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Almost every food distributor starts with mobile sales in the early days of entrepreneurship. In a sense, mobile sales is the simplest and most practical sales model: salespeople visit customers with loaded vehicles, sell and collect payments on the spot, and complete tasks such as advertising material posting, product display, and customer complaint handling. This makes management relatively easy for distributors. However, as labor, fuel, and vehicle costs continue to rise, and competition among homogeneous products intensifies, higher demands are placed on distributors' terminal operations. Many distributors complain that mobile sales costs are too high and efficiency is low, leading to thin profits or even losses. But tracing back to the root, it is often due to overly loose management during mobile sales, or that the current business situation is no longer suitable for the mobile sales model. So, how should distributors adjust and improve their sales models to maximize profitability?
Profit or Loss? First Calculate the Cost
Does mobile sales actually make money? Distributors must first learn to calculate costs. Suppose the average gross margin of the products a distributor operates is 15 points. With a monthly sales volume of 100,000 yuan, the gross profit would be 15,000 yuan. But this is without accounting for expenses and costs, so it can be called "pre-sale gross profit." Now, the basic configuration for mobile sales is one vehicle with two people (salesperson and driver), plus warehouse and logistics support personnel costs and other overheads, such as monthly taxes and entertainment expenses. These all fall under "fixed costs." The distributor's final profit is the "pre-sale gross profit" minus "fixed costs."
Calculating pre-sale gross profit is not complicated; the key is calculating fixed costs. Just for the "one vehicle, two people" of mobile sales, the combined wages and commissions for the driver and salesperson are no less than 150 yuan per day, and fuel and vehicle wear are about 150 yuan per day. That means a distributor's daily cost per vehicle is at least 300 yuan. From this, we can roughly estimate the break-even point: with a 15% gross margin, a vehicle's daily sales reaching 2,000 yuan basically covers costs; above 3,000 yuan yields a small profit; and reaching 5,000 yuan creates good returns.
So, mobile sales is not necessarily unprofitable; the key is sales volume. Distributors need to calculate the break-even point per vehicle based on product sales and gross profit, and use this as the minimum sales task indicator for sales personnel. If a salesperson cannot even complete the minimum task, it means not only no profit but also a loss. At this point, the distributor needs to analyze the reasons at the sales level and find ways to increase sales.
The "Troubles" Behind Mobile Sales
Currently, mobile sales remains the primary sales model for most circulation food distributors, but this does not mean it is suitable for every stage or every product. In reality, distributors often encounter various "troubles" during mobile sales, which significantly increase costs.
Mobile sales has two main limitations: one is time—goods must be sold the same day, loading and unloading take time, and unsold goods must be brought back; the other is space—terminal customers may be far or near, and "wasted trips" cause transportation inefficiency. This limitation is especially pronounced for distributors with many product items, because they don't know what customers have or lack, leading to inaccurate loading forecasts for each item. Even a few scattered small customers may require another trip the next day. Additionally, factors like weather, road conditions, prices, salesperson negotiation skills, and customer size make it difficult to accurately predict daily sales. If the load is too small, returning for replenishment is impractical; if too large, there is a risk of returns, causing waste of labor and materials.
Of course, mobile sales also has obvious advantages. First, it helps increase the closing rate. Customers can see the physical product, unload on the spot, settle payment, and complete the transaction, which also helps distributors with cash flow. Especially during peak seasons, transactions at C and D class terminal outlets are highly random, and the salesperson's negotiation role can be leveraged to push for on-the-spot closing, adding to overall sales. Second, it facilitates terminal customer management. Ordering, delivery, visual merchandising, and customer complaint handling are all handled by the designated salesperson, and customers know exactly who handles their transactions, often resolving issues on the spot (such as returns or exchanges). This greatly reduces the possibility of employee disputes and buck-passing.
Overall, the mobile sales model is more suitable for products with fast turnover or those where separate delivery costs are too high, so as to fully leverage its advantages and achieve a reasonable input-output efficiency. Additionally, during product introduction or market building stages, even if losses are expected, mobile sales should still be used to ensure a high distribution rate. But in the long run, the cost pressure of mobile sales will still become a burden for distributors.
When the Scale Grows, Consider Introducing a Pre-sale Model
Using mobile sales during the initial promotion of a product is necessary, but for mature products with stable sales, the significance of mobile sales diminishes. Therefore, distributors need to flexibly adjust and transform their sales models based on the product's market stage, and introducing a pre-sale mechanism at the right time might be a better choice.
So-called pre-sale, simply put, is a sales model where orders are taken first and delivery is made later. That is, salespeople visit terminal customers on a fixed route periodically, collect orders, and then the delivery department handles the delivery. Compared to mobile sales, pre-sale emphasizes division of labor and efficiency: salespeople work alone, focusing on order taking, visual merchandising, and complaint handling, while the delivery department can arrange loading quantities for different items based on orders, improving vehicle utilization and making delivery faster than mobile sales. However, introducing a pre-sale model has prerequisites, the most important being a certain sales scale.
For example, when operating a new beverage product, if monthly sales reach 3,000 cases with a gross profit of 5 yuan per case, the total profit is 15,000 yuan, basically overcoming the early loss stage. At this point, mobile sales is still necessary because with 600 effective terminals, the average monthly sales per store is only 5 cases, so 24-hour delivery must be ensured to avoid stockouts. Later, as the sales momentum opens up, the product may experience leapfrog growth, possibly exceeding 10,000 cases in a short time. At that point, daily sales can reach over 300 cases. With this sales base, delivery timeliness becomes less critical, and distributors can try to push some inventory to terminals, ensuring store stock can support a week, while integrating delivery routes and steadily transitioning from mobile sales to a pre-sale model. For example, within a 40-kilometer radius with 6 townships, one salesperson takes orders, visiting two townships a day, and after three days, a large truck delivers uniformly. This not only improves efficiency but also greatly reduces costs, ensuring distributor profits.
After Pre-sale, Pursue Maximum Efficiency
The pre-sale model not only has certain restrictions on the distributor's sales scale but also imposes higher management requirements. First, it requires increased investment in personnel and vehicles. With the traditional mobile sales model, a distributor only needs one salesperson and one driver per vehicle, and sometimes can even save labor costs by having the salesperson double as the driver. The pre-sale model requires separation of the sales and delivery departments: not only does the salesperson need a separate vehicle to visit terminals, but the delivery process also requires two people—a driver and a delivery worker. This is one of the main reasons some distributors are unwilling to introduce the pre-sale model.
But distributors must understand one point: high investment also means high output. From the perspective of per-vehicle efficiency, mobile sales typically uses small or medium trucks, with a load capacity of about 200 cases per vehicle. If each case yields a profit of 5 yuan, the daily benefit is 1,000 yuan. Pre-sale can use large box trucks with a load capacity of at least 1,000 cases, so the daily benefit is 5,000 yuan. From a cost perspective, under the pre-sale model, the driver and delivery worker each earn 100 yuan per day, and with vehicle wear and fuel, the total does not exceed 400 yuan. This is not much higher than mobile sales costs, but the output is five times greater.
Additionally, distributors can optimize the ratio of vehicles to personnel. For example, a distributor with annual sales exceeding 10 million yuan might have a delivery department with 3 vehicles, 3 drivers, and 3 delivery workers. Even during peak season, such a "high configuration" is unnecessary. If the distributor plans and manages well, only 2 vehicles, 2 drivers, and 1 delivery worker are needed. One vehicle delivers daily, and the other serves as a backup. When the volume increases, the backup vehicle is activated, and salespeople can serve as flexible personnel, temporarily acting as drivers or delivery workers without affecting normal delivery. Additionally, after entering the off-season, distributors should avoid idle personnel and can organize warehouse sorting and inventory counting to make the best use of everyone.
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