As more post-95s, and even post-00s, enter the workforce, frontline sales representatives in the FMCG industry are being replaced by these young people. How should these young sales reps be managed? They are smart, eager to learn, and willing to change, but they lack experience. At the same time, they lack patience and dislike being disciplined. In the past, training for frontline sales reps often involved either hiring external trainers or sales experts, or having excellent office managers serve as internal trainers to teach frontline staff. However, these methods are already quite traditional. As a large-scale brand enterprise, it is essential to adopt a "platform thinking" approach to manage young people. Regarding training, if it merely covers product, price, channel, and promotion, it only helps them understand the company; it is conceptual training. Only by understanding customers and persuading them can they secure orders. Therefore, the aforementioned training is just explaining terms and concepts, and it cannot solve the practical business skills needed in real work. Where is the solution? I don't think it lies with managers, but rather with the sales reps themselves. When a group is large enough, there will always be various ways to solve problems within the group. The old approach is to invite teachers or trainers to speak, but these methods rarely solve the real problems that sales reps encounter. Moreover, with the advancement of commerce, various channels have emerged and are changing rapidly. A single foodservice channel can extend to many consumption scenarios. At the same time, frontline sales reps face various channels such as internet cafes, grocery stores, supermarkets, O2O, community group buying, and campus channels. If we rely solely on fixed training paradigms, it is difficult to handle. Therefore, "platform thinking" training means: build a stage, construct a system, let "expert" employees share their methods; at the same time, encourage employees to conduct scenario-based drills, allowing problems to find the most appropriate solutions through simulated practice. The market competition is more intense, with great uncertainty every day and various difficult problems. How to enable frontline sales reps to quickly master problem-solving methods is a question every manager needs to consider.
-01- Sharing Culture: Let the excellent people around you tell you what to do. Regarding the sharing system, my approach is "share at every meeting; big meetings for big shares, small meetings for small shares." How exactly? At the quarterly regional manager meeting, each time someone shares, on a rotating basis. The person to share is designated by the superior, and the content mainly covers excellent cases from the region. For example, a sales rep in a certain region developed a chain of gas stations in a certain place, selling over 100,000 cases of water a year. How did you develop it, and what methods did you use? At the weekly regional manager meeting. The first item on the agenda is the regional manager sharing, and it is on a rotating basis, not a selection basis. Whoever's turn it is shares successful cases from their area. At the office's daily morning and evening meetings. The office manager organizes, and at each morning and evening meeting, someone must share. This sharing is not on a rotating basis; mainly, the city manager designates a sales rep who has performed outstandingly in the past few days to share. The benefits of establishing a sharing system: First, it builds the confidence and sense of honor of the sharers. Since they are on stage to share, they must be excellent. Second, it exercises the sharers' skills in making PPTs, public speaking, logical thinking, etc. Sharers need to prepare a lot, and in the process, they refine their own methodologies, which is very helpful for future promotion to management positions. Third, through sharing, the sales reps below can easily learn. They will think, "He is just like me, and he used this method to win the client, so I should try it too." If a manager talks about similar sales methods or techniques, employees will surely think, "It's normal that you can do it; you are much better than us, so of course you can." Sharing among sales reps, where levels are equal, is more likely to resonate and create empathy. I once tested this at a meeting: I randomly checked sales reps to repeat the specific actions of the eight-step visit, and two consecutive people got it wrong. So generally, when leaders speak, if employees can absorb 20%, it's already very good. But sharing among colleagues is relatively easier to absorb. In the sharing process, not only do sales reps' abilities improve, but daily meetings also become less boring. What exactly should be shared? Simply put, three steps:
First, what problem did you encounter?
Second, how did you solve it?
Third, what was the result? For example: 1. A sales rep shared about a small terminal store he served. For the past three years, the store had used a small beverage cooler, but through steps 1-2-3-4-5, he finally replaced it with a large cooler and placed it in the best position.
- For a new product launch and distribution, the normal level is that a sales rep can distribute to 10 stores a day, but one sales rep distributed to 30 stores a day. How did he do it? He can share on stage. When establishing the sharing system, I suggest not using sales volume as the standard, but rather specific events. For example, if a sales rep's monthly performance increased by 150%, it would be difficult for him to share clearly. Because performance is influenced by many factors, such as new products, weather, newly developed customers, and even unreasonable target allocation. Sales growth is the final result of a series of events superimposed, and even the sales rep himself may not be able to summarize it well. In contrast, facing a specific event with a specific method is more practical. Additionally, for sharing among frontline sales reps in offices, it is not recommended to use a rotating system; instead, whoever does something well should share. Sharing should not be forced; we should establish a culture of "rushing to share."
-02- Drill Culture: Let problems find the best solutions through scenario-based drills! Frontline sales reps encounter many uncertain problems every day. How to effectively solve these uncertain problems? I believe the best method is scenario-based drills. Simulate the problems faced in the frontline market in the office at zero cost, once or even several times. The biggest advantage of drills is that they have no cost. Encountering problems in the field without solving them incurs costs: time, energy, and ultimately affecting sales achievement. For example, an untrained sales rep will go to a customer and ask, "Boss, do you want to stock up?" Although the question is not wrong, the boss usually answers "No." Door-to-door selling often makes people uncomfortable, and the boss's subconscious answer is "No." The probability of getting an order this way might be only 1%. But there is another simple method, without changing anything else, that can increase the success rate to 20%: walk into the store, first check the inventory, then find the product with the least stock, and ask the boss, "Boss, you only have one case of orange juice left. Would you like to order 3 cases or 5 cases?" If the sales rep asks the boss if he wants to order, he can choose not to. But if he asks whether he wants 3 or 5 cases, most bosses will choose to order fewer. So asking "Do you want to order?" is actually setting a trap for yourself, giving the boss the right to say no. The above example of asking "Boss, do you want to order?" right away is typical of an untrained sales rep who doesn't know the tricks and has no idea what methods to use in different situations. Frontline sales reps face various uncertain problems in their daily routes, such as what to do if the boss is unhappy today? What if the clerk says the boss is not in? Should they just leave? Then the trip would be wasted. Is there a way to get an order even if the boss is not in? The purpose of drills is to turn uncertain problems, such as how to handle an unhappy boss or an absent boss, into certain answers by practicing them in the office in advance. The principle of drills is like athletes. The difference between professional and amateur basketball players is that without formal training, their movements are purely conditioned reflexes. For example, when an amateur player posts up, 99% of the time they will go in one direction. You might make a fake move to disguise your real move, but your fake move cannot actually hide your real move, and it might not even become a real move. Because you haven't undergone deliberate practice, amateurs only break in one direction and don't think of ways or find opportunities to break in both directions. Only professional players can do that. Why can they do it? Because they have practiced thousands of times off the court, drilling every possible situation for each move until it becomes second nature. When they step on the court, they have a hundred ways to react. Amateurs usually have only one. This is the importance of training: turning every move into muscle memory. Returning to the sales skills of frontline sales reps, drills turn practical methods into muscle memory. When you walk into a store, you won't directly ask the boss if he wants to order, but instead, you'll have a hundred responses ready for any sudden situation. Regarding the drill system, my suggestion: first do a warm-up for a period to get everyone interested. Take the office as a unit, once a week, have sales reps summarize the problems they encountered in the market that week. One plays the store owner, another plays the sales rep, and they conduct scenario drills. Freely improvise and think together about the corresponding communication scripts. Additionally, the city manager can collect and summarize these problems, categorize them, identify the most frequently encountered problems, have sales reps drill on these specific points, gradually refine the best response scripts, and finally develop a set of standard actions or training materials.
-03- Empowerment Thinking Replaces Control Thinking Through sharing and drills, good methods, techniques, and responses are mastered by sales reps in the office through communication and practice. Only then can they handle real market situations effectively. This is also a new management approach: platform empowerment thinking, rather than traditional control thinking. In my view, distributing new products, running promotions, and opening new markets are all horizontal growth. Although the growth is obvious, the costs and sacrifices are also high. How can we improve performance in a mature market at the lowest cost? The best way is to enhance the capabilities of sales reps. And the best training to enhance capabilities is to come from the market and go back to the market. Through the sharing and drill systems, let the young frontline sales reps of the post-95s and post-00s discover their potential, challenge difficulties, find joy, and achieve self-fulfillment!
About the author: Pan Lihua, Sales Operations Manager at Swire Coca-Cola, and a student of Dedao University's Class Zero. With over 15 years of sales management experience at Coca-Cola, he is familiar with FMCG market layout, strategy formulation, and team management. He is skilled in market insight and team motivation. Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.