---
title: "How Should New Distributors Survive in 2019?"
description: "New distributors, who are entrepreneurial distributors transitioning from sales roles in food companies or other distributorships, face challenges such as lack of experience, weak brand influence, dependency on manufacturers, and insufficient personnel. To thrive in 2019, they should choose suitable products, concentrate resources on niche markets, seek manufacturer support through performance, and continuously improve their marketing and management skills."
author: "师顺宽"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-12-31"
language: "en"
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---

# How Should New Distributors Survive in 2019?

> New distributors, who are entrepreneurial distributors transitioning from sales roles in food companies or other distributorships, face challenges such as lack of experience, weak brand influence, dependency on manufacturers, and insufficient personnel. To thrive in 2019, they should choose suitable products, concentrate resources on niche markets, seek manufacturer support through performance, and continuously improve their marketing and management skills.

New distributors refer to entrepreneurial distributors who previously did not work in the food industry or were sales personnel of food companies or other distributors, who after a period of training and accumulation, transitioned to become bosses. Their emergence is a product of the development and progress of the food industry. Their current situation is:

**1. They have potential and considerable ambition to overtake established players.** However, due to their shallow involvement in the industry, they lack experience in product selection, market operations, and team management. In the company's development, they fail to align with their actual situation, being rash, impetuous, and dreaming of instant success.

**2. Their business is just starting, and the company's brand image and influence have not yet been established.** Low awareness, little influence, few customers, and limited products mean that trust between the company and customers has not yet formed.

**3. They have a serious "wait, rely, and demand" mentality.** Since the company is just starting and has limited resources, they feel inadequate in market operations and hope manufacturers will provide more support to help them through difficulties. Thus, they frequently ask manufacturers for policies, fees, and support, which leads manufacturers to view them negatively.

**4. They lack personnel.** During the startup phase, the company is small, its prospects are unclear, and it struggles to attract experienced employees.

**[Case 1]**
In a certain prefecture-level market, Boss Li originally worked as a salesperson at a large local trading company. After three years of effort, he rose from an ordinary salesperson to a department manager, responsible for sales of a national first-tier mineral water brand and a provincial famous beverage brand. He was familiar with over a thousand terminal store owners in the city and had good relationships with them. Feeling confident, Boss Li believed that with such network resources, he should start his own business. Soon, at a provincial sugar, tobacco, and alcohol fair, he found a beverage company and became its agent for the city. After some deliberation, he poached two of his subordinates and set up a new company. He was confident that with his previous relationships with terminals, his agent beverage brand would succeed and make money. However, after several months of market operations, the results were unexpected. The terminal network and employees he had hoped to leverage not only failed to bring benefits but collectively betrayed him, leading Boss Li into deep reflection...

**[Case 2]**
Boss Wang previously ran a building materials business outside, accumulating savings over years. As competition intensified in building materials, he felt the industry was getting harder, so he switched to being a food distributor. In his first year, he rented a 500-square-meter warehouse, hired over a dozen employees (during the startup phase, the company's prospects were unclear, making it hard to attract experienced staff; those hired were mostly poor salespeople and newcomers who couldn't perform elsewhere), bought six delivery vehicles of various sizes, and became an agent for five small and medium-sized enterprises' products. After a year of market operations, the company's sales were only over 3 million yuan, resulting in severe losses. Looking back, many distributors sighed at the experience.

The entrepreneurial experiences of Boss Li and Boss Wang are quite representative. Let's analyze the main problems new distributors encounter during entrepreneurship, using them as examples:

**1. Blind product selection**
Every year, many small and medium-sized enterprises "take a quick look at the market, brainstorm a product, throw together packaging, set a policy haphazardly, start recruiting distributors busily, and begin distribution hard, but then the market goes quiet." During the high-growth period of the food industry, these tactics brought some benefits to many small and medium-sized food companies. However, as supply-demand dynamics and consumer attitudes changed, these companies now struggle to survive. To stay alive, they continue using such tactics to fool "new distributors" in various ways. Because established distributors have already been fooled by such companies, like Zhao Benshan tricking Fan Wei with "selling crutches, cars, and stretchers," they are wary. Only new distributors with shallow involvement are their targets.

For example, the beverage company Boss Li chose offered very favorable terms during recruitment, boosting his confidence. But after paying and receiving goods, he found that product quality was unstable, there was no brand influence, no promotional materials, and outdated marketing methods, making distribution difficult. Moreover, the support promised by the company was slow to materialize...

**2. Overconfidence in previously accumulated networks**
Pursuing profit is always the nature of channels. When Boss Li was a sales manager at his original company, he had good relationships with terminals mainly because the company had built a solid commercial reputation over years, and the products were well-known national and provincial brands that brought substantial profits to terminals. His relationships were based on the original company's strong platform. As the saying goes, "once the person leaves, the tea cools." Now that Boss Li has his own company, terminals see that his products have low awareness, little influence, are not accepted by consumers, and bring no profit. They are also unfamiliar with his company's financial strength and business credibility, so the terminal network he had accumulated betrayed him.

**3. Serious "wait, rely, and demand" mentality**
Since Boss Wang's business was just starting, the company's brand image and influence were not established. Low awareness, little influence, and few customers meant trust had not formed between the company and customers. During product distribution, he faced network rejection. So he hoped the manufacturer would support him, frequently asking for fees, policies, and support. But the manufacturer felt that Boss Wang had not met the distribution and sales targets he had promised. Instead of providing support, the manufacturer developed a negative view, fearing that investment would be wasted, so market operations reached a stalemate.

**4. Position changed, but mindset unchanged**
Originally, Boss Li was an employee. He just needed to do his job according to company rules, without worrying about business conditions, finances, or social relations. Now as a boss, he must consider the company's direction and daily operations. He was like a passenger on a bus, able to look around or sleep. Now he is the driver, responsible for all passengers. His position changed, but his mindset did not. For example, due to poor company performance, he failed to deliver promised employee benefits, leading to betrayal. Additionally, many like Boss Wang who transitioned from other industries to food distribution changed industries but not their mindsets.

**How should new distributors survive in 2019?**

**1. Choose suitable companies and products**
Products are key and paramount. For new distributors, if they cannot secure good products, they cannot capture terminal outlets and thus cannot profit.

Large brands have high requirements for distributors' capital, vehicles, personnel, networks, and public relations capabilities. New distributors need not aspire to large brands. Even if they manage to secure a large brand, they may be "abandoned" due to lack of a sound network, sufficient funds, and standardized management.

Large brands periodically launch a certain number of single products to fill market gaps. Although these new products may have low sales, there is market demand. Choosing these new products in the early entrepreneurial stage can enhance one's position and status in the industry, allowing gradual learning of experience and skills in market operations. Successfully operating the market will lay a solid foundation for the company's development.

Additionally, besides mature large brands, there are many running small and medium-sized brands in the food industry that also need to build networks. As long as one conducts careful investigation and analysis, chooses products with excellent quality and high integrity, with long-term planning and promotion plans, detailed market operation plans, complete promotional materials, reasonable and formal sales contracts, certain personnel support and market sales ideas, and a willingness to cooperate with distributors, leveraging each other's strengths for rolling development, they can also ride the fast track to success.

**2. Concentrate resources, refine operations, and replicate**
Most new distributors at the startup stage have limited capital, low company awareness and influence, scarce personnel, and poor operational capabilities. The company's brand image and influence are not established, leading to a lack of trust between the company and customers. This makes network building, distribution progress, and sales growth slow. To survive, establish a foothold, and grow stronger in the fast, complex, and ever-changing market competition, one must focus and concentrate resources such as people, money, and materials, launch key attacks, first do a small market well, then replicate and multiply, achieving the effect of "a single spark can start a prairie fire."

Choose a small area to concentrate resources and launch key attacks, quickly capturing the minds of terminal owners and consumers, creating a hot sales atmosphere in the regional market, thereby reducing the company's input-output ratio. Additionally, after successfully operating a regional market, not only can you refine a set of operational models suitable for your company, but you also build strong confidence for subsequent replication and multiplication, accelerating the process.

**3. Continuously develop and progress, seek manufacturer support**
Actively expand the market to keep product sales in your market rising and growing. Make the manufacturer feel at ease, reassured, and comfortable, enhancing your value and increasing your bargaining power in negotiations (there is never a win-win in negotiations; the party with more information often gains relatively more benefits), and strive for manufacturer support. For example, actively cooperate with the manufacturer's various product promotions and sales activities, avoid unauthorized cross-regional sales, and avoid low-price dumping, so the manufacturer always feels you are reliable. Do not casually switch brands, complain, or even suppress the manufacturer's product sales.

**4. Strengthen learning, improve marketing and management skills**
With the rapid development of the food industry, new distributors face both entrepreneurial opportunities and risks. Therefore, identify your shortcomings and find motivation to learn. For example, learn from more excellent distributors, frequently discuss marketing, management, and product issues with the manufacturer's sales supervisors and representatives, participate in marketing and management training organized by companies, and proactively invite companies to train and guide your sales team.

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