A friend recently mentioned an interview question at a well-known company: how to control your subordinates' work. This sparked my thoughts on personnel management and team building for regional marketing managers.

In deep marketing mode, on one hand, personnel management is a key component of regional marketing management and one of the key responsibilities of regional marketing managers; its effectiveness directly impacts the strength of execution. On the other hand, management is a weak point for many companies, and personnel management is no exception.

Factors affecting the efficiency of personnel management mainly include two aspects: one is the personnel management policies and orientation based on the overall management level of the company, and the other is the regional manager's own capabilities and understanding of personnel management.

So, setting aside company-level issues, how can regional marketing managers fulfill their personnel management duties and even build an orderly, harmonious, and cohesive team?

  1. Raise Awareness and Attach Importance—Establish a Correct View of Personnel Management

Regional managers' failure to fulfill their personnel management duties is partly due to management capability deficiencies, which is "not unwilling but unable," and partly due to insufficient understanding of the importance of personnel management.

We know that the success of marketing work depends on whether the strategy is reasonable and whether execution is in place. The key to improving regional execution lies in whether you have a "united, tense, serious, and lively" team, and building a qualified team requires managers to think deeply.

Unfortunately, in real work, many regional marketing managers (from marketing directors overseeing national markets to city area leaders) are keen on interpersonal dealings or enthusiastic about sales techniques, busy with socializing, and although they often talk about team building and personnel motivation, it is mostly formalistic. They rarely spend real time and energy on improving understanding, formulating reasonable plans, or using appropriate means in personnel management. This is due to insufficient ideological understanding and lack of recognition of its importance.

Therefore, establishing a correct view of personnel management and repositioning personnel management in one's duties is the prerequisite for doing this work well.

  1. Strengthen Management Cultivation and Improve Management Quality—Possess Qualified Management Capabilities

Personnel management belongs to the management category rather than marketing means. Many regional managers are promoted to management positions because they achieved excellent performance in frontline sales and solo operations, so they lack practical management experience. On the other hand, not many marketing personnel have mature and complete management thinking. At the same time, many companies' training systems are imperfect, and pre-job and on-the-job training often becomes formalistic or lacks targeting. This leads to many "sales elites" being promoted to management positions with knowledge and capability structures that do not match the position, resulting in management capability shortages.

In this regard, on one hand, companies should strengthen training system construction. As individuals, they should proactively improve their capability and knowledge structures and enhance management literacy. I believe there are two main ways:

  1. Proactive Learning: Strengthen learning and mastery of management theory common sense. There are many learning channels, such as asking others, discussing with colleagues, attending public lectures, etc. However, theoretical learning must be systematic, meaning understanding the basic framework of management and mastering basic management tools. Only then can it be applied to guide work practice. This requires learners to systematically read a management work while using other learning methods; for beginners, a concise reader is appropriate.

  2. Proactive Practice: For many marketing managers who gradually move up from the grassroots, their marketing methods and sales skills, i.e., business capabilities, are often outstanding, but personnel management is still in a "subconscious" state. Therefore, after understanding their capability shortcomings, while improving theory, they should also proactively combine theory with practice, such as improving management systems, using management tools, and evaluating management effectiveness, moving from "subconscious" to "conscious," and comprehending and improving through practice.

  1. How to Manage and What to Manage—Build Your Own Personnel Management Thinking System

So how to comprehensively carry out personnel management? What exactly should be done in personnel management? What role should managers play? This requires managers to have a relatively complete thinking system. Based on practice, I will share my understanding:

(1) Formulate Reasonable Personnel Plans: That is, determine staffing for the next marketing cycle and formulate phased personnel demand plans. Phased personnel plans should combine actual forecasts of regional marketing work, explore potential personnel needs, and be forward-looking and reasonable.

(2) Be Good at Identifying People: There are two situations. First, if the region has recruitment rights, during recruitment, comprehensively assess candidates. The principle is that candidates must match the position. Consider whether both parties' needs align, i.e., recruit "suitable" people, not just pursue one aspect. Second, in daily work, observe and understand team members, know people well and assign them appropriately, and complement each other's strengths.

(3) Be Diligent in Cultivating People: As the "leading brother" of the team, guiding and cultivating team members, improving their comprehensive quality, to enhance the effectiveness of regional business work, is an unshirkable responsibility both publicly and privately. Specific requirements include:

  1. Lead by Example: As a team manager, set an example in everything, strictly require your own behavior, and set a role model for team members to guide subordinates' behavior.

  2. Training and Guidance: Make full use of business meetings, market visits, individual communication, and other opportunities to provide work guidance, business skill training, and even principles of dealing with people. This requires managers to also try to be qualified trainers and mentors.

  3. Improve Regional Personnel Training Plans: This requires reasonable planning of budgets, training subjects, schedules, and forms based on the actual situation of the company.

(4) Reasonable Arrangement of Responsibilities, Rights, and Interests: This is the central work in personnel management.

  1. Let subordinates understand their "responsibilities": There are two main aspects. First, when setting up positions, there must be clear and detailed job responsibilities, i.e., what the position does. Second, based on the regional situation, make phased work task arrangements and goal settings for subordinates. For example, for a month, the regional supervisor should clearly plan and arrange next month's work for each subordinate at the monthly meeting and set monthly goals, so they know what to do next month and to what extent. This ensures correct implementation of phased business strategies and lets subordinates know what to do, avoiding idleness.

  2. Be Good at Delegating Power: Many regional managers treat subordinates as appendages and simple tools, concentrating all power in their own hands, and nothing can be executed without their approval. Some managers new to management often make this mistake, thinking it reflects their importance, but they do not realize this is a sign of not understanding management. On one hand, if rights and responsibilities are not unified and reasonable authorization is lacking, subordinates will be hesitant and passive, losing initiative and enthusiasm over time, even becoming "yes-men" who only act when told. On the other hand, over-centralization of power, viewing oneself as "supreme," actively isolates oneself from the team.

In this way, your regional marketing work becomes "your one-man battle"!

  1. Learn to Use "Interests" as a Management Tool: Here, "interests" refers to motivating subordinates. In a team, you must learn to give appropriate motivation regularly. Its essence is to reward the good and punish the bad, giving motivation to the advanced and pressure to the backward, turning pressure into motivation, thus maintaining team vitality.

Doing motivation work well mainly involves three aspects: improving systems, fair execution, and exerting motivational art.

3.1 Improving Systems: First, establish and improve regional incentive systems based on company systems, making them evidence-based. Incentive forms include material incentives, such as monthly evaluations, rewarding advanced individuals with cash or prizes; imposing material penalties on the worst monthly individuals as punishment. Second, non-material rewards do not increase management costs but can have more obvious incentive effects if used well. Many people may have experienced that an inadvertent praise from a superior can boost morale and make them strive for better performance, fearing to disappoint "the leader's trust and affirmation."

3.2 After having systems, how to use them? An important principle is strict execution and fairness and justice, so as to convince everyone.

3.3 Besides acting according to systems, motivation also requires artistry. My experience: first, praise more and punish less; second, praise in public more; third, avoid criticizing in public as much as possible.

(5) Strict and Effective Work Supervision: Necessary and adequate monitoring of subordinates' duties is essential. Without monitoring, sales personnel far from the organization become "sheep in the wild."

How to conduct effective monitoring? There are two main methods: direct monitoring and indirect monitoring.

  1. Direct Monitoring: Go to the market to conduct on-site inspections of employees' task completion.

  2. Indirect Monitoring: There are many ways, such as reviewing and analyzing this month's work documents and sales data (e.g., distribution rate changes, new customer numbers, daily work records, weekly reports, monthly reports) to judge their work status; also, talk with relevant agents and distributors to understand.

It should be emphasized that supervising sales personnel is necessary, but attention should be paid to the degree to avoid "over-supervision." For example, some companies assign dedicated personnel to track and verify daily planned customer visits of field personnel by phone. Such on-site control not only violates the nature of sales work but also makes sales personnel feel tense and oppressed, lacking basic trust and respect for people, and objectively pushes employees to the opposite side of the company.

(6) Conduct Phased Organizational Adjustments: Mainly combine two factors for phased adjustments: first, add or remove personnel based on changes in regional position needs; second, adjust positions based on subordinates' work performance, promoting or demoting as appropriate, and promptly remove those who still do not meet position requirements. This helps maintain the fit and harmony between the organization and business work.

  1. Strive to Build an Orderly, Harmonious, and Cohesive Team
  1. Use Systems to Ensure Order: The meaning of a team can be popularly understood as a group of people gathered for a specific goal through some way or bond, dividing work and cooperating to achieve a common goal or ideal. So how to keep the team running orderly? Obviously, some "rules" are needed. As the ancients said: Without rules, nothing can be accomplished. Imagine a country without laws; what would happen? What about the Water Margin heroes without "brotherhood loyalty"? Can an army fight without military discipline? Similarly, a company and its branches also need "rules," which are the company's management systems.

Therefore, for team building, systems are the guarantee and foundation; we must start with system construction.

  1. Emotional Integration—Make It Harmonious: A team is composed of vivid individuals, not cold machines. Systems are rigid and inflexible. Managing a team with only systems is far from enough. How to reconcile this contradiction? I think there are two main ways: first, combine principle with flexibility in executing systems; second, strengthen communication with subordinates. With flexibility, conflicts can be avoided; with communication, "heart knots" can be resolved. This is why even the army with the strictest discipline has "political commissars."

  2. Use Culture to Drive—Make It Cohesive: A team with combat effectiveness first needs cohesion, and a cohesive team is bound to be a combat-effective team. How to make team members unite under a common goal? The answer is to endow your team with cultural characteristics. Culture is a soft system, a bond that unites team members, and an "invisible hand" that elevates the team.

Different teams have different cultures. A political party has its platform, a religion has its beliefs, a nation is united by "national righteousness," and West Point, besides strict military discipline, has a self-discipline culture of "no excuses."

So how should a regional marketing manager act in team culture construction?

First, distill the essence and key points of your team culture. Some cultures coexist with the team, while others need to be forged. Team culture needs to be refined. The basic principles are: first, positive and upward; second, conducive to achieving team goals. This is the first step in building team culture.

Second, during management, guide, adhere to, implement, spread, and publicize the essence and key points of team culture, making it a widely respected norm and guide for team members' activities.

  1. Transform from a Qualified Position Manager to a Respected Leader
  1. Position-Based Managers vs. Leadership-Based Managers: Why can superiors manage subordinates? Why do salespeople listen to regional supervisors? Because in this organization, the regional supervisor position grants them the positional power to manage salespeople. Once they leave this position, the positional power disappears, and salespeople no longer have to listen. Therefore, many people who leave management positions sigh, "People leave, and the tea gets cold."

Those who only rely on positional power to exercise management functions can only be called position-based managers.

There are also some managers who can gain long-term support from subordinates, and even after leaving the position, they can still exert influence on their former subordinates. Subordinates obey not only because of positional power but also due to respect and recognition from the bottom of their hearts. Such managers can be honored as leadership-based managers.

  1. Be a "Leader" That Subordinates Respect and Follow: The reason "leadership"-based managers gain subordinates' respect and recognition, besides positional power, is more importantly from their personal qualities, such as noble character, fair and just principles, profound knowledge, or other outstanding talents and achievements. We can call this "personal charm." Therefore, to become a leadership-based manager, one must combine positional power and personal charm.

Conclusion: The core of management is managing people. Managing people is both a science and an art. To be a good "leading brother," the first thing is to improve your management capabilities and personal cultivation, and continuously improve. Cultivate yourself, understand the way, and optimize your skills!

Let us encourage each other with this in the marketing community.

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