In recent years, especially this year, the topic of "cutting off middlemen" has become more and more popular, and the most important thing is that our agricultural dealers, it seems that there is no dealer in the middle to make a difference, whether manufacturers or consumers can get a lot of benefits from it, but the fact is the opposite.
Middlemen have always been a "disgraceful" role for hundreds of years. When many new business models come into being, they like to talk about "going to the middle link". The legendary industry 4.0 is the age without middlemen. Manufacturers and consumers are happy together! Really?
Most people think that as a distributor, he is a speculator who makes a difference by selling back and forth in the middle. This idea is very superficial.
The outsiders don't understand, so that's all. Even the terminal stores and manufacturers that often contact us think the same. Whenever we talk about money, we will hear such words: You are such a big boss, lack of this money, you make so much profit, let me know what.
The biggest pressure on dealers is that they are not known by the outside world.
Customers don't know about them and feel they can be replaced at any time. In recent years, many platforms with the slogan of "killing distributors" have made many terminals fall into it. Finally, the platforms are gone and the dealers are still strong. Dealers are by no means simple middlemen, but the tone set by others can hardly be reversed.
Children's families do not understand them, are doing business, why dealers are always so tired? When I am busy, I don't stay at home every day. I get up early and return late. I am tired all day. When the children grow up, they expect their children to take over, but most distributors say that their children are unwilling to continue the business of their parents and prefer to work outside.
The manufacturer doesn't know about them and feels they can replace them at any time. Manufacturers always feel that the market is infinite, increasing sales tasks, constantly pressing goods, and a variety of constantly deducted costs. Always treat the dealer as a lamb that can be slaughtered at any time, and constantly exert pressure on the dealer.
Everyone's definition of distributor only exists in everything they see. Even the sales clerk himself has limited knowledge of the enterprise. He thinks he is selling goods and feels inferior when he enters the market.
However, they do not know that dealers have tried their best to cooperate with manufacturers, to shop, to open up the market. After years of drying, they have scraped out all kinds of expenditures and found that the only silver they have earned has also become the goods pressed into the warehouse, and the green silk around our ears has become white hair.
In this case, with the advent of the Internet era, the fierce impact of e-commerce, the economic winter, the owners of all dealers in the smoky room worried about the white head: this year how to do this business ah.
Unfortunately, when dealers are sad, a few inexplicable hands reach out to the front of their eyes.
The manufacturer said: Now the economy is difficult, you have to pay for the expenses in the store first.
Shop said: Now the business is not good, slightly delayed payment for a few days.
The dealer cried: You're all in trouble. Am I not? Let no one live!
Many influential distributors feel that the business is simply impossible to love.
In fact, it is unreliable to judge by intuition that without distributors, all parties will get more benefits. The value of distributors in the market environment is far from being developed, and will become larger and larger in the future.
On the macro level, economist Thomas Sowell wrote in Sophistry and Truth: An Introduction to Economics:
For a long time, people's desire to remove "intermediaries" has been erased forever by economic facts. Human knowledge and expertise are limited for any institution established by an individual or manager. In many links of the production and sales chain, only some parts can be effectively managed and operated by the same group of people.
Beyond a certain threshold, others may be able to perform their work more effectively at lower costs downstream of the process.
From the micro level, Master Kotler illustrates the social value of middlemen with the economic effect diagram of distribution, and elaborates on eight functions of information collation, negotiation, promotion and repository transfer.
Distributors can never replace the value!
Every dealer has contact with the general feeling that dealers are dispensable, but when there really is no dealer?
Every manufacturer needs tens of thousands of salesmen in a city, and the profits they make may not be enough. In addition, the turnaround of manufacturer's funds, the cost of warehousing, the circulation of products, and the cost of terminal development all have to be borne by themselves. How much does it cost, the key huge team, and how to manage it?
On the other hand, how to choose terminal products? Look for the manufacturers directly, one by one, or wait for the manufacturers to come to the door, a small shop, docking thousands of manufacturers, the phone number should be recorded in a whole book...
Distributors as intermediaries bear far more than imagination, is the warehouse of manufacturers, is the operation center of manufacturers, service center, distribution center, capital flow center... These are what dealers are doing. Now all other platforms, manufacturers are only participants, the market is not developed for you, warehouse costs or to count on you, all kinds of costs are borne by manufacturers, these are not comparable with dealers.
The existence of distributors is not only a connection between manufacturers and terminals, but also a filter in the middle to help terminals choose better products and filter out products that cannot survive in the market. It saves not only time, but also most of the risks.
As a risk-taking, capital, sales, warehouse, distribution... What a joke it is that the core of every process is considered useless.
Finally, I want to say: Dealers friends, do not lose heart, do not give up, what we need is to regain their core functions, in order to reflect the value of commercial "the main source of economic benefits" (Kotler language), survive the cold winter, waiting for us is excellence and brilliance.