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Many dealers have likely used their Moments to "recruit troops and hire horses," but the results are often unclear. Recently, I spoke with Li Bin, the operator of Hebei dealer Dunjie Supply Chain, about the challenge of recruiting. Their recruitment approach is worth learning from.
Dunjie publishes recruitment posts on its WeChat Official Account, includes the HR manager's personal WeChat ID, and requires all frontline sales staff to share the posts on their Moments. Additionally, each salesperson gives store owners a 10-yuan no-threshold shopping voucher to encourage them to share the post on their own Moments.
Li Bin told New Distribution, "Don't underestimate the Moments of small shop owners. They have at least 40-50 salespeople from nearby dealers or manufacturers in their WeChat contacts." Through these shares, interested dealer salespeople scan the QR code to add the HR manager. He recalls that the HR manager added nearly 200 local salespeople in one day through Moments sharing. "You can recruit whoever you want."
Recruiting via WeChat Official Accounts and Moments is just one example. Through the spread and sharing of WeChat Official Accounts and Moments, Dunjie has gradually established itself as the "most influential local small and medium supermarket supply chain company," attracting various resources.
This makes New Distribution think: WeChat Official Accounts, personal WeChat, Moments, and even WeChat Mini Programs should become standard equipment for every modern dealer.
01 23% of small shop orders occur at night
According to the latest research data from New Distribution, 23% of transactions on FMCG B2B platforms occur at night. Why? Besides the owner being relatively free, the key driving force is the platform's ground staff.
JD New通路's ground staff and Alibaba Retail通's city partners, besides visiting shops during the day, are also active at night, using personal WeChat, Moments, and WeChat groups to interact with shop owners. In contrast, dealer salespeople visit once a week. In a 7*24 hour period, they can only meet the shop owner once or twice, with each interaction lasting no more than 30 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted.
Any transaction must be built on awareness and relationships. In the past, building awareness and relationships relied on salespeople's gradual accumulation. Now, through WeChat Official Accounts, WeChat groups, and Moments, it's possible to achieve daily "visits" and accelerate customer relationship building. At the same time, using WeChat Official Accounts to build the dealer's own communication platform can gradually convert salespeople's personal relationships into the trading company's relationships.
Frankly, the value of building a communication platform goes far beyond this; customer relationships are just the appetizer:
1. Recruitment: Publish recruitment content on the Official Account, have all staff share and recommend, offer rewards; give shop owners vouchers to share, leveraging their networks to attract local salespeople.
2. Product Selection: Publish new product recruitment content, set targets for salespeople to have their shop owners share, leveraging shop owners to attract manufacturer salespeople.
3. Customer Relations: Share daily Official Account content to Moments and WeChat groups, using content as a conversation starter, keeping frontline staff in constant communication with shop owners, even without visits, ensuring online interaction so shop owners see "you" every day, increasing stickiness.
4. Resources: Manufacturer influence ≠ dealer influence. By consistently outputting content, dealers can establish a professional image, making shops remember the trading company name, not just the brand. Once the trading company gains visibility, it naturally gains influence, and more resources come your way.
5. Sales: The ultimate goal is to sell better, especially non-first-tier products and new items, using the trading company's reputation to drive new product sales. As the saying goes, dealers who only sell first-tier products are destined to be eliminated. To sell non-first-tier products more efficiently, you must build a local reputation as a well-known trading company.
02 Building an Independent Communication Platform for Dealers
How to do it specifically?
1. Register a WeChat Official Account for the trading company
Content types to publish:
- Trading company news and events
- Supermarket operation guides and tips
- Brand activities for distributed products
- Promotional policies and activities
Functions and application scenarios: A carrier for content accumulation.
- Establish a professional dealer image by publishing daily company events;
- Publish new product content, showcasing selling points and manufacturer strength;
- Support recruitment efforts;
- Provide additional operational knowledge to small shops, increasing stickiness;
- Pre-sell new products.
2. Transform salespeople's personal WeChat into work WeChat
The Official Account produces content, and the distribution channel is the salespeople's personal WeChat, sharing point-to-point with individuals or groups, and sharing to Moments. This ensures terminal shops receive the content promptly.
Note: Since many salespeople use personal WeChat with family, friends, and clients, it's recommended to use "grouping" or create a separate work WeChat to ensure it serves as a daily communication window.
Functions and application scenarios: Increase interaction frequency with shops and enhance customer relationships.
- Daily Moments posts, mainly product posters with selling point scripts;
- Special company events like new product signings, ordering meetings, promotional policies;
- Timed, targeted, and quantified voucher/red packet grabs.
3. Use WeChat Mini Programs
The purpose of WeChat Mini Programs is transactions and promotions. Dealers already using SaaS tools can have salespeople place orders via Mini Programs, push to shop owners for confirmation, and complete payment (reducing fraud like order splitting). Additionally, vouchers/red packets can be distributed via Mini Programs.
Note: If not using a SaaS system, Mini Programs are harder to implement and costly. It's recommended to first master the Official Account, WeChat, and WeChat groups before attempting.
Functions and application scenarios: Improve order transaction efficiency.
03 No one to execute? What to do?
Many dealers might be confused after reading this: "I'm from a sales background, how can I play with these things? No one inside knows how, and we can't hire outsiders." If you have this mindset, it's usually because the dealer doesn't value it enough or doesn't believe content can significantly improve their business. If you recognize its value, you'll find a way. Through exchanges with dealers, New Distribution has summarized some methods for reference.
Step 1: Imitate
Li Bin told New Distribution that Dunjie initially started its Official Account to expose employees to new things like "new retail, new distribution, and supply chain" knowledge, providing a learning space. Traditionally, this would be done through meetings, but the Official Account solves it well. So in the early days, Dunjie required "no innovation, just imitation." Now the account has shifted to providing content services for small shops.
Where does content come from initially? "Copy" or imitate. For example, extract suitable content (like shop operation guidance) from Alibaba Retail通, JD New通路, and other B2B platforms' accounts, and copy-paste; extract product selling points from brand manufacturers' websites.
For staffing, consider hiring college students or adding responsibilities to administrative or financial staff to handle the Official Account part-time.
Step 2: Explore
Once staff are familiar with basic operations, try exploring three directions:
1. Localization: Build local content, city-specific, extracting hot topics or major news.
2. Company-focused: Focus on company events, simply write about important news, meetings, new product signings, promotional activities, referencing other trading companies' accounts.
3. Shop-focused: Provide operational knowledge for shops, like "how to open a store, how to choose a location, how to display, how to save money," etc., relevant to the dealer's product categories.
Step 3: Standardize
Set standards for the communication platform: First, standardize Official Account content (not detailed here); second, standardize the Moments sharing mechanism. Set daily content, timing, frequency standards for salespeople, and even implement assessment in the early stages, shifting from a pure sales mindset to an operational mindset.
Final Thoughts
New Distribution has always advocated for dealer transformation. Besides business model transformation, we suggest shifting from a sales mindset to an operational mindset. Ultimately, dealer transformation means building an independent operating system, changing from relying on products, brands, and manufacturers to establishing a complete marketing system, avoiding market risks from manufacturers and brands, and achieving independent development.
From a sales perspective, single-dimensional face-to-face visits only lead to low-level, low-efficiency relationship building. With continuous content output, you can achieve repeat purchases and high-level, high-efficiency relationship warming. Moreover, this form is centered on the trading company, not a specific brand or individual salesperson.
When terminal customers have more diverse ordering channels, trading companies must focus on customer retention and repeat purchases. The value of content and social interaction will become increasingly important!
New Distribution will hold the 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference during the Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Fair from March 16-18. This conference will focus on the theme "Breakthrough" , with in-depth discussions among brand manufacturers, supply chain service providers, dealers, and retailers.
Compared to previous conferences, this summit will be fully upgraded. In addition to original topics like channel innovation, city distribution logistics, and dealer transformation , we've added parallel forums on new marketing cases, IP + FMCG empowerment, community group buying, and innovative retail . Through three days and ten high-density, high-quality expert sharing sessions, we believe every brand manufacturer and dealer can learn the latest business models, expert insights, and practical methods, finding new tools and approaches for their 2019 breakthrough and returning to high-speed growth.
Review of Previous Conferences
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