Recently, during market research visits in Shandong and Anhui, we conducted concentrated visits to a number of distributors. During exchanges, the common feedback was that business is very difficult right now, especially in lower-tier markets. Many distributors have been unable to hold on in the past two years and have been eliminated by the market. Some distributors have managed to withstand the pressure but have had to lay off staff, cut salaries, and reduce scale... Against this backdrop, very few distributors have survived and maintained growth. The protagonist of today's "New Distribution 100 People" is Weifang Beibei Le Food Co., Ltd., which not only achieved this but did it well, maintaining 20% growth annually. Sun Xiaojing, the general manager of Weifang Beibei Le Food Co., Ltd., who has focused on trading for 17 years, started her business in 2007, focusing on leisure snacks, baking, internet-famous and fresh-box foods. She currently manages over 1,000 SKUs, maintains over 200 internet-famous (hot-selling) products, has over 3,000 active retail points, and achieves sales exceeding 70 million yuan. How does Weifang Beibei Le Food do it? What adjustments has Sun Xiaojing made since 2020? This article shares her practices and thoughts with you, hoping to provide some inspiration.
From a Small Wholesale Stall to Regional Leadership
In 2007, Sun Xiaojing and her husband Zhu Qi started their business after graduating from university. The initial venture was simply taking over a small stall from their elders that wholesaled unbranded pastries. They did small wholesale business at the stall. Due to a weak market foundation and lack of capital, they had to borrow 400,000 yuan from the bank to barely keep the business going. Sun Xiaojing recalled with a smile: "In the first year of business, we earned 380,000 yuan, repaid the loan, and only at the end of the year did we treat ourselves to a meal of dumplings." The couple ran the pastry business for over a decade without computers, systems, or salespeople. Each year, they earned hard-earned money, and growth was slow. Sun Xiaojing often reflected: Why is my growth still slow despite all my efforts? She realized that staying in the unbranded segment, once tactical growth reached its limit, the business would only become more difficult. Moreover, doing everything herself and dealing with trivial matters daily left her no time or energy to think, learn, and explore new areas. So in 2021, Sun Xiaojing restarted the business, built the current team, introduced the Zhoupu smart warehouse, and embarked on a "second entrepreneurship." She transitioned from pure pastries to the leisure snacks category, positioning excellent service to small and medium stores as her core competitiveness. Sun Xiaojing made changes step by step. In team management, she gradually built a complete organizational structure and established a refined salary and performance appraisal system. In product layout, she further improved the product matrix, doubling the number of products, managing over 1,000 SKUs, and maintaining 200 hot-selling SKUs. In channel coverage, the number of stores grew from a few hundred active outlets to nearly 3,000. Over three years, through gradual transformation, Weifang Beibei Le achieved a leading position in the local leisure snacks category.
Empowering the Team: More Effective Than Going It Alone
Achieving a leading position in the regional leisure snacks category is not a simple statement; it requires the execution capability of the entire team. Sun Xiaojing said directly: "My team is very capable! Any instruction can be quickly understood and executed by business supervisors. Now I basically don't need to monitor goals or hold meetings." This "capability" mainly benefits from Weifang Beibei Le Food's employee empowerment system and refined management system.
1. Establish a business training mechanism to stimulate middle management capabilities
New employees first undergo HR training, learning about the company's positioning, culture, vision, salary, and rules, to reach a consensus on the company's mission and ensure the organization has a common goal. Next is department supervisor training, informing new employees of the department's regulations and specific work processes. For example, for new sales positions, supervisors provide 2-3 days of on-site training, teaching store entry, breaking the ice with store customers, referral scripts, etc., and provide timely adjustment suggestions based on the salesperson's actual performance. Even for experienced salespeople, department supervisors conduct irregular accompanying visits. This training process also cultivates a sense of ownership among business supervisors, making them feel more belonging to the company. In business development, the company fully empowers employees, gives them room for trial and error, and is willing to bear losses incurred during employee growth. Sun Xiaojing said with a smile that compared to losing a few outlets, employee growth is more important. Only by giving employees a sense of value and recognition can you retain talent, create a good team atmosphere, and attract talent.
2. Refined and systematic team management to stimulate sales capabilities
Organizational efficiency cannot be improved without salary and performance management; you must distribute money well to use people well. In terms of salary and performance, Weifang Beibei Le Food adopts a base salary + commission + customized performance approach. The relatively stable base salary and commission account for 2/3 of total compensation, and customized performance accounts for 1/3. Each month, the boss allocates customized performance to supervisors, who, based on the month's key products and using data from digital tools on each salesperson's progress, set the next month's KPI assessment items on the 25th of each month, assigning performance tasks to corresponding salespeople and further matching them to specific stores. For example, if the sales team sets a task to sell 5,000 units of a product, it must be divided between salesperson A and B. At this time, the supervisor must match tasks based on store conditions. For instance, A's area has 40 stores suitable for selling the product, while B's area has 50 suitable stores, so the assigned tasks should differ. If a salesperson's area is weak, their KPI should focus on developing new customers rather than the number of store visits. It's important to emphasize that performance tasks should be simple and detailed, with 2-3 items being appropriate, so employees can focus on key points and allocate time and market resources reasonably.
3. Use digital tools to optimize work processes through data
Sun Xiaojing believes that tools are leverage. Before using digital tools, salespeople were inefficient, and daily visit progress could not be synchronized in time, preventing supervisors from providing timely advice and adjustments. Especially regarding payment terms, salespeople sometimes shirked collecting accounts receivable, and if a small store closed, it caused huge losses. Now, with digital tools, all salesperson actions are visualized and streamlined, greatly improving management efficiency.
1 Task progress: Business supervisors use digital tools to set monthly assessment items for salespeople and extract task progress from the backend every Sunday. Store coverage, promotional displays, SKU entry counts, etc., are followed up on every Monday based on system-extracted data. This way, not only do supervisors have good control over task details, but each salesperson also clearly knows which stores to visit next and what specific actions to take.
2 Tracking accounts receivable: The digital system sets corresponding reminder cycles/refund cycles for different customers based on the orders each salesperson runs daily. It also generates daily report tables based on the number of outlets visited, transaction amounts, and collection amounts. For example, if salesperson B has a cash customer who fails to pay on time, the backend will promptly notify the salesperson to collect the money. If it exceeds seven days, a reminder or penalty is issued to the salesperson. Sun Xiaojing stated that it is precisely because of the refined management achieved through digital tools that the company can truly understand, supervise, and empower salespeople, ensuring the company's continuous healthy development.
Stores Don't Lack Products; They Lack Good Products That Can Sell
In 2020, Sun Xiaojing transformed her brand, and in three years, sales doubled. Among over 1,000 SKUs, she maintains over 200 differentiated internet-famous hot products. An unavoidable topic here is product selection. In product selection, Beibei Le Food's methodology is to listen more, see more, and compare more.
First, always pay attention to industry dynamics. Join professional alliance organizations and associations, maintain close communication with peers, and obtain the latest industry information. For example, if a product is already selling well in a small area according to peer exchanges, it can be foreseen as a rising star. When local consumer attention is not yet high, distributors should quickly introduce it for trial sales.
Second, gain insight into and accurately grasp mainstream trends. Always pay attention to research reports released by consumer-related institutions and focus on the preferences of mainstream consumer groups. For example, as the whole nation advocates healthy food, when introducing products, priority should be given to healthy short-shelf-life products to meet consumer demands.
Third, select products based on three factors: appearance, quality, and cost-effectiveness. Weifang Beibei Le Food's product selection strategy is 40% appearance + 30% quality + 30% cost-effectiveness. In the extremely competitive leisure snacks industry, products emerge endlessly. In this environment, only by first capturing consumers' attention with appearance and prompting purchase behavior can there be an opportunity to further verify quality. The requirements for quality and cost-effectiveness are to compare quality at the same price point and compare price at the same quality. Choosing products with extreme cost-effectiveness will be a future trend. For example, under the premise of the same product quality, if one manufacturer can produce 30,000 units per day and earn one yuan per unit to ensure profit, but ordinary manufacturers cannot achieve such high output and cannot survive earning one yuan per unit, then undoubtedly you should choose products from large manufacturers because the quality is the same but the price is lower. Based on this product selection strategy, the team regularly eliminates a batch of products and continuously introduces new ones, always ensuring fresh blood in the product library to match the needs of store customers.
Final Thoughts
During this period, New Distribution visited many distributors, and the common market feedback is that expectations for this year are not too good. "You must be strong yourself." The trend of external environmental changes is irreversible; distributors cannot change it, but they can seek change internally. As Sun Xiaojing shared, "Make a good budget, set good goals, tighten your purse strings, practice your internal skills, and take steady steps. First, do what you are good at, and then, while ensuring the basic market grows steadily, try new businesses."
Believe that those who are not abandoned by the times all have their own moats!