---
title: "Four Keys to Building Strong Terminal Customer Relations"
description: "Terminals are where products are sold, connecting products with consumers and serving as the most crucial link in product distribution. Controlling terminals is key to market success, and strong customer relations at these points are even more important than merely securing them. This article outlines four essential methods: regular visits, events and networking, terminal support, and profit assurance."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2015-06-03"
language: "en"
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---

# Four Keys to Building Strong Terminal Customer Relations

> Terminals are where products are sold, connecting products with consumers and serving as the most crucial link in product distribution. Controlling terminals is key to market success, and strong customer relations at these points are even more important than merely securing them. This article outlines four essential methods: regular visits, events and networking, terminal support, and profit assurance.

Terminals are the venues for product sales, the link between products and consumers, and the most important link in product circulation. Whoever controls the terminals controls the market; seizing terminals has become a key to marketing success. In competition, whoever controls the terminal market is the winner; losing terminals means losing the frontline of the market.

1. Good Customer Relations Can Create Greater Sales
Terminals need to be secured, but customer relations also need to be strong. To a certain extent, terminal customer relations are even more important than competing for terminals.

First, without good terminal customer relations, various terminal tasks will be difficult to carry out smoothly;
Second, without good terminal customer relations, some terminal investments may not yield their intended results, while good relations can maximize the benefits of such investments;
Third, terminal customer relations themselves have direct promotional power at the point of sale.

Maintaining good customer relations with terminals will bring you the following benefits:
- Terminals are willing to recommend your products to customers and actively sell your company's new products and new packaging.
- Terminals are willing to give your products better display positions and proactively do tidying and maintenance.
- Terminals are willing to let you post POP advertisements and prevent others from damaging or covering them.
- Terminals are willing to cooperate with your in-store promoters and store promotions.
- Terminals are willing to accept your sales suggestions and think about ways to sell your products.
- Terminals are willing to pay on time and actively replenish stock to prevent shortages or sellouts.
- Terminals are willing to share market information and trends with you, especially about competitors.
- Terminals are willing to proactively handle customer complaints about your products.
- Emotional relationships can compensate for shortcomings in benefits and make it easier for them to forgive your occasional oversights and mistakes.

2. Common Methods for Terminal Customer Relations
1) Terminal Visits
Terminal customer relations are built through visits; regular visits are the basic method for maintaining good relations. Good terminal customer relations always belong to diligent terminal salespeople.

You should know that terminal customers do not decide whether to help you based on your position, but on how familiar they are with you.

Some regional managers or sales directors, when checking terminal work at the frontline, may personally do displays but are stopped or even scolded by store owners or staff because they are not familiar with them. Such incidents are not uncommon, and these tasks are easily handled by a junior salesperson.

Therefore, to maintain good terminal customer relations, it is essential to do daily visits to retail terminals. During visits, terminal salespeople should gather personal information about key personnel at terminal stores, such as family situations, personalities, hobbies, and birthdays, and establish detailed customer profiles and files. They should give small gifts on holidays or irregularly, send gifts and greetings on birthdays, and help customers solve non-work-related problems when possible. This transforms business relationships into personal friendships, building feelings of friendship.

Terminal customer relations are built through visits, but not overnight. The key is to conduct terminal visits unwaveringly and continuously. Terminal visits are a marathon without an end, a long-term, ongoing task that can never be relaxed.

How can we ensure unwaveringly and continuously cycling terminal visits? Enterprises must establish a "store visit system" to manage and operate through the system.

Common steps for establishing a "store visit system":
- Establish detailed terminal files, including terminal name, address, business area, staff names, birthdays, and shifts.
- Divide the market into several districts and assign corresponding terminal salespeople to each district.
- Classify retail terminals into A, B, and C categories.
- Reasonably determine visit cycles and frequencies based on terminal category.
- Draw a terminal distribution map.
- Develop terminal visit route maps.
- Also formulate a "visit process" specifying what tasks to do at each terminal, how to do them, and what standards to meet.

2) Events and Networking
Events are an excellent way to build terminal customer relations. They provide a platform for communication and exchange between enterprises and terminals, increasing mutual contact and narrowing the distance.

Enterprises can adopt flexible and diverse methods, regularly holding various events such as symposiums, networking meetings, terminal celebration parties, tourism activities, brewery visits, learning lectures, ordering meetings, and new product launches. These events can also include introductions to enterprise and product knowledge. Through these activities, they can strengthen relationships, deepen understanding, and promote the enterprise and its products.

3) Terminal Support
Building terminal customer relations cannot rely solely on material incentives or small emotional investments. To establish stable and lasting terminal customer relations, enterprises need to provide systematic support and good terminal services.

Helping terminals is helping the enterprise itself. Providing systematic support and services to terminals not only enhances terminal customer relations and cooperation but also effectively obtains promotional space and display resources, thereby promoting product sales and improving sales performance.

Terminal support mainly includes the following:

First, provide sales support to retail terminals.
As an enterprise, actively helping terminals improve sales performance is a duty. Sales support to retail terminals mainly includes:
- Provide advertising support to terminals.
- Provide sales aids such as product displays, in-store advertising, and point-of-sale promotions.
- Personnel support: dispatch promoters for in-store promotion.
- Provide sales tools and equipment assistance, such as free shelves, freezers, and store signs.
- Deliver goods to the door, ensure supply, keep track of terminal inventory, and replenish promptly.
- Assist terminals in putting products on shelves and do tidying and maintenance.
- Handle returns and exchanges promptly, adjusting slow-moving inventory.
- Provide after-sales service, handling customer complaints and feedback promptly and proactively.
- Communicate frequently with terminals to solve difficulties and problems they encounter in sales.

Second, provide business guidance to retail terminals.
In addition to sales support, enterprises should also provide guidance and coaching related to business operations, offering reasonable suggestions for problems in terminal operations, helping terminals solve operational difficulties, and thereby enhancing their sales power and competitiveness, and improving overall business levels. For example, provide guidance on store decoration, product display, reasonable inventory, sales increase, cost saving, profit enhancement, advertising planning, and promotions. Give a plum and return a peach; when terminals benefit from enterprise guidance, enterprises can benefit more from terminals.

Enterprises have two different ways of thinking about how to conduct terminal customer relations, and different ways of thinking produce completely different results.

Method 1: How can I solve my enterprise's problems through terminal customer relations?
Most enterprises, when conducting terminal customer relations, usually think:
A. What problems do I need to solve?
B. How can I solve my enterprise's problems through good terminal customer relations?
This is a one-way way of thinking, from the enterprise's perspective. Of course, public relations plans designed this way can also achieve good results. However, merely starting from solving the enterprise's own problems to design terminal customer relations plans is always passive and not the highest level of terminal customer relations.

Method 2: How can I solve my enterprise's problems by solving terminal problems?
Enterprises have their problems, and terminals have theirs. If we can break through conventional thinking and consider whether we can solve our enterprise's problems by solving terminal problems, and whether we can embed solving enterprise problems within solving terminal problems, this is a reverse way of thinking, from the terminal's perspective.

This way of thinking is:
A. For terminals, what problems and difficulties do they encounter in operations? Or what problems have not been well solved?
B. If we mobilize our enterprise's resources and integrate the terminal's own resources, can we solve some of the terminal's problems and difficulties?
C. What are my enterprise's problems? Can solving terminal problems also solve my enterprise's problems?

In this way, enterprises and merchants integrate each other's resources for their own use, obtaining resources they lack from each other, thereby solving their respective problems in a more economical way.

A certain brewery, when entering each restaurant, provides the operator with a complete marketing promotion plan, offering targeted operational methods and ideas, and providing relevant guidance and support, including:
- Guidance and support related to business management.
- Guidance and support related to sales activities.
- Guidance and support related to advertising and public relations.
- Guidance on restaurant decoration and in-store display design.
- Formulating and promoting plans related to promotional activities.

4) Profit Assurance
Customer relations can compensate for deficiencies in benefit relationships, but they cannot replace them. Customer relations without profit assurance are not solid and cannot last.

To make customer relations solid and lasting, both profit assurance and emotional communication are indispensable, but profit assurance always comes first, and emotional communication second. Ultimately, the fit point between enterprises and terminals is profit; profit is the hard truth.

Enterprises must meet terminals' requirements for profit, ensuring reasonable and continuous profits. They should scientifically set pricing policies to ensure reasonable unit profits for terminals; promote product sales and increase volume to make products sell well, ensuring total profit for terminals; and manage the price system to ensure sustained profits for terminals.

Additionally, enterprises can find new profit growth points for terminals through various means.

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