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Terminal Network Width Increment Model Keywords: distribution rights awareness, sales rep awareness, fringe markets
What does it mean to increase terminal network width? It means expanding the coverage of our business visits (both company sales reps and distributor sales personnel).
Use the "every third store" method to conduct retail market surveys: "Do you know who delivers for our company's distributor? What's the delivery phone number?" This assesses distribution rights awareness. If awareness is too low, it indicates the distributor or delivery partner's coverage is insufficient. The solution is to negotiate with them, pushing them to add delivery staff and vehicles, or establish sub-distributors for areas they cannot cover.
Similarly, ask: "Who is our company's sales rep? Have they visited recently? How often? What's their name? Which manufacturer's reps visit more frequently?" If the answers are "Don't know," "Never seen," "Haven't come in a month," or "Competitors visit more often," it suggests your terminal reps' daily reports are false—they might be skipping small stores, only visiting big ones, or even slacking off. Alternatively, your route planning may have blind spots. What to do? Discipline the reps or add key streets with high store density and good image to the visit routes.
The most overlooked areas are fringe markets—urban-rural fringes, university towns, and development zones. These are far from city centers and often ignored by manufacturers, yet they have significant store counts and per-store sales.
Does expanding coverage mean unlimited manpower? Absolutely not. In a city, manufacturer reps should cover key routes—areas with high output and good image. Other routes should be covered by distributors, delivery partners, and sub-distributors.
If effective visits (periodic proactive visits by manufacturer or distributor personnel) increase from 5,000 to 7,000 stores, can that boost sales?
Terminal Network Depth Increment Model Keywords: increasing in-store SKU count has a sequence
What is network depth? It's increasing per-store sales.
Merchandising can boost per-store sales, but so can increasing the number of SKUs. A store selling one of your products versus ten will yield different returns, as will selling low-priced versus high-priced items.
Increasing in-store SKU count follows a sequence:
Account Opening Rate Improvement: When a terminal sales team is newly formed, lacking skills and relationships, pushing full-SKU distribution will overwhelm them. So, the first step is to offer good promotional policies, delivering "benefits" to stores, and getting as many stores as possible to make an initial transaction. This step may not contribute much to sales but lays the foundation for future work.
Blank Outlet Development: If 30% of urban stores don't carry any of your products, compile a list of blank outlets, assign them to each rep, and set monthly development policies (promotions, performance reviews). After a month, if hundreds of blank outlets start ordering, can that boost sales?
New Product Distribution: New products mean new sales. When the terminal team is still immature, focus on distributing one SKU. Hold daily morning meetings to summarize sales pitches, practice role-plays, rank performance with a "dragon-mouse" chart, and enforce rewards/penalties. After a month, reps will see a new product go from zero to 75% distribution on their routes, and hundreds of stores that initially refused now stock it. This boosts morale and skills. With thousands of new outlets carrying the new product, can that boost sales?
The secret to rapid distribution is "one product at a time": If reps try to distribute multiple products at once, they can't manage multiple promotional policies. Single-product distribution leads to multi-SKU success and is easier than chasing multiple SKUs. Once account opening is done, blank outlets are rare, and new products are launched, then track distribution rates. Identify a product with low distribution (but with local potential) and set a goal: "This month, focus on Product A. Report your daily target and actual placements. Rewards/penalties apply." Next month, switch to Product B. In advanced regions, conduct a census of distribution rates, list target stores that haven't stocked the product (the "nail store roster"), assign them to reps and distributors by route, and enforce rewards/penalties. Cross off each store as it's stocked. Over several months, if each month adds 1,000-2,000 stores for a product, can that boost sales?
SKU Count Monitoring: Offices often celebrate new accounts and new product placements, but a month-end census might reveal a decline in total SKUs across all stores. Why? Because while new products are added, old products may not be reordered. So, include a SKU distribution rate (or total SKUs) bonus in rep evaluations. If total SKUs increase month over month, can that boost sales?
Distribution Standards: After the above stages, SKU counts are rich. Now, implement detailed management—distribution standards: Require A-class restaurants to carry products a, b, c, d; B-class to carry a, b, c, e, f—defining SKUs per channel. Then evaluate reps on compliance with these standards, with rewards and penalties.
The ultimate is single-store management: Channel-based standards may have deviations. How do you precisely define B vs. C restaurants? By number of private rooms? Some restaurants have no private rooms but high sales and unit prices (due to good location). So, based on channel standards, terminal supervisors gradually adjust each store's SKU mix, marking it in the rep's route book. This becomes the single-store distribution standard. Before entering a store, the rep checks the route card: "My supervisor wants me to stock a, b, e, f here. Currently, they have a, b, f. Today, I'll get e in, and that adds another compliant store this month."
Looking back, from account opening, new product distribution, single-product tracking, SKU monitoring, to channel and single-store standards, the product mix across thousands of stores becomes richer and more rational. Isn't growth inevitable?
Key Account Increment Model Keywords: 80/20 rule, agreements, high-frequency visits
What are key accounts? Every town has supermarkets and large/medium restaurants, plus farm stays and tea houses. In beverages, beer, and liquor, these outlets can sell ten times more. A few large stores might account for half of a town's beer sales. In convenience stores and schools, single-store sales can be dozens of times higher than street stores.
Chain convenience stores may have dozens of branches, but often only a few are cash cows; others have poor performance, low sales, high costs, and long payment terms.
Key accounts are the "20" in the 80/20 rule.
How to manage key accounts? Many methods: buying exclusive shelves, signing display agreements, exclusive sales agreements, providing display coolers, volume rebates, etc.
Can signing key accounts increase sales? Usually, exclusive, display, and merchandising agreements come with volume targets, so you can calculate the increase.
Don't forget: Regardless of the agreement, actual results depend on high-frequency visits. Store owners won't voluntarily comply. Jokingly, "Signing exclusive agreements is like keeping a mistress—you spend money, but if you don't visit often enough, the postman might be the happy one!"
Merchandising Increment Model Keywords: spot-check top 5 stores' merchandising scores, HQ audits merchandising scores, prioritize sales-related merchandising metrics
Everyone knows good merchandising leads to good sales, but getting every rep to habitually arrange displays is hard. Many reps just walk in, ask "Need anything?", maybe stick two posters, and leave. The solution: Supervisors randomly intercept a rep daily, revisit the last five stores they visited to check merchandising (reps will have excuses like "I did the display yesterday, but the owner moved it back"), score them, and calculate a monthly merchandising bonus based on average scores. If consistent, reps will know supervisors really check and that it affects their bonus, so they'll do spontaneous displays, improving terminal appearance and increasing sales.
HQ audits merchandising scores: Everyone knows good merchandising leads to good sales, but sales managers often focus on serving distributors and wholesalers first, then order volumes. They don't like tedious, non-immediate work like merchandising. Solution: HQ publishes a merchandising scoring standard, sets up a dedicated department to inspect monthly, scores each region, adjusts regional managers' bonuses based on scores, and records it for promotion reviews.
Prioritize sales-related metrics: Everyone knows good merchandising leads to good sales, but doing terminal work, arranging displays, and posting posters doesn't boost sales as fast as channel loading. If an office has only four staff, facing both HQ merchandising checks and sales targets, what to do? A compromise: First, chase merchandising metrics directly linked to sales. Terminal merchandising metrics include stack displays, table settings, bar shelf display space, POP count, display cooler shelf space, door stickers, flagship stores, model streets... Which metrics have immediate sales impact? Stack displays, table settings, bar shelf display space (in summer, cold cabinet and cooler display volume). To improve both merchandising and sales, strengthen these metrics first.
In-store stack counts (excluding hypermarkets) depend on: reps' spontaneous displays, distributor delivery staff's spontaneous displays, terminal inventory levels, and company display reward policies.
At month-end, have reps survey the stack ratio between your product and competitors. Develop a plan—next month, launch a route stack increase initiative, requiring your stack count to be at least 2:1 versus key competitors. Rank vertically, reward good, punish bad. Simultaneously, offer stack display rewards and tiered purchase incentives (to boost channel inventory and display enthusiasm).
For finer detail, negotiate with distributors: "More stacks mean more sales, and you profit too. Can your delivery drivers also do spontaneous displays? Run a stack competition among your staff, with rewards and penalties. We'll cover half the employee reward costs..."
Think about it: Previously, reps only sold, didn't do displays; distributor staff didn't either; supervisors ignored it; and sales policies led to insufficient inventory, hurting displays. Now, HQ audits regional merchandising scores, supervisors must focus on display effectiveness, and they know to prioritize sales-related metrics. Supervisors check top five stores daily; reps do spontaneous displays daily (knowing that if their route's display space exceeds competitors, they get a bonus); distributor staff also do displays; promotional policies increase terminal inventory and display volume... Just the stack ratio improving from 1:3 to 2:1—how much sales increase? Then, if I chase shelf display metrics? Can that boost sales? Then table setting metrics? Can that boost sales? If I chase all these metrics, how much can sales increase?
Terminal Information Reach Increment Model Keywords: profit story, product advantages, promotional content
Whether a product sells well depends on whether the store owner recommends it. Why do owners recommend? Not just because of profit, but because they remember your product's high profit. If you launch a new product with higher profit than old ones, two weeks later, visit stores incognito: "What's the profit on this product? Which product has higher profit?" Often, the answers are wrong, or the owner says, "I don't remember." Honestly, with so many products, unless your profit is exceptionally high, owners may not remember.
So, when you find this issue hindering sales, especially for new products, require terminal reps and distributor reps to repeatedly tell store owners, bartenders, and staff: "Our new product gives 6 yuan profit per case—higher profit..." Then, at month-end, survey information reach and enforce rewards/penalties.
Information reach should also include product advantages and promotional policies. For example, "Our product is brewed with maifan stone spring water" or "We have a 'open lid, win another' promotion during launch."
When every store owner and bartender clearly knows your product's high profit, advantages, and consumer promotions, they'll naturally recommend it more actively. Can that bring incremental sales?
Summary
Terminals generate actual sales.
Coca-Cola and Master Kong fired the first shot in China—terminal route visits. More companies are imitating.
Can you sell without route visits? Yes! Many companies have rough channels but good performance. How? Through product advantages and advertising.
But remember, your advantages will soon be imitated.
JDB's current advantage isn't the product; its terminal visit capability and terminal performance are no less than Coca-Cola's. Although Zheng Guanghe and He Qizheng can also sell herbal tea and hire celebrities for ads, building JDB's terminal control capability would take them at least three to five years.
In the end, terminal management is the right path to growth.
This article is excerpted from Wei Qing's book "Terminal Sales Sunflower Manual" published by Peking University Press.
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