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Text/Wang Min
Source: Shenran (ID: shenrancaijing)
“The novel version of the business war will break his capital chain; the real version of the business war will break his car seat”, has become a joke that has been widely circulated on the Internet platform recently.
At the end of July, Hello City Manager slashed 70 Meituan motorcycle seat cushions, causing netizens to ridicule: “What you think of as high-level business wars often adopts the most simple and unpretentious way.”
From this, netizens also remembered the classic business tactics of “bad reviews, robbing official seals, swinging hammers, and poisoning” in recent years. What these methods have in common is that they only focus on attacking their opponents, but ignore fair competition and laws and regulations.
For those business battle scenes that often appear in novels, for the sake of understanding, we call them “high-level business battles”, which are not far away from us. Some practitioners told Shen Ran about the experience of being caught in it. In the market, startups raise financing and seek listing. The life and death of every company, and the ups and downs of an industry, there is no shortage of brutal business battles.
“Business is like Sun Wu’s use of soldiers, and the situation is judged; like Shang Yang’s reforms, it follows the opportunity.” The merchants of the Warring States Period had already realized the complexity of business warfare. More than 30 years ago, Karl von Clausewitz mentioned in the book “Business War” that “business is war, the enemy is a competitor, and the battlefield is in the mind of the customer”, which is still used by many people today. regarded as a standard.
The sea of commerce rises and falls, and wars without gunpowder smoke are everywhere. It’s just that in the face of the melee of interests, some principles must be adhered to, and some bottom lines cannot be crossed.
“Real version of business war”:
Simple and rude is the last word?
In the “realistic version of business war”, peer-to-peer pinching is the most common.
Li Yi joined a leading company in the logistics industry in May this year as a new media specialist. As soon as he joined the company, the director put forward requirements for Li Yi’s work, one of which was to report the content of his peers on major social platforms. Any content that is beneficial to the same company must be reported, and 10 must be reported every day, and the screenshots must be placed in the worksheet.
After more than a month, Li Yi gradually explored the characteristics of each platform. For example, “advertisement” is the easiest reason for successful complaints. Of the ten complaints she complained about every day, seven or eight were passed when there were many, and two or three when there were few.
“I also think it is vicious and immoral to report others,” Li Yi said. Because he couldn’t stand this kind of work, and the boss of the company also asked to be sent to another place, Li Yi finally chose to leave after working in this company for a month.
In addition to malicious reporting, competition among peers also involves malicious fraud.
Recently, the first-instance verdict in the case of “Luojiu Industry” suing “Dui Goosenian Wine Industry” for reputation right dispute came out. Zuigouniang was sentenced to apologize and compensate 120,000 yuan for “bad reviews” for her opponent.
As early as the end of 2020, Luojiu Industry found that a fruit wine product sold in its Taobao store suddenly suffered a lot of bad reviews, such as “my boyfriend had a drink yesterday and had a stomachache in the middle of the night”, “a smell of chemicals, whoever bought it regrets it”, etc. . Through search and investigation on social platforms, Luojie Industry found that the main body corresponding to the mobile phone number of the account that posted the bad review was the employee of Zui Goniang Wine Industry, and the employees of Zui Goeniang Wine Co. The invoice issued by Goose Niang Wine Industry is used for reimbursement. So, Drunk Goose Niang was brought to court.
Source / Visual ChinaThe court confirmed that 13 Taobao accounts that posted negative reviews were registered or used by Zui Goiniang liquor employees, including Zui Goiniang liquor’s human resources director, recruitment supervisor, procurement specialist and e-commerce designer.
There are also many cases of similar peers “doing the game”. For example, in 2019, the operating partner and subordinates of a well-known social APP deliberately set up a bureau, and after posting harmful pornographic remarks and pictures on their competing products, they then took screenshots and reported them to the relevant departments, resulting in the removal of the competing APP three times. months, business was severely affected. In March 2020, two suspects were arrested on suspicion of damaging business reputation and commodity reputation.
More fights between peers aimed at interfering with each other’s business. The staff of the operation and maintenance team of an offline shopping mall mentioned to Shen Ran that the company will arrange shifts for business personnel, and they will go to a nearby shopping mall of the same type to inquire every day, focusing on suppliers and preferential activities: if the suppliers of their own shopping malls If you open stores in other shopping malls, you will put pressure on them; if other shopping malls have preferential activities, your own shopping mall will carry out targeted activities. Another business person revealed to Shen Ran that in a previous competition with his peers, the general manager led his team to destroy the advertisements posted by his peers in the middle of the night.
Peer competition is just one of the battlegrounds in business wars, and the struggles within companies are not weak. The “poisoning, robbing official seals, and swinging iron hammers” that have caused a lot of uproar are all products of the company’s infighting.
In December 2020, Lin Qi, chairman and CEO of YOOZOO, was poisoned by a colleague Xu, and unfortunately passed away on December 25. According to public reports, the reason for the poisoning may be related to Xu’s dissatisfaction with the business distribution.
Behind the “snatch the official seal” is the snatch by the company’s top management for control. The most widely circulated case is Dangdang.com. In April 2020, the founder Li Guoqing led 5 people to break into the office area of Dangdang.com, snatching dozens of official seals and financial seals, and then the picture of Li Guoqing tying the company seal to his waistband made him the focus of this farce again. .
However, taking away the official seal does not mean that you have taken control of the company, and mastering the official seal does not directly mean controlling the legality of the company. Dangdang finally reported to the police. According to the details of the loss announced by Dangdang.com, a total of 11 companies’ financial seals and 36 companies’ financial seals were involved. By July, the official seal, bank USB shield and other important documents robbed by Li Guoqing and others had been recovered by relevant government departments and returned to Dangdang.
In the capital market, it is not uncommon for many companies to change from “infighting” to “military fighting” in order to seize control.
On January 6, 2021, Dong Yongcheng, the 64-year-old chairman of CEFC Trust, injured Wang Jin, the 54-year-old general manager of his company. According to people familiar with the matter, Dong Yongcheng injured Wang Jin with a hammer in the elevator of the Dalian office building, causing bleeding from his head and nose. Dong Yongcheng was eventually detained.
In September 2021, Jiaying Pharmaceutical shareholders set up a “Hongmen Banquet”. The secretary of the board of directors was invited to “drink tea” late at night, but was closed and beaten, and the secret key to the letter was also stolen.
After reading these “realistic version of business wars”, I have to sigh, is simplicity and rudeness the last word?
“Advanced version of business war”:
Capital War, Public Opinion War, Faction War
Of course, “scraping bad reviews, grabbing official seals, swinging sledgehammers, and poisoning” is not the whole of business warfare. The “high-end version of business warfare” that uses serial strategies to grab market share is actually happening every day. High-level industry competition is a war of capital and public opinion between companies, and it is also a struggle between different factions within the company.
Capital wars are most common in the process of companies pulling financing and IPOs. In the past two years, the top players of the star track have been fighting for the first share of the IPO. Tracks such as new tea drinks, fresh e-commerce, shared charging treasures, and online car-hailing are no exception.
A brokerage investment banking practitioner said that his work is like a business battle every day. A leading company in an industry is listed first, which means that it has seized the first-mover advantage in the public opinion position of the capital market, and it means that it can compare with competitors. If you get more funds earlier, you can reduce the dimension of another leading competitor in the industry and stabilize its position in the industry.
The representatives of the public opinion war also mentioned the “3Q war” in 2010. In this war that detonated the entire Internet industry at that time, Tencent set foot in the field of network security where 360 is located with “QQ Computer Manager”. To this end, 360 newly developed a “Privacy Protector” to specifically collect whether QQ software violated user privacy. Launched “360 Button Bodyguards” to block QQ software upgrades, hijack Tencent browsers, etc. Tencent, which has a user advantage, has played the card of “choose one of two”. Users can only use QQ normally after uninstalling 360 Security Guard.
During this period, the war of words and public relations between the two camps continued to escalate. Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360, said on Weibo that “the 3Q battle is not a struggle between 360 and Tencent in essence, but a struggle between Internet innovation and monopoly power”, putting himself in a weak position. Zhou Hongyi’s autobiography “Subversive” later also mentioned the concern for public opinion. After Tencent “choose one of the two”, “the balance of public opinion is now tilted to the weaker side.”
With the intervention of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the “3Q War” ended briefly with the compatibility of QQ and 360 Security Guard, and ended with Tencent winning the lawsuit after four years of litigation.
In the infighting of the company’s top executives where there is “no blood”, not only do both parties need to fight every step of the way, but the final result will also affect the careers of middle and grassroots employees.
source/unsplashLi Qian, who is engaged in the commercial real estate industry, saw with her own eyes that the company’s big boss and the second boss joined forces to start a business for more than 20 years, and finally moved to “separation” due to the uneven distribution of benefits. What surprised her was that at the beginning of the separation, the commercial real estate project she was in was originally assigned to the big boss, but the project leader knew that the second boss’s skills and courage were far better than the big boss, so he brought a few Subordinates, moved things to the second boss’s company.
In less than two years, the project leader has been reused by the second boss and has become the second-in-command of the new company. And Li Qian’s own commercial real estate project, under the management of the big boss, was losing ground, and was constantly overtaken by newly developed projects nearby. In the end, Li Qian also decided to leave.
After this incident, Li Qian realized the importance of “following people”. Liu Wan, a middle-level financial company, has experienced a high-level infighting that draws salaries from the bottom of the pile. In a company’s regular promotion after 2020, the original promotion opportunity was either A or B, but the result was unexpected by executives C obtained.
Liu Wan sighed that no one knew what happened behind C’s sudden promotion, but when the promotion result came out, A led the team to hand in the nomination certificate immediately, so B and C got into a stalemate. There is a contradiction between B and C, and it is impossible to gain C’s trust. And B has spent more than ten years in this company slowly climbing to the current position. The resources and accumulation in this company are very deep, and it is not easy for C to seize power in a short period of time.
Next, in order to build a team full of “our own people”, C first attracted the company’s HR, and gave incentives to a small number of the five middle-level executives under B’s subordinates, while the rest were either suppressing or maintaining superficial neutrality. For grass-roots employees, C has a one-on-one conversation with a name familiar with the business, allowing grass-roots employees to give opinions on their departments.
In a word, C’s strategy is to use the grassroots to disintegrate the middle layer, and then use the middle layer to disintegrate the upper layer. By the middle of the year, among the five middle-level managers, either resigned, transferred or downgraded, and Liu Wan was the one who transferred. After the middle layer was disintegrated, by the end of the year, B was also transferred to be in charge of an unpopular line. By this time, the entire department of B had been completely eaten up on the surface, and then, even the division of the grassroots had changed, and finally the shadow of the original could not be seen at all.
Compared with the simple and rude real-life version of the business war, the “high-end version of the business war” is an all-round competition of resources, IQ and emotional intelligence.
No matter “high-level” or “rough”,
Keep the bottom line in business battles
The past ten years have been the golden age of Internet development. E-commerce, online travel, online car-hailing, food delivery, shared bicycles, shared power banks, new retail, and community group purchases have basically created a new track every year. Behind every star track, there are countless commercial competitions without gunpowder smoke. Behind every war, there is not only the careful layout of the “high-end version of the business war”, but also the hand-to-hand combat of the “rough version of the business war”.
Take the shared bicycle track as an example, the high-end version of the business battle can also be glimpsed. Since around 2016, shared bicycles have started to “flash with demons”, and the war between Mobike and ofo has been fierce. However, under the influence of capital, market and other factors, Mobike was acquired by Meituan, and ofo went bankrupt. With the refund of user deposits, the situation in which Meituan, Qingju, and Hellobike are divided into three giants has basically taken shape.
While high-level executives are planning high-level business battles behind the scenes, there is no shortage of “mutual harm” among employees at the grassroots business line.
Shared power banks and community group purchases, which were once in the limelight, are all inseparable from similar wars. After the former head monster charging of the shared power bank industry was listed, Soudian and Jiedian merged to become Zhumang Technology and occupied the first position in the industry. While industry consolidation continues, vicious competition among front-line employees pulling charging cables and stealing cabinets from each other is not uncommon.
source/unsplashThe book “Commercial Warfare” puts forward several points of view. Enterprises in the leading position should fight defensive warfare, enterprises in the second place in the industry should fight offensive warfare, small and medium-sized enterprises should fight flanking warfare, and local and regional companies should fight guerrilla warfare.
In other words, commercial wars are everywhere, and no matter what stage a company develops, there are battles to be fought. Driven by interests, it is inevitable that there will be “sinister tricks” in commercial warfare, and it is not uncommon for “commercial warfare to become martial arts”.
Simple and rude “realistic version of business wars”, such as swiping cushions, brushing negative reviews, swinging sledgehammers, poisoning, etc., are in order to obtain greater profits, and they have fallen into vicious competition, but most of them have not only lost the company’s dignity, but also It will bring internal friction. In the A-share market, many shareholders of the company fought for control. As a result, the company’s operation and management and business development were seriously dragged down, and eventually the company’s voice in the capital market became less and less. In peer competition, vicious competition will also lead to waste of resources.
A more serious result is that, after violating laws and regulations, the parties also need to bear corresponding responsibilities. Whether it is the aforementioned malicious actions to frame the opponent, or swiping the hammer to injure the general manager, or poison the chairman to death, the final result is that the perpetrator cannot escape legal sanctions.
While the “realistic version of business warfare” is widely discussed, the implementers of these “sinister tricks” bear the price, and also warn the leaders behind the business war to keep the bottom line.
*The title image is from “Hanzawa Naoki 2”. At the request of the interviewee, Li Yi, Li Qian, and Liu Wan are pseudonyms in the text.
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