---
title: "The Gods Are at the Frontline"
description: "Some people avoid going to the frontline, but the author loves it because that's where opportunities and insights are found. By going to the market, one can discover successful tactics, identify patterns, and develop models that can be widely promoted, ultimately leading to market breakthroughs."
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-02-18"
language: "en"
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---

# The Gods Are at the Frontline

> Some people avoid going to the frontline, but the author loves it because that's where opportunities and insights are found. By going to the market, one can discover successful tactics, identify patterns, and develop models that can be widely promoted, ultimately leading to market breakthroughs.

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**-01-**
Some people don't like going to the frontline. Going to the frontline means facing difficulties head-on, answering questions, providing solutions, and formulating policies.
Some people love going to the frontline because the gods are at the frontline. Once at the frontline, thinking becomes active, and the greater the difficulty, the more excited they become. In the office, they struggle to find solutions; at the frontline, ideas flow like a spring.
When there's no other way, they go to the frontline. When encountering problems, they read books, consult experts, or go to the frontline. This is a famous saying from the boss of a listed company.
To boast a bit, I particularly love going to the frontline. Moreover, I love going with bosses, and they are willing to go with me. Because going to the frontline yields great gains. The biggest gain is not methods, but a deeper understanding of the market.
**When going to the frontline together, we see the same things and talk about the same things. But the conclusions we draw are different, and the solutions we propose are different.** Some people ask me, what's the trick here?
This article is my personal summary. I hope it serves as a modest spur to induce others to come forward with valuable contributions.
**-02-**
**The book "Marketing Warfare" (actually "Bottom-Up Marketing") has had a great influence on me.** The English name is accurate: "Bottom-Up Marketing," authored by Ries and Trout, the proponents of positioning theory. Compared to positioning theory, this book is not widely known.
Some people are at the frontline every day and seem familiar with it, but they may not have a deep understanding of it.
Please note my wording here. **Being familiar with the frontline means having a good grasp of details, but a deep understanding and insight into the market requires vision and insight.**
**"Bottom-Up Marketing" presents three important viewpoints that are crucial for going to the frontline.**
**First, strategy is the consistent alignment of successful tactics.** Turning successful tactics into collective corporate action is strategy. This is the core viewpoint of "bottom-up marketing."
**Second, market insight requires senior executives above the vice president level to go deep into the frontline.** Only when high-level executives go top-down can there be bottom-up market insight.
**I particularly agree with the viewpoint that whether it's strategy or tactics is not about macro or micro, or the size of the problem, but about the perspective of looking at the problem.** If executives above the vice president level go to the frontline and see things from the same perspective as grassroots staff, they are unqualified senior executives.
**Third, there are only two marketing strategies: the big bang strategy and the rolling strategy.** In fact, the rolling strategy is also a small-scale big bang strategy.
Only big bang and rolling can change market position; everything else can only maintain the market.
**This viewpoint tells us that as long as the market scope is small enough, even a small enterprise can create a big bang in the market.**
**-03-**
**When going to the frontline, there must be a goal.**
If it's just to get familiar with the market and understand it, then ultimately there may be little gain. Without a higher goal, you won't obtain the information needed to achieve it.
If it's just to solve difficulties and problems, you'll focus on the problems and difficulties themselves. Even if they are solved, the market may not improve.
"Bottom-Up Marketing" presents an important goal: the consistent alignment of successful tactics. Senior executives go to the frontline to discover successful tactics and then promote them consistently. That is the goal.
**Generally speaking, when I go to the frontline, I have two micro-goals: one is to "move the market up a notch or turn it around"; the other is to find the entry point for that. These two goals are actually the same goal.**
When the higher goal is achieved, the difficulties and problems naturally disappear. Because if sales are poor, even non-problems become problems; if sales are good, even big problems are not problems.
**Therefore, difficulties and problems are a "smokescreen" for real solutions. Going to the frontline means studying the issues behind this smokescreen.**
Don't get too entangled with difficulties and problems, and don't be led by the nose by them. Even though when senior executives go to the frontline, grassroots staff will either guide them to good markets to gain support and trust, or to problem markets, hoping to use the leader's power to solve specific issues.
**-04-**
**Going to the frontline should yield gains.**
Generally, I aim for three gains: **one is to discover opportunities; two is to summarize patterns; three is to elevate to models.**
**These three gains are not about solving specific problems but solving universal problems. Not about solving individual problems but solving common problems.**
On the surface, every market is different. Deep down, all markets have commonalities.
**When I see the first market, I generally don't speak or give guidance.** I definitely have thoughts, but whether it's common or individual, I need to see more markets.
**By the time I see the second or third market, I have a good idea whether it's common or individual. But I need to see more markets to verify.**
Commonalities and patterns are universally applicable. Individualities are locally specific.
**One market, one method equals no method.** I particularly hate the saying "what fits is best," which is often an excuse for not having a reasonable solution. The smaller the enterprise or boss, the more they like to say this.
**-05-**
**The basic skill of going to the frontline is chatting.**
Chatting is a research method to obtain diverse and real information, and to adjust questions and thinking direction at any time.
**Be sure to chat more with people at the terminal.** For example, shop owners, sales guides, salespeople, waiters, and customers. If necessary, you can also observe and track.
Chatting yields real information because the other party is not on guard, their mindset is relaxed, and their answers are not "politically correct."
**Besides greetings, the topics of chat should try to hide your true intentions as much as possible, while being purposeful and targeted.**
**Being good at chatting is difficult. Because it seems like chatting, but it's actually research. Research requires ideas, and ideas lead to topics. Otherwise, chatting yields nothing.**
Sometimes, when I chat, the people accompanying me don't notice; they think it's just pure chat, but my information comes from that chat.
**Have ideas, but don't be rigid; be ready to shift ideas at any time.** This is something to pay special attention to during chats. Those without frontline experience often can't even chat; they only do formulaic chatting.
**-06-**
**Discovering market opportunities and entry points is the most important content of research.**
**If you don't discover opportunities, you can only spend money. Opportunities are the most important market resource. Spending little money to do big things often relies on market opportunities.**
Many people look at the market and tend to focus on problems. **Solving problems doesn't necessarily mean starting from the problem itself.**
**Success is not because you solved problems, but because you seized opportunities.** This saying by the famous American futurist Naisbitt in "Mind Set!" I remember vividly.
What is an opportunity? Opportunity is a way of thinking. For example, during the Year of the Ox Spring Festival, it was difficult to push inventory due to the pandemic. That's a difficulty.
From another perspective, precisely because everyone found it hard to push inventory, terminal stock was definitely insufficient. That becomes an opportunity.
But when we hear reports from distributors, terminal stores, and salespeople, they often highlight problems and difficulties, and the work direction also leans toward problems and difficulties. Often, problems and difficulties are not solved, and may even worsen.
Indeed, the information reported to the office is mostly problems and difficulties. **If you solve problems along the line of difficulties, you'll soon find that solving one problem brings out more problems.**
Why are there more difficulties and problems in reports? **There are three reasons: first, the limited vision of grassroots staff; second, to imply to leaders that "I've tried my best" and "I've done everything I can," so problems and difficulties need leaders to solve; third, the need to compete for resources.**
I once led a sales meeting with two bosses. At first, all employees raised problems, and I couldn't solve them either. Then I stopped them from talking about market opportunities and talked about how to seize opportunities myself. In the end, we found that once we seized the opportunity, what problems were there?
**Of course, this doesn't mean problems are unimportant, but if you put problems in a broader perspective, when sales are good, problems may disappear.**
Let me talk about finding market entry points separately. If you can't find an entry point, you have to resort to frontal assault and hard attack. This is a major taboo in marketing. Even international big brands can't withstand repeated frontal attacks. Especially many small enterprises often imitate big companies' practices but lack their influence and resources. So, finding a suitable market entry point can be seen as an important opportunity point.
**-07-**
**Discovering patterns is another basic skill of going to the frontline.**
Once, I had a meeting with a manufacturer. A salesperson had newly developed a client because the original supplier's quality had problems.
Then I asked, what will you do after the development succeeds? He didn't know.
I told him: If this client's supplier has quality problems, then won't other clients of that supplier also have problems? Why don't you follow the vine to get the melon?
Another time, I attended a sales meeting of a manufacturer. They talked about many difficulties. Then I asked a question: What were the reasons for the new clients' purchases? In the end, they summarized 9 reasons.
These 9 reasons can actually be summarized into one. The brand planning master Ye Maozhong once said that sales is "the art of persuading people to divorce." The "mistress" succeeds with signs; there are reasons for squeezing out the original supplier.
Once I accompanied a boss who had "no way out" to the frontline. Every time I met a salesperson, I asked two questions: give 3 most successful examples and 3 least successful examples. **From the successful examples, find commonalities and promote them; from the least successful examples, find commonalities to guard against.** After 4 days of going to the frontline, the boss said he had the "Sunflower Manual" (a metaphor for a powerful secret manual).
**Discovering patterns means rising from individual cases (successful or unsuccessful) to methodology. Without patterns, there's nothing to promote. Once patterns are discovered, they can be promoted.**
Induction and deduction are two common logics used in market research. Rising from successful methods to methodology requires induction; evolving more methods from methodology requires deduction.
**-08-**
**The highest goal of research is to discover models. Models are patterns that can be widely promoted.**
**I have always emphasized that ordinary enterprises, even with a wealth of talent, can still fail completely. I have personal experience of this.** Because ordinary enterprises are characterized by "everyone has a way," but "the enterprise has no way." In other words, they lack models.
**Those enterprises that "can't die but can't grow big" basically have this characteristic: because they have a few capable people, they can't die; because they only have these few capable people, they can't grow big.**
**Excellent enterprises are characterized by "enabling ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results." Because the results are extraordinary, people think the people are also extraordinary.**
**An important way for ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results is to have a unified model. Models can be big or small, but they must be uniformly promoted.**
**Strategy is the consistent alignment of successful tactics. The result of consistency is a model.**
**Models are not necessarily thought up by senior executives, but they are definitely discovered by them.** For example, Jinmailang's "four-in-one" model was first created in a weak market in Shandong, and then summarized by the boss after researching in Shandong.
**In excellent enterprises, even if there is only one effective method, it must be promoted by everyone at the same time. This comprehensive promotion practice is a model.**
Any enterprise that is alive has some successful practices that can be promoted. But bosses often turn a blind eye to this.
When serving enterprises, many industries are ones I haven't experienced before. But as long as I go to the frontline, I can quickly discover models that can be widely promoted.
**-09-**
**Is it better to conduct market research more frequently?**
**No, it's not necessary. But periodic research is needed. Research after hitting a bottleneck is necessary.**
How long can one research last? As a senior executive, I think half a year is fine.
In most cases, senior executives get information through layers of management reporting. Without research, they lack the ability to discern and question the reported information.
**You know, information is power.** Management layers often hope to monopolize information to gain power, or transmit information with bias to gain benefits.
Recently, while researching marketing digitalization, I again conducted intensive research on many enterprise cases. I not only published a case series but also summarized the direction and methodology of digitalization.
**In addition to the three research goals of "opportunity, pattern, model," I have three other goals during research: solving enterprise problems, writing a regular article, and conducting enterprise training.**
**Opportunity, pattern, model are the common issues for senior executives' research; solving problems, writing articles, and training are my individual issues.**
**-10-**
The gods are at the frontline.
Opportunities are at the organizational boundary. The frontline is the organizational boundary. Staying in the office, you won't find opportunities.
Market insight is at the frontline. No amount of research can replace insight. Generally, insight comes first, then concepts are formed, and then surveys refine them.
The value of company resources lies in combining with the frontline, and executives above the vice president level have the ability to mobilize resources.
More importantly, the frontline has a stronger sense of context. The same words feel deeper at the frontline.
The topic of market research has been asked about for a long time, and I've always wanted to talk about it, but I haven't sorted it out until now.
Fang Gang is also a boss and expert who likes to go to the frontline. **"The gods are at the frontline" is our common feeling.** In 2019 and 2020, we went to the frontline together many times. These days, the topic of shortage in the Spring Festival gift market has once again brought out the insight of "the gods are at the frontline." Because shortly before the Spring Festival, we had just conducted a joint research.
Source: Teacher Liu's Digital New Marketing
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