Great Wall Motors has entered a bottleneck period of development: Can an outsider do a good job?

Last year, Great Wall Motors' sales volume fell by 0.4%, failing to achieve its sales target of 1.25 million. This year, Great Wall Motors has not stopped the downward trend. The sales volume of its mainstay Haval brand has declined for 12 consecutive months. The high-end brand WEY has only achieved 26.88% of its annual sales target in the first five months. Even the once "magic car" H6 has seen a double-digit decline.

What is the reason for the setback in sales of Great Wall Motors, which was once admired by many domestic brands? The author believes that the reason is that the irrational trend of consumers choosing SUVs in the past few years is no longer popular; the second reason is that Great Wall Motors launched the high-end brand WEY too early when the technology and brand of Haval brand did not meet expectations, resulting in excessive dispersion of corporate resources; the third reason is that Great Wall Motors has too many local talents, especially the sales executives are almost all promoted from within, which may not keep up with the market environment.

As we all know, Great Wall Motors once insisted on the simultaneous development of SUVs and sedans. However, as an independent brand with limited technical reserves, the sedan segment of Great Wall Motors has been unsatisfactory. This also led to Wei Jianjun, the head of Great Wall Motors, making up his mind to "focus on SUVs" in 2013. The Haval brand became independent and since then the Haval brand has entered a stage of rapid development.

In 2016, the SUV market achieved an extremely high growth rate of 45.9%, while the sedan market only grew by 5.4%. Correspondingly, Great Wall Motors' annual sales in 2016 totaled 1.0745 million units, with annual sales of one million, exceeding the annual target. Haval brand sales soared 42% year-on-year, becoming the only SUV brand in China to grow independently and reach the million-level.

The huge growth market also means "a pack of wolves looking around". The compact SUV market where the H6, the sales leader of the Haval brand, is located, has more than 90 models, and three of the top ten SUV models in May this year are domestic compact SUVs that are its direct competitors. In addition, the sedan market has gradually recovered since last year, and the growth of the domestic SUV market has slowed down to only 13.3%, which is in stark contrast to the results of 52.4% in 2015 and 47.1% in 2016.

With the recovery of the sedan market, major automakers have also begun to increase their investment in this market segment. In May this year, sedans accounted for 51.6% of the passenger car market, and the 13.5% year-on-year growth rate of sedans exceeded the 5.8% year-on-year growth rate of SUVs for the first time. At this time, Great Wall Motors is still focusing on SUVs and cannot extricate itself. In the first five months, except for the stable sales of Haval H9 and the newly launched Haval H4, the sales of other models have fallen sharply, and the sales of many models have even fallen by more than 50%.

Similarly, the WEY brand, which Wei Jianjun had high hopes for, is also going downhill. After the sales of VV5 and VV7 both exceeded 10,000 in January, they did not continue the high-start and high-end rhythm, but instead the sales fell all the way. In May, the WEY brand sold 11,000 vehicles, of which VV5 sold 5,562 vehicles and VV7 sold 5,014 vehicles.

Why did this happen? The author believes that the lack of talent has become the key to restricting Great Wall Motors' technological progress and brand enhancement. Baoding, where Great Wall Motors is located, has long been on the list of "most polluted cities" with a poor natural environment and inconvenient transportation. I believe this is also one of the reasons why Great Wall Motors cannot retain some high-end technical talents. Previously, Pierre Leclercq, vice president and design director of Great Wall Motors, left because Great Wall did not fulfill his promise to work in Shanghai.

At the same time, Great Wall Motors' employee salaries have long lagged behind those of JAC Motors, Changan Automobile, and Geely Automobile, which are also located in second- and third-tier cities, and most of its employees are locals from Hebei. The author checked Great Wall Motors' 2017 financial report and found that almost all of Great Wall Motors' eight current executives are old employees who joined Great Wall Motors before 2001.

I don't know if Wei Jianjun is aware of the problem that the "old officials" are loyal but "narrow-minded", so he has recently recruited a large number of external executives, especially those in the marketing field. For example, Ning Shuyong, the former executive vice president of marketing and communication of Qoros Auto, has joined Great Wall Motors as the vice president of Great Wall Motor Group, responsible for the two business units of new energy and pickup trucks, responsible for sales, channels, brands and marketing promotion, and reports directly to President Wang Fengying; for example, Wen Fei, the former director of market strategy communication and public relations of Infiniti, joined Great Wall Motors as the deputy general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company, responsible for brand strategy, marketing and product communication, and overall management of sales plans, business policies and the capacity improvement of the blue label Haval independent dealer network, and reports directly to Li Ruifeng, vice president of Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. and general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company.

At certain moments, outsiders are better at chanting. The author hopes that the joining of Ning Shuyong and Wen Fei can change Great Wall Motors' usual approach in the past, interpret the two brands of Haval and WEY with a more international vision and a higher level of pattern, and help Great Wall Motors return to the position of China's most profitable independent brand.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.