Sales growth is an eternal topic for any regional market leader, requiring careful thought and countermeasures. However, in reality, regional managers or operators often repeat 'yesterday's story'—ignoring internal factors and emphasizing external elements, as shown in the following two situations: 1. Negative attitude, blindly requesting policies from the company, hoping to stimulate sales through continuous policy support. This growth method is self-destructive, common in small and medium-sized FMCG companies. The main tactic is to continuously use excuses like intense competition or market difficulties to request policy support from the company. Every cause has its effect; methods determine results, ultimately leading to:

  1. 'Dealers are like hungry wolves, manufacturers are like sheep.' Dealers are happy to treat policy requests as a source of extra profit, unaware that profits ultimately come from the market, not the manufacturer. Constrained by policy space, manufacturers have to resort to short-sighted measures to meet 'market' needs.
  2. Rapid product aging. Policy support is a disguised price reduction. When this price reduction cannot be effectively controlled, it inevitably accelerates the collapse of the price system, and once the price system collapses, the product's life ends.
  3. Companies have to continuously develop new products to survive, making brand asset accumulation difficult. To maintain normal operations, when products age, companies will inevitably adopt new product replacement strategies, constantly replacing old products with new ones, which greatly harms brand asset accumulation and ultimately leads to being labeled as 'small brand' or 'generic brand'—a self-destructive move in today's brand-conscious society. 2. Focusing on quantity, not quality, resulting in low yield from extensive cultivation. Market competition is like a war without gunpowder; you either win or be eliminated. The only sign of victory is maximizing market share and ultimately maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. We have met many regional managers, even sales directors, who only understand one aspect of 'winning'—they grow for the sake of growth, completely ignoring how to build a sustainable competitive advantage, leading to all efforts being 'a moon in the water, a flower in the mirror.' This growth model is speculative, with paths like dense coverage by small regional dealers or multi-line parallel and overlapping product coverage. Once on this path, four major contradictions are inevitable, and if the manufacturer cannot effectively resolve them, regional market troubles will be endless:
  4. Contradictions among dealers. As the number of dealers increases, phenomena like free-riding, cross-region selling, and price undercutting are inevitable, testing the manufacturer's decisiveness.
  5. Contradictions among products. As product numbers increase, it may lead to difficulties in cultivating core products, low-end products dragging down the image of mid-to-high-end products, and difficulty in differentiating products in the same price range. Have decision-makers carefully considered these sunk costs?
  6. Contradiction between sales growth and brand accumulation. Over-development of dealers and intensive product placement can increase market share in the short term, but it is hard to achieve product branding, brand focus, and brand asset amplification. Sales growth and brand asset appreciation are hard to synchronize, ultimately leading to a sharp decline in sales without brand support.
  7. Contradiction between resource needs and corporate resource matching. Multiple products require production capacity to keep up; dense dealer distribution requires a large number of personnel for service and supervision; multi-line products require greater promotional resources to build core products. These all require corresponding corporate resources, otherwise the company will fall into endless troubles. One step forward is happiness, one step back is loneliness. As regional leaders, it is hard to avoid the issue of regional growth. After rejecting self-destructive and speculative growth models, what kind of regional market development philosophy should we adopt? And how should we act to practice this philosophy? Through the above analysis, it is easy to see that a healthy regional market should strive to achieve two goals: (1) high market share; (2) ensuring sustainable regional development. Therefore, regional market leaders should adopt 'on the basis of maximizing market share, ensure the construction of a sustainable competitive advantage' as the sole guiding principle for regional development. To better practice this philosophy, we have summarized the following specific paths from successful regional operations:
  8. Sharpen your tools first: build two wolf-like business teams
  9. Adhere to bottom-line thinking: stay away from three high-voltage lines in regional operations
  10. Lock onto competitive benchmarks: improve yourself through continuous learning and catching up
  11. Channel is king: actively build a comprehensive regional network while strengthening control
  12. From core terminals to core consumer groups: maintain high-frequency interaction with core consumer groups 1. Sharpen your tools first: build two wolf-like business teams The two teams refer to the manufacturer's business team and the dealer's business team. Their wolf-like characteristics are efficient execution and strong aggressiveness. To shape these traits, regional leaders need to complete the following basic work:
  13. Focused personnel selection criteria. FMCG sales personnel generally require relatively lower quality, but in specific business processes, they need strong execution, competitive awareness, and hardworking qualities. Therefore, in the selection process, corresponding measurement indicators should be set. Those who have not fought hard battles, dare not fight hard battles, or habitually act as deserters should be cautiously hired.
  14. Focused performance evaluation criteria. When setting evaluation indicators, responsible persons should ensure: (1) The assessed content must be specific, avoiding ambiguous indicators; (2) The assessed content must be measurable, preferably quantified; (3) The tasks set must be achievable through certain efforts; (4) The assessed content must be highly relevant to regional goals—we must assess what we aim to achieve, avoiding situations like task A but assessment B; (5) All assessed content must be completed within a certain time frame, otherwise the assessment is nominal.
  15. Corresponding tracking and inspection systems. 'No tracking of sales, everything is empty; no inspection of execution, systems are just wall decorations.' Tracking sales tasks and inspecting system execution are the primary duties of frontline regional managers.
  16. Equality before the system (the courage to enforce the system). A regional business team is like an army; orders must be followed to win battles. Rewards must be promptly fulfilled, and punishments must be enforced, only then can the consistency of the system be maintained. Management is ruthless, but people have feelings. 2. Adhere to bottom-line thinking: stay away from three high-voltage lines in regional operations As regional leaders, in daily management, you must adhere to bottom-line thinking and stay away from three high-voltage lines: (1) Ensure the relative rigidity of the price system to prevent vicious low-price dumping; (2) Ensure regional distribution order to prevent cross-region and cross-channel transshipment; (3) Ensure efficient market investment of expenses to prevent expense corruption. Maintaining the price system helps sustain the product life cycle and avoid accelerated aging. Regional sales personnel need to closely monitor several nodes that may lead to price system collapse: product giveaways, bottom-price operations, excessive promotions, and wholesale markets becoming distribution centers for bottom-price goods. Cross-region and cross-channel transshipment not only impact the price system but, more seriously, dampen the enthusiasm of quality dealers who work hard in the market. Therefore, once such incidents occur, regional leaders should take immediate action to resolutely eliminate them. Expense corruption is prone to occur, and once it happens, it will lead to reduced market investment, distorted dealer profit sources (dealers should profit from the market, but expense corruption easily makes them accustomed to requesting expense support from manufacturers, even turning it into operating profit), or joint corruption incidents. Therefore, regional leaders should lead by example, and manufacturers should establish mechanisms to make expense corruption 'touch and die.' 3. Lock onto competitive benchmarks: improve yourself through continuous learning and catching up The battle between JDB and Wanglaoji resulted in the disappearance of the third player; the competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi led to the disappearance of Feichang... Offense is the best defense; only through competition can you remain undefeated. When studying a brand's excellent performance in a regional market, we often find a surprising phenomenon. Therefore, as regional leaders, you need to do several things well: choose competitors, learn from competitors, find competitors' weaknesses, and defeat competitors. Choosing competitors is very particular. When I was serving a small regional beer company, we initially focused on the first-tier beer brand China Resources Snow and adopted a series of competitive strategies. Although we often 'suffered losses,' our market share increased rapidly. Later, due to a change in competitive strategy, we locked onto relatively weaker opponents. Even though we often won, our overall market share kept declining. Actively choosing to compete with excellent competitors, though the process is challenging, the results will not be too bad. Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated. The purpose of locking onto strong competitors is to learn and improve internal strength through competition, and ultimately strive to replace them. Learn the opponent's market operation methods, learn their management methods, study their organizational culture, study their products... find our gaps and fill them in the shortest time. By finding competitors' weaknesses and adopting a strategy of picking them off one by one, we can eliminate their effective strength and increase our market share and brand value. 4. Channel is king, terminals win: actively build a comprehensive regional network while strengthening control In the composition of FMCG companies' competitiveness, channel resource possession cannot be ignored. Sometimes, competitive status is even determined by measuring channel resources. 'Channel is king' still has significant research value. However, the phenomenon of 'too many channels lead to chaos, strict management leads to death' is common. To solve this long-standing problem, we have summarized a few strategies:
  17. Dealer layout first, recruitment later. Regional leaders need to have an overall layout for the entire region's channel layout, avoiding 'grabbing eyebrows and beard' or 'any mother is good as long as she has milk.' In dealer layout, it is necessary to achieve 'many but not chaotic, managed but not dead,' which tests the wisdom and courage of decision-makers.
  18. Core products paired with core dealers. Core products are related to the long-term development of the enterprise and have strong strategic significance. Therefore, in the recruitment process, special caution is needed to ensure dealer quality: strong strength (hardware and software), high loyalty (willing to seriously date and marry, not just one-night stands).
  19. Key channel customers receive key attention. For customers who like to touch high-voltage lines and channels prone to problems (wholesale markets, e-commerce), regional leaders need to deploy heavy troops and pay close attention. Once problems are found, correct them promptly, and if necessary, even have the determination to 'cut off a wrist.'
  20. Direct control of some channels. For channels that dealers cannot or are unwilling to operate temporarily, but which may be significant for regional market development, companies need to handle them separately. For example, try new channels that conform to channel development trends—community O2O, e-commerce, etc.; or channels that cannot generate enough sales and profits but are valuable for overall brand image enhancement—chain image stores, experience stores, etc. 5. Study core consumers and maintain high-frequency interaction with core consumer groups Products are in oversupply, with the same category flooding channels and terminals, overwhelming consumers. It is not easy for consumers to think of you, find you, and choose you. However, for most of us, it is impossible to maintain close interaction with all consumers. Therefore, regional leaders need to study who the product's consumer groups are, who the core groups are, and how to maintain high-frequency interaction with core groups to leverage their consumption-driving effect. Due to space limitations, we only raise this issue here without detailed explanation. If readers want to learn more, they can search online for my other article 'From Terminal Victory to Core Consumer Locking,' which provides detailed locking methods. Finally, to end this article, I adapt Tolstoy's famous saying: 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' to: High-performing regional markets share the same success path, while unfortunate regional markets each have their own misfortunes. -END- Content Selection Click the title below to read directly: [Line Sales Representative Practical Operation Guide (with full PPT download attached)]