Click the image for details. Distributors care most about profits. Every distributor is thinking about how to make their business sustainable, growing, and profitable. But reality is harsh: most distributors face the challenge of stagnant sales growth. Currently, distributors' sales growth faces several hurdles: many distributors struggle their entire lives to break through 100 million yuan in sales. So why is distributor sales growth slow, hard to break through, and never reaching 100 million? "Management loopholes, poor team execution, lack of good brands, bad sales models." Perhaps every distributor has a different answer. When we don't do well, we must reflect: Why am I not doing well? What factors are affecting my performance? 1 Human Factors: The Ceiling of Bosses and Executives Many distributors fail to grow big and strong. The root cause is not the product, the team, or market expansion, but the boss of the company. What kind of boss determines what kind of enterprise; how much capability determines how much business. The boss is like a ceiling: the height of the ceiling determines the scale of your business and the height of your employees. The speed at which the boss learns and changes determines the scale of the enterprise's development. If sales haven't reached 100 million, the boss definitely has a problem. Another important reason is the ceiling of the executive team. In China, there are two prominent phenomena in business: The first is using "family soldiers." For the boss, family soldiers have three advantages: they are trustworthy, less likely to leave, and low cost. Currently, half of distributors still use family management systems, which is detrimental to future development. The second is "old faces." In many distributors' core management teams, there are always old faces. No new people have joined the team for 3-5 years. Interestingly, when things happen, these old faces often find problems, while new people discover innovative methods and changes. Old faces always find problems when answering questions, and the problems they mention are alarming. They transmit too much negative energy. New people are different; to prove themselves, they constantly seek methods and opportunities to drive sales growth. Therefore, when hiring, bosses should bring in more talent, avoid absolute family management, and let fresh blood become the continuous driving force for the company's development. 2 Product Factors: How to Find Gold Among Old Products? There is a method called the featured product determination method. We all know that all products that sell well in the market conform to two rules: the first is "first," and the second is "unique." "First" refers to brand: the first brand in each category usually has the largest market sales. Almost all distributors with sales over 100 million have first-tier brands. Brand is the distributor's weapon; the weapon determines your future. "Unique" means the product is not a brand, but its characteristics are very distinctive, still attracting consumers to buy. Every consumer has consumption beliefs, which come from "first" and "unique." When selecting products, all distributors must ask themselves two questions: First, "Does the product I represent have unique characteristics?" Second, "Can it make consumers remember you among many?" The so-called product characteristics can be summarized into the following four features: First, uniqueness of raw materials and functions; second, uniqueness of core technology; third, distinct packaging segmentation; fourth, distinct product shape segmentation. To make your product stand out and be remembered and recognized by consumers, it must possess at least one of the above points. Therefore, most manufacturers should also upgrade and innovate from these points. When selecting featured products, distributors often fall into several major misconceptions: The first misconception is "fake selling points." A tractor with a BMW logo is still a tractor. There was a "walnut milk" drink on the market with the advertising slogan "Smart choice, wise choice." Its retail price was 18 yuan per box, with 20 cans per box. But based on the current walnut price of about 30 yuan per jin, this drink contains almost no walnut ingredients. Although it uses the slogan "smart, wise," the product itself does not have this selling point, so this beverage brand has never done well. The second misconception is "the selling point and the product itself do not create an association." No matter how well the product is promoted, if the advertising slogan doesn't make consumers think of the product, it is the most failed. In most cases, consumers buy products not for the product itself, but for the selling point and feeling. The third misconception is "copying the selling points of first-tier brands." There are many companies making old altar pickled cabbage noodles in the market today, and their slogans are all about authentic and tangy pickled cabbage. But because the "Uni-President" brand has already taken root in people's minds, it is difficult for other products to break through in the market no matter how they imitate. The fourth misconception is "quality does not support the selling point." There is almost no such thing as good quality and low price in the market. If you want a BMW brand with a QQ price, it is almost impossible. 3 Market Capacity and Competitive Landscape: Category Space Determines Development Scale What is market capacity? I once met a distributor from Henan. He started business in 2006, representing only two small brands, and never saw improvement. This year, he represented a well-known brand of vermicelli. In the first month, he shipped one truckload and quickly exceeded 100,000 yuan. Due to brand influence, the product was quickly accepted by the market. He confidently said, "At this rate, I will break through 1 million in a year." But in the following months, his product turnover became slower and slower, and sell-through became difficult. As we all know, the category space for vermicelli is very small. When distributors choose products, they must consider whether to choose a large category or a small category. In the past two years, you will notice a phenomenon: many distributors of functional drinks, water, and milk have sales reaching tens of millions. So category space determines your market size. The second point to mention is the competitive landscape. As mentioned earlier, if the market capacity is small, sales cannot increase. But it is also not true that if the market capacity is large, sales will increase. Take plant protein drinks as an example. This category has been very popular in recent years, but competition is also fierce. Fewer and fewer companies can survive and continue to develop. Most companies face serious growth bottlenecks due to following trends and imitation. Secondly, you also need to consider whether the category you represent fits the current trend. For example, carbonated drinks: Coca-Cola and Pepsi are large categories, but the growth of carbonated drinks has been slowing down. Taking on carbonated drink products still faces difficult sales growth. 4 Mechanism Factors: The More Employees Believe in You, the More Successful You Are A distributor once told me, "In my company, there are 8 employees, but the 8 of them together are not as good as me alone." The reason for this result is actually a problem with the company's mechanism. Many distributors complain every day that business is not moving, employees have no drive, and labor costs are increasing while output is decreasing. Here, I will tell an interesting example. We have all watched "Journey to the West." In it, Sun Wukong caused havoc in Heaven and defeated all the heavenly soldiers and generals. But when he went to the West to fetch scriptures, the biggest difficulty he encountered was that he couldn't defeat many demons, and he often went to Heaven to request support. The most incredible thing is that these demons were the pets of the heavenly soldiers and generals. The gods in Heaven eventually had to come down to subdue them. Think about it carefully, there is a contradiction: Sun Wukong can defeat the gods but not the demons, and the gods ultimately have to subdue the demons. Why is this? These heavenly soldiers and generals are like those who work for the Jade Emperor, while the demons below are like entrepreneurs who are their own bosses. Of course, they are different from employees. Generally, in distributorships that don't grow big, employees think, "We are just working for the boss. We have struggled with the company for ten years, started the business with the boss, and now the boss drives a BMW and lives in a villa, while we still earn a base salary of 2,000 yuan." They are all thinking about whether it is worth it. On the contrary, some distributors make employees feel that they are starting their own business and working for themselves. For example, in Xinxiang, Henan, there is a distributor who represents first-tier brands like Yili and JDB. Last year, his sales reached 120 million. As his business grew, he also made significant changes. He made his accounts public every month, including purchase prices, single-product gross profit, and profits. He also contracted out business units, adopted an employee shareholding system, and rewarded employees with a proportion of profits. Now his company is no longer his sole concern; every employee treats it as their own company, and sales growth is becoming faster and faster. So good mechanisms create good employees, and ultimately achieve good enterprises.