Jack Trout, author of 'Horse Sense', says: Working harder, believing in yourself more firmly, and thinking more positively alone cannot help you climb the ladder of success. In fact, success is not something you can spontaneously generate; the key to success is what you can obtain from others. Applied to regional managers, this is interpreted as: To achieve annual goals, regional managers cannot rely solely on hard work, confidence, and positive thinking; the key is to learn to leverage momentum and what they can obtain from their bosses and various support departments. Anyone who succeeds knows how to leverage momentum, and successful regional managers are no exception! This is the third article in the regional manager series, discussing how regional managers can leverage momentum, gain more support from the company, and achieve performance goals! Of course, any department and individual need to learn to leverage momentum; we are just using regional managers as an example for analysis, and the principles and practices are universal. ****-01-****To achieve your goals, what company support do you need? Please think about three questions. First, don't think about things related to 'money'; answer questions related to 'matters'. First question: To achieve your annual goals, what things do you need to do? Second question: Among these things, which ones can you do yourself? Third question: Among the things you cannot do or cannot do well, which ones require company support? From the above analysis, it can be seen that if you are capable, you can do more things yourself; if you are less capable, you will need more help from the company. In short, to achieve goals, regional managers always need the company's help and support! Let's analyze in detail below. 1. To achieve your annual goals, what things do you need to do? Please list all these things. To achieve goals, we need to do many things, such as from the customer aspect, execution aspect, and team aspect. The following are just examples for your reference; of course, you can also list the things you need to do according to your own work content and logic. a) List things to do regarding customers Is your total number of customers sufficient? Which channel customers are managed well? Which are managed poorly? Are customer records accurate? Are the number of active customers and the proportion of high-quality customers sufficient? b) List things to do regarding execution Are visit reach and visit success rates high? Are product distribution and display meeting requirements? Is the gross profit margin of products high? What is the proportion of new products? Has the proportion of high-margin products increased? What is the per capita sales volume? Is equipment management good? Are there any issues with the distribution of rewards to customers? c) List things to do regarding the team To achieve this year's goals, does your team's organizational structure need adjustment? Do positions need to be changed? Do personnel need training? Do you regularly coach the team? What is the effect? 2. Pick out the things you can do For things you can do, you have methods and resources at your disposal. Methods are what you are good at, and what you have the ability and experience to do. You can check off the things you can do from all the things you need to do. Your strengths are related to your experience. If you came from a distributor background and were promoted to regional manager, you are strong in distributor management. If you were promoted from the KA department, you will be more familiar and skilled with hypermarkets, supermarkets, and convenience stores. In short, when you have strengths and weaknesses, the things you are not good at require company support! 3. Which things need to be done with the company's help? Following the above question, you can continue to check off the things you are not good at, and among them are those that need company help. Below are two common and typical examples that need company support. a) Lack of experience in managing hypermarkets and supermarkets: Many regional managers start from grassroots sales, with more experience in distributor and grocery store channels, possibly also catering and other specialized chain stores. In short, many lack the methods and experience to manage hypermarkets, supermarkets, and convenience stores. b) Training and coaching make a big difference to the team In team combat effectiveness, professional methods and experience need to be acquired through training and route coaching, which also require company support. A regional sales representative needs 1 year to get up to speed; a channel sales representative is more professional and needs 1-2 years of experience; a KA sales representative needs at least 2 years of experience. Of course, you cannot rely on training to complete this year's goals, but continuous training and coaching are necessary. Stories of two regional managers a) Given money but doesn't know how to spend it A general manager once told me that regional managers have no concept of KA, hypermarkets, or supermarket channels. He asked regional managers to take him to second- and third-tier cities to visit markets, requiring them to visit hypermarkets and supermarkets to draw their attention. When I first arrived, I found that regional managers didn't care about hypermarket business at all because they didn't know how to do it. Even if you gave them money, they didn't know how to spend it. b) Not knowing how to serve KA customers In a training session, a regional manager complained about a customer: "Why does XXX national customer fine us? Why should they fine us? I asked for the reason for the fine, and they said it was because of untimely delivery." I said that timely delivery is written in the cooperation agreement between both parties, and the company itself has a commitment to on-time delivery. Regardless of the reason, we didn't execute well. This kind of problem can be solved because at the headquarters level, the two sides cooperate well. It may be because your team's relationship with this store is not coordinated. This issue needs the Key Account Department to help you coordinate. The above two examples show that company support is not just about giving money; sometimes you don't know how to spend it. The company should provide more methods. In example a, the KA department should provide methods; in example b, the KA department needs to provide methods and coordinate with the store. Four pain points of regional managers Blind hard work: Believing that only by working hard can you achieve goals, but every month you are exhausted, coping with various company requirements, the team is also tired, and achieving goals is still difficult! Stuck in details: Personal attention is only on completing tasks, personally taking the lead, getting bogged down in specific business, and leaving other things to the team to fend for themselves. Picky: Narrow understanding of company support, only valuing support related to price and discounts, selectively using resources. Inefficiency: Despite getting many company resources, the team's operating methods are unprofessional, only looking at the big picture, not counting small accounts, leading to high expense ratios and low investment efficiency. Unable to handle chain customers, especially KA customers. If these things are not done well, achieving goals will naturally be difficult, so you need to leverage the company's momentum! ****-02-****Why leverage the company's momentum? Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' Chapter on Military Potential says: "One who is skilled in warfare seeks victory through momentum, not through individual effort. Thus, he can choose the right people and rely on momentum." This means that skilled generals rely on momentum rather than individuals; the key is to create momentum, and under a certain momentum, people will perform accordingly. The position of regional managers in the company structure From the organizational structure, sales needs support from marketing, finance, and supply chain. In the organizational structure, regional managers report to the director above, manage the team below, and horizontally coordinate with finance, logistics, and warehouse, while receiving professional guidance and help from the marketing department's brand, channel, and KA functions. If regional managers only focus on the team and customers, ignoring communication and coordination with other functional departments, their role will be weakened, which is not good for the company or the individual. Good execution requires strong system support from the company First, in execution, departments such as sales, marketing, channel, and KA provide execution standards and methods, provide results of execution checks, and provide improvement methods. For example, there are professional operating methods for different channels such as hypermarkets, supermarkets, grocery stores, and catering. Second, for distributor management, the company provides software and hardware support and a full set of operating methods. Third, there is a full set of operating methods for key accounts, such as annual agreement negotiation and signing, annual plans, rolling three-month market plans, regular business reviews, and senior management meetings. Fourth, the headquarters improves execution performance by communicating with the headquarters of chain customers. Regional managers face more and more chain customers expanding to 2-5 tier cities. The execution of chain customers requires the company headquarters to connect with customer headquarters for improvement. The formulated operating procedures should be standardized, professional, and simplified. Standardization: All team execution actions are unified, and no one is allowed to act according to their own understanding. Professionalism: Execution actions conform to the characteristics of customer operations. For example, hypermarkets and supermarkets have professional requirements for pricing, gross margin, packaging, and product display. Execution operations need to be combined with these requirements. Simplification: Make it easy for the team to grasp and execute. To achieve the above, centralized management is needed. Centralized management plays a key role 1. Standard Operating Procedures improve efficiency and effectiveness In the FMCG industry, most enterprises are labor-intensive, with human and experience factors accounting for a considerable proportion. For example, in the market sales behavior of brand owners and retailers, human factors and experience play a crucial role. Review, analyze, and organize the best practices of operational behavior, use the principles of standardization, professionalism, and simplification to sort them into operating procedures, formulate SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), and quantify key actions into KPIs for everyone to execute. This will greatly improve work efficiency. 2. Modern management systems provide a platform for centralization Using modern management systems such as SAP, which have the advantages of modernization, informatization, and intelligence, provides solutions for enterprise management. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, which are customer-centric, combine customer information with internal processes to better meet customer needs. These modern management systems provide a strong platform for centralized management. To enable branches or stores to execute uniformly to improve efficiency and effectiveness, the model where the headquarters uniformly plans, standardizes, checks, and allocates resources is called centralized management. This is an objective law common in the FMCG industry. It applies to both retailers and manufacturing enterprises. a) Centralized management in retailers: Chain hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, as well as chain restaurants and clothing stores, as long as they have branches, the headquarters faces the issue of unified execution and uniformity. The challenge is even greater for national customers with hundreds or thousands of stores. Therefore, centralized management is the current effective model. That is, the headquarters formulates processes and standards for stores to execute, and the headquarters issues instructions for stores to execute. The headquarters hopes that this operation will allow consumers to experience the same high-quality service in any store. It strives to make the experience in a first-tier city store the same as in a fifth-tier city store. b) Centralized management in enterprises: Internal needs of enterprises: The more professional the company, the more it emphasizes centralized management. Although sales teams are highly independent, with the ability to independently operate from visiting customers, taking orders, delivering, and settling accounts, to standardize the actions of all branches, centralized management is also needed. Needs of professional customers: As mentioned above, retail customers implement centralized management, such as chain hypermarkets, supermarkets, and catering customers. Their execution has a set of standard operating procedures, from agreement signing, order placement, store execution, delivery, reconciliation, and payment, all with strict process operations. The more national chain customers, the higher the requirements for professionalism. These customers continue to open stores and expand, with the number of stores in 2-5 tier cities increasing year by year. This forces suppliers to improve service levels. Customers require suppliers to provide the same level and quality of service to stores in provincial capitals, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities. From the supplier's perspective, the common situation is that in provincial capitals, the team is strong and store service is good. But as you go down to lower-tier cities, service capabilities may gradually decline. Most regional managers lead teams distributed in 2-5 tier cities, which brings new challenges to the team's service capabilities. Therefore, from the regional manager's perspective, some things they are not good at require company support; from the company's perspective, centralized management needs to support regional managers; from the customer's perspective, chain customers implement centralized management, which raises the service requirements for regional managers. ****-03-****How to leverage the company's momentum? Successful people learn to leverage momentum In layman's terms, regional managers should closely follow the company's 'trends', for example: What goals does the company want to achieve this year? It will definitely give the sales team the necessary resources. If the company wants to strive for the national first place, it will definitely provide support in plans and resources. If the company wants to create a super hit product this year, If the company wants to improve execution scores at points of sale by 5 points, If the company wants to move up 3 places in market share, You need to make the team believe that the company will invest resources to support the sales team and will definitely reward the team to achieve its goals. Regional managers need to leverage the company's momentum to push the team's work to a higher level. This is smart leveraging! How to obtain company support and use resources? 1. With a plan, there are resources: When asking for resources, regional managers often neglect to make a plan. Simply put, tell the company that you want to achieve more challenging goals, so you need more resource support. When asking for resources, learn to calculate: you need to understand how to calculate expense rates, profits, and ROI. This is the standard and only language for communicating with the company. This planning ability is required of regional managers. 2. With a project, there are resources: To improve the capabilities of the sales team, companies often carry out projects, such as sales projects, channel projects, market projects, and key account projects. As long as you can participate, you will definitely get resources. Doing projects not only gets resources but also allows the team to gain methods. This is a win-win situation. In fact, many people worry about project failure and get too caught up in gains and losses, but there are always people who rise to the challenge and get through difficulties. 3. Using resources requires professional methods: Professionalism and non-professionalism have a big impact on performance results. For example, in the same supermarket, the performance of an ordinary sales representative and a KA sales representative can differ by 20-50%, and the ordinary sales representative's expense rate is higher than the KA sales representative's. That is, they spend money but don't get sales. In the example above, the regional manager who was given money but didn't know how to spend it lacked professional KA operating methods. Things related to KA should be handled by the KA department. You might ask, do KA stores in second- and third-tier cities need to be directly managed by the KA department? This depends on the actual situation. It doesn't necessarily require direct management; 'remote management' can be used. Divide the work and cooperate between the KA department and the frontline team, use the KA department's professionalism and the frontline team's execution, and without breaking the existing reporting relationships, integrate the KA department and frontline team into a large team with professional operating methods. This is the KA vertical management model! 4. Organically combine your work with headquarters projects From a professional perspective, the company headquarters' functional departments such as sales operations, marketing, key accounts, and channels will provide professional guidance. They will directly connect with the functional groups under the regional manager. For example: In the regional manager's area, the headquarters sales team will directly go to the sales office to do route planning. The headquarters marketing and channel teams will do promotion projects in different cities. The Key Account Department's vertical management project: The KA department will directly connect with the KA team in the area, negotiate annual business plans, rolling three-month plans, store execution, and regular business reviews with customers. Therefore, regional managers should use these projects to improve team capabilities, complete sales with professional methods, and achieve goals. Summary of the full text: To achieve goals, regional managers must leverage the company's momentum. The company's centralized management provides a very good platform for regional managers to gain support. Regional managers need to find their position on this platform, define a role for themselves, and then integrate into it. Leveraging the company's momentum, whether it is closely following the company's trends, obtaining company resources, or joining company projects, in addition to obtaining resources, should pay more attention to closely following the company's trends and letting the team gain professional methods. This will drive team execution, help the company and team achieve goals, and at the same time achieve personal goals! Source: Cao Yang GeoffreyCao (ID: gh_50d441955f44) Author: Cao Yang Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.