七盟電子工業股份有限公司

I can't be bothered to write.

Today, let's discuss the territory assignment system for overseas business development customers at Chiameng Electronics:

【This~kind~of~com~pany】,【don't~go~there】.

1. Overseas business development customers are not assigned by territory: Assigning territories means dividing the entire team into Asia, Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, the Soviet Union, and so on. The benefit of dividing territories is that sales channels and prices will not conflict with each other; two salespeople will not quote different prices to the same customer. At exhibitions, the two salespeople do not have to coordinate with each other or openly and secretly fight over who gets to handle a particular customer or compete to seize the customer. In addition, each quarter, every territory must first prepare a rolling quarterly sales revenue forecast, so that Procurement can get a head start on lead times and ask suppliers to prepare materials. If territories are not assigned, how can forecasts be made? Whether or not territories are assigned makes no difference to your boss, because all the money ultimately goes into your pocket. For the sake of benefiting the seven shareholders' relatives, you would rather not assign territories, but that will ruin the remaining salespeople. Oh right, of course you don't care!

2. The royal-relative female supervisor who blames everyone else for every mistake: The story took place at the Global Procurement Partners Conference in March of a certain year. Two weeks before attending the conference, I had already prepared a list of nine overseas customers to develop that day. At the weekly sales meeting, I also reported to my boss that I would be attending the Global Procurement Partners Conference on a certain date, but I didn't hear that you, this royal-relative female supervisor, would also be going. Because I thought you already had control of nearly 90% of the company's overseas customers, I assumed you wouldn't go; frankly, you didn't need to go. Here I want to explain to everyone that from my first day reporting for work until I was inexplicably laid off, Chiameng never gave me even a tiny, seventh- or eighth-tier overseas customer. I developed every single one from scratch. So that day, when it was my turn to enter for a particular customer, I sat down and talked with the customer for a few minutes first. The royal-relative female supervisor arrived later than I did and also sat down to talk. I have always been broad-minded, so I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. But how was I to know that a few days later, your mother went to the new supervisor, who had only been there for two months, and set me up, saying that I should have notified your mother in advance, causing her to make an extra trip to the World Trade Center. Just see if you don't 【get~so~angry~you~pass~out】!

3. It must have been 【Chiameng's】 foolish customer territory system for overseas business development that harmed you, right! By the way, you have been with the company for over 20 years—why didn't you suggest to the boss that overseas business development customers must be assigned by territory? It is easy to imagine that you and the boss are also in the same camp. For your own benefit, how the other salespeople meet their demise is none of your concern, is it?

4. I thought about it for a long time. There are only two phrases in the entire world that can describe you so aptly:

【bossy】 and 【insatiably~greedy】. This is absolutely~absolutely~not insulting you; it is praising you.

Write again later.

Here is my personal experience:

1. If you are not a relative of royalty or nobility and your English is not exceptionally good, it is actually not difficult to work for four or five years on the overseas business team at Seven Alliance. When I first joined, one of my subordinates relied on two major domestic distributors (of course, the company had assigned these clients to him). Because they needed RMAs, he had to drive over almost every other day. Naturally, during the weekly sales reports, he could calmly and confidently give a detailed report. First, he had substantial content to report; second, the orders placed by these two major distributors were definitely enough to satisfy the boss. Therefore, the company did not keep a close eye on him, and he did not need to write any customer-development emails to overseas clients. He worked steadily like that for four or five years, then resigned and left without a hitch.

2. Why do I bring up this person? Because he was one of the few exceptions. If you also want to get clients like those, you had better negotiate with the boss before the interview. If you foolishly do what I did—join the company, send an email, and ask the boss for them, thinking that what you are doing is reasonable and harmless—in their eyes, you are completely offending them. Of course, in the end, they will casually come up with some bullshit reason to fire you.

3. Negotiating before the interview is the smart move; it is the way to go. Negotiating after the interview makes them think you are an idiot, and they will use an idiot's justification to dismiss you. Don't forget: they are unreasonable wolves.

None

1. The atmosphere at work is a little eerie—very, very, very quiet, so quiet it feels like being in a hospital morgue, completely lifeless. The main reason is that a few members of the boss’s inner circle are calling the shots. They sit all around you and act as the boss’s informants and spies, making you afraid to utter even a single word! Friends who want peace and quiet can give it a try.

2. If you are a lower-level manager and someone under you makes a mistake, or you find their behavior unacceptable, when you want to reprimand (or teach) them by e-mail, you absolutely must not C.C. the boss or any member of the boss’s inner circle! You may think you are acting out of goodwill and letting your superiors know that you are doing your job, but to this group of overbearing and unreasonable people, they will turn around and slander you, saying that you are “destroying the company’s harmony”!

3. Because of point 2, I was suddenly laid off that afternoon. I personally asked that female manager from the boss’s inner circle about it, and she said, “They were doing their job just fine originally. Why did you send an e-mail to destroy the harmony?” That afternoon, I also spoke with the boss by phone. The boss actually said: “You and the people under you don’t get along (you have a poor relationship), so we have to lay you off,” then hung up after saying just that one sentence.

4. To them, you are nothing more than garbage to be sent to a recycling facility. You don’t need to follow their rules to the letter. When dealing with this kind of company, you can only use

【unorthodox methods】to fight fire with fire! The~more~crooked~you~are, the~more~they~like~it!

I can't think of any for now.

I advise anyone considering taking a job at Chi Meng as an overseas sales representative to be mentally prepared for the following. These are my personal experiences.

1. Do not store any data on your computer's hard drive; save it to the cloud instead: the relatives of the seven shareholders are constantly surrounding your seat. They are wolves, and you are merely a helpless little lamb. They are always coveting your data. My computer had a password on the Windows startup screen, but several times after starting it up, I found that the startup screen was different from usual. When this happens, you can only be angry but dare not say anything. (If MIS needed to access my computer, why didn't they choose a time when I was present?)

2. Be mentally prepared to be used as a scapegoat: Overseas sales staff must also serve as product managers (PMs). If you do not have what it takes, please do not casually accept this job. After I started working there, the company hoped that I could propose a solution to a quality case that had been delayed and unresolved for years. They gave me electronic files accumulated over many years, and because the case was so complicated, it might have taken a year to fully digest them. Just a few days after a meeting with the supplier, I immediately heard complaints from my close colleagues that my supervisor was dissatisfied with how I was handling the matter. I would like to ask you this: You had been with the company for over 20 years, and this case was originally your responsibility. It had been delayed for years without resolution, and you now sought my help. I had only just taken over and had not yet figured things out in the short term, yet you turned around and stabbed me in the back. Is that right? (If you dared to make such remarks to colleagues, surely you also dared to say them to the boss, didn't you?)

3. Your supervisor will leave you to fend for yourself.

4. The relatives of the seven shareholders use their privileges and do things outside the rules. The chaos they cause leaves you angry but afraid to speak up.

5. Even when a customer is being handed over to you, whether the files are electronic or in paper folders, they are often completely missing. Those four words—“not a trace left”—were told to me personally by the boss.

6. I was considered a lower-level supervisor, but do not think that becoming a supervisor makes you impressive or gives you reason to be smug. They will hire another supervisor at a higher level than you, who appears to have little professional ability and only knows how to talk, to pressure you.

7. The development of new products proceeds at a snail's pace, with no efficiency whatsoever. Meetings are often characterized by: discussing without deciding, deciding without acting, and acting without results.

8. For every newly hired overseas sales employee, the boss first praises you lavishly in front of all the employees at a meeting, as if you were a star. “Loving and cherishing talent” is his catchphrase. But his true nature is this: the company has been established for 30 years, and he has already made plenty of money. “Loving and cherishing talent” actually means “loving his own money and cherishing his own wealth.” To him, you overseas sales employees are merely a group of “garbage to be~re~cy~cled~and~pro~cessed~at~any~time.”

9. Sure enough, just as I had anticipated, if you cannot resolve the problem mentioned in point 2 and have no achievements in developing overseas customers, what reason does the company have to keep you? At 2:30 that afternoon, I received notice of dismissal. Completely unprepared, I had to get out by 6:30. I could not find the boss; he was hiding in China. The supervisor who had been there for less than two months stood less than two meters away from me and actually said, “If you don't leave now, I'll call the police.” Meanwhile, the other supervisor—the one who had caused me to lose my job and had been there for over 20 years—sat quietly in his chair, doing his own thing, without even looking at me. So I carried my large and small bags out the company's front door. It was pouring rain outside that night, as if Heaven itself were shedding tears for me. Truly, I was very sad that day. My heart was bleeding!

None

The cooperation between labor and management is based on a 【very unreasonable】 foundation:

One reason: Taking the overseas sales team where I worked as an example, Qimeng refers to a company with seven shareholders that was established 30 years ago. In the overseas sales B2B market, the market size is fixed and only that large. Therefore, since the company was established, the seven shareholders’ relatives have already gone through all the customers once and have secured the first-, second-, and third-tier customers in the market who place orders. What remains are the customers they believe will not place orders, which they leave for a group of inexperienced newcomers like you—who do not know any better—to develop. Therefore, only the relatives of the seven shareholders know the real reason those customers will not place orders, but they will not tell you. So you just foolishly continue doing this. After three or six months, if you have not developed any customers and your performance does not meet the company’s requirements, either you recognize the difficulty and resign, or you wait for the company to lay you off.

Reason two: In overseas sales, in addition to starting customer development 【from scratch】, you must also serve concurrently as a product manager (PM), working with the R&D staff to develop new products. Therefore, as soon as I took up the position, I had major responsibilities and was unable to handle everything at once, leaving me feeling powerless.

Reason three: I can accept work that I consider unreasonable. The problem is that the company was unwilling to give me time to learn and figure things out. In the end, because I asked the company to assign customers to me to work on, I was inexplicably laid off.

Do you think they were being reasonable or unreasonable?