Many companies face a common dilemma: after successfully recruiting distributors and distributing a new product, they expect smooth sales, but suddenly find the product isn't moving at the terminal. Sales staff become disheartened, the terminal loses confidence, and after a month, distributors start demanding returns... Why does a new product stall at the terminal? How can you get it moving?
I. Analysis of Factors Affecting Terminal Sell-Through
- Product factors: Whether the new product's taste is suitable, whether the price positioning is reasonable, whether the packaging grade supports the price, whether consumers like it, and whether the product mix is rational.
- Brand factors: Brand image, awareness, and reputation.
- Advertising factors: Insufficient intensity, lackluster creativity, weak impact, and media selection issues.
- Terminal factors: Level of terminal cooperation, strong competitive counterattacks, display design, promotional activities, and terminal distribution.
- Personnel factors: Sales staff quality, work enthusiasm, work methods, and handling of manufacturer-dealer relationships.
- Methods of terminal sell-through: Brand influence, advertising communication, promotional guidance, and promotional activities.
II. Methods for Terminal Sell-Through
- Buyout of terminals—Leverage relationships
- Terminals bought out by competing brands
- Products cannot be displayed on tables
- Small initial orders, increase visit frequency
- Strengthen customer relationships, mainly with lobby managers and bar staff
- Develop hidden promotions, increase reward intensity
- Target group consumption within the store
- Find core consumers who bring their own beverages
- Exclusive promotions—Better use of resources
- Company-bought terminals
- Vivid and standardized displays
- Use of display racks and advertising materials
- Expand recommendations to guests
- Good, comprehensive customer relationships
- Promotional guidance
- Promotional activities
- Centralized, intensive consumer promotions
- Co-promotions—Who performs better
- Both our brand and competing brands have promotions
- Good, comprehensive customer relationships
- Better displays and promotional showcases
- More innovative and powerful promotional activities
- Arrange better promoters, guide them to expand activity scope
- Develop hidden promotion intensity among waitstaff
- Secure the best promotional private rooms
- Natural sales—Who is willing to do more
- No brand promotions
- Good, comprehensive customer relationships
- Vivid and standardized displays
- Use of display racks and advertising materials
- Implement table displays
- Develop hidden promotions
- Strengthen terminal trade promotions
III. Five Core Elements of Terminal Sell-Through
- Customer relationships: Combine scattered and centralized customer relations; combine interests and emotions; combine routine and differentiated approaches.
- Customer relationship goals: Waitstaff, lobby managers, restaurant owners, or consumers (regular customer programs)
- Customer relationship targets: Identify key customer relationship figures, use resource concentration principles for key figures.
- Customer relationship files: Establish files for waitstaff, lobby managers, restaurant owners, and regular customers. Include name, phone, address, position, role, entertainment preferences, gift preferences, special anniversaries, people and events they care about, recent challenges, and customer relationship public relations records.
- Customer relationship requirements: Require relevant personnel to establish friend-like cooperative relationships with customer relationship targets.
- Customer relationship classification: Salespeople mainly target waitstaff, lobby managers, warehouse staff, and finance; promoters mainly target waitstaff and consumers; sales supervisors or managers mainly target lobby managers.
- Customer relationship standards (resource allocation): For example, core hotels: 150 yuan/month per store; key hotels: 50 yuan/month.
- Customer relationship methods: Sales personnel or supervisors propose specific key figure public relations execution plans, approved by the manager before implementation.
- Scattered customer relations: Sales personnel or supervisors conduct single customer relationship public relations based on the restaurant's specific situation, following customer relationship standards. Generally, fill out a customer relationship public relations application form (target, number of people, entertainment or gift method, purpose, cost), implement after approval; in special cases, apply by phone, implement after approval, then fill out the form later. Customer relationship public relations costs must be applied for by the supervisor; phone applications must not exceed 30 yuan. If scattered customer relations cannot resolve issues, shift to centralized customer relations.
- Centralized customer relations: The company conducts a themed customer relationship public relations activity once a month, i.e., "XX Night," inviting key customer relationship targets by category and batch to interact with our business and promotions, using collective entertainment, dinners, receptions, etc., to intensively strengthen restaurant customer relationships and establish good cooperative relations. Each event cost is controlled within 2,000 yuan.
Vivid display: Is it more advantageous than competitors' vivid displays?
Terminal packaging
- Image packaging
- Material usage
- Personnel status
- Sales personnel allocation: Transfer strong maintenance salespeople to core hotels, each responsible for 5-6 stores.
- Promoter allocation: Transfer excellent promoters to core hotels; later consider transferring average promoters to core hotels and excellent promoters to key hotels.
- Management: Divide areas, posts, stores, and targets to individuals; implement pressure-based management; clarify work content, requirements, and frequency for core hotel sales personnel; establish hotel files, regular customer files, and key personnel files.
- Adaptability: Personnel adjustments must fully consider previous customer relationships accumulated by sales and promotions, and the operational characteristics and abilities of personnel.
- Allocation method: Determined by market analysis meetings at the supervisor level or above, and execution plans are established.
- Promotional activities for sell-through promotion a) Significance of promotions
- Broadly, promotions use advertising communication, public relations activities, sales promotions, personnel recommendations, sales rewards, etc., to promote sales.
- Narrowly, promotions are general sales promotions.
- Promotions build a communication bridge between products and consumers through special or a series of means or tools.
- Promotions are the dissemination and release of corporate or product information.
- The essence of promotions is to use the most suitable methods and the most economical investment to achieve maximum and sustained sales.
b) Forms of promotions
- Trade promotions
- Promotions by enterprises or manufacturers targeting distributors, sub-distributors, wholesalers, terminals, and other links in the product flow.
- Common forms include market support, material support, rebate policies, reward policies, marketing training, and marketing guidance.
- Consumer promotions
- Activities implemented by product sellers to stimulate consumer demand.
- Common forms include free gifts, cash discounts, consumption demonstrations, usage guidance, and after-sales service.
c) Forms of trade promotions
- Market support: Provide a certain percentage of investment support based on purchase volume for market development and consumer promotions.
- Material support: Provide a certain amount of promotional items and promotional materials to enhance product sales power and image.
- Reward policies: Provide different proportions of rewards (products, items, cash) based on sales volume to incentivize distributors to sell more.
- Marketing training and guidance: Improve distributors' work quality and enthusiasm, prompting them to achieve more sales and greater profits.
d) Problems and solutions in trade promotions
- Disadvantages of trade promotions
- Dependence
- Channel conflict and price chaos
- How to avoid trade promotion dependence
- Guide distributors to invest jointly
- Strengthen marketing guidance and training
- Implement moderate item or cash rewards
- How to control channel conflict and price chaos
- Strengthen market control
- Increase penalties
- Effectively guide market operations
- Use special packaging or labels
- Choose the right timing for trade promotions
e) Forms of consumer promotions
- Free gifts
- Promotional items, large consumer goods, buy-one-get-one, special items like flowers, souvenirs, collectibles
- Cash discounts
- Price reductions, scratch cards, points cards, prizes in bottles (e.g., US dollars inside)
- Consumption demonstrations
- Explain product usage, verify product reliability and safety
- After-sales service
- Usage effects, free accessories
f) Roles of consumer promotions
- Encourage trial consumption and product awareness
- Create taste dependence and habitual consumption
- Generate brand preference and brand loyalty
- Foster word-of-mouth and expand influence
- Cultivate leading consumers and build affinity
- Strengthen consumer attitudes and encourage repeat consumption
g) Timing and methods of consumer promotions
- Product introduction stage
- Timely promotions to increase consumer awareness
- Intensive promotions to reinforce consumer awareness
- Focused promotions to capture core consumer needs
- Product growth stage
- Combine point and surface promotions to create a sales atmosphere
- Rhythmic promotions to reduce investment
- Multiple promotions to create illusions and build momentum
- Product maturity stage
- Gradually cancel single-point promotions to form habitual consumption
- Strengthen communication surface to create brand effects
- Product decline stage
- Aggressive promotions to stabilize consumption
- Joint promotions to integrate resources and reduce costs
- Interactive promotions to pave the way for new product launches
Terminal sell-through is the key to whether a product can ultimately achieve market share. Of course, there are more ways to accelerate product flow at the terminal. The "five methods" listed above are just some of the more common ones. After launching a new product, manufacturers must comprehensively consider and apply these methods based on their own product and competitive environment. I hope these five methods help you achieve success in ground-level sell-through and ultimately win comprehensively!
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