Click the image for details In the new year, the wind is chilly, plants wither, and the economic cycle heads toward a normal trough, yet it also nurtures new hope. I often say that this era is filtering out the strong and quietly encouraging the diligent. Build your career on a solid business foundation. Recover costs and ensure cash flow. Teacher Wan Weigang once said: You have your plans, but the world has its own. So we need to re-understand the essence of business. Let me give you an example, and together we'll redo our plans. 1 Suppose you are a mineral water manufacturer. How many mineral water brands do you think consumers can come into contact with and remember? Three? Five? Eight? There are countless brands, but we can only remember a limited few. In this world, there is no supermarket that can stock all brands of mineral water, nor is there a supermarket that sells only mineral water. So on the shelves of convenience stores and large supermarkets, we can only come into contact with and remember a few; the rest are eliminated and forgotten. This is a huge challenge for mineral water manufacturers. With a slight misstep, you have to start over. What to do? 2 You might say, advertise to implant the brand in consumers' minds and build brand awareness. Good, very good. But once consumers know your brand, can they actually reach it? That is, can your mineral water brand appear on the shelves for consumers to choose? There are only a few shelves: this row for fresh produce, that row for instant noodles. At most, 10 brands can be placed for mineral water. How do you break through and get consumers to notice you? The answer is simple: pay to get on the shelf. Pay money to appear on the shelf and gain more traffic. So, the term 'traffic' re-enters our field of vision. How we understand traffic determines our entire business. Supermarkets call this money a slotting fee. We call it traffic cost—the basic price we pay to acquire a customer. Supermarkets become our traffic source. 3 Let me ask you another question: besides supermarkets, what other traffic sources are there for mineral water? Snack shops, convenience stores, cinemas, unmanned vending machines, automated vending machines, omnipotent e-commerce platforms... Take out a piece of paper, think and draw carefully: what user touchpoints does your business actually have? Traffic is like water, flowing toward more efficient directions. You will find that the water of traffic continuously flows into the riverbed. Your product has so many ways to connect with users, and the business forms are so diverse. Even a small bottle of mineral water can be designed with 100 different selling methods. Trust me, you'll be shocked. When I take a Didi Chuxing premium car, I discovered a great sales method. Sitting in the back seat, I noticed a small shelf in front with a bottle of mineral water, a bag of chips, and some candies. I was amazed. So this is also a traffic channel. The moment when consumers and goods meet can be designed into a Didi premium car. Now that traffic is so expensive, smart minds can always find the best user touchpoints. 4 I also suggest you change your way of thinking and your discourse system. Shift from selling products to buying traffic. In the past, you sold mineral water to supermarkets, and supermarkets sold to consumers. In the future, you buy traffic from supermarkets. Is there a difference? Of course there is! Because the decision-making power lies with consumers. Buying traffic means you respect consumers more, understand the importance of traffic to business, and consider issues from the user's perspective. How to get users to come into contact with your product, and at the moment they are tempted, unconsciously reach for their wallets? This discourse system is not about studying how to sell, but how to make users buy. And purchasing to obtain traffic is the very starting point. From the logic of selling to the logic of buying—one word difference, but a world of difference, potentially leading to two completely different business models. Changing your discourse system is like changing your world. Manage your river of traffic, dig for water sources, chisel out thousands of small springs, and let a hundred rivers flow into the sea. Be sure to give users the opportunity to pass through you and take things away. Only then can you recover costs, obtain stable cash flow, and build strength for this winter. New Distribution will hold the 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference during the Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair from March 16 to March 18. This conference will focus on the topic of "Breaking the Game" and engage in in-depth discussions with numerous brand owners, supply chain service providers, distributors, retailers, and others. Compared to previous conferences, this summit will be fully upgraded. In addition to original topics such as channel innovation, city distribution logistics, and distributor transformation, it will add multiple parallel forums on new marketing cases, IP + FMCG empowerment, community group buying, and innovative retail. Through three days of ten high-density, high-quality expert sharing and exchanges, we believe every brand owner and distributor can learn the latest business models, expert insights, and practical methods, finding new tools and methods for breaking the game in 2019 and returning to the track of rapid growth. -END-