---
title: "How Long Has It Been Since You, a Battle-Scarred Veteran, Walked the Market?"
description: "Distributors have mostly built their businesses step by step, having experienced the days of walking the market. Now that many have achieved sales in the tens of millions, the author asks: how long has it been since you last walked the market? Market inspection is crucial; without it, all efforts are in vain. This article outlines key inspection dimensions and standards, emphasizing that inspection is not about distrust but about ensuring execution and improving results."
author: "李锋"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-09-17"
language: "en"
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---

# How Long Has It Been Since You, a Battle-Scarred Veteran, Walked the Market?

> Distributors have mostly built their businesses step by step, having experienced the days of walking the market. Now that many have achieved sales in the tens of millions, the author asks: how long has it been since you last walked the market? Market inspection is crucial; without it, all efforts are in vain. This article outlines key inspection dimensions and standards, emphasizing that inspection is not about distrust but about ensuring execution and improving results.

Distributors have come a long way, and except for a lucky few, most have built their businesses step by step, having gone through the days of walking the market. Those days of hard work and struggle are precious assets for every distributor, and recalling them still brings back the smell of sweat and dust.
Today, many distributors have achieved sales in the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, with dozens of salespeople under their command. Life has improved, but I can't help but ask: **how long has it been since you last walked the market?**

**-01-**
**Without Market Inspection, Everything Is Zero**
Previously, we discussed distributor operations: how to use data to do business, how to train salespeople, how to set work standards for salespeople, and then developing new customers and expanding channels.
I've covered all these, and most operations involve salespeople or require them to be implemented. But have you ever thought that **without market inspection, all of this is pale and powerless?**
Why do I say this? Because **employees only do what you inspect, not what you expect.** Your employees are ordinary people, not model workers. Don't expect that once you set standards, they will follow them as you envisioned.
Marketing work is a closed-loop system, and market inspection is one of its key components. **If you don't implement work, it's zero; if you implement but don't assess, it's zero; if you assess but don't reward or punish, it's zero. Market inspection can improve the execution of the entire sales and channel team, thereby enhancing overall market efficiency.**
Even if, for the sake of argument, your salespeople all follow your requirements, there will inevitably be times when mistakes occur. So, distributor bosses, you need to walk the market, inspect your salespeople, and take responsibility for your own business.
Is such inspection a sign of distrust in your employees? Of course not. Comrade Wang Qishan once said, **"Trust cannot replace supervision."** I inspect you not because I don't trust you; if there are problems, we correct them, which helps and improves you. If there are no problems, it proves you're doing well, and I'll praise you.
**Timely identification of problems and reduction of losses are important roles of market inspection, but it doesn't stop there.** Besides supervising personnel, it's more important to let you, as the commander, understand the frontline situation and what the competitors are like.
Sometimes, as the boss, you have a broader vision than salespeople and department managers, and a deeper understanding of the market, which may allow you to devise better strategies.
Market inspection is to help you better command your team in battle. Perhaps as the team grows, department managers will walk the market for inspection, but I still suggest that you, as the boss, regularly visit the market—once or twice a month, or even two or three times a quarter. Those who don't go to the frontline cannot become good commanders.

**-02-**
**Market Inspection Project Initiation and Standards**
Once you decide to conduct market inspection, what aspects should you inspect? Here are some of my views.
The content of market inspection is vast and complex, and monthly inspection cannot cover everything. Therefore, market inspection must focus on key points and initiate projects. By grasping the key points, you can allocate time and market resources well and promptly eliminate market problems and potential threats.
Before initiating projects, I want to emphasize one point. When problems are found during inspection, bosses **must not complain or even scold their employees.** I think this is wrong. The correct approach is to use data to communicate with salespeople, making them understand where the problems lie, which fundamentally solves the issues.
Respecting employees is the most basic point. Even if they make mistakes or violate company rules, you should still communicate on the basis of respect, even if you might already be thinking of firing them. As the saying goes, "Harmony brings wealth," not only with customers and partners but also with your own employees. You are not enemies.
Let's return to inspection project initiation. Here, I've compiled some inspection dimensions. If you can do well in these dimensions, it basically proves that your team is excellent, and your business won't be bad.

**1. Customer Inventory Standards:**
Is customer inventory reasonable? Are product batches and dates near expiry? Is there malicious overstocking? Are there products that don't move? And what about the inventory size of competitors?
Inventory inspection can reveal many problems. For example, if we have 20 cases in stock and competitors have 100, we should ask the customer why they stocked so much. Is it because the competitor is promoting, or because the competitor's products have higher margins and customers are willing to sell them?

**2. Salesperson Visit Standards:**
Talk to customers: how often does the salesperson visit? Is the time fixed? Do they follow the steps of the visit? From preparation to summary, you should understand all of it. (The 8-step visit is a relatively simple and feasible visit model; you can find it online, so I won't elaborate.)

**3. Promoter Standards:**
This mainly includes working hours, dress code, communication scripts, and promotional displays.
An excellent promoter can play a key role in boosting promotional sales. Once, just by changing a promoter, my sales dropped from 360,000 yuan per month to 260,000 yuan—a huge difference.
So, the management and inspection of promoters are very important. I have over 80 promoters, and their annual wages cost over 2 million yuan, with a visible impact on sales.
Promoters are often scattered across different areas, work long hours, and lack supervision. I once had a promoter who made a phone call for nearly an hour outside the store. Can such a department go without inspection?

**4. Promotional Policy Execution:**
When goods are pulled out, is there a display? Is the position good? This directly relates to promotional performance. Promoters need inspection, and so does the execution of promotional policies. If execution is not in place, policies are like a virtual setup.
In our company, every promotional activity has a standard process, possibly with dozens of items. If we don't inspect and execution is not in place, all this work is wasted, and sales will be vastly different.

**5. Consumer Education Activities:**
Similar to promotions, these activities may not be directly linked to performance, but they should not be ignored to avoid inefficiency and going through the motions.

**6. Expense Execution Standards:**
Expenses are a critical point. Often, activities, promotions, and displays involve expenses. Wherever there is profit, mistakes are easy to make, so this area requires stricter management, preferably with severe penalties.

**7. Competitors:**
Doing business is about competition. Know yourself and know your enemy, and you'll never be defeated. So when inspecting the market, pay special attention to competitors' market performance, including price, inventory, product appearance, and various initiatives.
Competitors are often the best learning and reflection objects. For competitors who do well, learn from their price system layout and whether they have achieved differentiation; for areas where they have problems, reflect on whether we have the same issues.

In addition, there are price system standards; material usage standards; display standards and display share standards; product distribution standards; and customer complaints. These dimensions are also key, but there are slight differences across industries and categories, so I won't elaborate.
Whether it's a distributor's sales team or a small or medium-sized manufacturer's sales team, the biggest gap with international companies' sales teams is that international foreign enterprises **standardize everything, such as visual display standardization, terminal visit standardization, promotional activity standardization, and script standardization, and they permeate every detail of team management.**
To manage a team well, standardized management is the most reliable way to improve team execution. Marketing competition between enterprises is not a one-on-one contest but a battle between teams. When two armies face off, you can't let soldiers show off their individual skills; you must have strict discipline, uniformity, and all actions following orders to have a chance of winning.
To make a sales team with varying personnel qualities do one thing well, the simplest method is to set standards. Standardized management makes employees' behaviors standardized, so execution results are naturally easier to control.
The key is to determine the projects. After identifying key or routine inspection projects, design detailed, quantifiable inspection standards for each project, and also design an inspection checklist that can quantify the standards, and conduct regular inspections.

**-03-**
**Not the Goal, but the Result**
After clarifying inspection goals and designing inspection standards, you should determine different inspection methods based on different market conditions and different inspection projects.
First, the boss can personally walk the market for spot checks. As the team grows, department managers can be arranged to do spot checks. However, this form covers too small an area to take care of the entire team, but your position will put some pressure on subordinates, so it's still necessary.
For specific standardized and process-based inspections, many marketing management software tools now make it much more convenient than before. These tools have been continuously improved, and loopholes have been reduced. For example, salespeople and promoters can clock in with photos, and keywords can be added to ensure fake photos can't pass.
There are various inspection methods, which can be continuously improved during business operations. But what about after inspection? You should know that market inspection is just a tool to optimize team combat effectiveness. The goal is to find problems, make our distribution business better, **increase sales, reduce expenses, and grow profits.**
So after inspection, you should record data, provide guidance, and form an inspection report. The market inspection report can be divided into four parts:
> 1. Summarize the relevant data indicators of the market inspection.
> 2. Through analysis of the summarized indicators, point out the good aspects and problems of the inspection project.
> 3. Analyze the causes of problems and deficiencies—what caused the current situation.
> 4. While summarizing project experience, put forward rectification requirements and suggestions for the inspection project.

Finally, conduct a market re-inspection. Based on the inspection results, compile the problems and come up with a plan for rectification. To ensure the effectiveness of rectification and achieve a closed loop of inspection management, inspectors should re-inspect the implementation of rectification to determine whether re-inspection is needed again, thus forming a re-inspection.
Especially for key projects, the implementation of rectification should be re-inspected to avoid inspection not being implemented and becoming a mere formality.

**Summary:**
Layered inspection is like the "right dress" in military management; it's a basic action in marketing team management. Only through inspection can you find problems, solve them, and drive your management work forward.
If inspection is done well, it can drive your management work, correct employees' violations, and boost your sales. So inspection work must not be taken lightly.


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Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671