2 Marketing Support Platforms + 8 Steps of Terminal Visits: Build a First-Class Team with Ordinary People!

There aren't that many talents in this world; use models to let ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things.

In a China-US CEO dialogue about what to focus on during rapid corporate growth, the host asked each entrepreneur to describe it in one word on a board. Chinese entrepreneurs wrote innovation, corporate culture, financing, and various other things, but American entrepreneurs unanimously wrote "team."

This shows the value of teams.

However, for many domestic companies, teams remain a headache, especially building marketing teams. They often feel that excellent salespeople are hard to find and marketing talent is scarce.

Start from two aspects to train a first-class marketing team with ordinary people.

Most companies' marketing teams operate as lone wolves, with sales regions as their own territories. Each salesperson has their own turf and doesn't allow others to infringe. Customers and networks become personal assets of salespeople, making it difficult for the company to control. Even in many industrial product fields, salespeople become industry-specific salesmen. When the company tries to take control of these resources, salespeople think, "I worked hard to get these customers, and I built the network bit by bit. Why should I hand it over to the company?" This is the crux of many marketing teams: they are fragmented, not centralized.

Therefore, to build a first-class marketing team, start from two aspects:

Build a marketing support platform

When marketing personnel encounter difficulties, if the company's marketing organization doesn't provide corresponding support, or when a struggling salesperson is about to give up, the organization only finds out then, or even after knowing, doesn't respond. Such companies haven't established a marketing support platform. As a result, they cannot control the market or customers.

A marketing support platform should consist of two parts: a standardization platform and a backend support system.

Standardization support platform: This means not letting salespeople cross the river by feeling the stones. For basic, common, and simple marketing actions, the company sets a series of action standards based on successful experiences, providing references during operations.

Backend support system: This mainly refers to the headquarters' information collection and decision-making system. Based on the collection, organization, and analysis of sales team behavior and market information, the headquarters issues instructions and provides operational plans for each market. For example, when the author's company provides services to industrial enterprises, it establishes an information support system and decision-making plan for key accounts, and the company's marketing organization provides convenience for regional key account business development from a higher level.

Break down actions to turn complexity into simplicity

It's well known that all-around sales elites are hard to cultivate and recruit, so relying entirely on sales elites is not conducive to building an efficient marketing team. Therefore, it's necessary to start from the company's existing resources, break down sales actions, and have several ordinary people complete the full set of actions that originally required an all-around salesperson.

This is the establishment of a marketing organization model.

The Qi Family Army's organizational model provides a reference. Qi Jiguang invented a formation called the Mandarin Duck Formation, which formed team combat power and achieved specialized division of labor. He replaced martial arts experts like boxers and instructors with simple farmers, and paired them with a reward and punishment mechanism for the team, forming a mutually supportive and cooperative anti-Japanese army that was invincible.

The same applies to marketing teams. The lone wolf business model is not conducive to collaborative combat in marketing teams. It may bring development for a period, but it's not conducive to intensive cultivation of the market or establishing a base market.

In marketing, especially in sales, operational models are established based on industry characteristics to simplify procedures and standardize marketing actions. As long as marketing personnel do the basic actions solidly, performance will naturally be good.

For example, in the FMCG field, many predecessors have summarized the "Eight Looks" model for terminals: 1. Look at location, 2. Look at inventory, 3. Look at display, 4. Look at price, 5. Look at customer relations, 6. Look at the store owner's first recommendation, 7. Look at competitors, 8. Look at distribution rate.

The Eight Steps of Terminal Visits also standardize and actionize complex, unassessable visits, allowing new salespeople to execute these basic actions and ensure results.

The Eight Steps of Terminal Visits are specifically:

Pre-visit preparation (visit route, merchandising tools, unfinished matters, etc.);
Outside-store operations (check outdoor advertising, approach customers);
Inventory check (special display points, stock of our products and competitors, inventory quality);
Sales and distribution (state policies, handle objections, new product extension);
Order closure;
Product display (normal shelves, multi-point display);
Administrative tasks (fill in customer information cards, confirm orders);
Evaluation and improvement.

Of course, marketing actions vary by industry. Companies must establish standardized marketing actions that match their own resources and capabilities to use ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results.

Reprinted from: Sugar, Tobacco, Wine Weekly Food Edition

This article is excerpted from Liu Wenxin's book "Marketing Common Sense That Sells with Every Move." The author is the general manager of Qibing Qisheng Marketing Planning Company, founder of the "Qibing Military Tactics" operating system, a well-known brand expert, marketing practical expert, and a specially appointed marketing lecturer at Tsinghua University.

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