Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Wang Ting
Gree Source: Times Finance
Gree's full-staff sales system has quietly changed.
A number of independent sources told the Times Financial Reporter that since April this year, the product sales performance of Gree employees is no longer linked to performance. However, Times Finance has not yet determined whether this change will affect all departments.
According to Gree Electric's 2022 financial report, Gree Electric has a total of about 51,931 production personnel, accounting for about 72% of the total number of employees.
"The unit has met to convey that the month has begun. Another employee of Gree's marketing department said that he had received a notice from his department, and the sales and performance of all employees in the department were decoupled, including managers and ordinary employees.
According to previous media reports, Dong Mingzhu mentioned at an event in early 2019 that the all-staff sales system began on January 31, 2019. If this is calculated, the current Gree sales system has been implemented for four years, according to the policy, all employees have opened a micro-store on the Gree Mall.
At present, the micro-store of Gree employees has not been recycled or closed, and can still be used. However, some respondents said that they are no longer ready to sell products, and it is difficult to sell them because the pricing of the micro-store is high, and some employees have swiped orders in order to complete the sales task.
Times Finance contacted the relevant person in charge of Gree about the change of the full sales system, but did not receive a reply as of press time.
Workshop workers: the sales target is 5,000 yuan per month
According to the content of the official account of "Gree Electric Appliance Trade Union", as of early March 2019, a total of 90,000 employees have opened micro-stores in Gree Mall, with one store for each employee.
In early February 2019, the article on the official account of the "Gree Electric Appliance Trade Union" Source: Screenshot of the official account
Mai Lijia, a Gree insider, told the Times Financial Reporter that he has been notified that starting from April 2023, the sales volume of WeChat stores will no longer be used as a performance evaluation indicator, and there will be no sales indicator. This was communicated orally at the meeting, and there was no written document.
Mai Lijia also said that he is not ready to sell air conditioners in WeChat stores. He revealed that at present, selling products in the micro store can only get 1% of the sales reward, such as selling a 2,500 yuan air conditioner, you can only get a 25 yuan reward, and the reward range does not include special machines and activity machines.
Previously, the company's performance appraisal required him to complete a certain amount of sales every month. Mai Lijia told the Times Financial Reporter that his salary is composed of basic salary, post salary, performance salary and various subsidies, of which performance salary accounts for the majority, and sales account for 30% of the weight in multiple performance appraisal indicators, and the same is true for many other departments.
Mai Lijia said that the department has set different sales indicators for different positions, and the management positions have heavy tasks and the indicators for ordinary employees are low. Different departments have different policies, some departments require full opening, that is, at least one product is sold every month, and some departments do not have this requirement.
Some Gree employees said that their department did not require all employees to open, and there was no sales target, but it would affect performance.
Gree employee Ah Rong said that before April, as an assembly line worker, his monthly sales must reach at least 5,000 yuan to complete the target, and the salary will be reduced if he is not completed, fluctuating hundreds of yuan, and his leadership sales target is 10,000 yuan.
It is worth noting that at the beginning of 2019, Gree responded to many media questions related to full sales, and repeatedly stated that employees did not have an assessment of sales tasks.
But whatever the truth, all of this will be a thing of the past.
"Cancel well, we don't want to sell"
In the past, Ah Rong could get a reward for every product he sold, and there were additional rewards if he met the sales target, or if he exceeded the standard and completed the task, ranking high among colleagues in the department, but he said that most people did not want to sell.
"The cake is so big, everyone sells 5,000 yuan (sales), and the salary is not the same as if it was not sold at all. Ah Rong said that the company allocates wages to various departments, and each department is responsible for the distribution, and the department will award some of them to people with good sales performance, and the salaries of people with relatively low sales will be reduced.
The reason why Ah Rong is reluctant to sell is that he believes that according to the current distribution system, the bonus of the sales reward is not an additional increment, but a share of the funds in the original salary pool.
Mai Lijia also talked about this, and he believes that the total salary should not be cut off from a part of the reward sales, because these wages are originally earned by workers working overtime.
In addition, both he and Ah Rong talked about the high pricing of products in WeChat stores.
In Ah Rong's impression, in the early days of the implementation of the "full sales" system, the price of products in the micro store was relatively low, and he could compete with other channels for customers, so he made some money, and the price gradually increased from 2021, and the price of some products increased by hundreds of yuan, which was higher than the price of mainstream e-commerce platforms, and it was difficult to sell.
Many Gree employees also mentioned the phenomenon of swiping orders, and some employees will spend money to entrust colleagues who have sales channels within the company to swipe orders.
As for the reason, based on their statement, some in order to meet the sales targets required by the superiors, would rather pay upside down, although the reward can not cover the cost of brushing, but the number of orders can get a higher annual performance rating to obtain performance bonuses and leadership recognition, and some managers have heavy sales tasks, and the rebate rewards are also high, which can cover the cost of brushing orders, and will also spend money to brush orders.
Dong Mingzhu once mentioned that the original intention of implementing the full sales system is to cultivate employees' marketing ability and let employees perceive consumer needs, and for individual employees, if they can do a good job in terminal services, they may increase their income by 100,000~200,000 a year.
Unfortunately, this system ended up being contrary to its original purpose to some extent.
A drop in the ocean?
Will the decoupling of performance and sales affect Gree's performance?
Mai Lijia thinks not, because the sales of all employees account for a very low proportion of Gree's total sales. According to a full-staff sales report provided by Gree insiders, in the first five months of 2022, the total sales of all employees of Gree Electric Appliances were 270 million yuan, and the per capita sales were less than 5,000 yuan.
The official account of "Gree Electric Appliance Trade Union" also mentioned some data, which proves that the proportion of sales contribution of all employees in the company's total income is very low.
In 2019, Gree Electric's revenue was 198.2 billion yuan, and in 2021 and 2022, Gree Electric's revenue will exceed 180 billion yuan, based on this calculation, Gree Electric's average monthly revenue will exceed 10 billion.
According to the article on the official account of "Gree Electric Appliance Trade Union", from the beginning of February to the end of March 2019, the turnover of the distribution platform of Gree Mall exceeded 100 million yuan, that is to say, within two months, the sales performance of all employees was about 100 million yuan to 200 million yuan.
From the beginning of February 2019 to the end of the year, the total sales of the department were 2.417 million yuan, and the per capita sales were 21,018 yuan. If each department of Gree can reach such a per capita sales level in 2019, the total sales of that year will be about 1.7 billion yuan, which is comparable to a drop in the bucket in the company's total revenue.
It is worth mentioning that in 2018, the year before the implementation of the full sales system, Dong Mingzhu proposed that Gree should reach a revenue target of 600 billion by 2023.
However, when the time comes to 2024, according to the latest performance forecast of Gree Electric Appliances, Gree Electric's operating income in 2023 will be between 205 billion yuan and 210 billion yuan.
(Mai Lijia and Ah Rong are pseudonyms in the article)