---
title: "Which Types of Distributors Will Win in the Next 5 Years?"
description: "The future performance of distributors depends on the boss's depth, height, and strength. This article explores these three dimensions, emphasizing deep thinking, strategic vision, and leveraging teams to seize opportunities."
author: "任文青Andy"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2023-01-29"
language: "en"
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# Which Types of Distributors Will Win in the Next 5 Years?

> The future performance of distributors depends on the boss's depth, height, and strength. This article explores these three dimensions, emphasizing deep thinking, strategic vision, and leveraging teams to seize opportunities.

**Introduction: The future performance of distributors depends on the boss's depth, height, and strength!**
Before the Chinese New Year, I traveled on business and visited many distributors. In a recent exchange with a friend, he asked: "In your opinion, which types of distributors will win in the future?" I said that most distributors would never ask this question, but it is indeed a good one worth exploring. In the past, when we talked about distributors, the focus was on whether to adopt new models or how to approach new channels—these are operational issues from a company perspective. But in the long run, a company's development depends entirely on its boss—his cognition, thinking, and actions. Which types of distributors will win in the future? This is actually hard to articulate clearly, but my observation and thinking are that the future performance of distributors depends on the boss's depth, height, and strength! What does this mean? I'll share it with you through this article.

#### **Depth**
**First: Depth. It concerns the distributor boss's ability to think deeply.** What is deep thinking? For example, ask different distributor bosses the same question: "If a brand's task increases significantly next year, what will you do?" Some bosses might answer: "This brand isn't well-known locally; just distributing it won't sell. First, we need to find the top 10 stores where competing products sell well, and during key periods, concentrate resources to boost sales in these stores..." Then they would break down subsequent actions, analyze sales sources, and explain why they would do this and what evidence supports it. But facing the same question, most distributor bosses don't know how to answer. To respond, they might say, "We've covered the urban outlets, so we might need to go to townships and develop wholesale channels." They can't articulate clearly because they haven't thought deeply about the issue.
**Deep thinking is a capability and a habit, underpinned by two keywords: causality and logic.** Many bosses like to talk about being result-oriented—"I only care about results"—but this is actually a low-level mindset. What we should truly establish is causal thinking. Everything happens for a reason. How did the current result come about? We need to review and summarize methods. If I want to achieve a certain result in the future, what should I do? We need to sort out our thinking and formulate action plans. When analyzing causality, logic is essential. Things don't exist in isolation; they are interconnected systems. A leads to B, and B brings C. We must judge whether our reasoning holds based on common sense, experience, and professional knowledge. Over the past year, communicating with some excellent distributor bosses, I found they share a common trait: the habit of deep thinking. When talking about past actions, they explain why they did them, what pitfalls they encountered, and what lessons they learned. When discussing future plans, they always start from business logic and analyze their approach. These are manifestations of deep thinking ability. Most people stay at the surface of things, unwilling or unable to think deeply, and this applies to the distributor group as well. I have repeatedly mentioned a term: business rationality. In the initial stage, seizing an opportunity can get you started, often with decisions made on a whim. But at a certain stage, you need to talk about processes, management, and data analysis. At that point, decisions must be based on rational business analysis. What lies behind rational business analysis? It is deep thinking. The reality is that most distributor bosses still rely on sensibility and primitive business cognition to drive their businesses. However, some distributors have broken through this state. They like to ponder, analyze, ask why, and always seek root causes from underlying logic, forming methodologies through practice. Distributor bosses with deep thinking ability won't perform poorly and will be better positioned to seize opportunities in the future!

#### **Height**
**Second: Height. It refers to whether the distributor boss can view current work from a higher level.** What does this mean? Over the past year, the distributors I interviewed had varying annual sales scales—some 20-30 million, some 50-60 million, and some over 100 million or even several hundred million. If I were to summarize their differences, I think this phrase is most apt: "Small bosses do things, medium bosses do markets, and big bosses do trends." The distributor community in China is very hardworking, especially evident in small bosses. They work from dawn to dusk, loading and unloading goods, taking orders, and handling deliveries. Small bosses are diligent and busy, immersed in specific, tedious tasks, striving to complete each task assigned by manufacturers. Bosses who have reached a certain scale are different. They have teams and departmental divisions—sales, delivery, logistics, etc. The boss thinks about how to motivate the team to expand the market and grow it. In fact, achieving this level is already commendable, but frankly, such bosses have only reached this scale and are running their businesses on inertia; they lack height. What is height? Height is whether you can transcend the present, stand at a higher level to discern industry trends, and make future business decisions. In the past two years, we've seen some distributors, while their original businesses remained stable, invest in transforming to self-built B2B, investing millions and even enduring 2-3 years of losses. They did so resolutely. Why? The trading and distribution industry is undergoing accelerated change! Under the dual pressures of oversupply and stock competition, and with the widespread application of digital tools, the direction of change is increasingly clear: use scale-based cost and efficiency advantages to offset rising delivery and fulfillment costs. Transforming to B2b is actually a decision based on trend analysis and early positioning. Of course, not all distributors need to transform to B2b. The point here is that any business is a business of its era. To seize the business of the era, you need height. So-called height means examining your current business from a larger spatial scope and a longer time span—this is essentially a view of space-time. Spatially, you need to see changes in industry participants—brands, terminal formats, consumers—in a district, a city, a province, or even nationwide. Temporally, how will these changes evolve over a longer period—two, three, five, or even ten years? What impact will they have on my business? This is what big bosses do: they ride trends! Standing high allows you to see far, make decisions that ordinary people dare not make in the present, and remain steadfast when facing difficulties.

#### **Strength**
Depth is about your way of thinking and doing things; height is your ability to see trends and opportunities. So what is strength? Strength concerns the extent to which you can leverage such opportunities. No task can be accomplished by a distributor boss alone. Leveraging opportunities relies on leverage. What is your greatest leverage? Your team. How can you judge the strength of a distributor's leverage? This can be glimpsed from the answer to a question. When interviewing distributor bosses, I often ask about current difficulties and pain points. Some say they lack time, some lack funds, and some lack manufacturer policy support. Bosses who give these answers are usually smaller in scale, still relying on themselves to develop business, with teams mainly playing auxiliary maintenance roles. But some distributor bosses give different answers. They say the biggest challenge now is a lack of talent. Such bosses have clear team divisions, with departments performing their respective duties, and the boss no longer participates in specific operations. This boss, who "least lacks talent," actually prioritizes finding talent. Why? Because he has experienced that the efficiency and drive brought by true talent are incomparable to ordinary employees! Many distributor bosses might say, "Let's talk about talent when we get bigger. Now, not only can I not find them, but even if I do, they won't come." This thinking is wrong! It's not that you can find talent after the business grows; it's that with talent, the business can grow. A distributor boss shared a valuable experience. She said she believes in the saying, "Without a parasol tree, you can't attract a phoenix." So within a few years of starting her business, she decided to build a standardized company rather than a small venture. She divided positions, hired professionals, and within a few years, her business achieved a breakthrough. Now she is a major distributor with annual sales in the hundreds of millions. Your team is your leverage. How do you strengthen this leverage? Many people like to talk about management, but before management, we must first talk about governance. Management is about doing things right, while the core of governance is doing the right things. Design alignment of rights, responsibilities, and benefits, place the right people in the right positions, and match them with appropriate responsibilities and benefits. Before management, you must think from a governance perspective; it requires top-level design. With design, you can attract talent, or rather, it enables your employees to transform into true talent, making your team a powerful lever, giving you the maximum strength to seize future business opportunities.

#### **Final Thoughts:**


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