---
title: "How to Implement Successful Market Management?"
description: "Sales management involves planning, executing, and controlling sales activities to achieve sales goals, focusing on market management, process management, and team management. Effective market management includes defining market scope, understanding buying characteristics, choosing entry modes, and setting realistic goals."
author: "蒋军"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2014-10-28"
language: "en"
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# How to Implement Successful Market Management?

> Sales management involves planning, executing, and controlling sales activities to achieve sales goals, focusing on market management, process management, and team management. Effective market management includes defining market scope, understanding buying characteristics, choosing entry modes, and setting realistic goals.

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Sales management is the planning, execution, and control of a company's sales activities to achieve its sales goals. It primarily encompasses three aspects: market management, process management, and team management. Let's first explore how to conduct effective market management.

The main content of market management includes: defining the market scope; identifying buying characteristics within the market; determining the basic mode of market entry; and establishing realistic short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals for specific markets, using a timeline as a reference to develop strategies and tactics. Market management emphasizes setting and measuring sales targets and campaigns from a market perspective.

**Defining Market Scope**

Market scope can refer to the national or international market for large enterprises, or regional markets for SMEs. It also involves identifying which channels, outlets, and consumers the product or service targets.

How to define market scope?

First, identify gaps or unmet consumer needs. Choose to develop products or services that are underdeveloped, target customers whose needs are not being met, or operate in regions with no current coverage. Your product may have unique features or claims (even if competitors have them but don't promote them, it can be considered unique), and consumers have a need but are not yet aware of it. For example, Sony's invention of the Walkman led and created consumer demand.

Second, research the market scope. If developing underdeveloped products or services, study how to produce and provide better offerings and their costs; if targeting a specific customer group, understand their needs, preferences, and which aspects of the product/service they value (quality, price, convenience, technology, taste, etc.); if operating in a blank region, grasp the local policies, regulations, geography, economic conditions, and customer characteristics.

Third, gather market information. Concentrate the company's resources to fully operate in the defined market, achieve results, and continuously expand based on that foundation.

Speaking of this, we must discuss the "physical" concept of the market. Earlier, we defined market scope from a demand perspective, but defining it from a "physical" development perspective is also crucial. That is, defining market scope in terms of national, regional, and city levels. This definition is also more closely tied to corporate market management.

For example, a medium-sized drinking water company in South China has developed in several cities on the edge of the Pearl River Delta for years, with good control over distribution channels in surrounding cities and solid profitability. Its sales organization is simple: a vice president oversees overall sales, with a sales manager, regional managers, and sales representatives (including team leaders). The marketing department is weak, with only two staff members. Clearly, this company's market scope is "regional." Its survival strategy relies on channel control and relative loyalty from local consumers.

**Studying Buying Characteristics**

Research and analysis of consumers have always been a weakness for Chinese companies, partly due to the maturity and marketization level of the Chinese market. In mature Western market economies, consumer research has been conducted for decades, even predating the birth of marketing science.

A classic example is P&G's Tide laundry detergent entering the Chinese market, where they conducted scientific "laundry" research on households in major cities. They studied laundry detergent usage, washing time, frequency, who does the laundry, and load size. This research greatly contributed to Tide's successful entry into the Chinese market and served as a model for Chinese FMCG companies' consumer research.

Buying characteristics also include organizational buying. For FMCG, organizational purchases are typically large, infrequent, and require discounts.

What are the main consumer buying characteristics?

For FMCG, consumer purchases are often impulsive and random under brand influence, characterized by small quantities and high frequency. Consumers have increasingly high expectations for product quality, packaging, brand, and service.

**Market Entry Modes**

The essence of contemporary business competition is business model competition, as Peter Drucker said. We can also say that the success of market development and management largely depends on the market model.

Market scope and buying characteristics determine the market development model. Based on the channel and consumption characteristics of FMCG, the following models can be chosen:

Organizational structure: Can be divided by product category, region, brand, or customer. For most SMEs, a regional organizational structure is more suitable for market development and management.

Market entry strategies: There are strategies of creating momentum, accumulating momentum, and leveraging momentum. Creating momentum aims to build atmosphere, attracting high attention from channels and consumers over a period, then using a push-pull approach (channel and terminal push; brand and consumer activity pull) to drive it to a peak; leveraging the created "momentum" to quickly convey the product to consumers, pulling the market and channels.

**Sales Planning**

Sales plan management: Decompose the annual sales target to departments, compare with last year's performance, formulate departmental annual sales plans, break them down to individuals, and monitor monthly.

Create monthly personal sales plan forms for marketing staff. Monthly completion status: work completed, including sales, collections, customer visits; sales expenses (personal travel, entertainment, gifts); advertising and promotion effectiveness; key account status, new customer development, abnormal customers, potential customers, competitor activities, issues and suggestions, and next month's work plan.

Sales territory management: Territory structure, personnel, and systems. This is fundamental; without structure, people, and systems, even the best ideas cannot be effectively executed. Regional markets are a key support for enterprise success, especially for typical FMCG companies, as few traditional companies can achieve nationwide "prairie fire" without going through regional markets.

Sales channel development: Channel length, width, depth, and relevance. Plan and adjust according to channel characteristics. For example, a medium-sized company in South China, mainly producing beverages and water products, has thrived for years in a market dominated by big brands because it firmly controls its local channels and leverages geographical advantages, remaining largely unaffected by strong competition.

Promotion planning and sales promotion: Develop promotion plans based on sales plans and targets to support achieving sales goals. Annual, quarterly, and even monthly promotional activities must have prior plans and applications. Define several major promotion themes and tailor local promotion plans based on regional market characteristics. Since each market differs in conditions and competition, promotions need not be identical. For instance, a local brand faced significant impact from competitors in its base market, making maintenance difficult; its strategic market also declined due to reduced terminal enthusiasm and recommendation willingness. After market research, two promotion plans were developed:

One is the "exclusive terminal marketing strategy" for the base market, selecting terminals with good sales but requiring "exclusive sales" and "independent display." Since the base market already had good sales, terminals were attracted by competitors' strong investment; now with awards and no sales worries, terminals actively participated, yielding good results.

The other is the "offensive terminal marketing strategy" for the strategic market, also using awards, but due to weaker market and consumer foundations, the first approach couldn't be used. After visiting terminals and offices, the awards were modified: several major prizes were added, and the "exclusive sales" and "independent display" criteria were removed, keeping other criteria unchanged. Terminals participated enthusiastically, and results were equally good.

Product management: Products are the foundation. What does "foundation" mean? It means the most basic element; without it, everything else is castles in the air. In sales and sales management, products must always occupy a prominent position, including price management, product development, and product mix. In sales management, product price management and product mix are key focuses.

Product price management: Old products decline due to consumer indifference or new product substitution, but more importantly, profit erosion: channels lose profitability, and terminals also lack high margins due to frequent discounts, so products quickly exit the market. The core of price management is to ensure a rational channel price system and keep channels profitable. Although increasingly difficult, sales managers should use company policies and resources to encourage channels to adhere to price policies, avoiding goods or cash purchase incentives during holidays and promotions, especially during new product launches.

Product mix: A single finger doesn't have much power and may get hurt, but a fist has great power; the same applies to products. A single product in an era dominated by hypermarkets and supermarkets struggles to achieve cost advantages. Moreover, for channel and market considerations, using product mix to gain market share is a "fast and good" strategy. This can be done by combining high, medium, and low-end products or using different brands for different channels. This makes it easier to control cross-regional sales and price undercutting, but when operating, the same region should be under one sales area to ensure "one chessboard," reducing duplicate investment and construction costs, and achieving brand promotion and channel synergy.

**Setting Sales Targets**

Sales targets are typically annual, including: sales volume (sales revenue), profit targets, new product sales targets, number of distributors, effective retail outlets, unit sales cost, effective market pricing, and accounts receivable scale. The main method is backward reasoning, such as: whether resources exist to achieve the increase, changes in company resources over the next year, and whether there are capabilities and feasible measures to address these changes. The more detailed the reasoning, the closer the target is to realization. Annual target description: combine the above indicators, e.g., summary of last year's actual sales, annual variance, annual sales target justification, and conclusion.

Sales revenue targets: Annual, quarterly, and monthly targets should be based on the previous year/quarter/month, expressed in numbers; decompose annual targets into quarters, assign to sales departments, and further to regions and individual salespeople.

Profit targets: Estimate annual profit, allocate to sales departments, and create departmental profit completion tables.

New product sales targets: Set expected sales targets for new products, benchmarked against last year's actual new product sales.

These targets should be decomposed into regional markets along several dimensions: first, by product category; second, by customer; third, by salesperson; fourth, by key accounts, mainly national hypermarkets and supermarkets. Plan sales amounts and product quantities, broken down by category and item.

**Formulating Sales Strategies**

Basic sales strategies:

Sales strategies should be formulated based on market competition, company resources, and product characteristics. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy or method. Main approaches include:

Brand strategy: Brand strategy is important but not urgent; the outcome of a single battle doesn't indicate strategic issues. It determines whether to compete on service, price, quality, or a combination. It defines the direction and methods.

Product strategy: What varieties, packaging, flavors, and combinations to sell in which channels. In product strategy, consider each product's mission, profitability, and channel price differences.

Channel strategy: What channels suit the product? Single or multiple channels? Channel length, width, depth, etc.; is it channel (distributor)-driven or recruitment-driven?

Pricing strategy: Price is crucial, especially channel member profitability (not gross margin but return), leaving enough operational space. Low-price strategy? Premium strategy?

Promotion strategy: Promotion is a lubricant; communication should be sharp. Advertising first or terminal first? Single precise communication or broad coverage?

**Sales Breakthrough Strategies:**

Focus strategy: Market focus: concentrate on one or several small regions (e.g., 2nd and 3rd tier markets); target focus: which channel or indicator is the main assessment; resource focus: where to invest heavily; communication focus: which level to concentrate on first, emphasizing precision and sharpness.

Integration strategy: Closely integrate internal departments, regional market resources, personnel, and value chain to concentrate superior resources for regional breakthroughs, creating a marketing storm in channels, terminals, and the entire market.

Momentum strategy: Creating momentum: create events related to hot news, requiring objective resources and conditions; leveraging momentum: use news events and related topics to derive differentiated marketing strategies; using momentum: build brand assets and drive product sales over a long period.

Channel strategy: Recruitment: use promotional campaigns and recruitment plans to quickly cover the market; general agency: operate through a general agent, with the manufacturer assisting in developing distribution networks; distribution: exclusive distribution in small regions for stronger market control and breakthroughs.

Terminal strategy: Refined marketing: pursue efficient visit efficiency, value chain coordination, and ultimately achieve regional No.1; community: establish dedicated community promotion teams, using activities and purchase-with-purchase as entry methods; special channels: such as internet cafes, schools, sports halls, can partner with big brands (non-conflicting) for special second-tier distributors, with good results and lower costs after cost sharing.

Word-of-mouth strategy: Create and find typical cases and events, guide discussions for word-of-mouth marketing packaging and promotion. Get people talking about you; build and maintain a good reputation; amplify the spread of word-of-mouth among consumers.

Conference marketing: Product: product is the foundation; without it, nothing else matters. Planning: without planning, aggregation is impossible. Program: content, format, process. Target group: must be precise and have sustained impact.

Experiential marketing: Redefine marketing from the consumer's senses, emotions, thoughts, actions, and associations, entering the market from the consumer's perspective.

**Strengthening Customer Management:**

Customer file management: "Dynamic customer file management" involves continuously updating and modifying customer information, and based on it, setting sales targets and maintaining customers. It is a management tool, including customer file cards and tables, facilitating qualification review, operational control, and credit control.

Distributor management: Includes three parts: distributor policies and incentives; relationship and service management; and intermediary management.

**Sales Execution and Control**

Currently, many SME FMCG companies' middle and senior management focus on results, which is not wrong. They set many rules for regional business management but provide little targeted guidance and coaching. Completing tasks is fine; failing leads to salary deductions, making "systems" a sword hanging over salespeople – only punishment, with little or no incentive effect.

Execution and control should focus on the following:

First, clear goals and phased goals. Salespeople fear having no goals or phased goals. If the daily goal is just to visit terminals, over time they'll just "herd sheep" because without a detailed target, they feel every day is the same and lose motivation. Goals must be divisible; new product launches can be divided into preparation, introduction, growth, stability, maturity, and decline stages. Each stage has different priorities: preparation involves familiarizing with product selling points, channel preheating, and terminal pre-promotion; introduction involves terminal visits, product display, demonstration, and word-of-mouth; growth involves consumer pull, stabilizing and expanding consumer groups, regulating channels to prevent cross-regional sales and price undercutting, and stabilizing the channel network.

Second, sound systems. Without rules, nothing can be accomplished. Develop realistic assessment systems, including for company personnel and distributors/second-tier distributors. Systems should not be complex to avoid "over-management" traps. Simple and easy is enough, especially for performance-affecting systems; otherwise, the system is perfect but the market is lost. Some companies, to maximize promotional resource efficiency and prevent fake promotions and personnel, create cumbersome application and reimbursement processes, but by the time approval comes, the opportunity is gone. Some market staff apply two months in advance, but the activity's relevance cannot be guaranteed. The best method is for distributors to advance funds, but due to complex reimbursement, many distributors now hesitate to do so, knowing that money has time value.

Third, team quality. People are undoubtedly the most important. For salespeople, during selection, check whether their basic and key qualities are met, especially key qualities; otherwise, excellent results are hard to achieve. Next is training: one on professional knowledge, industry knowledge, and communication skills; the other on marketing knowledge and sales techniques. Two main methods: regular training (morning meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings) and special training (new product launches, competitive strategy development, distributor management, terminal display, visual merchandising, specific consumer activities, etc.).

Team management is one of the three pillars of sales management and will be analyzed in a dedicated article.

If you abandon sales strategy guidance and regional personnel coaching and only demand results, those results won't be good.

"Execution" sounds nice, but why do so many companies fail? Good execution results depend on precise goals, sound systems, and overall team quality.

Regarding control, it mainly involves monitoring and evaluating key nodes, based on accurate information. For example, new product launches can be tracked through daily sales volume and trends, and competitive reactions, mainly to gauge momentum. Promotion control checks whether activities follow approved content, what effects were achieved, and what shortcomings exist, using phone calls and field visits for supervision and control; it should also reflect middle and senior management's guidance and assistance – not just finding problems but solving them.

The above discusses the first part of sales management – market management, which is abstract and macro. But it is the foundation for the other two parts; without it, even the best process management and team management are "moons in the water, flowers in the mirror."

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