---
title: "How to Achieve Growth in Regions with Lagging Sales? 90% of the Problems Lie with the People!"
description: "When a distributor's sales are stagnant, the root cause often lies with the salespeople. This article analyzes the problems of underperforming salespeople from four aspects: work attitude, comprehensive quality, business skills, and diligence, and proposes long-term team-based support strategies to help them improve sales."
author: "李锋"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-08-10"
language: "en"
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# How to Achieve Growth in Regions with Lagging Sales? 90% of the Problems Lie with the People!

> When a distributor's sales are stagnant, the root cause often lies with the salespeople. This article analyzes the problems of underperforming salespeople from four aspects: work attitude, comprehensive quality, business skills, and diligence, and proposes long-term team-based support strategies to help them improve sales.

**Click the image above for details**
How to solve the problem of stagnant distributor sales?
First, we must understand that the essence of sales growth is the process of solving problems, including problem salespeople, problem customers, and problem regions.
Today, let's take some time to discuss how to solve the "problem salesperson" issue, focusing on how to help underperforming salespeople increase sales.
When a salesperson's sales lag, in most cases, it's a "people" problem. I believe objective factors account for only 10%, meaning 90% of the problems are with the salesperson.
**However, lagging salespeople do not mean we should give up on them. In fact, as long as their attitude is not a major issue, we can use various support measures to boost their sales.** Below, we analyze the common problems of underperforming salespeople from four aspects: work attitude, comprehensive quality, business skills, and diligence.
**-01-**
## **Analyze Personnel Capability**
**First is work attitude.** This is a prerequisite for a salesperson to be competent, including conduct and ideological and moral aspects. A salesperson with a poor attitude, even if highly capable, should be considered for elimination; otherwise, they may bring greater losses to the company.
**Next is comprehensive quality and professional skills.** With rising prices, the basic compensation we can offer salespeople is not high, so people with good comprehensive quality rarely take up grassroots sales positions. Experienced salespeople in the market, or those with higher education or thinking levels, will prefer to work for manufacturers even if they do sales.
So generally, as long as salespeople are honest, hardworking, not too rigid, and have a professional dedication, they are suitable for a distributor's team. Comprehensive quality can be gradually improved through training, and usually, with basic training and business planning, most salespeople can become competent after a period of practice.
Comprehensive quality can be improved through later training, and so can professional skills. We have detailed this in the article "Distributors, Do You Know Who Sells Your Goods?" for those interested; we won't elaborate here.
It should be mentioned that training should be provided to all salespeople, with additional support for those who lag behind. We'll discuss how to provide this support below.
**Finally, there's diligence,** which is about whether one can endure hardship and be industrious. As the saying goes, "Diligence overcomes all difficulties." Salespeople who can't endure hardship, skipping stores in summer heat or missing customer visits in winter cold, can significantly impact the distributor's business. This can be stimulated through welfare mechanisms. If there are employees who remain lazy regardless, that falls under attitude issues.
Through simple analysis, we can roughly understand which salespeople are worth supporting and which need to be replaced to avoid harming the business's healthy development. After simple capability analysis, we need to consider specific key issues and how to solve them.
**-02-**
## **Identify Key Problem Points**
How to identify key problem points? Data analysis is crucial. I believe key problem points are mainly analyzed from two aspects: customer perspective and competitor perspective, as both directly relate to the distributor's business performance.
**Customer aspects such as activity, distribution rate, and SKU sales directly affect the distributor's revenue; competitor aspects are the main source of competitive pressure in the market. Defeating competitors naturally boosts sales and revenue.**
**Customer Perspective:**
From the customer perspective, we can use data ranking to identify who the lagging salesperson is and the key issues. Here are a few examples:
Customer activity ranking: We know that the more active the customers, the higher the sales, so a higher number and proportion of active customers mean increased sales.
From the table in the figure, we can see that salesperson G has the lowest customer activity, with a gap of more than 10 percentage points from the average. Through this data, we can identify what causes the salesperson's lag. Common reasons include: skipping stores, lack of diligence, low visit frequency, or poor customer relationships leading to reluctance to visit. We then need to investigate further.
Core SKU distribution rate ranking: Distributors know this data well; the distribution rate directly determines sales volume.
To increase sales, products must be distributed. If the distribution rate doesn't improve, it means the salesperson hasn't distributed the products, and consumers can't see them. How can sales not lag? Another key point identified.
Next, rank different data items, for example:
Rank profit margins: Low rankings may indicate the salesperson is promoting discounted products rather than focusing on promoting high-margin new products.
Analyze single SKU sales to understand the salesperson's focus and weaknesses for each SKU, etc.
**Competitor Perspective:**
**Besides analyzing market and customer data, we must also be aware of competitors' market performance, as it also affects the distributor's business.** The better competitors' promotions and displays, the more they sell, and the worse our sales become.
Know yourself and know your enemy, and you'll never be defeated. So we need to teach salespeople how to fight, analyze competitors, and attack them.
First, collect data on our brand and competitors' sales for each SKU, including sales price, specifications, market share, etc. This may require good customer relationships.
Then compare data across brands to find suitable solutions. As shown in the figure:
It's worth noting: Are the products competitors use to compete with us strong volume drivers or high-margin products?
From the figure, we see that in the 4-5 yuan price range, our company has an advantage, but the competitor sold over 1000 units at around 2.8 yuan, while our salesperson thought this price range had poor sales and didn't stock products in that range, wasting the market. Also, the competitor gained an advantage with floor displays.
We can adjust our plan: buy two floor displays to further strengthen our advantage in high-end noodles, and introduce products with similar specifications and prices to compete in the low-price market.
When competing for market share, first understand the market situation, then make targeted product structure adjustments. On one hand, we need products to seize share from competitors' core products; on the other hand, use pricing, display, and rebates to suppress competitors.
Besides targeted product pricing, we must also monitor competitors' promotional policies to see if they are similar or differentiated.
For example, for the customers our lagging salesperson handles, how often does the competitor run promotions, and how does that differ from our schedule? What core SKUs do they use in promotions? Do they use core products to drive new product launches, or rely on a single product?
Once we understand, we can respond accordingly. For instance, if the competitor runs a promotion once a month, we do it once a week to get our products seen more by customers and consumers. Over time, our sales will naturally increase.
Another issue is display. The first factor for actual sales is product distribution, and the second is product display. After distribution, we need customers to put our products on shelves so consumers see them. The more SKUs we have on the shelf and the larger the share, the higher the sales.
Poor display indicates obvious deficiencies in the salesperson's hands-on ability and customer relationships. Lagging salespeople often don't realize this; they just think about getting customers to stock goods. They overlook the importance of display. If displays are not concentrated and competitors dominate, consumers can't see our products. Can such a salesperson be without problems?
This requires experienced managers to guide them, teaching them how to do displays well, while also building customer relationships during support visits, making it easier for the lagging salesperson to do displays in the future.
By analyzing competitors' promotional policies, we can identify problems in the salesperson's grasp of the overall competitive landscape. Many salespeople lack this awareness of studying competitors, and they need guidance and teaching.
**-03-**
## **Long-term + Team Support for Lagging Salespeople**
After identifying problems through data analysis and market research, many distributor bosses only punish or even scold employees, which is meaningless for improving sales.
As mentioned in Part 1, as long as the salesperson's attitude is fine and they are dedicated and want to do well, the department general manager or branch manager should support them. How? By taking them to the market and teaching them how to obtain and analyze data. During support, first help them focus on core key accounts.
What are core key accounts? Customers ranked in the top 30 by sales. The department general manager visits them with the salesperson weekly. Solving these core customers' problems will quickly boost sales. Rapid sales growth will increase the salesperson's income and strengthen their confidence and initiative.
Moreover, this support is not completed in a week or a month; short-term efforts rarely solve problems. It requires a relatively long-term support period, such as 3 months. We must understand that a significant reason for company sales decline is individual salespeople dragging behind; most salespeople are fine.
So during support, for average salespeople, a little guidance is enough, but focus on lagging salespeople. For example:
A newly hired salesperson, Xiao Li, lagged behind others due to being new. Department GM Xia boosted his confidence through onboarding training, then accompanied him on visits for 2 months. As a result, Xiao Li's performance improved rapidly, he understood various situations and could devise solutions, his income exceeded 10,000 yuan, and the company's overall performance rose significantly.
Additionally, the team should support lagging salespeople. In our company, we have two centralized support sessions per month for lagging individuals to boost their confidence. When people have confidence and someone helps them, why wouldn't they work hard?
Moreover, with cooperation, success rates rise significantly. An experienced veteran paired with a lagging salesperson can easily resolve many difficult issues by playing off each other with customers.
**Furthermore, managers like department heads going deep into the frontline long-term is very helpful. Remember, all sales inspiration comes from the frontline market, and long-term cooperation deepens team synergy.**
So, in summary, through data analysis, understand the key problems salespeople face in the market, find the problems to prescribe the right remedy, and support lagging salespeople to improve sales and the team's overall average sales level. Over time, your team will become stronger and eventually develop into a wolf-like team of elites.


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