Click image for details Time flies, and the first quarter of 2017 is almost over. Currently, the entire terminal market is moving very slowly. Many products that were pushed to stores and distributors before the Spring Festival are still being sold at the market terminal after the traditional peak season, changing the previous pattern of rapid replenishment after the holiday. The overall market sentiment is low. Manufacturers, distributors, terminal stores, and senior management across the entire sales chain are pondering where marketing should go. The sluggish market sentiment has negated the traditional Spring Festival boom. Will the new year be better? But in fact, the slow sales state of 2016 is continuing. Where is the FMCG industry headed? The current marketing situation is quite different from previous years: high labor costs, low output per outlet. The cost of serving terminal outlets through company marketing personnel is very high, making it impossible to deploy staff on a large scale. Otherwise, companies would struggle to be profitable. Many companies increased marketing staff last year to expand blank outlets, but sales did not grow significantly. Personnel increased, but sales did not meet the company's expected cost-output ratio. Strictly speaking, they used expenses to buy some sales performance. In the long run, profits continue to decline, and operations are completely unsustainable. For new staff: on one hand, supervisors have not provided strict guidance and management to new subordinates; on the other hand, whether new staff are qualified and capable of the job. Every new staff member who does not perform as expected is a liability to the company. Elite teams, improving personnel quality and operational level, are more important. Each regional marketing personnel must position themselves as an effective account manager to improve their operational level. How to identify effective distribution customers and further improve product distribution rate? For benchmark core outlets, use momentum and visual merchandising to effectively enhance the marketing influence of surrounding areas. For core customers and outlets, focus company resources for effective investment, including display, free samples, human resources, and advertising. Through investment in these core stores, effectively drive the distribution rate of other non-key outlets. When marketing personnel visit customers, it should not be simply about collecting payments and placing orders; such marketing personnel are outdated. They should focus on the effectiveness and performance of work time, whether they understand the number of regional outlets and inquire about customers' outlet numbers, and effectively assist customers in overcoming difficulties in distributing to blank outlets. Through promotional activities, improve product sell-through, stimulate the enthusiasm of the distributor's marketing team, give distributor staff some benefits, and set effective incentive policies, such as new product distribution policies, core model store policies, and promotional aid display policies. It is very important to plan customer expense investments, effectively communicate and implement free sample promotional policies and company policies. Regularly hold or participate in distributor team meetings, providing training and guidance. During customer policy implementation, conduct inspections, audits, and verification simultaneously. Also, each month, set aside time to visit stores with distributor sales staff to guide their work. Marketing personnel must not only be diligent but also ensure effective work quality. Results matter, but process matters more. Only with effective work level and quality can marketing performance be guaranteed. Clarify your thinking before acting is even more important. A qualified marketing personnel not only does sales and develops customers but also has operational capability. Every expense investment should be considered from an operator's perspective, whether the investment is within the input-output ratio. Some marketing personnel use expenses completely unreasonably and irregularly, asking for high prices because it's company money, making random applications, and constantly complaining that expenses are insufficient to do marketing. Some regional customers have good sales performance at the end of the year, but after accounting for expenses and the company's headquarters' operational costs, the company cannot profit. If every customer is like this, how can we pay everyone's wages? Now many companies' products enter stores, but without promotion, they don't move. If not promoted, they either die or become stagnant outlets with mediocre sales, barely surviving. When a company spends money to enter a store, it must consider whether it can turn these outlets into effective ones, regularly plan activities and promotions, so that each month generates some sales performance. Some are ignored, with no activities each month, or there is over-investment leading to heavy losses. A balance must be found between expenses and sales, allowing products to survive in stores within reasonable costs, rather than relying on store activities to merely meet sales targets without considering the company's cost ratio. Industry data analysis shows that foot traffic in stores has drastically decreased. Relying on single-point breakthroughs as before is very difficult. The consumer base is clearly aging, and investing too much yields average returns, with even greater losses. The core issue is that circulation and B/C-class stores are too few. We must think about how to leverage second-tier distributors in wholesale markets and improve distribution to stores that require little or no cost. Now channels are diversified, with outlets like micro-stores, fruit shops, and cake shops becoming increasingly abundant. If each region also covers these special channels, sales performance will greatly improve. This should become a deep-thinking issue and key work direction for every regional marketing personnel in the future. As foot traffic in stores and KA decreases, channel costs will further increase. The original gross margins of manufacturers and distributors can hardly bear current KA costs. Manufacturers must develop more quality, healthy, and tasty products. Product weight can be reduced, but gross margins must be high enough to support and earn the necessary profit, providing space for enterprise development. -END-