Deep distribution has become synonymous with meticulous cultivation. Many manufacturers, when aspiring to and implementing this 'intensive' model, often fall into the dilemma of 'intensive but not refined': more people but no performance growth; more standards but worse management; intensive cultivation but no fine work; abundant harvest but not necessarily a bumper yield. What exactly is the reason? 1. Enterprise Level: Weak Foundation Currently, many experts or companies are complaining about the deep distribution system. If someone says 'there is no problem with deep distribution,' someone might immediately throw a 'brick.' But why is it that two fellow apprentices holding the same boxing manual can still determine a winner in a duel? The difference is internal strength! For enterprises, 'internal strength' may not be profound; it might just be the basic skill of stance training. In fact, it is some common frontline 'small problems' that are the universal headaches and helplessness for enterprises. (1) Low efficiency. In a region with hundreds of blank terminals, sales representatives constantly face 'closed doors' during visits, hitting walls everywhere, unable to start, watching the task pressure grow, but only sighing at the sea. In a newly entered region, without the support of brand or channel pull, relying solely on grassroots sales reps to support the market is like hitting a wall with your head. (2) Severe boredom. Since terminal visits are usually once a week, the sales reps' actions are repetitive and monotonous, day after day, year after year. Without passion, sales reps just go through the motions, not only failing to quickly improve performance but also damaging their enthusiasm and confidence. Especially in mature markets, when sales reps rarely encounter competitors, the work becomes mechanical and monotonous, neglecting combat readiness, and new product promotions are not timely. (3) Cat and mouse. In daily work, sales reps often have 'hide-and-seek' and 'counter-detective' skills to cope with inspections, even fabricating forms and orders, inflating numbers. New supervisors paired with old sales reps, or incompetent supervisors, are key to this phenomenon. (4) False prosperity. In some branches, morning meetings are strict, slogans are loud, forms are neat, data is beautiful, and supervisors are confident... a scene of strict management and effective execution. But when you go to the frontline, you find rampant competitors, widespread fraud, and even the distribution rate is fake. This phenomenon is common in enterprises where headquarters' 'audit work' is superficial and sales assessment is paramount. (5) Cost out of control. For enterprises implementing channel intensive cultivation, they generally adopt the 'promotion separation' method. Terminal promotions are usually executed by the enterprise, and costs increase year by year without market share growing. This is the result of relying on routes, weakening channels, and simply doing market work through routes. (6) Going it alone. Branches and distributors do not cooperate well, and during promotions, they do not receive full support from distributors. After promotions, customer complaints pile up, either promotions are not redeemed in time or delivery is not in place. Enterprises and distributors blame each other, conflicts escalate, and they become enemies. (7) Master works, servant rests. Manufacturers gradually weaken the functions of distributors, becoming overly dependent on orders, and falling into the 'order' quagmire. (8) Grassroots personnel skim the surface. After a long time of 'cultivating but not refining,' as performance declines, sales reps lose confidence and interest in visits, and they jump ship. Enterprises blame 'the poor quality of this batch of sales reps,' so they rob Peter to pay Paul, recruiting 'more qualified' sales reps, increasing salary and training costs; meanwhile, grassroots management is unstable, leading to inconsistent system execution. Finally, the two gaps form a vicious cycle. 2. Supervisor Level: 'One Incompetent General Exhausts a Thousand Troops' A qualified route supervisor must not only know how to 'fight' but also how to 'lead troops,' otherwise the tragedy of 'one incompetent general exhausting a thousand troops' occurs. As branches are the fulcrum of enterprise marketing management, whether they have a batch of qualified route supervisors is the guarantee for the implementation of the enterprise's intensive cultivation strategy. (1) Parachuted supervisors. This is common on the frontlines of many enterprises: today it's Supervisor Wang, tomorrow it's Supervisor Li, with different management styles, so management is naturally discontinuous. Moreover, many enterprises rely on 'parachuted' supervisors, who bring other corporate cultures while disrupting the enterprise's own management culture. Branches are small but are 'multinational' troops. (2) Sales-oriented supervisors. Route management reflects process management, but enterprises focus on sales-oriented assessment. To complete sales, supervisors must focus on market actions related to sales, the most typical being 'pressuring, pressuring, and pressuring' in the channel. Many actions of sales reps on routes are not directly related to sales, so why do them? If supervisors do not pay attention for a long time, the route collapses. (3) Report-oriented supervisors. Every day or week, supervisors must report various data to superiors, such as account openings and distribution rates. Supervisors think this is a task assigned from above, not a tool for their own use. For example, they never use changes in distribution rates as a basis to analyze the market, like a company commander who cannot read a map, fighting in the dark, commanding by feel. To achieve the goal of precisely promoting their own products and precisely attacking competitors is just wishful thinking. (4) Gut-feel supervisors. Having a 60% overall distribution rate but less than 20% market share is a typical example in some regional markets. Originally promoting a mid-range new product, they end up distributing most products into small shops and grocery stores, like putting Maotai into roadside diners, naturally not generating sales! Channel layout determines the efficiency of product flow. Many market supervisors, in the process of product promotion, often follow their gut, not knowing which channels the products are distributed to, resulting in products expiring and the market not being conquered. (5) Weak supervisors. The degree of product order protection is often proportional to the supervisor's personality strength. A supervisor who dares to manage will not ignore chaotic price order, nor will they stick to conventions and remain unchanged. Product price order is the basic guarantee of product vitality and channel profit, and the flow of products in the channel determines the stability of price order. Exclusive distribution is an effective guarantee, meaning that one terminal corresponds to only one delivery supplier. (6) Achievement-oriented supervisors. The characteristics of achievement-oriented supervisors are: managing routes but not the market, managing leaders but not soldiers. Once leaders come, supervisors busy setting 'ambushes,' trying to lead the bigwigs to pre-prepared routes, full of flowers and harmony, glorious. (7) Fantasy supervisors. Many route supervisors are buried in 'desk work,' holding morning meetings in the office, compiling statistics, making phone calls, etc. These thorough office 'white-collar' workers rack their brains to come up with 'brilliant' promotion plans that look beautiful but are useless. The above phenomena are numerous, and in many enterprises' frontlines, you can find counterparts. It is these 'sheep-like' supervisors that cause even a group of 'lion-like' sales reps to flee in defeat. If a route has been run for three months and the store owner still does not know the sales rep's name, it can be judged that the sales rep's visit efficiency is definitely not high. Therefore, when inspecting routes, supervisors only need to ask: 'Boss, do you know our salesperson's name?' Employees never do what is hoped, only what is assessed! Once customer relations are included in the assessment, sales reps will do everything to make the store owner remember their names. 3. Sales Rep Level: How Many Ineffective Visits? A bag, a few forms, a stack of POP, visiting target terminals one by one in a fixed area every day... This is the common image of route sales reps shuttling through city streets. They are the 'nerve endings' of enterprises implementing deep distribution, carrying the strategic intent of terminal combat. What are these 'nerve endings' generally doing? Most are repeating the work of 'reading electric meters': greeting at the store, taking a turn, and leaving, or even shouting from the bike at the store entrance, 'Boss, need goods?' and upon hearing 'No,' immediately leaving. If an enterprise falls into the quagmire of intensive cultivation, it must be these 'nerve endings' that have problems. (1) Sales rep fraud. Daily form work is the basic skill of route personnel. They work on the move every day, making it easy to not fill forms, fill them randomly, or even fake forms and orders. Once forms are untrue, the entire route management will suffer the evil consequence of 'a thousand-mile dike destroyed by forms'! Common phenomena of fake forms and orders: (1) Falsifying visit times. Visit time is the foundation of ensuring the quality of route work; it must be filled in per store. Many sales reps fill in randomly after visiting the route or during lunch, making the route manual, this 'camera,' like being turned off, an expensive decoration. (2) Falsifying order achievement. Sales reps create fake orders to complete the promotion targets assigned by supervisors. For example, the order reflects the opening of one new store for a new product, but when the order is transmitted to the distributor, delivery finds the terminal refuses: the boss is not in, no money on hand... Such 'invalid orders' are often laughed off by supervisors, who may not even know if the order was delivered, but the performance statistics show the sales rep achieved one new store for the new product. Thus, more sales reps start exploiting loopholes, slacking off here, enjoying life there. (3) Falsifying inventory statistics. The purpose of terminal inventory statistics is to analyze the product status of our and competing products, obtain terminal flow information in time, and assist in formulating basic data such as terminal output. Of course, it is also a troublesome action requiring patience. For example, at a convenience store, one product has multiple varieties and multiple competitors coexist, with products piled on shelves, under shelves, and even under tables. Many sales reps are skilled at this: a quick glance, a number by feel, and fill it in. There are also falsifications of shelf management actions and customer complaint handling, and so on. In many enterprises, these 'fraudulent' behaviors often become a trend, and supervisors and other grassroots personnel mostly 'turn a blind eye,' but they can easily become the root of system necrosis. There is no other way; only the military rule of 'beheading without pardon' can prevent problems before they occur. (2) Lack of customer relations. All terminal actions of sales reps are based on customer relations. Without customer relations as a backing, sales reps will find it difficult to move. For example, a new sales rep goes to a store to do shelf management and is kicked out by the store owner: 'I don't know you, why are you moving things around in my store?' The advancement of terminal customer relations is a gradual process and can be measured by standards. Stage 1: Nothing to say. After the sales rep introduces himself softly, seeing the boss 'oh' without lifting his head, there is nothing more to say. Stage 2: Only official words. Many sales reps memorize 'scripts' and fire them at the boss. After a 'barrage,' the boss asks confusedly: 'What would you like to buy?' Stage 3: Normal communication. Only a simple business relationship with the terminal: when there is a market activity, tell the boss; when the terminal is out of stock, the boss says so. Most so-called 'mature sales reps' in enterprises are at this stage. Stage 4: No secrets. A high-level sales rep can gain the store owner's trust in a short time, and performance naturally soars. This trust results in going beyond business scope, treating each other as friends. It is hard for enterprises to force sales reps to reach this stage. In advancing terminal customer relations, enterprises only need to grasp two points: (1) The master leads through the 'ice-breaking' door: the enterprise provides standard visit processes, establishes a frontline script database, pre-answers various responses from store owners, and organizes simulation drills for sales reps to master. (2) Key assessment: whether the store owner can call the sales rep by name. Since sales reps from various manufacturers are all skimming the surface, most store owners can only vaguely say which manufacturer, which product, or even use the product name to call the salesperson. If a route has been run for three months and the store owner still does not know the sales rep's name, the visit efficiency is definitely not high. When inspecting routes, supervisors only need to ask: 'Boss, do you know our salesperson's name?' Employees never do what is hoped, only what is assessed! Once customer relations are included in the assessment, sales reps will do everything to make the store owner remember their names. For example: 'Boss, I'm a salesperson from XX company, my name is Yi Xiaohu, the Yi from Iraq. If you can't remember, just call me 'Iraq Tiger'!' The boss laughs heartily and remembers from then on. (3) Talk but not act. Current competition has shifted to fierce terminal battles, and sales are directly proportional to the number of outlets. Visual merchandising execution is a manifestation of terminal combat capability and a basic skill of sales reps. A qualified route sales rep must go through the 'three blisters' stage: blisters on the mouth, blisters on the feet, and blisters on the hands (visual merchandising execution and shelf management). An enterprise's control over terminals depends not on how many people visit terminals, but on the achievement of visit quality and visual merchandising execution. Headquarters (offices) should formulate detailed visual merchandising execution rules, guide sales reps to advance according to standards, follow up on standard achievement for inspection and scoring, and link it to sales reps' performance. If you push competitors off the shelf, you can push them out of the market. How to maintain the competitiveness of your products at the terminal? The basic action is the solid shelf management of sales reps, making your products 'jump' out of the sea of competitors and suppress competitors as much as possible. When executing this work, pay attention to the visual merchandising principle: make your products seen, bought, and heard, and make competitors' products unseen, unbought, and unheard, so that your products are 'thought of' by consumers. In summary, the reasons why enterprises 'stumble' in deep distribution are mostly due to focusing on strategy and not on frontline execution. In fact, the gains and losses of deep distribution mostly lie not in itself, but in the enterprise's basic management. This is a process from quantitative to qualitative change. Only by building combat-effective operational units can enterprises avoid falling into the trap of 'cultivating but not refining' or even 'pseudo-intensive cultivation.' This article is excerpted from Mr. Fang Gang's book 'What Old FMCG Hands Do: Regional Manager Operation Tips.' To purchase this book, please click 'Read the original text.' If you think this article is good and want to communicate with the author, please long-press the QR code below to add Mr. Fang Gang's WeChat, and reply 'Learning' when adding. -END- The best domestic FMCG distributor learning platform, focusing on providing professional, practical, and applicable tutorials for enterprises and distributors, committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly. The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry. 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