At the end of the year, construction machinery manufacturers are successively cleaning up agents with serious debt problems. Some have terminated agency relationships, some have filed lawsuits against agents, and some have directly seized and frozen agents' office buildings and other assets, and have applied for litigation preservation against agents' shareholders and actual controllers. The two sides are at daggers drawn, filled with tension. When facing debt difficulties, why do agents always blame the manufacturer? Why do they attribute most of the reasons to the manufacturer's indulgence and encouragement? Looking back, as a manufacturer, should you summarize something from this debt crisis? Zhong'an Dexin TM, in its debt management project services for several companies, has felt that manufacturers currently have four obvious major problems in debt risk control:

1. Due to the lack of regular or irregular assessments of agents' debt management status, debt risks cannot be predicted in advance, leading to ultimate loss of control.

According to our specialized services in Shanxi, Beijing, Jiangxi, Shandong, and other places, manufacturers' understanding of agents' debt management levels is very untimely, inaccurate, and incomplete, making them extremely prone to major debt crises.

The manufacturer's debt risk control department has very insufficient ability to grasp information and control and monitor agents. They blindly pursue market and sales volume, with no parallel debt monitoring system and institutional processes compatible with market sales. We suggest that the manufacturer should appoint a third-party professional institution to collaborate with the internal debt risk control department, and regularly or irregularly go deep into each agent to conduct a comprehensive and professional assessment of debt management status. This assessment should cover debt management organizational structure and human resources, debt management system and process design, data statistics and use, debt monitoring and collection, management of secondary agents (sub-agents or dealers, distribution outlets), repurchase and sales of second-hand machines (debt vehicles), legal disposal, and the comprehensive level of the agent's debt management and potential risks of various types. A complete, professional, prudent, and objective assessment should be conducted, and on this basis, the third-party institution should provide adjustment and correction suggestions.

Manufacturers should make the assessment of agents' debt management one of the important debt management risk control measures and implement it as a regular practice.

2. Manufacturers respond slowly to serious debt problems of agents, lack systematic "post-debt project management" planning and operation, and lack the concept of integrating agents through "debt-to-equity swaps".

Without any systematic assessment of legal risks and market risks, simply and brutally filing lawsuits and freezing and seizing the property of relevant agent guarantors is undoubtedly killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

In addition to slow responses to agents with serious debt problems, when handling bilateral relations, there is a lack of systematic "post-debt project management" disposal methods, which easily leads to both sides turning against each other, further expanding losses, and making an already serious situation worse.

As discussed in previous articles, the principles of "post-debt project management" we advocate are: clearly positioning it as legal affairs rather than marketing behavior; pre-assessment and plan formulation; comprehensive advancement and professional collaboration; binding processing with agents, and ensuring a good beginning and end.

At the same time, when conditions permit, carry out "debt-to-equity swaps" to integrate agents, standardize the internal governance of agents' companies, and gradually form a model of integration of production and sales.

3. Manufacturers should vigorously assist in optimizing and streamlining the debt management systems of each agent.

Manufacturers should stand at a higher and farther perspective and provide the greatest help and guidance for improving the debt management level of each agent. This assistance is not just a few centralized training sessions and exchange forums, but should tailor different optimization and streamlining plans for each agent's characteristics combined with manufacturer policies.

We always believe that debt management requires both grand strategic thinking and refined practical operational requirements. The refined requirements here include the localized rule requirement of "singing the song of whatever mountain you are on", that is, a debt management system adapted to each agent's own corporate culture is needed.

Corporate culture is soft power, an intangible force affecting corporate operations. As a huge systematic project like debt management, it is absolutely impossible to have a one-size-fits-all solution. We suggest building on the corporate culture characteristics of each company, optimizing and streamlining on the basis of the original processes and systems, and at the same time implementing our principles of "loose sales, tight monitoring" and "big credit review" to achieve a stable long-term mechanism plan for agents.

4. Manufacturers' practical training for debt management personnel is seriously insufficient.

Debt management personnel have very frequent turnover, and their comprehensive quality is uneven. Relying solely on the agents' own training environment, it is difficult to maintain a team of debt management personnel with a certain level. Especially for systematic and professional training of middle-level and key personnel, agents find it even harder to complete on their own. Moreover, most agents currently have a rather low level of debt management, which highlights the urgency of personnel training.

Relatively speaking, manufacturers can entrust professional third-party institutions to adopt a combination of centralized and decentralized training methods, uniformly provide professional training courses for high, middle, and low-level debt management personnel of each agent, and form long-term skill training and career development plans, fundamentally solving the problem of cultivating debt management personnel for agents.

In short, construction machinery manufacturers must not be hands-off with agents' debt management. They should timely grasp the debt management status through third-party assessments and make advance predictions; when measures must be taken, they should decisively apply the rules of "post-debt project management" for effective handling; at the same time, in order to fundamentally improve agents' debt management level, they should vigorously assist in providing localized debt management optimization and streamlining, and provide multi-level long-term professional technical training. Only in this way can debt risk control within the brand system be "precise, efficient, and powerful".