Wei Jianjun poached two senior executives in 15 days to form a "firefighting team"! WEY only completed 26.88% in 5 months

Haval H8 sold 128 units per month, WEY P8 sold 503 units per month, and WEY achieved only 26.88% in 5 months. What is bothering Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motors, is not just the total sales target, nor is it a problem that can be solved by a self-fine of 3 million yuan or a self-fine of 2 million yuan by President Wang Fengying.

A careful reading of Great Wall's sales data shows that Great Wall is already facing serious problems such as over-concentration of sales, lack of new products, and marginalization of some products.

The introduction of foreign aid has also become a stopgap measure for Great Wall to save its team.

Following Wenfei, Yuguancheshi learned that:

Ning Shuyong, former executive vice president of marketing and communications at Qoros Auto, has joined Great Wall Motors as vice president of Great Wall Motor Group, responsible for the new energy and pickup truck business units, including sales, channels, brand and marketing, and reporting directly to President Wang Fengying.

Ning Shuyong is the second "paratrooper" introduced by Great Wall in recent times. Just last month, Wen Fei, former Infiniti's director of market strategy communications and public relations, joined Great Wall Motors as 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 capacity building of the blue-label Haval independent dealer network, reporting directly to Li Ruifeng, vice president of Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. and general manager of Great Wall Motor Sales Company.

The Great Wall is showing signs of fatigue

There is a reason why Great Wall Motors has been introducing senior executives one after another.

Following a sales decline in 2017, Great Wall Motors has shown no signs of recovering this year.

WEY, a high-end brand that Great Wall has high hopes for, sold a total of 67,200 vehicles from January to May. After nearly half a year, it has only achieved 26.88% of its annual target of 250,000 vehicles.

The bigger problem is that among WEY's three models on sale, VV7, VV5 and P8, two models have seen a sharp decline, showing signs of "lack of stamina".

VV7's monthly sales reached a peak of 10,600 units last year, but then fell to only 5,014 units in May. VV5 encountered the same situation, with sales continuing to fall to 5,562 units.

Not only that, even the Haval brand SUV, which is always victorious in the SUV market, has experienced varying degrees of decline in May this year compared with the same period last year, including H2, H5, H6, H7, etc. The only one that has increased year-on-year is H9, and the growth of H9 is because it was just launched last year and its production capacity is still climbing.

Great Wall's weakness has been evident since last year. In 2017, Great Wall Motors sold 1.07 million units, down 0.40% year-on-year. Not only did it fail to achieve its sales target of 1.25 million units, it also lagged behind the industry's average growth rate. In 2017, China's SUV sales were 10.2527 million units, up 13.32% year-on-year. At the same time, Great Wall Motors' net profit in 2017 was 5.035 billion yuan, down 52.28% year-on-year.

Because Great Wall Motors failed to meet expectations in 2017, Great Wall Motors Chairman Wei Jianjun and President Wang Fengying fined themselves 3 million and 2 million respectively.

Salvation requires change at the source

Although they have different divisions of labor, according to their resumes, both Ning Shuyong and Wen Fei have worked for Volvo. In particular, before Ning Shuyong officially joined Qoros Auto in May 2017, he was the Vice President of Communications for Volvo Cars Asia Pacific, responsible for the company's corporate image and brand, product communication, and government relations in China.

It is foreseeable that:

With the joining of the two executives, Great Wall's marketing capabilities will be improved, and it also shows Great Wall's determination to make a breakthrough.

However, Yuguan Auto Market is worried that Great Wall’s problems cannot be solved simply by introducing senior executives.

Before 2017, although Great Wall Motors had been the sales champion in China's SUV market for 15 consecutive years, it had also been regarded as China's most profitable independent brand in terms of profit performance, with the "highest profit margin in the world."

However, an important factor in Great Wall's success is that it has seized the opportunity in the market, comprehensively laid out its presence in the mid- and low-end SUV market that neither joint ventures nor domestic brands have yet entered, and reduced costs by expanding its scale, thus building its products at low cost, which has enabled Great Wall to rapidly expand its scale in the SUV market.

Yuguan Auto Market believes:

The former advantages of the Great Wall are waning and its status is in jeopardy.

The reasons are as follows:

1. In recent years, with the rapid layout of independent brand SUVs, more and more products have flooded into the fast-growing SUV market, which has directly led to a decline in Great Wall's sales.

This is the case with the Haval series, and WEY also has this sign. After the launch of mid-to-high-end SUVs such as Lynk & Co and Roewe RX8, WEY's sales have declined, which is understandable. This shows that Great Wall's original success was built on insufficient competition.

Second, Great Wall gave up its sedan strategy. Although it will focus on the SUV market in the short term, Great Wall, which gave up sedans, has been rapidly surpassed by Geely Automobile, which has both sedan and SUV businesses in recent years. The fact that it is easier to make SUVs than sedans means that it will be difficult for Great Wall to make sedans for a long time to come.

3. Great Wall Motors is over-centralized. Its management system is still a rough family-style management. Chairman Wei Jianjun is a serious "one-man show". Even Wang Fengying, as the president, only has the highest approval authority of 200,000 yuan. She reports to higher levels seriously, which also makes it difficult for the "paratroopers" of Great Wall to stay in Great Wall for a long time. In addition, this management model also leads to excessive centralization of product development and planning, which is not determined by the market.

Fourth, the cost issue of Great Wall Motors has become a new round of problems faced by Great Wall Motors. Although it has many products, not many of them have truly formed economies of scale. Except for Haval H6, Great Wall has no other model with monthly sales of over 10,000.

5. Great Wall’s corporate brand has not been established yet. This is why its only successful product is the H6. On the contrary, Geely has almost relied on its corporate brand to achieve success in every product it launches.

6. Great Wall's dealers are capable and loyal but lack responsibility. They are unwilling to give up profits for market share and are afraid of internal competition and external dealers.

7. There is no separation of powers and responsibilities in Great Wall's core business segments. No one is responsible for sales volume and profits. There are no rewards for achievements, no losses for mistakes, and there is not much difference between doing well or doing badly. There is a lack of a fair and effective reward and punishment system.

Yuguancheshi believes that as competitors become stronger, these problems of Great Wall will become more and more obvious.

Great Wall wants to seize the opportunity of new energy

Of course, Great Wall is also actively seeking changes and a new round of market opportunities, including the establishment of a joint venture with BMW and the layout of new energy.

In February this year, Great Wall Motors issued the "Announcement on the Signing of a Letter of Intent between Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. and BMW AG", stating that the two parties intend to cooperate in the automotive field in the form of a joint venture. The cooperation will mainly focus on new energy vehicles and future technologies, and "further develop the domestic and foreign new energy vehicle markets."

In addition, Great Wall Motors launched the new energy brand Ora, which is positioned in the low-end car market such as daily commuting and transportation. It will also cooperate with car rental companies to launch shared car services.

Although the industry generally believed that Great Wall Motors launched Ora mainly to meet the new energy points requirement, Yuguancheshi believes that Ning Shuyong's appointment can be understood as Great Wall Motors' desire to make new achievements and find new breakthroughs in the new energy market when it is under pressure in the SUV market. If the new energy market can be successful, it will be a new opportunity for Great Wall Motors to enter the new energy market or even re-enter the sedan market.

In any case, car manufacturing is a protracted battle. For any company, there are different stages, and Great Wall Motors is also facing a turning point at this time. However, how long this period is and how to successfully get through it and pave the way for the future will test the management's ability.

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.