Chapter 18 Expert commentary: background system controls front-end risks

Among all living beings, there are far more workers than bosses. In terms of numbers, bosses seem to be an absolute "disadvantaged group".After entering the business world, the situation has changed drastically. If you take someone else's bowl, you naturally have to listen to others. The boss's deterrent power comes not only from the assets he controls, but also from the "public power" given to him by the organization. The incarnation affects and even affects the professional life and income of the subordinates.In an enterprise, bosses and employees, superiors and subordinates, seem to be an unequal cooperation.

I think most bosses and superiors will not readily accept the above point of view.Because on the other side that people don't care about, the boss has taken more risks than the employees, and the boss has taken on more pressure than the subordinates, and some of the risks and pressures come from the behavior of bad employees rather than market factors.Just like the issue of the ownership of customer resources, in the eyes of enterprises, it will be considered an unnecessary debate, because it is the early consumption of many enterprise resources that is exchanged for the accumulation of customer resources.For the results, the enterprise is naturally the owner, and the employees are only the executors.The artificial loss of customer resources should be regarded as the bad behavior of bad employees.

The author tends to "public ownership" of customer resources, but there is no doubt that in our surroundings, especially in domestic-funded enterprises, in order to maintain "public ownership" and prevent "embezzlement", managers adopt various strategies to "retain" resources. Does the method really reflect fairness, or is it a disguised harm to employees... Let me give you an example.Mr. Liu is the account manager of a central air-conditioning manufacturing company in Shanghai. He is responsible for business development in South China. His daily business activities include market visits, customer information collection, purchaser visits, product proposals, contract negotiations, payment collection, and after-sales coordination, etc. Wait.Sales backbones like Mr. Liu are naturally the main recipients of the company's orders, and the customer relationship is also mainly maintained by these people. Their work attitude and performance level determine the success or failure of the project.

How to retain these people, manage these people, and retain the customer resources they have is a headache for business owners. Mr. Liu is not happy working in this company.On the first day of employment, the manager of the human resources department told him that he must find a relative or friend with a local household registration in the company's registered place to act as Mr. Liu's guarantor. The scope of the guarantee is very general. The person found shall be jointly and severally responsible for his future actions.In order to get a job, Mr. Liu found a friend, but he was still upset, thinking that this was clearly an employment based on distrust.

After taking up his post, Mr. Liu also knew another local rule of this company, "15% of the monthly sales commission of sales personnel will be temporarily withheld as a professional ethics deposit. If there is no violation, it will be issued uniformly at the end of the year.", several violations In the behavior, there are related to customer resource management, such as: not to disclose the company's customer information (including completed and unsold transactions) to competing brands, not to transfer potential orders to competing brands, not to cause negative or malicious behaviors to cause contracts human loss and so on.Mr. Liu feels that these are the professional qualities that a project salesperson should have. Your practice of deducting sales bonuses is actually a disguised harm to the rights and interests of employees.The company said that customer information should be "owned to the public", and Mr. Liu thought: Since your attitude is so clear, why did you take "not less than three years of experience in the same industry" and "priority for those with customer resources" at the same time when recruiting us? What about the admission criteria?As a company, what are your true values?

In specific business operations, Mr. Liu also felt many obstacles. He has been traveling in the market all year round. In order to meet customer needs, he often needs timely and fast support and response from relevant departments of the company. In fact, customers are not satisfied with the services of these departments. , In the end it was he who resolved the conflict.The status quo of the company's management often results in him being the only one who is really responsible for the customers, and he becomes a lonely warrior and an inescapable "scapegoat".This has been the case for a long time. In some areas, it is no wonder that customers only recognize him and not the company. "Customer resources follow me, it is caused by your company!" Mr. Liu thinks so.

Through the experience of Mr. Liu, we changed from the initial thinking of "Who does the customer resource belong to?" to "How can the enterprise retain the customer resource?".The management method of the company where Mr. Liu works has continued for a long time. It is not surprising that salespeople "take away" customer information or take away customer resources after leaving the company.And it can be expected that there will be more disputes and contradictions. How to retain customer resources?How to retain people who have mastered customer resources?"Hezhi Consulting", which focuses on research in the field of corporate marketing, has provided us with some suggestions:

1. Recruit personnel with good professional ethics records, employ them in a legal manner, and respect them; 2. Competitive salaries are not the only way to retain sales elites. On the contrary, internal unfairness hurts the enthusiasm of employees more than external salary gaps; 3. Implement reasonable and relatively stable business incentive policies and customer incentive policies; 4. Establish a "work support platform" for sales staff consisting of multiple departments such as product, technology, finance, marketing, sales service, and after-sales, to decompose the customer pressure faced by sales staff as a whole;

5. Enterprises of suitable scale establish an electronic "customer relationship management system" to scientifically manage customer resources, analyze customer value, and respond to customer needs; 6. Express the importance and respect for customers in various ways as much as possible, such as special seminars, customer social gatherings, joint market promotion, customer credit upgrades, regular mutual visits between middle and high-level managers, etc.Regional sales staff working alone is often an important reason for the loss of customer resources in the future; 7. Set up a special sales team (project team) to serve key customers and major customers, so that customers can adapt to the habit of dealing with the "sales team".The actual situation of the enterprise shows that signing the "non-competition avoidance" document cannot avoid the possible harm to the enterprise after the resignation of the employees, especially for the industry-oriented and professional personnel, the second employment in the same industry is almost the only choice.The existence of the sales team can alleviate the risk of ordering after individual members leave to a certain extent.

For business owners, some risks cannot be fully controlled, such as the loss of customer resources. If you expect to control risks with an inhumane system that is detrimental to fair cooperation, it will only backfire.