Chapter 20 2. 150000:2000, how many people are needed for marketing?

Rural China, with its vast land and large population, seems to have the greatest market potential. However, the low consumption capacity, unsmooth advertising channels, and especially the very unsound sales network have always made companies that salivate over it linger again and again. Come back with success.In the past ten years, in this world, there have been very few successful companies. Sanzhu and Wahaha are two companies that are often mentioned together.However, after entering the interior and conducting a detailed analysis, it can be found that the two companies are actually taking two completely different paths, so the endings are also very different.

Wu Bingxin, the president of Sanzhu, who admired Mao Zedong's thought of "encircling the city from the countryside", is obviously a business master with a strategic vision. He did not rush to open the way with rigid advertisements, but spent nearly a year building his rural marketing network.He designed a four-level marketing system for Sanzhu's rural marketing, namely prefecture-level subsidiaries, county-level offices, township-level publicity stations, and village-level propagandists. Taking advantage of China's low labor costs, he carried out crowd tactics and hired hundreds of thousands of college students to enrich county-level and township-level offices and propaganda stations.At the same time, he also created a "no-cost advertising model", that is, to send each publicity station and village-level propagandists a barrel of paint and several advertisement templates of Sanzhu Oral Liquid, asking them to put the "Sanzhu Oral Liquid" Painted on every soil wall, telephone pole, road guardrail, livestock pen and latrine in the countryside, so that everyone who came to the countryside at that time would be very surprised to find that every inhabited place in the land of China In the corner, you can see the wall advertisements of the three plants.

At the same time, Wu Bingxin also designed a set of "8-level cadre system", the president is 1 level, the vice president is 2 levels, the directors of the four major centers are 2.5 levels, and the general managers of each province are 3 levels. For example, the managers of Hangzhou and Suzhou companies are at level 4.By analogy, the headquarters has successively signed "lifetime contracts" with about 5,000 managers at all levels. Wu Bingxin obviously hopes to use this system to stabilize the backbone of managers. With the increasing number of derivative products of the three companies, new changes have taken place in the organizational structure.It is of great research value that the final organizational form of the three strains is a hybrid of the Western business department system and the military system during the Chinese War of Liberation.On the one hand, according to the launch of new products, different business departments have been established at the headquarters. Each department operates independently, has its own system, and implements vertical leadership.In the major regions and major provinces, in order to ensure the coordinated operation of the three products, a "market frontline headquarters" was established, and a "market frontline general command committee" was established at the headquarters.Wu Bingxin described: "The market frontline general command committee is equivalent to the National Military Commission. After the provincial agencies have become the market frontline headquarters, Wu Bingxin, the founder of the three companies, is equivalent to the former enemy committee. Using a militarized management model to plan and plan business wars means militarized actions. And the biggest feature of militarization is absolute obedience to orders.”

Regardless of whether Wu Bingxin's reasoning has real internal logic, at least in the initial stage of market derivation, this militarized system played a certain role.It is said that at its peak, Sanzhu registered 600 subsidiaries in all major cities, provincial capitals and most prefecture-level cities across the country, and had 2,000 offices in counties, townships and towns. The total number of marketing personnel at all levels exceeded 15 million people.Wu Bingxin once said boldly: "Except for the postal network, I don't know who has a bigger network than me in China." In 1996, relying on such a huge marketing force, Wu Bingxin launched the so-called three major campaigns of summer, autumn and winter. The leaflets, banners, posters and slogans of the three plants have been posted all over China, achieving sales of 8 billion yuan in one fell swoop, and sales in the rural market have accounted for more than 60% of the total sales of the three plants.

Different from the marketing strategy of Sanzhu, Wahaha is taking a "joint marketing" route.Compared with companies such as Sanzhu, Wahaha has an unimaginably small number of salespeople across the country, but only a mere 2,000 people—Zong Qinghou said that he would not allow this number to make a big breakthrough. Looking at Wahaha's 15-year development history, its marketing model has gone through three different stages: In the first stage, we will cooperate closely with the state-owned sugar and wine wholesale company and its subordinate secondary and tertiary wholesale stations, and use their existing channels for promotion.Because Wahaha took the lead and seized the opportunity quickly, a fresh blood spewed out in the stagnant old circulation system.

The second stage was the mid-1990s. With the rise of various professional and agricultural markets in coastal provinces, individual and private wholesalers took advantage of their flexible and changeable mechanisms to overwhelm the original channel network of state-owned sugar and wine companies. There is a big reorganization in China's rural and urban markets.Wahaha promptly complied with this change, joined forces with major players in various markets, and quickly weaved a new, extremely flexible market network.It is precisely through the tens of thousands of large and small dealers who are profitable and go everywhere that Wahaha's products have penetrated into every corner of the country.

Around 1996, with the prosperity of China's health care products and beverage market, more and more private enterprises joined the battle group.They have followed Wahaha's example and entered the agricultural trade and professional markets. Even multinational brands like Procter & Gamble have begun to shift their marketing focus downwards, competing with Wahaha in county-level markets.The relationship between manufacturers and distributors has become complicated and subtle, and its existing drawbacks have surfaced one by one: first, the company cannot control the market due to long-term distribution; Will trigger panic price cuts.

At this time, a phenomenon of "hunters, trees and rabbits" occurred: manufacturers are like "hunters", large county-level distributors are like "trees", third-level wholesalers in rural areas are like "rabbits", countless "hunters" are busy Plant "trees", find "trees", and grab "trees" in the county town, and then sit and wait for the "rabbits" in the countryside to come to the door.Zong Qinghou soon realized that it is better to go directly to the countryside to catch "rabbits" instead of crowding with others in the county town to grab "trees". ?

This has entered the third stage, that is, the changes that have occurred in recent years: Wahaha began to fade out of the farmers' market, abandoned the original extensive marketing route, and began to weave its own "joint sales" network.Wahaha's marketing organization structure is as follows: Headquarters - Provincial Branches - Special First-Level Wholesalers - Special Second-Level Wholesalers - Second-Level Wholesalers - Third-Level Wholesalers - Retail Terminals. Its mode of operation is as follows: every year, special first-level wholesalers make an advance payment to Wahaha according to the size of their respective sales volume, Wahaha pays interest equivalent to that of the bank, and then settles the last payment before each delivery.The first-level wholesaler develops special second-level wholesalers and second-level wholesalers in its own area of ​​influence. The difference between the two is that the former will make an advance payment to the first-level wholesaler in order to obtain more favorable policies.

Wahaha guarantees to develop only one first-level wholesaler in a certain area.At the same time, the company also sends one or several sales managers and tallyers to help dealers carry out various distribution, tally and promotion work all year round.In some counties, it even happens that: The local first-level wholesaler only provided funds, warehouses and some porters, and all the rest of the marketing work was done by the personnel sent by Wahaha. This is a very unique collaboration framework.On the surface, wholesalers sell Wahaha's products but have to pay Wahaha a lot of money in advance—in some large households, this sum can reach several million yuan.In terms of Wahaha, it "freely" contributes people, effort, and advertising fees to help wholesalers make money.

As far as dealers are concerned, they undoubtedly like manufacturers like Wahaha very much: first, the company is large, the brand is famous, and there are strong advertising campaigns; Diluted; three, the sales company appointed tally personnel to fully cooperate "free of charge", and the various preferential policies of the headquarters are not discounted, which is very in place. Of course, they are also under pressure. First, they must have a certain amount of capital at the bottom, and second, they must devote all their efforts to expand the market in the region, otherwise the joint sales rights may fall to other companies in the second year. From such a description, it is not difficult to find that Wahaha's channel model is actually composed of two systems, namely the dealer system and the branch system.In a sense, distributors are logistics providers, mainly responsible for warehousing, funds, and delivery to terminals, while provincial branches are responsible for management, service, advertising and promotion.Since all the special second-level wholesalers are in the hands of Wahaha, there is no need to worry about the situation that the tail is too big to lose.For the management of wholesalers, Wahaha mainly adopts "profit-driven" and strictly protects the interests of dealers. Any marketing is a dangerous game based on credit.Compared with manufacturers recruiting their own people and weaving a wholly-owned market network, Wahaha's joint sales model seems to be more economical and efficient.On the one hand, large and small dealers at all levels can enable Wahaha to quickly enter an unfamiliar market and greatly reduce the cost of market introduction. More importantly, it seems that these dealer teams that are both integrated with Wahaha but not from the same root are A vital force in ensuring innovation, growth and risk reduction in the market.In fact, Wahaha has achieved checks and balances in the market through this "system construction".And most importantly, it avoids the dinosaurization of Wahaha's marketing team.In fact, the final demise of Sanzhu and other enterprises is almost all because the marketing front is too long, and the enterprise is carrying forward with heavy burdens, and finally collapsed overnight due to the disconnection of management. In the terminal-oriented marketing process, it is actually a very complicated subject to consider the pros and cons of a marketing model, and the three elements that deserve the most attention: one is marketing cost, the other is controllability, and the third is sustainability . In the current Chinese market, only multinational giants Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble are comparable to Wahaha's marketing capabilities.Liu Fengkun is a distributor of Wahaha in a city in East China. Interestingly, he is also the general distributor of Procter & Gamble, and before that, he also worked for Coca-Cola for a while.He told us about his different experiences in making these three products. Let's talk about staffing and sales first: Procter & Gamble has 12 trucks and 18 salespeople in this city, with annual sales of 80 million yuan; Coca-Cola has 17 trucks and 25 salespeople, with annual sales of 20 million yuan; Wahaha has no trucks ( In other words, Liu Fengkun's car has to be used), 12 tally workers, and sales of 11 million yuan. Let's talk about the management and operation system: The cars and personnel of Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, including the regional managers dispatched by the company, are all managed by Liu Fengkun. Liu pays a basic salary of 300 yuan per month, and the rest of the bonus is paid by the company in proportion to the sales volume. Liu conducts specific assessments distribute. Due to the complete equipment of people and vehicles, there is no second-level wholesaler, but the company directly sells the terminal. According to the regulations, these salesmen travel all over the city for three days to distribute goods, tally goods and settle payments. Wahaha's personnel are mainly managed by the company manager, with assistance from Liu Fengkun, and their salaries and bonuses are paid by the company.Liu Fengkun's main job is to develop and manage secondary wholesalers. He currently has 12 secondary wholesalers, and each secondary wholesaler manages 200 to 300 retail stores. The daily work of Wahaha's tally staff is to assist Liu Fengkun Do a good job in various marketing work with these 12 secondary wholesalers. Obviously, Liu Fengkun has different autonomy when cooperating with the two companies.But he is more optimistic about Wahaha's model, because the joint sales model seems to be less risky and more permeable, and can create a new channel advantage through the collaboration and interaction between manufacturers and distributors. In line with the joint marketing model, Wahaha's internal marketing operations are also very different from those of its competitors. For example, Ting Hsin Group, which produces the "Master Kong" series, manages and distributes brands according to different categories, and its branch factories and sales branches in various places are independent accounting units; while Coca-Cola operates independently due to the different joint ventures of the bottling plants. , its China headquarters mainly performs the functions of market coordination, personnel arrangement and investment decision-making.What Wahaha implements is a "centralized system" in which all resources are managed in a unified manner. Its logistics, business flow, and cash flow are all controlled by the headquarters. It is a model of "high planning control internally and high market operation externally".So, how does this unified marketing machine, which sells tens of billions of bottles of beverages every year and has annual sales of up to 8 billion yuan, work normally? Wahaha is a typical marketing-oriented enterprise. All its departments are set up closely around marketing, and its compactness and efficiency are very rare.Jack Welch believes that a company—even a large company like General Electric—cannot have more than five management levels, otherwise work efficiency will be greatly reduced.In Wahaha, we can only see four management levels at most: decision-making layer-market center-manufacturing base-purchasing, financial and distribution departments. A unified system, while the internal settlement system is strictly implemented among various departments, so that it can not only exert the effect of cogs connected and high-speed operation, but also avoid unnecessary consumption between departments.At the same time, the production and sales policy based on sales, the dealer's deposit system and the unified management of cash flow ensure the safety of the company's funds. For this very rare centralized marketing system, there are different understandings in the industry.Some people think that its efficiency and agility are by no means comparable to other marketing models, while some experts doubt that how big is the management radius of this unified model?With the increase of production and sales, the increase of product categories and the emergence of diversified investment, can it maintain this efficient and high-speed operation? In this regard, Zong Qinghou was more calm.He believes that any marketing model is related to the status quo of the enterprise and the market form, and changes are inevitable. Breakthrough models and innovative systems are the only way for enterprises to grow.The evolution of Wahaha's marketing model does not "obey" theoretical arguments, but depends on the needs of development. The innovation of any marketing model is also closely related to the improvement of management technology.In recent years, advances in computer technology have created new growth possibilities for Wahaha's centralized management model.Since 1995, Wahaha has developed a report management office system based on statistical management on the Sybase database under the Unix system. After 1997, Wahaha began to develop two major management systems: one is the logistics management system including sales, supply, warehousing, production, transportation and other functions; the other is the dynamic management of sales customers based on the joint sales system marketing system system. The establishment of these two management systems will greatly strengthen the core value of the marketing organization and revolutionize the marketing management level.At present, Wahaha has established a rigorous nationwide network sales customer system, and has established dynamic files for all distributors and wholesalers. By sending market personnel in various places, they can keep abreast of their sales trends and make timely deliveries.This customer system has greatly improved the company's production and sales management and cash flow management, accelerated the turnover of goods, and reduced inventory losses.According to Zong Qinghou's vision, in the end, this system will not only undertake the function of sales, but also a channel for information feedback and customer service. It will be a key project for Wahaha's transformation from a distribution-driven enterprise to a customer-driven enterprise.