---
title: "How Can Management Teams Break Down Existing Walls and Reshape Their Mindsets?"
description: "This article discusses how FMCG management teams can break through their existing cognitive barriers and reshape their thinking. It provides a case study and three methods for rebuilding cognition: communicating with business-related people, seeking advice from experts, and thinking and summarizing regularly."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-07-19"
language: "en"
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# How Can Management Teams Break Down Existing Walls and Reshape Their Mindsets?

> This article discusses how FMCG management teams can break through their existing cognitive barriers and reshape their thinking. It provides a case study and three methods for rebuilding cognition: communicating with business-related people, seeking advice from experts, and thinking and summarizing regularly.

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Let me share a case with you first:
A few days ago, when I visited a farmers' market, I met a wholesaler. The local business manager saw that this customer only sold competing products, so he stepped forward to introduce his own products. From a cold visit to familiar communication, everything showed that an experienced salesperson's basic skills were quite solid. But when it came to order suggestions, the boss said that their products were relatively expensive. The manager's response was that their product quality was high, materials were exquisite, and the listed company's brand power was strong, etc.
Afterwards, I had a brief communication with this business manager about how to respond when customers say "the product is expensive."
Regarding the issue of "expensive products," different scenarios require different communication methods:
**1. When consumers say the product is expensive:** Their focus is on the issue of price and value, that is, whether the money they spend is worth it while the product meets their needs. So we need to explain the high quality and strong brand, and use factual evidence to tell them: your money is well spent.
**2. When channel partners say the product is expensive:** They care about the issue of price and sell-through. Can it be sold? Is it easy to sell? Your explanation should cover what channels, what products, who to sell to, and how much profit, preferably with cases, telling them that although the price is high, it still sells well and makes money.
**3. When subordinates say the product is expensive:** Focus on whether it is an attitude problem (unwilling to promote, afraid of after-sales trouble?) or a skill problem (insufficient sales skills? Insufficient product knowledge?). What methods should be used to solve attitude problems? How to help with skill problems?
**4. When distributors say the product is expensive:** Focus on whether they are worried that after shipping the goods back, if they can't sell, the loss will be theirs. That is, how to solve the after-sales problem? One less humane way is to say the company mandates it and they must sell it. Another more acceptable way is to ship a small quantity first, do a pilot in channel outlets, and the company also has market expense support, so we do the market together, etc.
The logic differs among the four, the scenarios differ, and the answers differ.
Many managers in FMCG are promoted from top salespeople. They have excellent frontline execution skills, but they also have limitations when applying frontline experience to multi-dimensional sales scenarios. Today, let's talk about how FMCG companies can help marketing management teams break down existing walls and reshape their cognition.
Image source: Tuchong Creative
**01 First, break your existing cognition**
Many managers are promoted from highly successful salespeople. There is a continuation of the inertial thinking that was previously considered high-quality. Take the case at the beginning: an excellent salesperson mainly faces consumers and terminal outlets. When they hear "expensive product," their instinctive response is to answer with high quality. This is not wrong, and such answers have solved many problems before. But when promoted, the customers they face also change, not only consumers and outlets, but also distributors, sub-distributors, wholesalers, subordinate teams, etc.
At this point, they find that their previous advantages no longer exist and cannot solve problems. They need to break the previous cognitive loop and rebuild a new loop that fits management logic.
Each thinking mode has its corresponding applicable scenario; conversely, each scenario must have its corresponding thinking mode. **The process of a professional manager's promotion is the process of breaking the old cognitive loop and establishing a new cognitive loop.**
**02 Three methods to rebuild cognition**
**First, communicate more with people related to your business.**
For example, as a manager, people related to your business include distributors, sub-distributors, wholesalers, and outlets. Communicate with them about whether your policies are conducive to market competition, and verify whether your judgment of the market is accurate, etc.
There are subordinate teams. Communicate with them about the implementation of your policies and whether your management can effectively stimulate human efficiency, etc.
There are direct superiors. Communicate with them about whether your next work plan has any omissions and whether you can obtain company support, etc.
There are company logistics departments that cooperate with you. Communicate with them about whether your expense verification is accurate and efficient, and whether your management matches the company's development requirements, etc.
Why communicate more? Everyone has their own information bias. It's not that you don't observe carefully enough, but because you lack certain dimensions of perception, you cannot see more truths of the world. Only by communicating more with these people can you widely absorb various viewpoints and gain a new understanding of yourself.
**Second, seek advice from experts.**
What is an expert? It's someone who can easily point out the answer to a problem you've been racking your brains over. By seeking advice from these people, you can build your new cognitive logic system faster.
Another example: I have been thinking about how small-scale distributors can better manage their sales teams. Because of the small scale, they cannot hire professional managers. As a small boss, the distributor always finds it difficult to communicate heart-to-heart with those who work for him. What to do?
When visiting a distributor, he gave me the answer. He had about ten salespeople and represented five or six brands. Each brand needed a brand manager. Obviously, he couldn't afford the labor cost of so many managers. So he did one thing: he took stock of his salespeople and ranked each salesperson's sales by brand. The one with the highest sales for a brand became the person in charge of that brand. Thus, he selected six salespeople as brand leaders. These six people were both managers (in charge of the brand with the highest sales) and executors (for other brands with lower sales). They needed to cooperate and check each other to achieve the task targets for each brand and receive achievement incentives.
This way, the dual identity of manager and executor overlapped, solving both management and execution problems. More importantly, they could empathize with each other and achieve mutual success.
I couldn't have come up with such a method. I need to seek advice from experts and rebuild my cognitive logic system.
**Third, think more and summarize frequently.**
These six words have had a significant impact on my career. I have developed a good habit: on weekends, I take time to summarize the week's work in writing. Over the years, I have benefited greatly.
Image source: Panoramic Vision
We are often overwhelmed by busy work, and many times we work in an instruction-driven manner. For example, a customer suddenly requests something that needs to be submitted immediately, so we rush to complete it. Sometimes customers strongly demand that we follow their logic, so we have to modify the execution plan. These things, from a long-term perspective, are not necessarily the best, but they are things we must do.
These things require us to think more, to consider the customer's viewpoint and position, and to summarize frequently, to know how to handle similar situations in the future.
Secondly, in the information age, we are bombarded with useful and useless information every day, and it is extremely easy to lose ourselves. We cannot just learn the things that are easy to see or easy to learn. We need to dig deeper into the underlying reasons. **Continuously cultivate the ability to extract valuable information from the chaotic "information storm"** . This requires even more thinking and summarizing.
**03 Changes in views on original things after raising cognitive level**
This is a big topic. Take the most basic unit of sales, the outlet, as an example. At least 8 elements need to be studied to fully reflect the value of the product at the terminal. The following outlet analysis is a study of a certain market's outlets that I did for a brand during consulting:
**1. Product market performance & inventory quantity & age structure:** In central city large supermarkets & CVS, there is stock but no service, leading to large SKU differences. Small and medium outlets have weak market performance due to low single-order quantities. Overall inventory is insufficient due to factors like high rent, and some outlets have older age structures that cannot be effectively controlled.
**2. Product channel types:** The overall channel performance is weak. Large stores & supermarkets with fee investments are stronger. Community convenience stores are polarized (strong outlets and blank outlets).
Image source: Pexels
**3. Product sales forms:** Mainly sold in single packs, with weak awareness of 2-pack bundles, 3-pack bundles, etc., resulting in low average customer spending. There are few trial experiences, and the repeat purchase rate for new consumers is very low.
**4. Product sales performance:** A product series has a high distribution rate, but other shares are low. Outlet distribution is not precise. There were large-scale returns before, reducing distributor enthusiasm. For example, within 100 meters around the distributor's warehouse, there are 4 outlets, three of which have no products.
**5. Product competitive landscape:** In urban areas, competition is weaker than main competitors. Main competitors are mostly covered by wholesalers. Overall competition is weaker than competitors. Targeted distribution is the first priority.
**6. Wholesaler impression:** Channel gross profit is lower than competitors, price increase layout is unreasonable, and some customers have been lost. The manufacturer needs to pay attention.
**7. Number of outlets:** The number of outlets is low, service density and quality are insufficient. Distributors have many of their own outlets, but few outlets carry our products.
**8. Outlet quality:** Non-paid outlets have single SKUs, and display positions are not ideal, mainly depending on the distributor and their employees' attention to the product.
The above analysis of outlets is not the most comprehensive, but it is relatively complete. In fact, many times our cognition of the most familiar things around us is not as perfect as we imagine. It's more like the blind men and the elephant: we touch one part of the outlet and stubbornly try to improve from that part, but the actual effect is greatly reduced, and we don't realize it. This is what needs to be improved in cognitive level.
**In conclusion:**
Let me end this article with a popular internet saying: Every penny you earn is the realization of your cognition of the world; every penny you lose is due to defects in your cognition of the world. You can never earn money beyond your cognitive range, unless you rely on luck; but money earned by luck will often be lost by ability in the end. This is inevitable.
Cover image source | Panoramic Vision
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