---
title: "Why Are Young People No Longer Willing to Enter the FMCG Industry?"
description: "A notable phenomenon has been observed: frontline sales in the FMCG industry have not attracted high-quality talent for a long time. Even companies like P&G find it very difficult to recruit graduates from Tsinghua or Peking University, let alone frontline staff for Coca-Cola or Master Kong. A brand owner friend complained about massive turnover among their salespeople. I said, 'Your products are harder to sell than insurance, and they earn less than food delivery or courier services, so how can you retain salespeople?' Many frontline brand managers and supervisors earn only 4,000-5,000 yuan upon joining, while food delivery and courier incomes have reached 10,000 yuan in the current market. The FMCG industry cannot retain people under these conditions. The lack of excellent talent entering is a surface phenomenon; on one hand, the field is not cool or leading enough, but more importantly, it cannot pay higher wages to excellent talent!"
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2024-01-20"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/9OE3hbyb0qf6mE1xW07jbg"
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# Why Are Young People No Longer Willing to Enter the FMCG Industry?

> A notable phenomenon has been observed: frontline sales in the FMCG industry have not attracted high-quality talent for a long time. Even companies like P&G find it very difficult to recruit graduates from Tsinghua or Peking University, let alone frontline staff for Coca-Cola or Master Kong. A brand owner friend complained about massive turnover among their salespeople. I said, 'Your products are harder to sell than insurance, and they earn less than food delivery or courier services, so how can you retain salespeople?' Many frontline brand managers and supervisors earn only 4,000-5,000 yuan upon joining, while food delivery and courier incomes have reached 10,000 yuan in the current market. The FMCG industry cannot retain people under these conditions. The lack of excellent talent entering is a surface phenomenon; on one hand, the field is not cool or leading enough, but more importantly, it cannot pay higher wages to excellent talent!

Recently, I've observed an interesting phenomenon: **the frontline sales in the FMCG industry have not attracted high-quality talent for a long time. Even companies like P&G find it very difficult to recruit graduates from Tsinghua or Peking University, let alone frontline staff for Coca-Cola or Master Kong.**

A brand owner friend complained to me that their salespeople are leaving in droves. **I said, 'Your products are harder to sell than insurance, and they earn less than food delivery or courier services, so how can you retain salespeople?'** We see that many frontline brand managers and supervisors, upon joining, only earn 4,000-5,000 yuan. In today's market where food delivery and courier incomes reach 10,000 yuan, how can the FMCG industry retain people? The lack of excellent talent entering is a surface phenomenon. **On one hand, this field is not cool or leading enough; more importantly, it cannot pay higher wages to excellent talent!** Talking with many older marketing professionals, around 2000, if you had the opportunity to enter FMCG sales, the income was very good, and it was a job everyone envied. But today, the frontline income of many brand owners has not increased for years, while prices and housing costs have soared to what levels! On one hand, intense competition has led to a zero-sum game, leaving everyone without profits; on the other hand, sales costs remain high. The deep distribution model is a whole distribution system based on past big products, cheap labor, cheap traffic, and low sales costs. **Today, the biggest pain for all enterprises is that the existing deep distribution system has insufficient human efficiency. Enterprises support tens of thousands of salespeople to serve millions of small shops, but the per-capita output is extremely low.** This inefficient business model has not been iterated for many years. Many companies' terminal operations are almost identical to those ten years ago! At the same time, many internet-famous brands, through e-commerce live streaming, achieve sales of millions or tens of millions in a single session, creating an illusion among many brand executives: instead of selling one by one, why not do a live stream? Now many companies are studying new retail, new social e-commerce, new community group buying, and new short-video e-commerce, but no one is studying how to do new sales. Remember, in today's Chinese market, there are still over 5 million mom-and-pop shops. Among the over 20 million marketing personnel, most are grassroots, still running small shops and supermarkets as salespeople and promoters. They are the fundamental force supporting hundreds of billions in sales and building FMCG brand empires! Should deep distribution be done? This is not a judgment question but a choice question! As long as mom-and-pop shops exist, it must be done. For now, mom-and-pop shops cannot be replaced in the short term. Terminal shelves still need to be squeezed into; in a highly competitive environment, we must rely on people to do a lot of competitive actions. Therefore, the key is how to do it. **Improving human efficiency, using fewer people to do more precise things, and generating greater sales volume becomes the core that all enterprises must deeply think about and act on.** Many companies are using digital tools, proposing digital strategy slogans, and building B2b transaction systems, O2O systems, SFA systems, etc. The original intention is good: to improve efficiency and reduce costs. But what are the results? Many software tools on the market look similar, but their usage varies greatly. This makes many companies reflect: Are digital tools effective? Why can't digital tools greatly improve human efficiency? Is it a software problem? Here we need to think critically: What is the core of a tool? Is it to manage people? To nail people to routes? To monitor? To visualize? To quantify? To evaluate processes? Or to grow? To increase a salesperson's daily sales from 3,000 to 10,000? **The core of digitalization is to empower people, helping frontline salespeople complete distribution and sell-through work more efficiently, quickly, and accurately, enabling salespeople to manage 300 or 400 stores instead of 150, with lower difficulty and better results.** So empowerment is the core value of digital tools! Think of the Gulf War: What was the US military's information system doing for American soldiers? Was it monitoring them? It was assisting them, monitoring the enemy. It was positioning, aiming, and long-range combat, helping them complete combat missions more excellently and efficiently. **But today, what are most companies' salespeople using tools for? For actual monitoring, assessment, and management of salespeople!** Every day, headquarters clerks check attendance, routes, and visit counts, then hold meetings, impose fines, and assess! If you treat salespeople like thieves, what do you think they treat you as? **Maximizing transaction efficiency cannot be separated from human nature, scenarios, and tools:**

**1. Human Nature**
The work of a salesperson is different from that of a delivery rider. For a delivery rider, they just follow the APP instructions, pick up the goods at the store, navigate to the destination, and make a call. The work is highly standardized with no complexity; anyone can do it. But a salesperson is different. Salespeople perform sales actions, persuading small shops to place orders, and through hands-on effort, squeeze out a little space in a highly competitive freezer to place their products. When I was in sales, I gave salespeople a mantra: 'In summer, beverages need to be lifted, cut, pasted, moved, placed, and stuffed.' This is not just execution; it requires certain abilities and skills. You can tell salespeople what to do, but you cannot control how they do it or whether they want to do it. So this kind of non-standardized work requires activating the salesperson's initiative, making them willing to do it actively. Therefore, the internal management logic of digital tools must align with human nature, become a productivity tool, and through use, reduce the difficulty of their work, making them more willing to do it.

**2. Scenarios**
Regarding how to sell goods, I find many friends have a misconception: they think that once the goods are displayed at the terminal and posters are pasted on the wall, the job is done. The real purpose of displays and posters is to create a purchasing atmosphere. In middle school biology, we learned a medical term called conditioned reflex. It means that if you ring a bell every time you feed a puppy meat, after a while, when you ring the bell, the puppy will instinctively salivate. Let's apply this to humans with an analogy. I'll say a few advertising slogans and see your reaction:

> 'This year, holidays don't accept gifts...' 'Afraid of getting heaty? Drink...'

See? When I say the first half, you automatically fill in the second half, right? This is a conditioned reflex. Our sales work is not done after the display; if we cannot make users instinctively pick up our product, then our display is ineffective. How to build a purchasing atmosphere that makes users act instinctively is the core of terminal sales.

**3. Tools**
The essence of a tool is like a farmer's hoe, a driver's steering wheel, or an IT engineer's computer. Salespeople need tools to maximize terminal work efficiency. The sell-through logic behind the tool, the empowerment system based on that logic, and the management philosophy behind that system are the core of the tool. In summary, a tool is a sword, but the sword manual behind it is more important than the sword. In martial arts novels, true masters can hurt others with falling flowers or flying leaves. A child, even with a sword, can only use it for play. How you use the tool is key. Tools are meant to improve the efficiency of terminal salespeople, guiding them to fight more efficiently and accurately. The core of the tool is to integrate the aforementioned human nature and scenarios into every action of the salesperson through the tool. Let salespeople act proactively, see results, and achieve sell-through after action.

**Efficiency is essentially a generational gap in combat tools. Grasp the core of sell-through. Only with human nature and scenarios can true efficiency be generated.**

**From March 14 to 16, the [Supply Chain Revolution] 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference & the 2nd China FMCG Hard Discount Conference & China FMCG Distributor Conference will grandly open in Chengdu!**

**Over three days, there will be one main forum, one China FMCG Hard Discount Conference, one China FMCG Distributor Conference, more than ten sub-forums and closed-door exchange sessions, and the first major debut of the [Ultimate Supply Chain] Brand Factory Direct Procurement Fair.** We will join thousands of FMCG brand owners, distributors, retail transformers, and industry service providers from across the country in Chengdu for continuous brainstorming, discussing the challenges and opportunities, changes, and ways out in the era of supply chain revolution. I hope every participant will still have a place in this wave, and I believe this will be a conference worth attending!


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