Reposted from WeChat public account [Business Trends] lizhengquan02

I have always believed that for a sales team lacking execution, the first to be disciplined should not be the frontline salespeople, but their directors, regional managers, and city managers. Only an incompetent general leads a sales team with serious execution problems. A key reason is the often-quoted phrase, "I only care about results, not the process."

What You Want is Results; What You Manage is the Process

It is not easy to make sales managers—such as office directors, city managers, regional managers, and sales managers—reflect on and criticize themselves. Thus, when sales are poor and senior management questions them, they often say things like: "The company's market support promises were not fulfilled, and dealers have complaints and resistance"; "Consumers say our product tastes bad, worse than competitor XX"; "The product lacks awareness, and advertising and promotion are insufficient, leading to low acceptance and enthusiasm from merchants." In short, the responsibility lies mainly with the company, not with their management or the sales team's execution ability.

But behind the so-called "company responsibility," what is the real situation? There are many problems, but two common ones deserve our attention:

First, they treat sales targets as the content of execution and assign them to individuals. If more detailed, they might have each responsible person provide a sales breakdown plan by channel or region, but aside from thinking about policies and promotions, there is little substantive content on how to actually get the work done.

In contrast, for companies with good execution, their sales managers typically teach their subordinates four basic methods to ensure sales: First, take the initiative to secure good shelf positions and display space, rather than accepting store arrangements as fate; Second, ensure high-quality, consistent in-store visual merchandising; Third, develop market gaps, increase secondary distributors and terminal network members, improve product visibility, and maintain effective outlets; Fourth, try new channels to seek new sales growth points. Only after these do they consider advertising and promotional support, and use them effectively.

Second, they often say "I want results, not process" and "no excuses," but lack necessary and strong supervision and inspection of subordinates' execution processes.

Let's discuss this issue separately.

Supervise the Execution Process

Result-oriented management by sales managers is a very harmful habit. Because sales managers are themselves managers of the process, this habit directly leads to two outcomes: First, they don't know what subordinates are doing outside; Second, they mistake subordinates' deceptive information and excuses for real and major market problems, eventually causing the marketing direction to deviate.

When Li Zhengquan was a sales representative, he also received various forms such as daily sales reports, terminal visit forms, and competitor information summaries. At the time, he resented these forms because he felt that after working hard outside in all weather, he couldn't get a moment of peace back at the office! Besides, he suspected the company—wasn't this just preparing for a wave of "blood replacement"? Now, many salespeople in many companies have similar feelings.

However, sales managers' later behavior often makes salespeople more relaxed. They initially urge everyone to submit forms, but after a few days, they seem to lose interest. Even if salespeople falsify information, they can't tell truth from falsehood. In other words, apart from the morning verbal plans and the information on the forms before leaving, they have no idea what the salespeople are actually doing outside. Later, when problems like lost outlets, declining display quality, and falling sales occur—caused by subordinates gathering in teahouses to drink tea, play cards, or do private business—the focus is wrongly shifted to insufficient advertising and promotion.

Clearly, such sales managers are very incompetent. However, they might be right under your nose. From now on, discover them, and then either demote or fire them, or force them to change: no longer manage and execute based solely on a few forms; accompany subordinates to visit dealers, secondary distributors, and terminals to understand the real issues in sales and execution; track, spot-check, and verify subordinates' work.

Of course, you should also require them to reflect more substantive content in business reviews and next-period work plans, rather than focusing on complaining about "company responsibility." In fact, if such a work plan is on your desk, you can basically judge that the provider is an incompetent manager with serious execution problems in the sales team.

Break Barriers and Strengthen Control Over the Process

Slow and distorted information feedback has always been a major reason for poor execution in many companies. In many cases, this factor is a headache because changing it may involve adjustments to organizational structure, management processes, or even channel levels.

Take Shanshan Suits, which was the market share leader for seven consecutive years. From 2000 to now, Shanshan, with over 40 main franchisees and 1,500 sub-franchisees, has lagged behind its city rival Youngor, ranking second. What's the problem? One very important reason is that Shanshan's main franchisees act as a wall between Shanshan and its sub-franchisees and the market, making it difficult for Shanshan to understand the real market situation and manage terminals effectively. For example, Shanshan's main franchisees use a buyout system. To protect their own interests, they often push old inventory to the lower levels, order fewer or no new products, and sub-franchisees can't see Shanshan's new products.

To change this, Shanshan had to introduce measures such as: the market management department directly communicating with single-store franchise terminal customers, with after-sales service following; establishing self-managed companies to expand franchised single stores for direct sales and supply, creating more direct links with sub-franchisees. But undoubtedly, channel members whose interests are threatened will resist strongly.

However, even if barriers and resistance are great, we still need to make efforts to reduce information gaps. Reducing channel management levels and establishing communication links with lower-level members are such measures.

But to improve the execution of your own sales team, the Lianzhi Zhida Marketing Execution Research Center believes more efforts are needed in other areas:

First, in addition to managers who directly report sales execution information, bring more people into your information network. They can be logistics staff, salespeople, or even small shop owners and secondary distributors. However, note two points: First, choose the right people; information providers should not become arrogant from favoritism, and it's best if they remain low-key; Second, don't make sales managers feel you don't trust or respect them.

Second, increase the cost of information falsification to enhance deterrence.

Third, make the rules for irregular information feedback more detailed, and maintain updated files on dealers and terminals to verify authenticity through information checks.

Fourth, strengthen market patrols, bringing yourself or departments that can control the sales team closer to the market frontline.

Equip More People with Process Execution Skills

To strengthen marketing execution, your salespeople and their managers must have three conditions: First, they must have the awareness to execute, knowing how not executing will affect their performance; Second, they must be willing to execute, which is often influenced by the awareness mentioned and their acceptance of the content; Third, they must have execution skills—for example, sales managers know how to ensure execution effectiveness, and salespeople know how to execute. Let's focus on this point.

Earlier, we mentioned that many companies have various market operation manuals, but these skills may not have been transformed into their salespeople's execution skills. In fact, there are four common problems: First, they naively believe in on-the-job training, ignoring differences in learning enthusiasm and ability; Second, even though they know people have different aptitudes, experiences, qualifications, and diligence, they still habitually treat all salespeople as being on the same positive level; Third, they habitually treat salespeople as all-rounders, thinking they can handle dealers, secondary distributors, and various hypermarkets, supermarkets, and small shops; Fourth, they assume salespeople are motivated to use execution skills at every stage.

It's safe to say that if you have any of these problems, your sales team's execution is flawed. But what should we do?

Li Zhengquan has several suggestions:

First, value systematic training and mentoring, because on-the-job training cannot replace them.

Second, always remind yourself: leveraging salespeople's strengths is more important than temporarily fixing their weaknesses. For example, don't pull a salesperson who excels at traditional grocery stores into K/A (key accounts) where they are not skilled.

Third, confine salespeople to smaller circles and more detailed work. For instance, make them understand that execution is their mission; issues like advertising and promotion are for others, so they can better cultivate their own territory.

Fourth, increase the weight of process assessment rather than relying too much on sales volume and payment collection to evaluate salespeople. For example, outlet growth, maintenance of effective outlets, new product distribution rate, display quality, and terminal visual merchandising maintenance can all be part of the assessment. Interested readers can also refer to the "Zhengquan Salesperson Assessment Coefficient" mentioned in the book "Weak Brand Marketing."

Fifth, extend the "honeymoon period" between salespeople and the company as long as possible, helping them maintain their passion longer. We all know that new salespeople and veteran salespeople differ greatly in work enthusiasm and responsibility. What we need to do is stimulate them and keep their passion for charging into battle, rather than letting it fade over time.

Sixth, execution skill competitions, fulfilling company promises on time and in full, providing more promotion opportunities in positions or technical titles, and increasing their identification with corporate culture and sense of belonging can all help improve salespeople's execution skills and their enthusiasm for using them.