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Dealer development cannot be separated from personnel management, which generally involves recruitment, utilization, and assessment. However, dealers commonly hold some erroneous mindsets in personnel management, which have seriously affected the healthy development of their businesses. Today, we will briefly discuss several common mistakes in recruitment, utilization, and assessment.

I. Wrong Mindsets in Recruitment and Utilization

1. Inferiority Complex: Dealers often believe that their enterprises are weaker than manufacturers in terms of strength and influence, and that their compensation capabilities are inferior. Even matters that seem simple to large enterprises, such as insurance and household registration, are seen as significant expenses for dealers. Consequently, they develop an inferiority complex during recruitment, thinking they can only hire low-education talent, and hiring college graduates seems like an unattainable luxury.

2. Impatience for Quick Results: Due to their limited strength, dealers find it hard to recruit suitable talent. Even if they do hire someone, after a long training period when the employee becomes capable of handling tasks independently, they may leave due to compensation issues, leaving the business in a difficult transition. However, without staff, business cannot proceed. When a suitable candidate is finally recruited, dealers may skip background checks and let them start work immediately, leading to frequent cases where personnel, goods, and vehicles disappear together, and fraudsters' clumsy tricks succeed repeatedly.

Some well-funded dealers, aiming for rapid market development and saving on training costs, prefer to poach talent from other dealers or manufacturers. But if you can poach, others might be even better at it. Establishing a simple training system for your own sales staff is key.

3. Deceptive Mindset: To recruit desirable personnel, dealer bosses often promise things beyond their capabilities or use ambiguous compensation promises. For example, a company advertised a regional manager position with a salary of 1,800 RMB base + commission + allowance, and the manager spoke confidently. But upon joining, the employee discovered that the base salary was only given if a minimum sales target of 15,000 RMB was met, and the base salary was proportional to the target achieved. That essentially meant everything was commission-based. Why make it sound so good? The result is constant hiring and turnover. Even if this method keeps costs low, in the long run, the dealer suffers the most. Can market development be well maintained with frequent personnel changes? Can sales improve with constant turnover?

4. Bully Mentality: It is said that some dealers have connections with criminal elements. If you work for such a dealer and then leave to join another dealer, they may send people to harm you. Unless you quit working or move away where they can't find you, your life and safety are at risk. When such negative reputation spreads, who would dare to work for such a dealer?

5. Contemptuous Attitude: Even when suitable personnel are hired, some dealers do not value them, constantly pointing fingers and showing disdain. Employee opinions and questions are not properly addressed, and they might say, "When I started my business, you were still in diapers."

6. Parental Complex: Lack of effective motivation leads to low employee morale. Instead of reflecting on their own practices, dealers scold employees, saying, "You should work hard to repay me because I feed you; I am your bread and butter."

Dealer growth and expansion depend on proper recruitment and utilization of personnel. Only by adjusting these wrong mindsets, conducting strict background checks during recruitment, valuing their own credibility, fulfilling promises promptly, and showing care and respect for employees can dealers increase employee loyalty and willingness to work. Such a win-win cooperation will surely lead to more sustainable development.

II. Misconceptions in Performance Assessment

There is a common misconception in dealer sales staff assessment: most dealers assign each salesperson (who may also serve as driver, or a driver-salesperson model) a specific territory, responsible for delivery and collection. Their salary is base plus commission. The dealer boss evaluates the salesperson's performance mainly based on the sales volume achieved in their assigned area. This is essentially a result-oriented assessment, using sales commissions to ensure motivation and providing bonuses during festivals or year-end based on overall sales achievement. This assessment system did play a positive role in the early stages of dealer development, but it has its imperfections and incompleteness.

Because dealer sales staff generally have low education levels and receive little targeted training, their overall quality is poor. Moreover, to secure their long-term employment, they focus on meeting the boss's assessment criteria, i.e., working towards sales volume in their area.

Over time, when sales targets or bonuses meet their psychological expectations, salespeople may gradually relax, leading to shrinking customer bases and declining customer quality. Additionally, improper handling of terminal customer returns and complaints can damage relationships with certain stores, and salespeople may abandon these customers if it doesn't affect their sales, even though these customers could generate sales for the dealer.

Therefore, besides sales volume, dealer assessments should include customer retention, new customer development, and customer merchandising for a comprehensive evaluation.

  • Customer Retention: Monitor the loss of key customers and apply negative assessment based on the loss rate.
  • New Customer Development: Reward based on the number of new customers acquired and their sales volume.
  • Customer Merchandising: The boss conducts irregular monthly market checks and rewards salespeople based on merchandising standards.

Dealers profit because their high-quality sales network is recognized by manufacturers. To maximize profitability, dealers should not only have salespeople achieve sales targets but also use comprehensive assessments to maximize network maintenance and quality, and through a superior network, achieve multi-brand agency to maximize profits!