Coca-Cola, Pepsi, P&G, Unilever, Colgate... These international FMCG giants, almost every consumer goods company requires their salespeople to conduct terminal visits according to standards. However, the current situation we see is that the vast majority of salespeople's terminal visits are mere formalities, just exchanging pleasantries with the terminal owner and leaving. I once saw a cold drink salesperson who only asked the owner if they wanted to order, and when the owner said no, the salesperson turned and left.

The importance of terminal visits in maintaining customer relationships, boosting sales, and understanding the market needs no further elaboration. Let's first look at the systematic requirements of companies like Coca-Cola, P&G, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson in terminal visits.

Terminal Visit Requirements of Multinational Companies

1. Coca-Cola's Eight-Step Visit Procedure: Preparation → Check outdoor advertising → Greet the customer → Merchandising at the point of sale → Check store inventory → Suggest orders → Confirm orders → Thank the customer.

These "eight steps" have been repeatedly emphasized and trained by Coca-Cola to its sales representatives for years, and they are even made into signs hung in every office.

2. P&G's Terminal Visit Operation Standards.

□ Basic Steps of Customer Visits:

  1. Make a plan: Set visit objectives;
  2. Observe the customer's business premises;
    • Use observation skills for customer penetration
    • Check our product's shelf display, distribution, sales aids, and stock levels;
    • Competitor situation
  3. Sales presentation to achieve our visit objectives;
  4. Collect payment;
  5. Sales aids: Post advertising materials; train customer staff on product knowledge;
  6. Record and report: Record the results and opportunities of each visit; fill out daily visit reports;
  7. Analyze and review the visit process, summarize gains and losses.

□ P&G Sales Representative's Daily Work Procedure:

  1. Return to the office on time;
  2. Prepare all sales materials, including customer records, sales reports, orders, invoices, sales aids, and sales manuals;
  3. Set goals and check the visit plan;
  4. Call to make appointments with relevant customer personnel;
  5. Conduct field visits to customers;
  6. Return to the office to submit orders and payments;
  7. Make the visit plan for the next day.

3. Unilever's 6×9 Basic Visit Process. "6" refers to six tools: customer call sheets, sales reports, sales folders, sales briefing materials/tools, merchandise display materials/tools, and daily sales priority task reports. "9" refers to nine steps: Review plan → Start visit → Store check → Collect payment → Sales briefing → Close sale → Record and report → Display work → End and evaluate.

4. Johnson & Johnson's Eight-Step Visit: Plan and prepare → Store tour → Collect payment → Sales presentation → Merchandising → Build good customer relationships → Complete reports → Analyze visit results.

Johnson & Johnson believes that efficient terminal visits are a solid foundation for achieving sales targets, and standardized work procedures make salespeople's work more planned and targeted.

Key to Efficient Terminal Visits

Terminal visits are not superficial; they are not just exchanging pleasantries every time. Efficient terminal visits are divided into three parts: thorough preparation before the visit; following steps during the visit to improve work efficiency; and timely summary and improvement after the visit. We know that multinational companies have accumulated a lot of successful experience in actual sales work. After being transplanted to the Chinese market and transformed through decades of reform and opening up, they have formed very good Chinese experience. So, for our domestic enterprises, how can they better apply this successful experience to gain competitive advantage for their own companies? Based on our experience in coaching domestic enterprises, we need to do the following to improve visit quality.

1. Adequate preparation before the visit. If the visit quality is not high, it's better not to go at all; it's not worth the time and effort with no results. Grassroots salespeople are responsible for many outlets, so they need to prepare in advance, including: customer information; feedback from the last visit; merchandising tools such as double-sided tape, rags, pens, knives, POP; visit routes, reports, etc.

Coca-Cola's preparation includes: checking personal appearance; checking customer card information; preparing merchandising materials; preparing cleaning tools. Requirements include a clean and tidy appearance, such as rinsed and clean mouth, neat hair, shaved beard, clean clothes with flat ironing, shirt tucked into pants, belt fastened, shoes polished, etc.

In addition to the above, when visiting distributors or other important retail terminal customers, an appointment should be made in advance. The main purpose of the appointment is not just politeness, but to save time for both parties, especially your own time. With so many channel outlets to visit every day, time is very tight. Appointments can concentrate both parties' time, avoiding wasted trips. With thorough preparation, discussions will go smoothly. Initially, appointments may not always be successful; the owner may be busy and unable to meet, or even if an appointment is made, we might have to wait because of their business, wasting time. So, let's look at the essence of this issue. When visiting customers, we usually identify two names: besides the main decision-maker, there is a secondary important person, such as the owner and the owner's wife. This way, meeting one of them basically achieves the goal. During each visit, agree on the next visit time. Over time, as people get to know your work habits and style, as long as you leave a deep impression, most customers will respect your time schedule, and some may even wait for you.

2. During the visit, achieve business consolidation and development. During terminal visits, do store inspections, merchandising, payment collection, and strive to secure orders. Time is precious, so every action must be conducive to business consolidation and development.

For example, check outdoor advertising. Coca-Cola requires timely replacement of damaged or dirty posters; removal of outdated promotional materials with old advertising slogans; and placement in prominent positions not blocked by other items. We need to deeply understand and apply the core of this step, not just the form.

Check terminal inventory. During this visit cycle, how much stock has been sold, which products sell fast, which sell slowly, and ask for reasons; at wholesale departments, ask the usual invoicing staff, then ask the sales supervisor or the owner/owner's wife to find out the reasons and solutions. Finally, record and report to the company.

Gather information. Terminal visits are an important means of collecting market information. Pay attention to competitor dynamics: what promotions are they running, what new products have they launched, when do promotions start and end, how are they implemented, where, and what are the results. Report the information to the company, which may provide corresponding market support based on the market situation. Moreover, by analyzing these phenomena, you can find the reasons for changes in the business curve, summarize the regularity of business changes, and keep historical records of your work. Your supervisor and the company will support your work at the appropriate time and in an appropriate manner based on your records.

Persistent efficient terminal visits will earn you fair evaluations from customers. Each customer visit affects the impression of the product, the salesperson, and the company in the customer's mind. Therefore, no matter how familiar you are with the customer, terminal visits cannot be relaxed. Customers respect serious people; only then will they follow our sales suggestions.

3. Follow up and summarize after the visit to improve promptly and immediately. After the visit, you must follow up on results, handle issues, and record information. Solid visit summaries and follow-ups significantly impact business improvement. At the same time, continuously summarizing the process and results of each visit, and timely summarizing, can deepen understanding and improve your abilities.

In fact, the techniques and methods of terminal visits are not complicated and can be learned quickly; they are not difficult. However, to achieve excellent sales results, the key is to master the essence of terminal visit work, not just imitate, and to persist.

Follow-up and summary after visits are often neglected or ignored by salespeople in many companies. This is because after a day of visits, they are very tired and don't want to move, or leisure and entertainment take up time, leaving insufficient time to complete daily reports. As a result, what they submit looks like they are just going through the motions; they don't want to read it themselves, and supervisors are dizzy reading it. Naturally, no improvement is achieved.

Therefore, the best approach is to spread the summary work throughout the day. After each customer visit, jot down the key points of the visit, simple and clear, so you can recall and supplement at any time. During the time after lunch and dinner, you can take it out and complete it.

Each time you fill out the daily report and summary, it is actually an opportunity to fully communicate with your own mind, continuously improving your work skills. I have used this method to train my team, and we have all improved significantly.

Application and Adaptation for SMEs

The above are the best practical experiences for terminal visits. Following these methods can maximize terminal visit performance. However, in actual implementation, some companies may think that these are the practices of large companies. Although advanced, our company may not be able to learn them, and even if we learn, we may not be able to implement them. Let's analyze the factors that prevent implementation of the optimal terminal visit plan, which may include the following issues:

Poor quality of grassroots salespeople. Due to the limitations of domestic enterprises and SMEs, salaries and benefits cannot attract better salespeople. But that's okay; for terminal visit salespeople, if they implement the above visit methods, their quality is sufficient. They don't necessarily need to be college graduates. On the contrary, average-quality salespeople can find common topics with small terminal shop owners, and communication should not be a problem. College graduates working at Coca-Cola have a sense of honor, and it greatly helps their future career development. Although SMEs lack this appeal, the opportunity to do more business and earn more commissions is something Coca-Cola salespeople, who only receive salary and bonuses, cannot achieve. So, the key is to strengthen communication and repeated education with salespeople, so they identify with the methods and finally implement them. Therefore, for SMEs to do terminal work well, the focus is not on whether they can recruit suitable salespeople, but on whether management can supervise and motivate. What kind of salespeople should SMEs recruit? Let's describe: the most suitable salesperson has at least a junior high school education, is hardworking, has good character, expresses themselves fluently, and is serious in work. These conditions are sufficient; the rest lies in daily sales management.

Thinking the operations are too complex or just for show, unwilling to implement. The purpose of scientific and procedural terminal visits is to improve work efficiency and achieve more performance. Therefore, the marketing team should be repeatedly educated to internalize the visits, generate deep identification, and set examples to demonstrate to the team.

To save trouble, not implementing as required. To solve this problem, supervisors should design daily report forms well, carefully review them, use them in morning meetings to discuss the previous day's visits, write comments on the reports, and make filling out daily reports a key part of KPI assessment. These methods can promote team execution. If objective factors like insufficient time prevent full implementation, make every effort to adjust to follow the visit steps, as this is the most efficient and effective method.

Mechanical execution, time-consuming and laborious. This requires joint visits, i.e., visiting terminals with the salesperson, without revealing your identity, observing from a third-party perspective how the person executes the visit.

For domestic enterprises, especially SMEs, when learning and applying the above content, adaptations are needed: Generally, large and medium-sized domestic enterprises can achieve good results by following the instructions as is. However, most SMEs' sales should be done broadly, focusing on finding distributors and retaining them. If they do detailed work and follow up all the way to terminals, the company often cannot afford such high costs, and hard work may not yield results. SMEs should focus their terminal efforts on key regions, mature and semi-mature markets, or distributor enterprises. The above specific aspects also apply to them and can produce good results. If SMEs are short-staffed, they need to adapt by focusing on terminal network development and sales growth, so salespeople can easily grasp the key points and assessment is relatively easy.

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