Topic 1: Marketing is not mysterious; it is a technical skill. Interestingly, when it comes to training, marketing executives and marketing novices share the same concerns and dilemmas: Novices, just entering the field, anxiously wonder: What marketing knowledge should I learn? How can I learn to become an expert? Executives hope to establish an internal marketing training system, so that newcomers can be 'processed' according to this system and become veterans. Thus, companies set up training departments, but many training departments' sole responsibility is to spend the company's training budget—whatever topic is popular in society, whichever teacher is currently 'hot', they invite them to perform at the company. After applause or boos, the noise subsides, the teacher leaves with the money, and the trainees' excitement quickly cools; they go back to doing what they did before. Like an iron camp with a constant flow of soldiers, as marketing personnel change, the training content becomes like water off a duck's back, leaving no trace. Executives lament that training has become an ineffective cost, and salespeople feel confused: 'After listening to so many lectures, it seems there are still many things I can't handle; I don't know what to learn.' What should marketing people learn? How should they learn to avoid detours? Just working hard is useless. Learning itself is a tough task; as the saying goes, 'There is no royal road to learning.' In the past, students were punished and had their palms slapped (only considering students' endurance, they didn't use the rack). Confucius said, 'Isn't it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned?' That's because when he said that, he was already a sage and no one dared to hit him. In contrast, Zhuangzi was wiser; he said, 'My life has limits, but knowledge has no limits. To pursue unlimited knowledge with limited life is dangerous!' Meaning, human life is finite, but knowledge is infinite and cannot be fully learned; using finite life to pursue infinite knowledge is bound to fail. So learn wisely; learning requires methods, trade-offs, and focus. This principle applies to marketing people: it tells you not to study blindly! Learning marketing should be planned and systematic. If you indiscriminately listen to a bunch of lectures and read a bunch of books, you'll miss what you should learn and waste time on what you shouldn't. The result is that with wrong methods, you work hard but gain nothing, and you deserve it. What is the right method? Don't be fooled by the gurus' nonsense. Marketing is not mysterious at all; it's a technical skill. Learning marketing is similar to learning hairdressing, pedicure, cooking, or tailoring. A skill is certainly composed of many sub-modules. For example, culinary arts: to become a master chef, it depends on how much effort, creativity, obsession, and talent the chef invests. But to become a skilled cook is not difficult: first, you need to know how to select, wash, and prepare ingredients; have knife skills to chop; understand seasoning and heat control to stir-fry; and memorize dozens or hundreds of common recipes. Once you're proficient, you're a cook. Whether you want to pursue a national special-grade chef certificate is your personal interest, but as long as you've put in all this effort, you're already a cook... Marketing is the same. Marketing is not mysterious. From novice to veteran, the things you need to learn, practice, and experience are nothing more than a few dozen capability and skill modules. If these modules are clearly listed as a catalog, companies can use it to organize their internal training systems and materials, modularly processing newcomers into 'finished products'. Marketing newcomers can follow the catalog of marketing skill modules to learn, avoiding detours, and feel confident in their studies. This is a great benefit. Topic 2: The Absorbing Star Technique. Before discussing the marketing skill module system, I want to talk about learning methods. My family members all look young, and I'm even more so. As my university teacher said, 'I've graduated for nearly 20 years, and my appearance has hardly changed; it's like I've stopped developing.' Some people might envy this trait, but for a trainer, it's troublesome—often being underestimated because of youth, and when giving lectures, my appearance doesn't command the room. When training companies, I often encounter novices just out of college, blinking their innocent eyes and asking, 'Teacher Wei, you're so young (he might think I'm his age), yet you have so much substance. Could you give me a reading list and a to-do list? If I follow your list and read the books and do the tasks, can I become an expert immediately?' Wow, that question is too creative, top-notch! Is there such a method? No? If not, this article wouldn't continue, because I'm about to talk about it! This method's name is familiar to everyone: the 'Absorbing Star Technique'. It sounds a bit shocking, but don't worry: 'If you practice this skill, you don't need to castrate yourself.' I've practiced it for many years, and I've truly benefited a lot. The first move of the Absorbing Star Technique: 'Keep good reading notes.' It sounds nothing new. Have you kept reading notes? Yes, but show me—they've long been thrown to some distant place. My personal view: reading professional books without taking notes is no different from reading porn! Isn't it? When reading porn, you might feel very stimulated, heart racing, fantasizing, feeling pleasure and sweating; but once you close the book, you're still a bachelor! Reading professional books is the same: while reading, you resonate a lot: 'Yes, yes, supermarket negotiations should be well prepared; the book makes sense;' 'Yes, yes, I've worked in the Guangzhou market; I've encountered this case in the book; well written'... But once you close the book, do you forget? A large part of my lecture content comes from books and articles I've published. When students listen to my lectures, they might feel a sense of déjà vu—like they've seen this content somewhere (for example, my column series on distributor management in 'Sales and Market' a few years ago). But when I ask questions in class, they still can't answer—strange, they've even read the textbook, why can't they answer? 'I've read it, and it seemed good at the time, but the content? Oh, I've forgotten long ago!' So, the first move: keep good reading notes! It sounds ordinary, but when combined with the second and third moves, its power is great. The second move: File and save properly. Let me share my practice: I force myself to finish four books every month (mostly on planes and in cars). And I never hoard books; I buy and read them. I know many colleagues buy books and hoard them without reading—they buy a marketing management book, read the first ten pages, and throw it on the shelf. They spend over a thousand yuan a year on books but never finish one. I'm the opposite: I buy one, read one, and throw it away after finishing. I really throw them away; my bookshelf has few books; after reading, they go to the trash. Why? Because I don't just read with my eyes; I read with scissors. Next time you see a middle-aged man with a crew cut on a plane cutting a new book with scissors, that's me. I destroy things quickly; a 200,000-word book takes about 4 hours (two flights) to finish. I skim over content that doesn't move me, and immediately cut out what does. The problem is that when you cut a page, the back is also cut, so I buy books wastefully—I always buy two copies, one for the front, one for the back. After cutting, the remains are thrown away; I've already cut out the useful content. What do I do with the cuttings? In the past, it was tough; I used paste to stick them into a scrapbook, and had to reclassify them every few days, making me look like a box maker. Now with computers and laptops, the workload is reduced. I just give the cuttings to my assistant, who converts them into electronic form and saves them on my computer—at this point, you've kept good reading notes and saved them, but you haven't filed them properly. What is proper filing? Create a large folder on your computer: 'Daily Experience, Daily Wisdom.' Then create individual Word sub-files. Name the files according to your work content. Classify the problems marketing people face: 'Distributor Management' is one problem, create a file; 'Supermarket Negotiation' is another, create a file; 'Small Store Visits' is another, create a file; 'Account Management' is another, create a file; 'New Product Launch' is another, create a file; 'Promotion Management' is another, create a file... and so on. Think carefully: marketing people face many problems. Initially, you might not be able to classify into twenty categories, but based on your work, pre-name and create these files. That's filing. Then, the notes you take from reading and the cuttings can be filed away. For example, if a book says: 'The key to managing distributors is managing their team. Distributor bosses often listen to their subordinates' reports, so the boss doesn't manage selling but manages purchasing...' Good, this is insightful. Convert it to electronic form, whoosh, into the 'Distributor Management' file. Tomorrow, in a lecture, the teacher talks about 'Negotiation precautions after Carrefour's regional system...' Good, this is useful. Convert it, whoosh, into the 'Supermarket Negotiation' file. The third move: Keep a work diary. There is knowledge in books and classrooms, but even more in actual work. If you don't summarize and record in time, you'll forget. Those who are good at summarizing grow quickly. Writing a work diary daily makes your experience more valuable and accumulates experience faster, 'smarter than yesterday.' A work diary is not a running account but reflection and summary—for example, if you failed in a negotiation with a distributor today, summarize where you went wrong and how you would negotiate if you had a second chance. Tomorrow, if your new product launch succeeds, think about why you won. The day after, if colleague Zhang San is fired, think about why he was fired and what the lesson is. And so on. First, write it down, then find time to organize, convert useful parts into electronic files, whoosh, into the computer folder for filing. The fourth move: Maintain the filing catalog, and use it freely. As you collect more materials and understand content more deeply, the 'files' will become more detailed. For example, initially you created a 'Supermarket Negotiation' file, but later you find it can be divided into 'Supermarket Contract Negotiation,' 'Supermarket Performance Management,' 'Supermarket Promotions,' 'Supermarket Reconciliation and Payment,' 'Supermarket Order and Logistics Management,' etc. The filing will become more refined, and electronic documents will be continuously reclassified and reorganized, eventually forming your own complete filing model, like an automatic sorting machine. Once you master this skill and form a habit, you become like 'Ding Chunqiu, the old demon,' who has mastered the 'Absorbing Star Technique.' Whether listening to lectures, watching DVDs, work experiences, or even casual chats, whenever something moves you or you gain something, you immediately absorb it and place it in the fixed category. When using it, it's 'free to send and receive'—if one day you want to summarize your experience on supermarket negotiation management, just a click of the mouse brings all the accumulated knowledge on that sub-topic before your eyes (maybe 50,000 words, but remember, these 50,000 words are selected from hundreds of thousands of words of reading and information). Think about it: if you had practiced this skill five years ago, wouldn't you have a photographic memory? What does photographic memory mean? When needed, knowledge immediately comes to mind. Now, you just move a finger... it's about the same! If you had practiced this skill five years ago, you would have remembered all the books, courses, and cases from the past five years. What level would you be at! Topic 3: The Technical Module Catalog for Marketing Personnel Let's review: earlier I gave the viewpoint that 'marketing is not mysterious; it's a technical skill composed of many sub-modules. Learning systematically according to these modules will yield twice the results with half the effort.' Then I gave the method: 'The Absorbing Star Technique: reading notes, work diary, filing, and maintaining the catalog.' Now it's time to give the tool: what exactly are the 'marketing skill modules'? In other words, can you provide an example of the 'filing model' in the Absorbing Star Technique? Depending on the industry and company size, the 'marketing skill modules' and 'filing model' may have some minor differences, but the overall framework is consistent. The entire marketing knowledge system is divided into four lines. I'll first establish the concept and framework, then illustrate the detailed modules with a diagram. You can compare the two for better understanding.

  1. Enterprise Knowledge Module: Help trainees understand the company, learn about it, integrate into its culture, and build confidence and pride in the company. Recommendation: This line is unrelated to marketing skills; trainees are often 'passively trained.' It can be developed by the company's training department, forming standard courses for standardized training of new hires. For marketing personnel, learning this content is a 'political necessity' and must be passed.
  2. Basic Professional Quality Knowledge Module for Marketing Personnel: Enhance professional qualities, standardize newcomers' 'listening,' 'speaking,' 'reading,' 'writing,' and 'acting.' Recommendation: There are many mature audio-visual and text materials on the market for such courses. The training department can introduce and modify them, converting them into standard internal courses for standardized training. For marketing personnel, these courses tend to be formal; mastering them for use is enough, no need to go overboard (except for frontline service staff).
  3. Market Operation Skills Knowledge Module: Marketing personnel managing markets need to learn basic market management knowledge, standard procedures, and common tools, as well as contingency plans for market problems they may encounter. This section should be divided by channel—distributor management, retail store route management, supermarket negotiation management, etc., each channel has its own required knowledge and skills. Recommendation: This line should be the highlight of marketing training. For companies, it should be done through both external teacher course introduction and internal self-summarization and development, with different levels for different positions. The most important thing is the inheritance, accumulation, and internalization of knowledge (see the author's articles in 'Sales and Market' Channel Edition, April and May 2008, 'Sales Knowledge Management: Don't Let Fertile Water Flow to Others' Fields (Part 1 and 2)). For marketing personnel, this line should be the main direction for using the Absorbing Star Technique and filing.
  4. Management Skills Knowledge Module: When marketing personnel rise from market execution to team management roles, they need to initially master management knowledge and tools. Recommendation: Management itself has artistic elements, which can be mysterious. But there are also many solid methods and tools. Focus on training in solid tools; it's not about how profound the management theory is, but how many management tools they use after the course. It's recommended that companies also use external and internal research methods to gradually accumulate their own course system, with different levels. For marketing personnel, learning management should emphasize practical practice; management methods and tools cannot be learned without actual practice. First use basic management tools, get started, then improve management art. Marketing is not mysterious; whatever channel your product goes through, you need to do the corresponding work. Cutting corners or being pretentious is equally unacceptable. Marketing is a technical skill composed of knowledge modules. The knowledge modules that a marketing person should know (using FMCG as an example) are roughly as described in this article. If there are omissions, they are special cases and specific content (such as salesperson skills, community promotion skills, account management for credit sales companies, etc.), which can be supplemented according to the actual situation of the company and individual. It seems like a lot to learn, but if you study systematically and step by step, you can complete and practice these modules in three to five years. If you use the 'Absorbing Star Technique,' you can further improve the efficiency of modular learning. No matter how long the road, it's not longer than your feet. As long as the method is right and you have perseverance, it's not difficult. That's how marketing 'veterans' are made. Teacher Wei Qing has opened a WeChat public account: long press the QR code below to follow: Editor's PS: The editor has selected 1,067 articles from nearly 1,900 published on this public account, divided into 14 categories and 57 knowledge points, systematically organizing frontline marketing management content into a library for easy learning. From market to customers, covering practical combat and management, all are pure dry goods. After following the account, reply with the number '1' to browse the following content: Sales improvement skills (73 articles), Sales supervisor skills (74 articles), Terminal visit management (82 articles), Distributor market operation (118 articles), Distributor development (91 articles), Distributor internal operations management (89 articles), Team management (53 articles), First lesson for sales novices (96 articles), Efficient distribution skills (117 articles), Sales manager's eighteen skills (90 articles), Managing distributors (47 articles), KA operations (35 articles), Internet and branding (47 articles);