In China, there are about 80 million sales professionals. In this vast sales force, how to stand out in your industry, be exceptional, and become the pinnacle of the pyramid is a topic we will deeply study. No soldier doesn't want to be a general, but first, you must strive to be an excellent soldier. If you can't even be a good soldier, then talking about ideals is unrealistic. Only by practicing internal skills can you punch powerfully and defeat enemies with every move. Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes internal regulation and external management, treating from within to cure the disease, and break the cocoon into a butterfly. Based on my marketing practice, I have summarized ten internal injuries that sales professionals cannot afford.

  1. One of the ten internal injuries: Liking to play hide-and-seek with superiors. Many sales professionals, while covering their market, have played cat and mouse. When a superior inspects the market and asks where you are, you tell lies about your whereabouts. When the leader arrives at your base, you haven't had time to return from places like internet cafes or mobile halls where sales professionals rest, and eventually, the truth comes out. Summary: Superiors often started from the grassroots. Don't use your cleverness to challenge your leader's intelligence. People are not machines. As long as you finish your daily work, you can relax, but you must tell the truth. Your leader will understand. Otherwise, you will be exposed and embarrassed, becoming a classic negative example for your colleagues.
  2. The second internal injury: Always making grand promises but being passive in execution. At every meeting, when asking about tasks, new product promotions, stocking, and other market work, the answers will move you to tears. The responses are thunderous, morale is earth-shattering. When asked individually, sales professionals clench their fists and answer forcefully, "Leader, rest assured, no excuses." The leader feels like a spring breeze. But later, when tracking, you find that before the meeting, there is impulse; during the meeting, excitement; after the meeting, no movement. At the meeting, ambitious; after the meeting, hesitant. Thunder is loud, but rain is small. Summary: When asked individually, be realistic, not high-profile. If the superior later tracks your execution and the results differ greatly from your earlier statements, the leader will feel you are flashy but not substantial. Similarly, high-profile statements are not conducive to the leader's correct decision-making.
  3. The third internal injury: Difficulties always outnumber methods. Every time you execute market work, such as setting tasks, new product promotions, restarting old markets, as long as you set goals, whether high or low, promotions large or small, a series of difficulties arise: tasks too high, competition too fierce, customer profits low, promotions too small, customer strength weak, customer enthusiasm low, product packaging not upscale, etc. Instead of discussing methods more deeply and specifically, they complain and find difficulties to reduce their pressure or pave the way for failing to meet targets later. Summary: Once a specific market operation plan is issued, it's okay to discuss difficulties objectively. But imagining difficulties subjectively without execution will only affect your execution. First, it shows your attitude is not good. If major obstacles arise during execution, you can discuss them again. From practical experience, execution is often less difficult than imagined.
  4. The fourth internal injury: Never doing things that are not assessed. Companies usually assess directional things, such as this year's plan to fully implement terminal vividness assessment. Even if you don't want to do it, you must, because assessment is usually linked to interests. Summary: Doing assessed things is not wrong. Mainly, with company development and market competition, the assessment orientation changes, but it doesn't mean that unassessed things are unimportant. To become a professional marketer, you must develop comprehensively at the grassroots level. Only by experiencing more market problems can you become skilled and lay a foundation for future promotion.
  5. The fifth internal injury: Exploiting company loopholes. Sales professionals' income consists of legitimate and illegitimate income. Illegitimate income, i.e., gray income, is earned by finding company loopholes, such as withholding promotions, fake display and signboard photos, colluding with customers, etc. Of course, this part of income is relatively easy, but the risk is also high. Many people rack their brains to find gaps for this source, but also live in fear of being discovered and losing reputation. As the old saying goes, "If you don't want others to know, don't do it." Don't think that if you do it flawlessly, you can rest easy. Summary: A gentleman loves wealth and gets it in a proper way. There are things you don't do to achieve something. Ill-gotten wealth comes quickly and goes quickly. Don't ruin your career for a small gain. Scars heal, but they leave permanent marks.
  6. The sixth internal injury: Use of social tools: smoking, drinking, playing cards, and other entertainment. I don't advocate against using social tools like smoking, drinking, playing cards, or bathing. Used appropriately, they can indeed improve customer relationships, bring you closer to customers, and facilitate sales. But think again: the purpose of hard work is to improve the quality of life and give your family happiness. Using an advertising slogan: "30-year-old with a 60-year-old heart." Many sales professionals have poor stomach, lungs, liver, and kidneys. Many also use the excuse "I have no choice." I've observed that many sales professionals who smoke don't smoke much during business negotiations; they smoke a lot by themselves. Summary: Use social tools correctly, not excessively. Performance bought with health is failed sales. Similarly, customers always focus on profit. Social tools are just Viagra; they satisfy temporarily, not long-term. Correctly recognize the customer's focus—profit.
  7. The seventh internal injury: Time management without focus. Many sales professionals have more ineffective working time than effective time. There is a saying describing the hard work of sales professionals: "Get up earlier than chickens, sleep later than dogs." How much effective working time is there in a day? I once did a test: at night, I gathered sales professionals and asked each to write quantifiable work on the blackboard. The results were disappointing; each wrote only a few items, but they felt they were more wronged than Dou E. They hadn't been lazy; they had been running the market all the time. As for why, I can't say either. Summary: Running the market can't be like "Let the Bullets Fly." You must learn to plan overall, manage time well, handle the relationship between "urgent and important, urgent but not important, not urgent and not important, not urgent but important," and have clear division of labor with customers.
  8. The eighth internal injury: Reporting only good news, not bad. This phenomenon is very common. The reason is simple: reporting good news avoids criticism; reporting bad news invites criticism. What's more interesting is that good news is exaggerated, and bad news is downplayed. Much of the good news is boastful, deceiving superiors and subordinates. Summary: Provide market information correctly to help leaders make correct judgments. Similarly, reporting bad news objectively and with evidence will not result in negative incentives. On the contrary, once exaggeration is exposed, the criticism will be worse.
  9. The ninth internal injury: Not good at reflection. "Think in action, act in thought." Only through continuous practice, thinking, practice, and thinking again—a repeated process—can you grow and elevate your practice. Many sales professionals are not good at reflecting. When encountering problems, they ask superiors for answers without thinking. Some don't adapt; they know only one aspect, not the other. Some don't know where success or failure lies and just work blindly. As a result, many are still at the grassroots level at an old age. Summary: Be good at thinking, diligent in thinking. The brain always runs faster than the legs.
  10. The tenth internal injury: Serious half-glass mentality. Many sales professionals sigh about how they are not recognized, how they are already very OK, and why they haven't been promoted, always "on the road." They encourage themselves with "Laughing to the sky, I go out the door; how can I be a mere commoner?" But if you analyze carefully, is that really so? The most obvious example: during company training, the lecturer speaks with high passion, spittle flying, while the audience is drowsy. After class, they comment: "What is the lecturer talking about?" Regardless of the content, did you listen? For others' promotions, they lament: "He is not as good as me; it's just that my opportunity wasn't as good." Summary: If you are gold, you don't need to worry about being buried. If your performance is great enough, you will shine like the sun. Are you worried that the sunlight won't reach the eyes of company leaders? Analyze yourself thoroughly; those who know themselves are wise. If you have mastered all business skills, persist. Man proposes, God disposes. Wait for the opportunity. The road is long and winding; I will search up and down. Only by taking the essence and discarding the dross can you continuously grow, step by step, to realize yourself and achieve the career path you pursue. The 3rd (CFIC) China FMCG + Internet Conference will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting 1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, founders of 200+ B2B platforms, and 100+ investment and financing institutions to jointly explore a new chapter of cross-border integration! Core topics of this conference:

  • How can the FMCG industry achieve new growth opportunities through B2B?

  • How should the new supply chain behind new retail be built?

  • How can intra-city logistics help B2B achieve leapfrog development?

Highlights of this conference:

  • The industry's first "2017 China FMCG B2B Industry Competitiveness White Paper"

  • Case sharing of excellent transforming and upgrading distributors

  • Conference + exhibition upgrade: Hall 6 Internet Technology Exhibition strengthens docking

  • Alibaba Retail Link, ProLogis Finance, Eternal Asia Supply Chain, Best Store Plus, Yijiupi, Haiding—leaders from various fields will deliver speeches and share pioneering views.

Registration is now open. Long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register. Add friend and note "Conference Registration" Click the link below to review the highlights of the 1st and 2nd FMCG + Internet Conferences: 2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum -END-