---
title: "How Much Have Manufacturers Improved Over the Years?"
description: "After two decades as a distributor and dealing with manufacturers, the author reflects on how much manufacturers have actually improved in their treatment of distributors. While management tools have advanced significantly, the fundamental mindset and management approach towards distributors remain largely unchanged, with distributors still viewed as sales tools or subordinate units."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-01-31"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-much-have-manufacturers-improved-over-the-years-87e57a3c/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-much-have-manufacturers-improved-over-the-years-87e57a3c.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/PHBuQ-9Y1UEPebRdwIhwSw"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%BF%99%E4%BA%9B%E5%B9%B4-%E5%8E%82%E5%AE%B6%E8%BF%9B%E6%AD%A5%E4%BA%86%E5%A4%9A%E5%B0%91-87e57a3c.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-much-have-manufacturers-improved-over-the-years-87e57a3c/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# How Much Have Manufacturers Improved Over the Years?

> After two decades as a distributor and dealing with manufacturers, the author reflects on how much manufacturers have actually improved in their treatment of distributors. While management tools have advanced significantly, the fundamental mindset and management approach towards distributors remain largely unchanged, with distributors still viewed as sales tools or subordinate units.

Private Enterprise Internal Management Research/Pan Wenfu
Having been a distributor for twenty years and dealing with manufacturers for the same period, I have been reflecting on one question: **How much have manufacturers actually improved in their treatment of distributors over the years?**
First, objectively speaking, there has been significant progress in specific management tools, such as market base data import, real-time inventory data synchronization, sales flow monitoring, cross-region sales supervision, and even the positioning and activity tracking of manufacturer personnel. With the introduction of advanced management tools, efficiency in related areas has indeed improved.
However, in terms of the positioning and management philosophy towards distributors, it is basically the same old approach. Although they verbally claim to treat distributors as partners (some even say strategic partners) and interest communities, in reality, in the eyes of most manufacturer bosses, distributors are just sales tools. If they are valuable, they are used; if they are not, or when a distributor with higher value appears, the current distributor can be discarded. In the view of some powerful manufacturers, distributors are merely subordinate units that need to obey orders and follow commands.
**Thought determines behavior! The positioning of sales tools and subordinate units naturally leads to a series of management behaviors.**
1. Distributor Recruitment
The cooperation between manufacturers and distributors begins with recruitment. However, the recruitment methods have not changed for decades, basically still centered on products and distribution benefits, emphasizing the manufacturer's strength, product quality, market size, investment, and profit margins. As for the product's inherent shortcomings and problems, poorly performing markets, the fit with the distributor's current product portfolio, the actual investment required from the distributor, and defects compared to similar products, none of these are mentioned.
The specific recruitment methods are also mainly hard recruitment, getting straight to the point without considering prior contact and understanding, let alone cultivating the distributor's interest or guiding the direction of cooperation.
2. Understanding the Distributor
After the formal cooperation begins, it is expected that the manufacturer should have an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the distributor. However, few manufacturers achieve this. The regular distributor files only contain basic company operation information, without understanding the distributor's operational model, company development direction, market positioning, product portfolio, profit model, costs and waste, organizational structure, resource allocation, and even the current problems they face.
Why don't they understand? Because they think it's unnecessary or that distributors are simple. The manufacturer's concern for the distributor is more focused on the sales of their own products.
3. Objective View of Manufacturer-Distributor Differences
Although manufacturers and distributors are both in business, there are many differences between them, even in how they make money. Manufacturers earn strategic profits, emphasizing national layout, long-term development, market order, price system, brand building, upfront investment, and sustained output later. Distributors earn tactical profits, emphasizing short, flat, and fast returns!
Manufacturers have production capacity pressure; the larger the volume, the greater the advantage in raw material procurement, so they hope distributors will push volume. However, distributors prioritize current interests, and pushing volume has little practical significance, leading to increased overall costs and even a decline in net profit. This is why the two sides often argue over annual sales growth targets.
The differences between manufacturers and distributors are objective, but manufacturers rarely analyze or view them objectively. They always dominate with their own views and seldom consider the distributor's specific characteristics.
4. About the Manufacturer's Sales Personnel
The specific business interactions between manufacturers and distributors are carried out by the manufacturer's sales personnel, who represent the manufacturer in communication and execution. Therefore, the basic quality, professional skills, and stability of these sales personnel directly affect the efficiency of cooperation.
Objectively speaking, the manufacturer's sales personnel are in a weak position when dealing with distributors. After all, these young people in their twenties or thirties have never run a business themselves, and can't even afford a house, yet they are expected to command a boss who has been in business for twenty or thirty years and is worth tens of millions, on how to do business in a foreign place... Moreover, most manufacturers do not have clear quantitative standards for the technical capabilities of their sales personnel, nor do they provide corresponding vocational training, nor have they guided sales personnel to have an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of distributors. In the end, sales volume and payment collection are the only assessment criteria, meaning that no matter how the sales personnel operate, as long as they can get the distributor's money back and meet performance targets, it's fine.
When the manufacturer's sales personnel lack professional skills and cannot handle distributors, making it difficult to achieve performance, they either fool the distributor, coaxing the payment first, or find other ways to make money.
Of course, in terms of extortion and embezzlement by manufacturer sales personnel, there has indeed been progress over the years. In areas such as opening new distributor accounts, replacing distributors, returns and exchanges, promotional item applications, promotional activity applications, orders for hot products, reimbursement of advance expenses, and warehouse inventory checks during price adjustments, wherever there is a fee or approval authority, or the possibility of handling, there are opportunities to make money. Some sales personnel even go so far as to set a direct quantitative standard, such as one yuan per box of goods.
In summary, over the years, there has been no essential progress in the manufacturer's positioning and management philosophy towards distributors, nor in management behaviors. They still rely on traditional models, and in terms of the quality, professional skills, and even professional ethics of sales personnel, there has been a regression. This is the fundamental reason for the increasingly tense relationship between manufacturers and distributors.
Author: Pan Wenfu
Born from a private business background, he managed a family-owned distribution company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several manufacturing enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and the integration of demobilized military personnel into private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and keeps updating his material collection and solutions.
-END-


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

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