Friendly Reminder: Click the blue text above “快消品经销商专业咨询” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management.

I. What is different now compared to before?

1. The business environment is fast, chaotic, and restless

In recent years, the economy has continued to develop rapidly, and enterprises are facing a good period of development opportunities. Business development is fast, transportation is fast, information is fast, communication is fast, etc. There is also the theory of "fast fish eat slow fish," which believes that only by being fast can there be more survival opportunities. Speed has become the keyword of today!

Behind the rapid development, there are also some chaotic phenomena: enterprises are eager for quick success and instant profit in pursuit of so-called speed; enterprises of different scales use different means, leading to a chaotic market; product quality problems frequently occur, and problems keep arising; "not playing by the rules" is everywhere...

With the great abundance of material goods, people's desires are also rapidly expanding, and the development speed of enterprises is far behind the expansion of people's desires. As a result, enterprises begin to feel impatient and restless. Desire has swallowed up many normal laws. Enterprises often think about innovative ideas and breaking conventions, but often neglect their basic operations.

2. The post-80s and post-90s generations have become the main force

The post-80s and post-90s generations are the only-child generation. They have a superior living environment, which is very different from the hardworking and enduring post-60s and post-70s generations. They are quick to accept new things, are unwilling to be constrained too much, and pursue self-expression.

The main force has quietly shifted. Managing these new forces with original methods will cause certain conflicts. As a result, enterprises now have high turnover rates, difficulty recruiting employees, and difficulty managing them.

3. The rapid development of the internet

From fixed-line telephones, pagers, mobile phones, and the internet to the current mobile internet, people's communication methods have undergone rapid changes, and the convenience of communication is unimaginable. It is no exaggeration to say that the changes brought by the internet are "earth-shaking." If you are not careful, you will fall behind the pace of development.

II. How should we adapt to these changes?

1. Use the internet

Since the internet brings us so much convenience, its use is indispensable. There is no need for every company to consider O2O, nor to mention internet thinking every day, nor to regard internet changes as a flood of beasts. Taobao and Xiaomi are successful cases of using the internet, but they are not very replicable. It is inevitable that there will be successful users of the internet, but the number will not be large, because the internet tends to form monopolies. How many chat tools do you choose? How many shopping websites do you pay attention to? How many portal websites are you familiar with?

For ordinary enterprises, ignoring the internet is definitely not acceptable. They should use it in three aspects.

First, treat it as a sales channel, and only one of many. Just like the channel changes in the past, it started with large wholesale, then department stores and supermarkets appeared, and in recent years various specialty stores have emerged. Now the internet has brought online sales, adding another sales channel. How to make good use of the internet's sales channel function? A simple way is to open a store on Taobao or open an official flagship store on Tmall, and then consider online malls such as JD.com and Yihaodian. But at present, it is hard to say how much profit it can bring. The premise is to be prepared to lose money. To comfort yourself, treat it as an investment in brand promotion. If there is no flagship store on the internet, how can you prove that it is a big brand product?

Second, treat it as a promotional and publicity channel. Online promotion can directly bring traffic to the sales platform. This is the charm of the internet: promotion and sales are integrated. Traditional TV and print media promotion are separate from sales. In fact, upon careful thought, the integration of promotion and sales is not unique to the internet. TV shopping, catalog sales, and terminal-based promotion (building the brand at the point of sale) are also like this. Despite so many benefits, the current cost of online promotion is not low. Enterprises with high budgets can directly do hard advertising online; those with smaller budgets can do Baidu promotion, keyword optimization, etc.

If enterprises are more concerned about free promotional resources, they should make better use of various WeChat groups, official Weibo accounts, and WeChat public platform construction. But for free promotion, you still need to consider having attractive substantive content. If you just sell products every day, it will definitely cause resentment and you won't have any fans. Now in WeChat Moments and QQ Spaces, some people start posting a large number of pictures to sell products. Others are not interested, and moreover, they treat friendship as a transaction. The only result is that you will be blocked!

Finally, make reasonable use of the internet for team and customer communication and management. Establish WeChat groups and QQ groups for special project communication, which brings many conveniences for information exchange and personnel management. In the early days of sales personnel management, if you wanted to locate personnel, you needed to cooperate with mobile companies, costing 200 yuan per person per month. Now, you can directly use Weibo to post pictures, which not only reports the work environment but also provides free location services, making it easy to manage sales personnel. Other various sales logs, process management, document approval, etc., can all use OA systems, especially with the popularity of smartphones, mobile internet brings more convenience.

2. Focus

Whether it is an enterprise or an individual, they should focus, not seek to be big, but seek to be specialized and refined. More than 10 years ago, compound talents were advocated, needing to know a little about everything, and such people were oriented towards management. Now the environment has changed, and you need to focus on a specific industry or profession to achieve success. Lei Jun attributes part of Xiaomi's success to "focus." In his view, without focus, you definitely cannot make a good phone, and you should not make multiple models, but focus on one model to the extreme, which makes it easier to succeed.

In the current era where all kinds of information is flying around and there are many channels for receiving information, whether it is the team or channel personnel, they should go deep into one field and cultivate it for a long time. Only then can they become skilled through practice and gain more profits. Frequent job changes and industry changes without accumulation may eventually waste your youth and make you sigh. People think that changing jobs frequently can seek more development opportunities, but looking back, those who stay in a company for a long time often hold important positions. What about those who change jobs frequently? When the new company has squeezed out your value, they will start looking for new favorites. So, frequent job changers should be alert, unless you are going to start your own business and need to understand different enterprises.

Distributors are the same. Operate your existing industry well, think more, focus on management, and when encountering industry difficulties, persist a little more. When spring comes, it will definitely be full of flowers, and finally bear abundant fruits. Distributors who frequently change industries or manufacturers find it difficult to grow big and strong.

3. Collaboration

We need to change our concept of channel partners, treating channel partners and their teams as quasi-employees, or managing the company team and channel partners uniformly, integrating the two teams, and doing a good job of collaboration and division of labor. Each party does things within their professional scope. Distributors are responsible for logistics, capital, and resources; manufacturers are responsible for products, promotion, and guidance on market development methods. In most cases, manufacturers demand more but do less. Enterprises that do not value channel partners often find it difficult to grow and develop. We should establish the idea that channel partners are more important than the enterprise's marketing team. Marketing personnel stay in a region for one or two years, either being promoted and transferred, or changing jobs. They frequently change, and their depth of work and sense of responsibility definitely cannot compare to channel partners who invest money, effort, and continue to operate! When promoting channel flattening, many enterprises set the secret to growth as "eliminating big players," cutting off large distributors, choosing smaller regional distributors, or setting up branches or offices. Not to mention the high management costs, the effectiveness is judged by each enterprise. It must be said that many enterprises can still maintain a certain growth when the industry declines, relying on long-term cooperative and strong distributors.

In team management, we need to establish a platform mindset, giving employees more development space. The company provides a platform, and bosses and employees are both entrepreneurs, working within their own interests and abilities. Only by valuing team development and allowing employees to see a brighter future can the team be stable and the enterprise grow. If there is only the success of the enterprise without the growth opportunities of employees, such an enterprise will also find it difficult to grow and develop.

Some people say: What is a good team? It is a team where there are many capable people. What is even better is that those who are more capable than you are also more humble, low-key, and work harder than you! What is a bad team? It is a team where you find that there are many braggarts, and worse, they not only do not work, but also form cliques and eliminate all those who do work!

Without collaboration, how can we survive in today's increasingly competitive environment?

4. Avoid impatience

Facing the many temptations in the economic environment, both the team and channel partners need to calm down and find peace in the chaos. If you only see the external glitz and cannot see the essence of things, you will be blinded by a leaf and eventually become more and more chaotic. Everything has a gradual process, and we must follow the laws of nature.

Demanding 30%, 50%, or even 100% growth rates from marketing teams and distributors at every turn exceeds a normal development speed and is like pulling up seedlings to help them grow. There is an enterprise whose marketing team, under pressure to increase regional sales, required distributors to keep stocking up, causing constant complaints from distributors. Finally, employees found that they still could not complete the task, so they kept developing new distributors, causing the original stocking distributors to suffer losses. As a result, the original distributors defected in anger. In the end, not only was the task not completed, but distributors were lost, and employees resigned. Many enterprises repeatedly stage such tragedies because of excessive sales pressure.

Some things take time from the beginning to produce results. Not everything can have immediate effects. We need to look at the long term. Otherwise, it may lead to deformed sales actions and be counterproductive.

III. How can we respond to all changes with constancy?

The environment is changing with each passing day, and new plots are constantly being staged. The enterprises in the play are under great pressure. Is there a strategy to respond to all changes with constancy? Yes! The key is the heart.

1. For channel partners: Sincerity

The current social environment lacks integrity, making integrity extremely precious. Therefore, as long as you treat channel partners with sincerity, you can solve various problems. How to use sincerity towards channel partners? It is one approach: treat channel partners as your closest relatives. At this point, we can know how to get along with this channel partner.

When selecting channel partners, match them appropriately, be sincere to them, do not fool customers, and do not aim to make customers excited or cheat money. When visiting channel partners, also have sincerity, think carefully for the customer, and do not cause trouble for the channel partner's reception. In the control of channel partners, do your best to meet their reasonable requirements; if they violate principles, handle it calmly. When serving channel partners, you should be even more sincere, treating customer affairs as your own. Only then can you work together with channel partners and promote better sales.

No matter how many changes occur in the external environment, as long as you are sincerely united with channel partners, do you still worry about not having a response strategy? What is feared is that with changes in the external environment, these customers who were not treated sincerely before will, under the call of new opportunities, embrace their future, and we will not find suitable partners around us.

2. For the team: Equality

In team management, establish a mindset of equality. Do not belittle yourself, nor consider yourself unattainable. Insist on equal communication with the team; treat incentives fairly, eliminate factionalism, and be open, fair, and just; in team control, put yourself in others' shoes. When managing the team, think from the other's perspective, first imagine whether you would be willing to accept it, and then implement it. "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself."

Ultimately, we need to create a corporate culture of equal communication, let the team execute consciously, and enhance team cohesion and sense of responsibility. Nowadays, many corporate cultures are mere formalities, either only recognizing money, or copied from somewhere, slogan-style corporate culture, vision, and values, thinking that hanging them on the wall is enough.

Now we are beginning to advocate family traditions. Enterprises should also pay attention to the construction of their own corporate culture, but the key is how to truly implement it and hang the slogans on the wall in the hearts of the team members!

Like this article? Feel free to click the top right corner to share it to your Moments;

About us: WeChat name: 快销品经销商专业咨询管理 Account introduction: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally targeting distributor internal management:

Click the "Read the original" below to enter our micro-community for interactive communication and questions. Learning and exchange QQ group: 344257092