Many manufacturer sales staff always identify themselves as employees of a certain company when dealing with distributors, believing that their interactions are merely for work. However, in the commercial era, everyone is a merchant; distributors are merchants, and manufacturer sales staff should also view themselves as merchants. They are not just working but doing business, representing the manufacturer in business dealings. The mindset of working versus doing business differs greatly, and at least distributors' minds operate entirely on a business mindset. If manufacturer sales staff could also think in business terms, communication and cooperation between the two sides would be much smoother, naturally reducing conflicts and disputes arising from asymmetric understanding.
Interactions between merchants are based on interests. Similarly, interactions between manufacturer sales staff and distributors are also based on interests. Generally, this interest is the sales benefit brought by the manufacturer's products. Of course, many conflicts and disputes between manufacturers and distributors also stem from this product interest. Although they claim to be cooperative and advocate win-win, in reality, they often compete for interests, each trying to push costs and risks onto the other while maximizing their own benefits.
In fact, in the interactions between manufacturer sales staff and distributors, having only product interest is not enough. This single form of interest is easily impacted by various external factors. Changes in interest status will directly lead to changes in the manufacturer-distributor relationship. If manufacturer sales staff and distributor owners have multiple compound interests, the stability of their relationship will naturally be much stronger. Even if product interest encounters issues, it won't affect the overall relationship and cooperation. Generally, there are at least the following three types of interest relationships between manufacturer sales staff and distributor owners:
1 First Interest: Personal Emotional Interest. Based on understanding of the distributor and smooth personal communication.
In interpersonal interactions, personal feelings are very important. Setting aside business, pure personal appreciation and recognition between individuals mainly rely on the manufacturer sales staff's personal charm, communication skills, and understanding of the distributor owner. From a purely personal perspective, optimizing the relationship, some successful manufacturer sales staff have turned their relationships with distributors into brotherhood. Even if the products they sell are not famous brands and sales and profits are mediocre, due to personal feelings or helping friends and brothers, distributors will still allocate resources preferentially.
2 Second Interest: Conventional Product Interest. The benefits brought by the product itself.
This is relatively simple and is what many manufacturer sales staff do every day. Besides the sales benefits of the product itself, there are other related forms of interest, such as services to distributors and expense support. However, these expenses and services have two inherent problems: First, due to the habit of maximizing interests, distributors constantly ask for more expenses and more market policies, even special policies. Second, the service forms provided by manufacturers to distributors are increasingly homogenized, such as senior management visits, luxurious annual meetings, or overseas trips. Service costs are rising, and their appeal to distributors has significantly decreased.
3 Third Interest: Knowledge Interest in Overall Operations and Management for Distributors.
Current distributors are no longer simple individual businesses, nor are they truly enterprises, but rather a state in between, with unique organizational forms, values, and operational characteristics. Moreover, there is no industry standard for distributor companies; almost every distributor company has its own uniqueness or standards. Many marketing and management tools used by enterprises cannot be applied in distributor companies. Currently, most distributor companies are still in a state of "rule by man" by the boss.
However, what current distributors lack most is not one or two profitable products, nor one or two market expenses from a few manufacturers, but overall operational and management issues. The current market environment is different from before: national regulations are increasingly strict, money under the table is harder to earn, opportunities for sudden wealth are fewer, fixed costs are rising, upstream manufacturers are flattening channels, greatly compressing distributors' living space, and downstream modern retail outlets are rapidly rising with long payment cycles and high sales expenses, greatly compressing distributors' profit margins. Competition among peers is intensifying, and internal management costs and difficulties are increasing daily. Squeezed from all sides, many distributor owners are trapped in internal and external troubles, especially personnel management issues, which have become the primary headache for many distributors.
However, due to limited education of distributor owners, lack of learning channels, and safety concerns that make it inconvenient to communicate excessively with peers, many matters and problems can only be solved through their own trial and error, lacking systematic consideration and solution design. Moreover, there are few reference management tools and practical cases. Facing expanding companies and increasingly complex market environments, many distributors' problem-solving speed cannot keep up with the emergence of new problems.
At this time, manufacturer sales staff can consider providing the third form of interest to distributor owners: knowledge interest. By understanding distributors, combining their own work experience and learned knowledge, they can provide solutions to various problems for distributors. In other words, they can enhance their professional capabilities, especially in internal management, and then act as teachers and consultants for distributors, fundamentally helping them. This will surely gain high attention and recognition from distributors.
Personal interest, product interest, and knowledge interest – if these three interests can coexist, they will fundamentally strengthen and stabilize the cooperative relationship between manufacturer sales staff and distributor owners, significantly improve cooperation quality, reduce many unnecessary internal disputes and conflicts, and ensure stable and long-term cooperation.
Author: Pan Wenfu Born into a private business owner family, he managed a family distributor company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several production enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and veterans entering private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises and keeps updating material collection and solution designs.
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