Chapter 29 4. Those who can stay in crisis are the best

A successful business needs to create a team of employees who are united as one, and only by caring for employees can they be rewarded by employees.Growth requires continuous cultivation and discovery of talents. Those who cannot be poached are real talents, and those who can be retained in times of crisis are the best. At the time of the handover in the autumn and winter of 1994, the famous "collective resignation" incident occurred in Gree Electric Appliances, which pushed Dong Mingzhu to the position of the company's operation director.In this collective job-hopping incident, Dong Mingzhu, as Gree's hottest "gold medal salesman", is naturally also in the sight of others.The value of air-conditioning sales personnel has been rising in the competition between companies to poach people. At that time, Dong Mingzhu was offered an annual salary of 2 million.In fact, the phenomenon of "instigating rebellion" by insiders in the company is not uncommon in other companies. The famous case is: Duan Yongping left Xiaobawang Company in 1995, and hundreds of backbones above the middle level followed him. The drained Xiaobawang has since disappeared. ; Zhang Shuxin led 15 middle and senior managers to resign collectively from Yinghaiwei in November 1998. Since then, Yinghaiwei, the number one Internet brand in China, has since disappeared. The old man of the enterprise slapped Microsoft hard, which made the company embarrassing for a while.However, as the ancients said, "What is lost is the east corner, what is harvested is mulberry." The incident that happened in Gree also caused the media to exaggerate, but it made Gree Electric realize the sales force earlier, more clearly and more deeply than other manufacturers. The huge role played by the company when it took off, and the huge risks contained in it, so that in the later period, we put aside illusions and firmly shifted the focus of work to the construction of marketing models and marketing management, focusing on the value of the brand and the improvement of product quality. role of value.The origin of the matter began with a substantial reduction in the salaries of the salesmen. "As long as it is a high-quality product, people will ask for it wherever you go. You don't need to buy food and drink and sell it everywhere. Sales strategy is very important, but if the product quality and style are not good enough , technology is not good, it is impossible to achieve sales success." Zhu Jianghong is a very tolerant person, and he is not jealous of the high income of the sales staff.When Gree started its business, the salary of a salesperson was 20 or even 30 times that of the boss, and the purchasing department of the entire unit had a mobile phone that looked like a brick.Another leader would definitely not do this, but Zhu Jianghong can give up his mobile phone and car to the purchasing and sales department, and walk to and from get off work by himself.However, Zhu Jianghong's view is that the company's current achievements are the result of the close cooperation and overall efforts of various departments, including the scientific and technological personnel who forgot to eat and sleep to develop new products.A bad product, no matter how many sales people you have, will never be in the market, so you can't just give credit to the sales people.Gree's sales staff brought products to the market under the incentive of the commission system. Although they themselves paid a lot, they also formed a misunderstanding: the product sold well, not because the product was good, but because of the sales staff.

In 1994, it was the weather and the environment that brought about the prosperity of the air-conditioning market. However, some Gree salespeople did not consider these objective factors.Disapproving of Zhu Jianghong's views, Gree's vice president in charge of sales believes that good product quality is a necessary condition for opening up the market, but not a sufficient condition.Good-quality products do not necessarily sell well, and the role of marketing is to bring good products to the market and let consumers accept them.Marketing personnel are responsible for the fate of the enterprise, and the value of marketing personnel in the enterprise is also constantly increasing through the mutual excavation of enterprises.Obviously, these are two development ideas about modern enterprises.It is reasonable to break up if the way is different.The air-conditioning market was a seller’s market at that time, and the supply of products was in short supply during the peak season. Under such circumstances, air-conditioning companies mainly relied on the personal ability of their salespeople to make their mark, and stimulated the enthusiasm of salesmen by means of sales commissions.This often makes some enterprises completely fall into a misunderstanding, overestimating the ability of the marketing team, thinking that the rise and fall of the enterprise depends entirely on the sales staff, and their value is raised too high.The result of the contest between the two sides was a split in the top management, and the vice president in charge of marketing left in a huff.Gree’s sales staff “collectively resigned” was not accidental. At that time, the air-conditioning competition was fierce, the market lacked regulation, and the market economy in the initial stage was confusing. The market is simply understood as poaching first-class marketing talents, so they "pick peaches" everywhere at all costs.Misled by this situation, some salespeople are pampered or even mercenary, self-inflated, thinking that as long as they go to any company, the brand of that company will definitely be able to start.They never think about how to develop together with the company. They don't know that it is the cooperation of all departments of the company that enables them to be on the stage of market performances. Without this stage, they will accomplish nothing.In this way, the marketing team will challenge the company at any time, and collectively change jobs at any time, putting the company in an embarrassing situation.At that time, the company in Zhongshan promised to the vice president of Gree that as long as his sales exceeded 300 million yuan, the company could give the salesperson a maximum of 3% of the business fee, plus 2% of the advertising fee, a total of 10 times higher than the commission of Gree Electric Appliances. about.This attractive offer made the staff of Gree Electric Appliances Operations Department collectively quit.

In November 1994, the 1995 Gree Air Conditioner Order Meeting was held in Zhuhai Hotel, where hundreds of distributors from all over the country gathered.On the next day, at the ordering meeting of a private air-conditioning factory in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, 11 people including 8 salesmen and 2 accountants, led by the former deputy general manager in charge of sales of Gree Electric, made a collective appearance .And took 300 of the 340 dealers who participated in the Gree Electric Order Fair the day before yesterday to the competitors.For a while, people inside Gree Electric were panicked, which seriously affected the operation of the company.The cause of the incident is that considering the long-term development of the company, Zhu Jianghong decided to reduce the commission rate of the sales staff, reducing the original commission rate from 1% to 0.28% to 0.38%, which caused extreme dissatisfaction among the sales staff.The sales staff believed that Gree’s situation was very good in 1994, and even the warehouse’s inventory was sold out. is unacceptable.There are moving benefits in front of him, but Dong Mingzhu is not tempted, on the contrary, he stands firmly on the side of Gree and Zhu Jianghong.Gree's collective resignation event has caused great shocks in the industry and has impacted Gree's normal operations.The company's top leaders, especially Zhu Jianghong, paid a high price for neglecting the operation department.Zhu Jianghong is generous and kind, and puts his main energy on product quality and new product technology development.After this incident, he began to realize the importance of establishing and stabilizing the middle-level cadre team of the enterprise.Since the problem first came from the Operations Department, which is in charge of marketing, the reconstruction of the cadre team first started from the Operations Department.Zhu Jianghong decided to use elections to select the head of the business department from the company.The content of the public opinion survey is very detailed, including unity ability, work ability, organizational ability, management ability, comprehensive ability and so on.After the results came out, Dong Mingzhu received the overwhelming majority of the votes. In addition, in the company's various evaluations of work in the past few years, she scored the highest.Gree employees and leaders unanimously recognized Dong Mingzhu, mainly for three reasons: 1. Outstanding performance, being the number one salesman every year; The ability to control things can win all kinds of difficulties and obstacles in Huaidi, Nanjing, and Jiangsu.As a woman over 30 years old, her desperate work spirit is unmatched by many men. Dong Mingzhu has never thought of being the leader of Gree. Her idea is very specific, that is, to do one thing no matter where she is Just do it well and don't think too much about the future.It is also because of this that it is recognized by the company's leaders.As early as 1992, Zhu Jianghong intended to promote Dong Mingzhu to the Zhuhai headquarters as a minister.Dong Mingzhu was a little tempted, because there is no house allocation for a salesman, and he can be allocated a house when he becomes a minister.But at that time Anhui market development was tight, she was unwilling to come back.He was ordered in danger, and in the internal election initiated by Zhu Jianghong, Dong Mingzhu was promoted to the head of operation of Gree Electric Appliances, and began to lead the disaster-stricken enterprise to survive.In order to ease the different voices among the senior leaders, she was specially arranged to be a deputy minister for a month before becoming a regular.Times have changed, and the reason why Dong Mingzhu was willing to come back as a minister in 1994 was mainly because Gree's salesmen collectively quit.Faced with the old system of state-owned enterprises that has been criticized by others, what Dong Mingzhu thought of was not to simply escape, but to stay and rebuild.It doesn’t make sense to come back as a minister under normal circumstances, but this is the most challenging time. Coming back as a minister can create a brand for the company and lead the team.If the wealth is purely calculated, Dong Mingzhu's annual sales commission is as high as several million, and as a minister, he can only earn tens of thousands of yuan, and he offends others.This incident has indeed caused Gree to suffer a lot, and on the other hand, it is not without its positive effects: First, it makes Gree earlier, deeper, and clearer than other companies. As a result, in the subsequent career development, Gree no longer relied too much on the individual heroism of business personnel to make the market, but focused on relying on the value of products, collective strength, the role of the organization, The power of the brand comes to seek development; moreover, this incident pushed Dong Mingzhu, who is extremely talented, to the leadership position of Gree marketing, making Zhu Jianghong and her a golden partner since then, and it also made Gree's talent construction more complete.Therefore, Gree Electric Appliances has a rule that as long as you come from a peer company, no matter how capable you are, in principle, no one will be accepted. Usually, there are two kinds of job-hopping for employees. One is frustrated and fails to get promoted; Those who are fired for this shortcoming don't need either of these two types of personality.

In October 1994, Dong Mingzhu returned to the headquarters of Gree Electric Appliances in Zhuhai after finishing her three-year career as a salesman.She said something to the general manager Zhu Jianghong. She came back to be a minister not because of power, but because she came back to do a good job. As long as she didn't seek personal gain, she hoped to get the support of the general manager for any decision she made.The other party agreed.After Dong Mingzhu took office, she completely changed the phenomenon of accounts receivable, making Gree's marketing model evolve from the initial sales promotion stage to the large-scale model stage.After this incident, Gree has entered a new era: Zhu Jianghong and Dong Mingzhu began to carry out marketing work based on their understanding of modern marketing as well as their methods and strategies, making Gree embark on a continuous trend with Gree characteristics The road to maturity and success in marketing.