Scan the QR code in the image to register “ In Journey to the West, most demons are escapees from the 'headquarters,' and only the White Bone Demon is a wild one. Sun Wukong cannot defeat demons, but those headquarters leaders can easily 'collect' them without lifting a finger, simply because they hold 'magic tools.' ” A strong headquarters is a product of a centralized system. Regardless of rank, headquarters personnel always feel a sense of 'being half a grade higher' when meeting frontline staff. Chinese people prefer working at headquarters because, although the pay is not high, it is respectable. Headquarters functional departments have an inherent sense of superiority over frontline staff. This superiority not only breeds bureaucracy but also 'soldier-ocracy.' Although 'soldier-bureaucrats' have no power, they can manipulate processes. Some even boast: 'I may not be able to make things happen, but I can easily ruin your plans.' In short, the headquarters has become the 'problem that creates problems' and must be operated on. The headquarters is always far from the front line Case When consulting for a company, we found it extremely difficult to communicate with the boss, mainly due to differences in basic understanding of the market. So we urged the boss to tour the front line with us. From the distributor, we learned that this was the boss's first 'personal expedition' to inspect the market, even though the company had been around for over a decade, with its main market in the province. For this boss, the market was close at hand yet far away. After the market tour, the communication barrier with the boss naturally disappeared. Diagnosis Because the headquarters is far from the front line, headquarters and grassroots marketing personnel often cannot communicate in the 'same language.' Some call this phenomenon 'the boss speaks bird language in the sky, while subordinates do pig things on the ground.' For a company, the 'thrilling leap from commodity to money' happens at the front line; the channel is merely a transfer of warehouse. However, the voices the headquarters hears rarely come from the front line; the strongest are those of distributors, who act as an 'insulator' between the boss and the front line. When I worked at a company, I initially toured the market by first visiting distributors and then checking the front line, only to find that most of my time was taken up by the distributors' 'enthusiastic hospitality.' Later, we realized that distributors are most interested in sales policies, not the front line, while manufacturers are most interested in the front line, not sales policies. The difference in starting points between manufacturers and distributors makes distributors a natural 'insulator' between the boss and the front line. So we changed our market tour method: first check the front line, then meet with distributors. This way, we truly understood the market situation and realized that 'seeing' under the guidance of distributors is not 'believing.' As the market focus sinks and channels flatten, the headquarters seems closer to the front line, but the reality may be the opposite. While channels flatten, the internal management levels of the enterprise increase. Previously, the marketing system had only 1-2 management levels, but now it commonly has 3-4. The more marketing management levels, the farther the boss is from the front line, and the marketing system again plays the role of an 'insulator' between the boss and the front line. Some may question: the headquarters has big things to do, why care about the front line? We believe that the direction of marketing and major policies are usually in the hands of the headquarters, and the front line is the source that determines marketing direction and policies. In most cases, the headquarters must understand front-line information through formalized information transmission, but no one in the marketing system can have as significant an impact on marketing direction and policies as the headquarters. Moreover, China's front line undergoes major changes every so often, requiring the boss to personally experience it. The distance between the headquarters and the front line is not related to spatial distance but mainly to psychological distance. The closer the psychological distance, the closer the spatial distance.** We do not require all bosses to spend over 200 days a year in the market like Zong Qinghou of Wahaha, but the headquarters should at least genuinely care about the front line. The management system works like this: whatever the boss cares about, the management system will selectively report. If the boss ignores the front line for a long time, the management system will not bother the boss with front-line issues, except in two cases—when there is major 'good news' to claim credit or major 'bad news' to ask for help. Management scholars have long known that corporate bureaucracy inevitably produces 'systematic errors.' Under the normal command and reporting system, they designed an exception: superiors can skip levels to check subordinates' work. For China's rapidly changing market, if bosses want to develop in sync with the Chinese market, they 'can and must skip levels to inspect front-line work.' Because the characteristics of the Chinese market determine: the closer the boss's heart is to the front line, the closer they are to success. The headquarters always uses execution as a scapegoat Case 'No Excuses' is one of the best-selling financial books. Some companies give a copy to every salesperson, and others organize study discussions. Along with the earlier 'A Message to Garcia,' some bosses finally found an excuse for poor performance: salespeople are not like Rowan, who delivered the message to Garcia. Diagnosis The popularity of 'No Excuses' and 'Crossing the river by feeling the stones' is a tragedy for Chinese management, as it provides an excuse for incompetent managers. When headquarters managers come up with a target without any basis by patting their heads, they always say to subordinates: 'No excuses!' Then salespeople have to 'cross the river by feeling the stones.' Successful companies do not recruit a large number of 'capable' salespeople through a process of washing sand to find gold, but first find a marketing model that solves the company's marketing problems, and use this model to gradually enable people of average quality to operate it. If you expect every salesperson to create their own model and let them 'cross the river by feeling the stones,' most will eventually fall into the river. Therefore, successful companies first have 'excellent models creating excellent salespeople,' and then 'excellent salespeople achieving excellent companies.' What can a company that does not provide a support platform for salespeople offer them? Only products they do not know how to promote and endless pressure. What kind of salesperson has the required ability? They must have market planning and entrepreneurial abilities. What a high requirement! This is not a requirement for salespeople; it should be for startup bosses. If salespeople truly had such abilities, companies might not be able to keep them. Excellent companies require salespeople to be creative to 'add brilliance to the present splendor,' not to 'provide fuel in snowy weather.' Companies should provide salespeople with a mature marketing model. As long as they operate according to the model, the market will not have problems. Marketing models do not fall from the sky, nor can they be copied from other companies. They require the headquarters to fully mobilize internal marketing resources based on market possibilities or opportunities, plan a marketing model with the company's own characteristics, and have the ability to help salespeople run this model. This task can only be undertaken by the headquarters or decision-makers. Headquarters policies always change drastically when they reach the front line Case A food company conducted thorough research and planning before launching an important new product. At the new product launch meeting, experts and marketing management gave a comprehensive explanation of the significance and procedures of the launch and answered various questions from attendees. After the meeting, marketing personnel entered the market with the 'New Product Launch Execution Manual.' When the launch meeting ended, all headquarters personnel breathed a sigh of relief, just waiting for good news from the market. Ten days later, the marketing manager made a special trip to the target market and found that the seemingly flawless new product launch had been executed with many loopholes. When the marketing manager visited distributors, they found that the regional marketing supervisors who attended the meeting had not conveyed the meeting spirit to salespeople, let alone to distributors. The regional supervisors only conveyed a simple message to distributors by phone: the factory has launched a new product, priced at XX. The meeting spirit and the 'New Product Launch Execution Manual' were all 'embezzled' by the regional supervisors. Diagnosis The failure to convey headquarters policies and spirit seems to be the responsibility of regional managers, but the root cause lies in the headquarters. During channel flattening, we found that the manufacturer's sales management system has become multi-layered. Previously, the typical sales management system was: headquarters → provincial (or regional) salespeople. Now the typical sales management system is: headquarters → regional manager → provincial branch → city office → county salesperson. In the process of channel structure flattening, the manufacturer's sales management system has become hierarchical, which is the 'flattening trap' of marketing. According to our observations, the management penetration of Chinese local enterprises is usually only 1.5 levels, but the current typical sales management system has 4 levels, far exceeding the limit of Chinese local enterprises' management capabilities. Therefore, if the company's marketing policies and meeting spirit cannot be directly conveyed to salespeople and distributors, but rely on the management echelon to transmit layer by layer, it is normal for policies to change. Not only do headquarters policies get distorted, but front-line information also gets distorted when fed back upward. This confirms our long-held suspicion: only companies with strong management capabilities can effectively implement channel flattening. We believe that the collapse of many companies is actually the result of over-expansion and over-flattening, leading to management failure. We have found that industry-leading companies that stand the test of time have a competitive advantage not in marketing strategies but in management penetration. Our conclusion is: marketing breakthroughs rely on marketing strategies, but ultimate marketing success relies on management penetration. Some marketing experts are puzzled why many small and medium-sized enterprises in China can thrive. In fact, this is the result of the flattening trap of strong industry players. For SMEs, both channels and sales management systems are flat. For strong players in the industry, only one level can be flat. Thus, effective management measures from the headquarters of strong players, after being attenuated layer by layer through the sales management system, become a spent arrow when they reach salespeople. If the flattening trap is not resolved, strong companies may not be more competitive than SMEs in grassroots markets. The headquarters always only knows 'cutting the feet to fit the shoes' The vastness of the Chinese market and the huge differences between regional markets far exceed the imagination of headquarters managers who sit in offices all day. Yet most headquarters personnel still sit in offices and direct frontline marketing personnel based on imagination. Chinese companies' marketing headquarters generally dare not delegate power because 'once delegated, chaos ensues' has been proven countless times. Therefore, centralization is sometimes necessary. However, centralization cannot be an excuse for the headquarters to require frontline personnel to 'cut the feet to fit the shoes' to adapt to the headquarters. Chinese company headquarters and regional managers bargain like buyers and sellers. There are two typical approaches: one is that the headquarters comes up with a 'unified plan' and then requires each region to 'cut the feet to fit the shoes'; the other is that because the headquarters does not understand regional market conditions and cannot come up with specific policies, it delegates the task of formulating policies and plans to frontline managers. But the headquarters is not at ease with frontline managers, so it starts 'asking for the sky and bargaining down to the ground.' The headquarters always responds to regional managers' requests with 'not agreeing the first time, only giving when pressed,' and 'cutting in half when meeting.' Thus, they often miss the timing and intensity of market opportunities. A strong headquarters is a product of the era of mass products, network distribution, and advertising pull. Facing highly differentiated regional markets, strategic regional markets become inevitable. Therefore, the outcome must be the virtualization of the headquarters, with market decision-making shifting down to strategic regional markets. For companies that have achieved seamless market coverage, this is a real challenge. But few companies truly realize this. The headquarters always finds faults more than experiences Almost all companies lament that marketing innovation is too difficult, but at the same time, there is a large amount of marketing innovation at the grassroots that has not been 'discovered' by the headquarters, resulting in a situation where headquarters marketing innovation is scarce while grassroots marketing innovation is thriving. Innovation at the individual salesperson level is usually unconscious behavior. Even when innovation has taken shape, the salesperson may not know they have made an innovative 'feat.' A salesperson's individual innovation may be a flash of inspiration to solve a difficult problem, an accident, a result of pressure, a product of their unique experience or knowledge, a new understanding of consumers, or even the result of a mistake. The biggest problem is that salespeople rarely recognize the significance of their innovation. Misled by wrong concepts for a long time, they think innovation is a 'great' thing, a 'patent' of certain professionals at the headquarters. How can such a small thing they do count as innovation? Therefore, a large amount of valuable innovation is ignored by salespeople. Innovation at the headquarters organizational level is by no means the result of marketing managers sitting in offices and thinking hard, but comes from discovering salespeople's innovations. Elevating locally successful innovations to a global level is the responsibility of the headquarters. Marketing innovation at the individual salesperson level is usually a tactical measure to solve specific problems. However, if headquarters management discovers the value of a salesperson's innovation and promotes it on a larger scale, it is equivalent to elevating individual tactical innovation to corporate strategic innovation. The headquarters precisely lacks such a discovery mechanism. As a result, individual salesperson innovations remain only local small-scale activities, without recognition and elevation from the headquarters. And corporate-level innovation, lacking a source, forms a situation of innovation scarcity. As long as sales meetings are held at the headquarters, they are always 'complaint meetings' and 'policy-request meetings.' If headquarters personnel could condescend to visit the grassroots and summarize experiences and lessons, marketing innovation would be easily discovered. Source: Liu Teacher's Digital New Marketing (ID: liuchunxiong1964) -END-