors far behind.
Hou Xiaohai believes that sales is like fighting a war, and soldiers' weapons are crucial. Salespeople's weapons are sales methods and techniques. Snow Beer especially values the development of sales weapons, investing a lot of manpower and resources every year to provide salespeople with systematic and highly operational "sales weapons."
Compared to occupying the market, maintaining a strong market position for a long time is more difficult. Once a strong brand is established, it must not only accept challenges and attacks from competitors but also keep an eye on all directions, promptly discovering real problems in the market and among employees, and solving them in time.
**Truth: The Premise of Solving Problems Is Discovering Real Problems**
In Hou Xiaohai's management experience, he believes that subjectivity and utilitarianism are two major obstacles to discovering real problems. This is where his work experience at Gallup Consulting honed his ability to conduct independent project research. Using statistical theory, Hou Xiaohai became a manager with deep insight and market decisiveness.
He never easily trusts reports and data submitted by middle managers, nor does he rashly express subjective opinions in front of subordinates.
Hou Xiaohai's habit is that market and terminal problems often become unrecognizable after being passed through salespeople, supervisors, managers, and regional managers. If decision-makers do not have real data, it is difficult to discover real problems, let alone solve them.
Mastering first-hand information is a habit Hou Xiaohai developed at Gallup and Pepsi. Over the years, Hou Xiaohai has maintained a habit of contacting consumers as much as possible, listening to their voices; contacting frontline salespeople as much as possible, listening to grassroots employees' voices; and contacting the market as much as possible, understanding the real market situation.
"What managers care about is not what problems exist in the market or among employees, but which problems affect sales and corporate development," Hou Xiaohai believes. "Enterprises should use limited resources to solve the most critical problems and improve resource utilization as much as possible."
When communicating with China Resources employees, Hou Xiaohai often mentions three suggestions: First, be clear about your goals and know what you want; Second, don't be afraid of failure! Third, be patient in doing things; life is a long race, and the one who laughs last is the king.
**Hou Xiaohai's Career Secrets**
Four years of statistics major in university cultivated his rigorous logical thinking system;
Four and a half years at Shougang, with extensive reading and interaction with workers, honed his mindset;
One and a half years at Gallup developed his work habits, insight into things, and systematic management abilities;
Pepsi enhanced his marketing experience, establishing a scientific and systematic marketing theory in his mind;
At China Resources Snow Beer, he learned and accumulated a large number of successful marketing methods and techniques for Snow Beer, contacted marketing personnel at different levels and positions, and equipped himself with the ability to independently operate markets and brands.
Text | Edited by Judy, a small-town youth, based on public reports. Please indicate the source for reprinting.
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