Recently, many friends have seen that Jinmailang, whether in noodles or beverages, continues to grow rapidly despite shrinking overall market share, and they ask me what the fundamental reason is. Indeed, the Four-in-One model plays a crucial role, so many scholars have begun to study Jinmailang's Four-in-One, many companies arrange for management to learn it, and some even spend heavily to poach Jinmailang's mid-to-senior managers to help implement it in their own companies. However, results are mostly unsatisfactory. The fundamental reason is that three logics are not clearly understood. Today, I will share briefly about Jinmailang's Four-in-One model.

-01- The First Core Logic: Human Efficiency Logic The Four-in-One is not just a single marketing tactic but a combination of human resources and marketing systems. Sales directors who habitually analyze it with traditional 4P and 4C frameworks often go astray. China's current macroeconomic system dictates that traditional FMCG trends must seek growth from existing stock; big fish eat small fish, fast fish eat slow fish. The most cost-effective and efficient method is to continuously boost the enthusiasm and willingness of personnel through a system. For example: if a pack of instant noodles is discounted by 50 cents for the terminal, it makes little impact, but if the salesperson's commission is increased, sales might rise by over 20%. Effective incentives to improve human efficiency are one of the core logics of the Four-in-One. In this regard, Jinmailang is the industry's ultimate user of people; if it says second, no company dares to claim first. Let's first look at the six HR modules: 1. Planning; 2. Recruitment; 3. Training; 4. Performance; 5. Compensation; 6. Labor relations. Now, the Four-in-One components: 1. People; 2. Vehicles; 3. Terminal devices; 4. Regional contracts. Mapping them one-to-one reveals:

  1. People are the workers: planning, recruitment, and training are about instilling and controlling the workers' mindset;
  2. Vehicles are either paid for by the workers or are their own: representing efficient, low-energy transport (route planning is self-optimized);
  3. Terminal devices represent performance and compensation, the core of human efficiency improvement. The company breaks down market and sales basics into steps, quantifies assessment, and workers earn as they work, accumulating small gains, with daily commission payouts and transparent income;
  4. Regional contracts establish labor relations and profit sharing (50/50). The Four-in-One's origin comes from the success of China's agricultural reform starting with "Xiaogang Village," addressing distribution rights. The more distribution rights are delegated downward, the stronger the sense of ownership among frontline staff (workers' mindset: not working for the dealer but truly for themselves; the more they do, the more they earn), the higher their enthusiasm, the greater efficiency, and ultimately the stronger the company's competitiveness. The profit growth from the Four-in-One ultimately comes from: incremental sales driven by worker enthusiasm and savings from efficient operations across all links. Summary: China's FMCG business circle is still in a stage of continuous exploration and innovation, especially at the dealer and dealer-worker levels. The traditional model is "management by delegation," where dealers obtain regional agency rights and arrange their teams to complete sales and service. This creates two problems: First, the dealer mindset: "I'm not the brand owner; the product isn't mine; there's no guarantee of long-term cooperation; the agency might be taken away once I build it up. My goal is to make money from the product and my team as quickly as possible." This mindset prevents dealers from improving their own human efficiency. Second, the worker mindset: "The market isn't mine, the product isn't mine, only my salary is mine. If today's pay is good, I work for this dealer; if tomorrow another dealer pays better, I'll switch." This is the main reason worker efficiency remains low. Avoiding harm and seeking benefit is human nature and cannot be changed, but Jinmailang's Four-in-One leverages strengths and avoids weaknesses, aligning with human nature: returning the market to the workers, the product to the dealer, and basing the dealership on a shared endeavor between dealer and workers. Sweat for your own bread, do your own work. This fundamentally achieves the goal of aligning with human nature and improving human efficiency.

-02- The Second Core Logic: Outlets and Service Many marketers fall into a logical trap, worrying first not about the number of effective cooperative outlets but about sell-through: what if the products don't move after distribution? This puts handcuffs and shackles on dealers and salespeople, and who would want to work hard under such conditions? I recall Chairman Fan Xianguo once said at a dealer meeting: "Do we view sales targets from start to finish, or from finish to start? I believe we must view sales from finish to start. This year some dealers made a lot of money. To make money, you need to achieve a certain sales volume. What conditions are needed to achieve that volume? How many outlets? How many vehicles to cover those outlets? List the problems and they are solved. Without these resources, you can't achieve the targets, so you must have them in place at the start." The Four-in-One primarily addresses the outlet and service issue. 1. Calculation, Breakdown, and Follow-up of Outlet Targets Many companies plan annual budgets focusing on sales targets. Coarse ones plan a dealer's annual task in a county by amount and cases; slightly detailed ones plan monthly or quarterly sales targets; even more detailed ones plan which items or channels will achieve the tasks. But in practice, plans are just plans; dealers grab everything, focusing on total sales to meet their targets. Jinmailang doesn't do this (though it never relaxes task follow-up). I've participated in several Jinmailang annual budgets; the importance of sales task breakdown is clearly lower than that of outlet target planning. Using a prefecture-level market as an example, the steps are: a. Fully divide the prefecture-level city into districts, counties, towns, and villages; map the population to the smallest unit; based on market strength, estimate one outlet per 200-400 people; plan annual outlet targets and vehicle requirements. b. Divide a county market into several areas based on outlet numbers and geography (regional contracts). c. Track outlet targets down to each area contractor, each month (monthly summary), and each day (morning meeting follow-up). Jinmailang is relentless in follow-up, with heavy rewards and penalties (20 yuan reward per outlet developed). Both internal sales teams and dealers are assessed. For sales teams, income for meeting sales targets but missing outlet targets is far lower than for meeting outlet targets but missing sales targets. Assessment determines direction; heavy assessment determines key direction. For dealers, penalties for missing outlet targets are severe, with account deductions. Outlet compliance is not about achievement rate but actual outlet numbers. 2. Quantity Leads to Quality Change A sales common sense: goods pile up like a mountain. A vendor selling pears from a truck at a community gate sells more if the truck is full than if it's half full, especially the last few pears, which won't sell even if they're fine. Dig deeper: if there are two such trucks in the community, one east and one west, total pear sales will definitely exceed twice that of one truck. The market is like the community; trucks are like outlets. For example: if a market has 100 outlets, each selling 10 cases per month, but if you stock 1,000 outlets, will each still sell 10 cases? Definitely not; at least 15. This is the pile-up effect; quantity leads to quality change, and Jinmailang's product power and sell-through power are invisibly enhanced. The Four-in-One's overall strength is subtly changing the market landscape. Salespeople's tasks at terminal stores, covering sales basics and market basics, are all broken down and quantified into every action, uniformly creating thousands of "pear trucks," leading to geometric sales explosion. 3. Vehicles, Outlets, and Service No vehicles, no outlets; no outlets, no sales. Controlling outlets ensures sales land; regular visits ensure sustained and stable sales. To help dealers improve outlet control and achieve stable sales growth, Chairman Fan Xianguo proposed as early as 2011 that the Four-in-One would become the company's highest-level decision for dealer cooperation. Those studying the Four-in-One are familiar with the above, so I won't elaborate. Below is a breakdown chart of population, areas, and outlets for a county market. Summary: Nearly 90% of Chinese dealers lack independent market planning ability. Splitting the word "marketing," dealers can only "sell," not "plan." Most customers follow the brand's ideas and requirements, growing with the brand, highly dependent. The question is: the brand company is like the dealer's leader. A leader who only sets annual, monthly, and item-specific targets but doesn't teach dealers how to achieve them—is that a good leader? In a sense, Jinmailang's outlet process assessment does provide process support for task indicators and is a method to achieve sales targets. Those dealers who accepted it, whether actively or passively, have all profited if they persisted. Jinmailang has been a good leader to dealers. Of course, kindness doesn't lead troops; benevolence doesn't wield power; strictness is love, indulgence is harm.

-03- The Third Logic: Digital Marketing via Terminal Systems and Their Bridge Role Speaking of Jinmailang's terminal system, one must mention the Magic Interconnect system used during the Four-in-One's introduction and maturity phases. If "people," "vehicles," and "regional contracts" are pearls, the terminal system is the thread stringing them into a necklace. This thread must be strong, withstand testing, and be effective and efficient, serving as a link between top and bottom. Its functions include:

  1. Digitizing channel and terminal scenarios (data itself has limited value; the key is the management model implemented by the Magic Interconnect backend based on data);
  2. Visualizing outlets;
  3. Transparent expense management;
  4. Real-time interactive communication management;
  5. Mobile dealer management and integrated inventory management. More specifically, the terminal system can effectively:
  6. Help dealers understand their mission, how to achieve efficient cooperation through the data bridge, such as simplifying and making transparent the investment and verification of market expenses (promotional items, gifts, display awards, merchandising materials, etc.), reducing cumbersome procedures and freeing both parties. How to use the terminal system to monitor SKU sell-through at each terminal store, serving the manufacturer's inventory management, enabling planned production and delivery, efficient distribution, improving capital turnover, and reducing expiration risks.
  7. Salespeople's market work includes sales basics (daily online rate, number of visits, time in store, work timeline, efficiency, order count, order SKU count, visit success rate, etc.) and market basics (shelf facings, shelf position, merchandising execution, display execution, comparison with competitors, etc.). Only with solid basics can market sales steadily improve. Learn to use the terminal system to fragment and step-ify these two basic tasks, and through effective incentives, achieve continuous tracking and checking. Ultimately, personnel work becomes quantifiable and traceable, service outlets become visually correctable, and each store gets a tailored strategy.
  8. Dealers generally have low education levels and only a vague impression of the market, following intuition; team building is usually limited to overall sales. Teach dealers to view the market macroscopically through the terminal system, analyze each employee's sales and profit contribution by item, monitor execution at each sales point, and achieve real-time interactive team communication. Help dealers implement tabulated management and monitor team efficiency and income via a mobile phone.
  9. Based on actual market trends, use the terminal system for store management, price management, and per-store input-output management to enhance product terminal momentum.
  10. Use terminal system data analysis to classify dealer markets by comprehensive sales level, SKU level, and key channel level, segmenting the market and determining effective operations based on segmentation.
  11. Through the terminal system, monitor the process of sales managers, supervisors, and top performers helping weaker staff, making visible and quantifiable the use of each person's strengths, avoiding weaknesses, placing the right people in the right positions, and maximizing their potential.

Finally: This is my simple understanding of Jinmailang's Four-in-One. Many ask how to operate it, often focusing on the Four-in-One itself—people, vehicles, terminal devices, and regional contracts—which is wrong. The Four-in-One's core is replacing low human efficiency with high, low efficiency with high, low energy efficiency with high, and one-way communication with two-way interaction. As Chairman Fan Xianguo said: "Market decisions are constantly evolving and differentiating. Is your work evolution or differentiation?"

Extended Reading:

Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.