These days, you don't know the cost of living until you run a household, and you don't know how hard life is until you try it yourself. It's like the buyer show versus seller show for the same dress on Taobao: on the model, it looks ethereal, but when you put it on, oh my, you go from school beauty to a joke in an instant.

The same goes for being a distributor. You see others get a distribution right, open a small shop, and suddenly they're bustling with customers and goods flowing like a wheel, changing houses in one year, cars in two, and by three years, they've changed their whole world. Then you think, you're not stupid, not clumsy, not lazy, so you copy them, open a shop, take on a brand, but before you know it, you're struggling through one year, barely surviving two, and closing down by three.

Both are distributors, both run stores, so why is there such a huge gap in business success?

A distributor's growth story can be roughly divided into six steps:

Step 1: Find a good product, choose a new category, and ride the product's growth trend, starting from a small store, gradually accumulating some savings. At this stage, operating costs are low, and the store's survival depends entirely on the product's natural traffic. You sell as much as you can, and you want to sell as much as you can.

Step 2: Start expanding into related categories, find ways to get more people to buy, and get buyers to buy more. The result of this step is often an increasing number of products.

Step 3: At a certain stage, you realize that just selling products isn't enough; you need to focus on store image and sell at a premium. You start upgrading the store's image, choosing brand agency, and focusing on product display. At this stage, the store's image improves, and brand awareness begins to emerge.

Step 4: With the improved store image, costs increase, so you need volume to cover costs, making increasing store sales a top priority. To survive and grow, you need sales promotion, merchandising, and other sales-driving activities. This is what we often call moving from being a passive seller to an active seller.

Step 5: If the upgraded store survives and the big store thrives, ambitious distributors start thinking about replicating their success model on a larger scale. They either open chains, franchise, or directly supply retailers. At this stage, they're already thinking about channel management.

Step 6: If you're lucky enough to become a regional power, you might get inflated. Most will take one of two paths: one is to extend upward, building your own factory, creating your own brand, becoming a manufacturer; the other is to seek quick money, investing, speculating in real estate, or even opening bars and KTVs, diversifying widely. At this point, distributors either soar to the sky or fall into hell.

At each step, many distributors give up halfway, and every distributor who doesn't cross that threshold has a story of struggle and a "back in my day" tale for future generations.

Step 1: Without good insight, you're not cut out for distribution!

For entrepreneurial distributors, success depends on insight. This insight isn't just about reading people when dealing with customers, but more importantly, about judging peers and products.

Insight into peers: Many people become distributors because they see their neighbor, Wang Laowu, who used to be a poor guy, but after just two years in distribution, he's already acting like a big boss. Many jump into distribution because of this. They don't know that his store is bustling because his brother-in-law is a powerful figure in some bureau or office; or that his store seems empty but he lives well because he's doing business behind closed doors. If you copy him and open a retail store, you're just asking for trouble.

Insight into products: For new distributors, the most important thing is choosing what to sell. Mature products have thin margins and fierce competition, and distributors usually can't get them easily. Even if they do, it's a near-death experience for newcomers. New products and categories have market gaps, but there are many trap products disguised as pie-in-the-sky opportunities, resurrecting in the market. Many new distributors, due to poor product selection, waste their hard-earned startup capital on these "trap products," and after years of hard work, they're back to square one.

Step 2: Without your own product cognition system, you're not cut out for distribution!

After surviving the startup death phase, distributors often make two types of mistakes when expanding categories. One is chasing only high-profit, low-price products; the other is overreaching.

Successful startups start to gain confidence in their sales ability. They often say, "In my store, my mouth is the brand; I say who's the brand, and they're the brand." If such distributors are strong solo fighters, they're likely to become general store-type distributors, with many categories and products, but mostly low-end. As brand awareness and consumption upgrade trends emerge, these distributors either move to lower-tier markets or wait for death, picking up scraps from the mainstream market, becoming dwarfs that never grow.

Another scenario is when distributors expand categories greedily, not supplementing with related categories around their successful products, but selling whatever is hot. This is a strategic blindness many distributors easily fall into, and those who get lost in it are now six feet under.

Step 3: Without an empty-cup mindset and cooperation awareness, you're not cut out for distribution!

At the stage of building brands and image, the distributor's willingness and ability to cooperate become crucial.

Today, most distributors with a place in the regional market are major or key distributors supported by enterprises. Leaning against a big tree makes it easy to enjoy the shade. Without brand support, distributors not only work hard for money but also find it hard to make big money. That's why leading companies in the industry are so sought after.

At this stage, whether a distributor can advance further depends most on mindset, especially when cooperating with mature brands. Is your past success important? Of course! But if you choose to upgrade your image and brand, it's because your old business model has hit a bottleneck. Since you've chosen to cooperate with formal brand companies, listening, observing, and using other companies' experiences and methods is the lowest-cost way to trial and error.

Are there companies that just push inventory and don't help solve problems? Yes, of course. But when choosing a partner, you need to keep your eyes open, ask peers, visit the market, and check the company. Once you choose, you must go forward without hesitation. Hesitation and suspicion will only hurt you and your employees.

Besides, which company doesn't like distributors with high cooperation? Since cooperation brings support, support brings resources, and resources bring market, why do you hesitate?

Step 4: Without a spirit of adventure and exploration, you're not cut out for distribution!

With image upgrades, operating costs rise, and distributors' demand for sales volume surges. The store's natural traffic can no longer meet development needs.

Going from relying on a product's natural traffic and attributes to sustain a store to actively going out to hunt for business is a difficult step for many distributors, even though everyone understands the principle of being an active seller.

Being an active seller sounds simple, but why is it so hard? Essentially, it's because people have an instinct to avoid harm and seek benefit. Either the store is doing well, and you want to find more traffic; or the store is doing poorly, and you look for outside opportunities. First, you calculate: there's labor, materials, expenses, and you have to swallow your pride to beg for favors. Then you see: flyers are ignored, and in residential areas, you're chased out. Finally, you hear others' success stories, which are just discounts, buy-one-get-one, and referrals—nothing spectacular. You think it's high investment, high risk, uncertain returns, and you have to lose face. So you decide to focus on the store first; at least you won't lose your shirt. You'll see, you'll see...

Distributors who die at this step slowly kill themselves with this mindset. Although many who fail here think they tried and it didn't work, there's a huge gap between trying and actually doing. We won't discuss that here, as saying too much might seem harsh.

Step 5: Without the mindset that helping others is helping yourself, you're not cut out for distribution!

Going from retailer to channel distributor, from managing your own team to managing other distributors, opening chains, franchising, or even setting up sub-distributors, is to some extent a process of replicating your success. This replication involves both mandatory promotion and consideration of other distributors' realities; you must consider the capacity of downstream outlets while maintaining company standards. So, distributors who excel as channel distributors are savvy people, the cream of the crop.

From a retailer who satisfies consumers to a channel distributor who commands a following, your vision and pattern should rise to a new level: from winning yourself to winning together, from self-interest to altruism. In more abstract terms, it's a rebirth of your outlook on life and the world. The stickiness and service capability for these outlets involve not just money and profit, but also people.

The reason Lei Feng's spirit is still relevant is that in the internet age, no one can thrive alone.

Step 6: Small wealth depends on diligence, great wealth on destiny. Without an entrepreneur's fate, you're not cut out for distribution!

This point is a bit idealistic.

Not everyone needs to become a famous entrepreneur to reach the peak, and not everyone needs to be rich to be a winner in life. "First destiny, second luck, third feng shui, fourth accumulated virtue, fifth study"—the success of the sixth step is somewhat idealistic. Many distributors extend upward in the supply chain, but few succeed, though this goes beyond the scope of distribution. Conversely, many who made their first pot of gold in distribution and then speculated in real estate or stocks are still living comfortably today. Of course, this also goes beyond the discussion of distributors.

The success or failure of this step: if you succeed, you're the next Zhong Shanshan; if not, you just flashed briefly on the path of distribution.

So, you think being a distributor is just buying and selling, that simple?

Wrong, wrong, you're all wrong!

To be a good distributor, you need to be good at analysis and understand products;

You also need to learn some psychology, not only to figure out others but also to know yourself;

You need not only a team spirit that endures humiliation but also an endless spirit of exploration;

You even need a grand vision of everyone being well-off, you, me, and everyone;

Most importantly, you need

—Destiny!

—This article is dedicated to those distributors who didn't complete the Long March of 25,000 li!

Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.

China FMCG + Internet Professional New Media Dedicated to FMCG manufacturers' transformation and upgrade and channel digital solutions