When Huawei initially acted as an agent for other people's small switches, the market was relatively lucrative, although it was also highly competitive. After completing the initial capital accumulation through the sale of agency products, Huawei began to develop its own products, which was the most important metamorphosis in Huawei's history. Companies with little wealth and no ambition are generally unable to accomplish such a thrilling leap. Companies or channels that represent products are basically testing their pure marketing capabilities. Everyone gets the same goods from the original manufacturer, and it's up to them to sell more. Huawei uniquely printed two advertising slogans on the product boxes: "Go to the countryside, go to the countryside, the vast world has a lot to offer." "Anyone who buys a Huawei product can return it unconditionally, and guests who return it are as welcome as those who buy it." This simple tagline also reflected the characteristics of that era, and embodied the most down-to-earth philosophy of Huawei's operations. "Wide world with great potential" was a slogan known to people from "60 years ago". The latter slogan was a very simple sense of customer awareness, which later developed into the core value of "customer-centricity", which is the highest law guiding product development and sales.
Inside Huawei, we call Ren Zhengfei "Boss," which is clearly a Cantonese, Hong Kong-style term of endearment. After graduating from university, the boss was employed in a construction engineering unit, and in 1974 he was drafted into the army as an infrastructure engineering soldier. 1983, the state abolished the infrastructure engineering soldier, and Ren Zhengfei was transferred to the South China Sea Petroleum Logistic Service Base in Shenzhen. Later he recalled this experience, said, just returned from the army, do not understand the market, said in an interview: "How can I earn people money? It's embarrassing to earn people's money." "What's wrong with giving people money, so they should give us the goods, and what's wrong with us giving them the money first?" This idea let him suffer a loss, the money paid to the other side, the other side does not give the goods, this incident may also indirectly contributed to his later resignation to start a business. Liu Chuanzhi founded Lenovo early, someone said you can buy a color TV, so he gave each other 200,000 dollars, after receiving the money that person disappeared, Liu Chuanzhi overnight rush white head. Later he said, "I have a shortcoming, is easy to gullible others." Liu Chuanzhi and Ren Zhengfei the same age, in the belief that others have **** the same place, which may also have a certain correlation with the ability to do business - fear of wolves, fear of tigers, not dare to take risks is very difficult to seize business opportunities. Ren Zhengfei looks extremely naive, his character also has a very naive side, such a person has some kind of indescribable charisma.
The quality model of a salesman is to be both naive and shrewd. When people see how smart you are, they won't want to do business with you; and if you're really naive, you won't be able to do business. I saw in Huawei's excellent account manager, there are very many people belong to the naive and shrewd model. Huawei is a company that started from scratch, has no background, and can't leverage its strengths. In the early 1990s, because the domestic market demand for communications equipment was very strong, and communications equipment, although it had a certain technical threshold and specialization, was not particularly difficult, many companies quickly completed the transition from acting as agents for foreign products to self-developed products. At that time, the most prominent four were Julong, Datang, ZTE and Huawei, known as "Huge China". Apart from Huawei, the other three had a certain technological foundation, with Dragon originating from the PLA Communications Engineering Institute, Datang Telecom Group being a subsidiary of the 10th Research Institute of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and ZTE having a stake in the Ministry of Aerospace Industry and technical support. The other three communications equipment companies had some advantage over Huawei in the early days, and there are institutional reasons why Huawei has since emerged as the leading company. Compared with state-owned enterprises, the biggest characteristic of private enterprises is freedom, without rules and regulations. But freedom is not the same as advantage, to establish a set of rules adapted to the development of enterprises, never easy. The core of Huawei's system is to stimulate the motivation of all employees.
Ren Zhengfei is a natural agitator, an old marketer said, the boss's big advantage is that he wants to get rid of whoever he wants to get rid of in a minute. Zheng Baoyu is Huawei from the agent to independent research and development of products of the key figures, graduated from Huazhong College of Technology (later changed to Huazhong University of Science and Technology), during the school period with excellent results, graduated from the school to stay after teaching soon achieved a lot of scientific research results, and then went to Tsinghua University to read a doctoral degree. Ren Zhengfei from his classmates to inquire about this talent, hurry to dig people. Once, I asked Mr. Zheng, how did the boss lure you here? He said, the boss is too bragging, reading a doctorate at Tsinghua for a few months and feel nothing interesting, come over to see, a come on the go. Zheng Bao used to come to Huawei in 1989, his earliest credit is not R & D products, but to solve a technical problem of Huawei agent products. At that time, Huawei agent of the small switch products a little problem, Zheng Baoyu analyzed, quickly found the crux, and then he soldered a resistor on the circuit board of the switch, the fault was eliminated.
Then the market gradually realized that although everyone is to buy the same small switch, only from Huawei to buy will not fail, so there is a switch from Huawei to buy the legend of the problem, Huawei's proxy products so sales boom.
It is said that the original manufacturer is afraid of shoplifting, intentionally give Huawei to reduce the supply, which is Huawei had to quickly develop their own products a reason. Mobilization ability is no longer strong, can not be sustained to stimulate staff motivation, the most critical place is the boss is more generous, willing to give money. From Huawei out of the staff to work in other companies, an identical evaluation is not seen than the boss more generous people. Ren Zhengfei himself said that Huawei can do business with him not selfish have a certain relationship. Despite the fierce competition, telephone exchanges were a popular product with a certain technological threshold that allowed it to continue earning high profits for a longer period of time. Huawei's early employees performed slightly better, up to six months, or even every month may be increased wages. in March 1999, when I first joined Huawei, the salary was 5,000 yuan, as a social recruiting staff, this starting salary is on the low side. But because of my good performance, by the end of 1999, my salary had risen to RMB 12,000. 1999 Huawei already had 12,000 active employees, and the company was still able to give its employees such a large salary increase, which was the main source of motivation for Huawei's development. After the rise of the venture capital entrepreneurial model, it was not easy to understand Huawei's early profitable development model. For example, Internet services lose money at the beginning and make money only when they reach a certain scale, so almost all Internet companies rely on venture capital to get started. At the time Huawei started, venture capital was not very popular in the United States, and even less so in China. Therefore, in those days, if you want to do business, you have to make money at the beginning, which also objectively reduces the intensity of competition. As Ren Zhengfei has a big ambition, will not be rich, in the absence of venture capital, it is difficult to get a loan, through the snowball method, the money earned into the expansion of reproduction is the only program for the enterprise to move forward. And to share the money to everyone, but also to solve the funds for the expansion of reproduction, which naturally produced the Huawei internal personnel shareholding system. The earliest Huawei employees, although the salary is quite high, actually get in the hands of only a part of the end of the year, deducted wages and year-end awards are converted into shares, in the company's internal so-called allotment of shares.
The dividends from the shares were only a book property at the end of the year, and the company issued more shares. Until around 2000, Huawei's annual sales had reached 20 billion yuan, or followed this development model. At that time, there were already many people questioned that Huawei this is not illegal fund-raising, and even competitors also denounced Huawei, leading to Huawei was once investigated. However, no problems were detected and Huawei's unique system was preserved. Huawei's capital-raising model has not been found to be a problem, mainly because the boss really want to send money to everyone, but also want to get the rapid development of funds to maintain sound operation, without major problems. When I joined the company, Huawei was already a big and prestigious company that could get loans, and the company's stock dividends were much higher than the interest rate on loans, but there were still a lot of people who said that the company was issuing stock just to raise capital. Huawei stock is not mandatory to buy, and since the returns are good and always guaranteed, there are very few people who refuse to buy the company's stock, even though some people question that the company is raising capital, and behavior is more honest than words. Earning a lot of money and handing out a lot of money is a kind of cyclical momentum for Huawei's development, and it's also very important for marketing and sales people to know how to pay them more reasonably.
Sales finally presented a very objective financial figures, many companies have taken the commission system of bonus distribution program, but Huawei did not take this simple distribution, for two reasons: First, equipment sales in different industries, regions obviously different difficulties, and this difficulty is also in constant change, if the commission system, the proportion of luck will be relatively large, which is unreasonable, and unfair; second, telecom equipment sales are different, the difficulty of the system is also in constant change, if you engage in commission system, luck accounted for more, which is unreasonable and unfair; second, telecom equipment sales is the most important part of the system, but it's not a good idea. Secondly, telecom equipment sales is a team behavior, simply give the individual commission will affect the team's combat effectiveness. Therefore, Huawei did not take the industry's common simple commission program, but according to the sales situation, the end of the year assessed a bonus for everyone to distribute.
Internal shareholding, team target bonus distribution method is not the result of Huawei learning from the experience of other counterparts. Ren Zhengfei said, Huawei start-up period, do not know the capital market there are many methods of interest distribution, which is also true. Large internal employee shareholding is actually risky. For example, if there is a year of poor management, shareholding employees instead of losing money - this is a common occurrence in the relatively high risk hardware equipment industry, the consequences are also very terrible. Fortunately, Huawei's business is sound and has always been profitable. Ren Zhengfei founded Huawei, although the reform and opening up has been ten years, but the development of the market economy is still in the early stages of college students graduated from the state package allocation of work, in such a planned economy to the market economy of the transition period, how to manage a market economy company, the whole country is in the process of figuring out. Ren Zhengfei and Huawei's early personnel basically had no experience in managing a company. Ren Zhengfei is a very perceptive person, he is able to daily affairs, phenomena observed in all walks of life, comprehension of the reasoning of the flexible application of the enterprise. Confucius said: "The one who is born to know is superior; the one who learns to know is inferior; the one who is trapped and learns is also inferior; the one who is trapped and does not learn, the people are inferior." I think Ren Zhengfei is the person Confucius said was born to know - when a person has a sense of smell to find the right path, method, can deal with many specific problems well, can draw the essence from daily life, all kinds of history, real-life events, touching the class, is born to know. Wu Chunbo, a management expert hired by Huawei, said that Huawei has no secrets, but only the most basic common sense of business management to the extreme, which is very true. This is true. However, discovering and selecting the right common sense is something that requires talent and brainpower. Huawei's sales incentive model is not copied from the industry, which requires a kind of insight, requires a kind of depth of thought on how to allocate more reasonable. Most people simply follow the rules and lack the habit of thinking y. The right incentives are very important to sales, and are the fuel that motivates salespeople.
Ren Zhengfei has a fair and generous scale in his heart, and this scale will give the company to find a way to distribute the proceeds between the various systems, and how to distribute the benefits in the system, and constantly calibrate and amend, and ultimately get a good method. At the beginning of Huawei's business, the boss was not selfish, charismatic, and good at motivation, which inspired the fighting force, and was the "little strong" among the agents. After earning some money, the boss has a good eye for people, looking for people everywhere, digging people. Beginning to take the road of self-developed products, the early boss to find people everywhere, recruited a number of high quality people, they stood up to the war, under the leadership of the boss, "to the first to know after the knowledge, to the first to feel after the consciousness," the level are also getting higher and higher, and became Huawei's leading force. Throughout the dynasties, the founders of the fight down the mountain generally end up becoming the highest level of leadership, such as Han Gaozu Liu Bang group of early entrepreneurial veterans Xiao He, Zhang Liang, etc., Han Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu's entrepreneurial partners twenty-eight Yuntai generals, etc., to make the achievement of the large companies are also the same.
People will have a confusion: in the end is the early entrepreneurs have the ability to make a big company, or various factors let them make a big company, by the way, when the big leader? Did the heroes make the times, or did the times make the heroes? The real situation is that both sides of the reason, the boss is wise to find a bunch of better talent to start a business. At the same time, it must also catch up with good luck and good opportunities. No matter how carefully selected, it is unlikely that all start-ups are highly competent and able to learn quickly to keep up with the company's development requirements. If you enter the company earlier, and have a certain amount of merit and hard work of the personnel to become the company's development of resistance, how to do?At the end of 1996, Huawei has about 2,500 people, there are more than 2 billion in annual sales, but some market cadres are not enough to lead the team to cross a higher step. In order to solve this problem, Ren Zhengfei Huawei version of the "cup of wine to release the military power", requiring all market cadres to hand in a duty report, a resignation report, if the resignation report is approved is no longer a cadre. In this way, many cadres were dismissed, while the company also did the ideological work, most of the dismissed cadres did not leave.
The big resignation of the cadres in the marketing department set up a rule for the company that cadres can go up and down, which is conducive to the selection of talents and the prevention of organizational boarding, and is very important for Huawei's further development. Two years after the establishment of the company, Huawei has its own R & D products, due to the general quality of the product, so the need for R & D staff to the front line to do support and promotion. This resulted in a practice of R&D supporting sales, which was market-oriented and sales-oriented. Later, Huawei summarized this orientation into the sales method of "calling fire from the front line", which was crucial to the successful sales of Huawei's products. Early Huawei sales did not form too many routines, mainly by the mobilization of the boss's ability to mobilize with a strong and reasonable incentives for sales staff to sell as much as possible to expand the reproduction, and soon had a certain scale, stood firm, and laid the foundation for the later to seize greater opportunities.