1First Time as Supervisor, Small Test, Impressive Results In June 2014, the company insisted that I develop the catering channel for herbal tea. After a month of being a scapegoat, I chose to resign. By September, because the B county in A city was performing poorly, the factory cut off the distributor and replaced them with a dealer; now the dealer's brother went over to become the dealer. Several supervisors had been changed, and after four months, sales were still stagnant, and the market showed no improvement. I had some prior contact with this guy, and he seemed decent. He found me, and since I wasn't doing anything, I went over to help. In the first month, I followed the sales routes every day. In the urban areas, I observed store product assortments, negotiation styles, and store attitudes... to judge customer quality and compile statistics. In rural areas, I focused on understanding key accounts and estimating market capacity for various products, but I never participated in closing deals! In the first month, I "did nothing" and didn't report any "battle results." The boss only saw me staying up late, organizing a pile of notes! He didn't ask me anything and paid me 3,000 yuan in wages, which was probably his way of expecting me to create another miracle. After receiving the salary, I had to deliver results. The next day, I discussed with the boss and reported my analysis. Step one: Establish a foothold. Develop channels + generate sales. Step two: Focus on a specific product as the core product for the coming year, concentrate all human, material, and financial resources to build this product into a profit and volume product, gain market initiative, and truly establish a presence. The specific analysis was as follows: Entering winter, there are many banquets, making peanut milk the peak season, with a surprisingly large market capacity. We abandoned the traditional winter gift box competition and focused on the banquet product, large peanut milk. Specific actions: Adjust policies, significantly adjust the policy for key accounts ordering 100 cases, with the post-policy price at 43.85, 5 yuan lower than the main competitor and 1 yuan lower than parallel imports. Use this product to target key accounts in wholesale and banquets to open channels. Don't worry about the rest; expand after opening channels. The goal for one month: close deals with 80% of key accounts, out of 38 key accounts, aiming for 30, totaling 3,600 cases, striving to achieve 150,000 in sales for this single product. Once wholesale and banquet channels are open, it lays the foundation for the Tetra Pak Spring Festival gift boxes; also, the factory will give more support and approve more channel expenses. The dealer followed my deployment. The salespeople focused, with 80% of their energy on cracking key accounts with low prices, and it went smoothly. This product sold nearly 4,000 cases, and other product shipments also steadily increased. The dealer's anxiety finally settled! Although they didn't make much money, it was better than losing money. With channels and sales up, there were many opportunities for vertical expansion later! Overall, sales increased by 120,000. Not bad, but suddenly the per capita sales of large peanut milk jumped to first place in the region. The boss still made a gross profit of 5 yuan per case. The third month was December, and this month was mainly for ordering conferences. The factory, under the guise of commendation, approved an additional 10% in channel expenses! We went big, directly setting the policy for 500 cases at 41. The ordering conference, combined with Tetra Pak, achieved 600,000 in sales. That was six times the sales of the same period. The main competitor's sales for this product plummeted by two-thirds in the same period, and by April of the following year, they were loading trains to sell in other regions. This established the foundation of trust in me, allowing me to do more seemingly rule-breaking things! 2Going Against the Grain, Combination Punch to Blow Up Red Bull Theoretically, winter is the peak season for gift items. After opening channels, we should have deepened terminal work. But I didn't. After three months of testing, I had fully gained the dealer's trust and secured more market expenses. I then switched to the next product. Among our products, I chose Product L as the dealer's long-term development product. This product had good sell-through and high profit, with a margin of over 10 yuan per case. According to the plan, we decided to abandon the deep terminal work on gift boxes and instead focus on Product L, concentrating 90% of human, material, and financial resources on it. Step one: Extensive displays and promotional materials. Display method one: Cut cases, three cases per group, for one month, with the fee being one case of this product. The position must be right next to the cigarette counter. Display method two: Place 10 or more facings on the cigarette counter, with a purchase of three cases. Display method three: Position right next to Red Bull's display. If you achieve five facings, purchase three cases. This month, directly give one case as a fee. Actually, even if the factory didn't approve the fee, the dealer wouldn't lose money! Two teams did van sales, each team had to visit at least 30 stores per day, earning 10 yuan per store completed, split equally between the two members, with a deduction of 15 yuan for each store missed. Sticking one OPP was 0.5 yuan, and wrapping a cooler was 10 yuan. Posting a poster in a terminal had a reward capped at 10 yuan, settled every night. The team members were busy and happy, voluntarily working overtime at night to cut cases and load goods, and arriving at the company before 7 a.m. because the rural routes were far. The results were good: in 20 days, we set up over 900 displays, with shipments reaching nearly 4,000 cases. Of course, the dealer didn't make money; the expenses were advanced by them. After three months, they could approve over 10,000 yuan, which wasn't even enough for bonuses. After 20 days of van sales, we entered the follow-up phase. Good, 10 days of follow-up visits added over 1,100 cases. With these 1,100 cases alone, the dealer could earn over 15,000! Overall, the dealer broke even this month. But they saw the huge potential market for this product and were overjoyed! This month's sales were average, at 250,000. But the difference was that this single product accounted for nearly 200,000. Step two: Reverse the boxes. (This trick was recently played by Nongfu, and Red Bull followed, but not well!) February began, the coldest time of the year here, but temperatures were generally between 3°C and 15°C! What other tricks did I have? This month, we didn't do displays; we switched to a more powerful move: box reversal. What is box reversal? It was designed based on the high profit of this product. The idea was to claim that the factory, for promotional purposes, was buying back the boxes at a certain price on the spot, and only for this batch. Red Bull also did this, but not thoroughly, not aggressively enough, and their product was in plastic wrap, so after box recovery, the product could be stacked, which was weak in comparison! My plan was: the opening price was 58 yuan per case, and the box was collected on the spot for 10 yuan each! Team members got a 4 yuan reward per case. The previous month's promotional displays were well done, and there was sell-through. The average sales were about two cases per store. Remember, this was during the off-season for medium-sized bottled beverages. This trick was incredibly effective! With this price, stores could earn nearly 2 yuan per bottle. Most importantly, by removing the boxes, stores got loose products, and our salespeople filled all the empty spaces on shelves and coolers with our products. Any place that could hold a product was occupied by ours, an effect you couldn't achieve with any amount of spending! Some high-selling stores used snake bags, boxes, basins, buckets, and even placed over ten cases on the cigarette counter after opening them. The scene could only be described as shocking! In 20 days of box reversal, we reversed over 6,000 cases. The dealer made a small profit of over 30,000! We took various beautiful photos and submitted them as reimbursement materials, getting over 10,000 approved! This was the first profitable month since the dealer took over the market! This trick was particularly ruthless: it quietly occupied a large amount of shelf space, created atmosphere, boosted sales, and stores received unpackaged products. Driven by high profits, they proactively placed the product in the most sellable positions, leading to a massive surge. When salespeople followed up after 20 days, the earliest reversed boxes had sold out, and in 10 days, they replenished over 2,000 cases. Remember, the gross profit on those 2,000 cases was over 20,000! In March, the weather started to warm up. What other tricks did I have? At this point, I didn't need to come up with tricks because March was the traditional ordering conference! The salespeople did extensive promotional work, and as long as stores weren't out of stock, they dragged them to the ordering conference. Of course, many places were still out of stock, and in 15 days, we replenished about 1,000 cases. At the ordering conference, I played a big move: minimum order of 50 cases. The huge price difference forced terminals to stock up. Once stocked, they had to find the best places to display, increase facings, and find ways to sell. This ordering conference had some mistakes; many small stores didn't dare to order 50 cases. But we still sold over 20,000 cases. For this single product, the dealer earned over 160,000. The total ordering conference amount was 960,000, more than seven times the same period. The most obvious result was that Red Bull's sales plummeted by more than half. The distribution channel dropped by three-quarters, and the same-period ordering conference fell from over 6,000 cases to just over 3,000! I was proud to see the ground covered with golden bottles! 3Win the Cooler, Win the World: The Art of Deception to Dominate the Best-Selling Position – The Cooler Would pressing so much stock into the market cause problems? There were potential issues. First, if stores couldn't sell through, there could be many aftereffects; Second, salespeople couldn't use this product to boost performance in the short term! Could this product be pushed further? In summer, the cooler is the best selling position; whoever controls the cooler is the boss. According to market research, coolers generally have no more than three facings, and there's still room for maneuver! Should we spend display fees to grab coolers? Not this time. The dealer's warehouse had over 3,000 cases of water, which came with each factory shipment, and the dealer found them a headache. Okay, let's use the water to play. Since the dealer had made money, 3,000 cases of water were only worth over 30,000 yuan. I said we'd play it my way, but we had to make it interesting. Use this water as a fee to sign coolers? No, regular displays are passive; many stores, if you leave, the cooler will be someone else's the next day. Only when stores do it voluntarily does it truly matter. But that's easier said than done! Not easy doesn't mean impossible. With the same fee, change the approach and the thinking, and it might be completely different, like the box reversal. If you offered that small price difference as a display fee, people wouldn't be interested! They focus on immediate benefits, just like FMCG products are impulsive. They don't care about a monthly display fee but are thrilled to grab a few products two or three yuan cheaper on e-commerce platforms, right? The box reversal played on this psychology too. With a mix of reality and deception, we made the water sacrifice worthwhile. The salespeople first notified stores half a month in advance that the factory would be inspecting, and in other places, if there was one bottle of M beverage in the cooler, they'd give a bottle of water. But the specific time was uncertain. Of course, most stores didn't care. We hired someone to pose as a factory market supervisor, conducting a surprise inspection, checking how many M products were in the coolers, and giving one bottle of water per bottle on the spot. The first batch gave out over 300 cases of water. We inspected over 800 terminal coolers, with an average of about 10 bottles per cooler, about 1.5 facings. When salespeople followed up, many stores regretted not listening to them! The salespeople casually said, "This manager is strange; he might come back in a few days." After 20 days, he came back. Stores had increased their stock, but not much, and they regretted it again. This time, the effect was better, with over 400 cases. Because stores didn't believe there would be a second time, the increase was just a conditioned response from the previous stimulus when they stocked up. But that wasn't my ultimate goal. When salespeople followed up, they said, "This manager is strange; no one knows when he'll come or who he'll send. I think he's targeting this area. I'll help you display more, especially in the front; one bottle here is worth two. Our product is small, so it won't block the ones behind!" But stores generally didn't allow products to be placed in front of others! This time, we increased facings a bit more. After two services, more than half of the first layer of the cooler was our product. Then the so-called manager came down hard. He didn't bring van sales; he just took photos, counted, registered, and the dealer delivered. He promised that if someone came to check the cooler next time and the first layer was full, they'd give an extra case of water. When the salesperson came to organize next time, after some conversation, they not only filled the first layer but also replaced the front facings of other layers with this product. Another person came to check, and the obedient stores made a killing! Later, he came twice more. Over three months, there were five surprise inspections. We gave away over 4,000 cases of water. After that, without salespeople having to arrange it, stores voluntarily filled a whole layer of the cooler with our product and placed it in front of other tall bottles! With this arrangement, the entire cooler looked like it was full of our product from two layers up. The salespeople just negotiated restocking, did vertical expansion, and promotional work. The sell-through was terrifying; in two months, the stock pressed during the ordering conference was basically sold out. On the streets, if you saw someone holding a bottle of beverage, it was mostly Product L! With less than 50,000 yuan worth of water, we not only sold through in two months what was expected to take four months, but also stimulated stores to proactively sell our product, making it a super bestseller surpassing mineral water! In every store, you could see dozens of cases stacked, with a hint of Guangzhou C'estbon! Display fees? Just a different approach. But since we'd cultivated the habit, using water to raid coolers wasn't a long-term solution. In the end, we signed coolers: one case of tea per month for a layer of the cooler, and the company checked that the cooler had water normally. If you tried to give a store one case of tea to use a layer of the cooler for your single product, forget it! Later, we developed channels related to cars: car washes, repair shops, private gas stations, parking lots. It was fun! For repair shops, we aimed to cultivate their consumption habits. We'd negotiate, then send three cases of product for display, with one case per month, no upfront payment, and they'd pay after selling. Then we'd do promotional work at the repair shops. We never intended to collect the money. Because a few small shops near repair shops had strong sales; the mechanics would drink two or three bottles a day each. We did good promotional work and product image at the small shops around repair shops. Many might think this was crazy; would the dealer agree? If you're the boss, with a profit of over 10 yuan per case and overall profitability, as long as there's market to expand, wouldn't you be willing to spend a little? For 4S stores, we directly sponsored M product activities, with various promotional materials and a large display of 50 cases. For every car sold, we gave one case to the customer, and we also gave five cases per month to the company, covering all 4S stores. 4S stores don't generate much sales; they don't rely on this for profit, and low fees aren't attractive, but it's crucial for brand building! Once sales rise, you must build the brand, otherwise it's dangerous. In this closed small county, it was entirely possible to create a paradise. Because information was isolated and the population wasn't very mobile. In the three months after the ordering conference, sell-through accelerated day by day, but my salary didn't increase; it decreased. With the market in this state, the expense-to-sales ratio was so low that we couldn't spend all the fees. With enough fees, anyone could play and play beautifully. In this small place, there was only so much vision; at best, they saw you as an employee, not a second boss. I didn't care about running a small business in that mountain ditch! With success, I retired, as is the way of heaven! At the group company, I had no customers; for two months, sales were zero! Then those critics started attacking me, and the manager held me accountable. So I directly opened a distributor and shipped 150,000 worth of goods from the factory. Then I sparred with those critics: during lunch, I sent a few red packets, saying, "Congratulations everyone, we finally opened yesterday, with an order of 150,000. I enjoyed the feeling of being the company's sales champion; it was great! Those critics, the one who taught me 'salespeople are judged by performance,' you can see it in the daily tables. In the past two months, haven't my two buddies been in the top three in the region? Isn't our per capita shipment the highest in the region? Do you know what comprehensive data analysis is? One person can't earn all the money; you have to take care of the brothers! And you dare to show off your seniority? With your sesame-sized performance, I could do it in a week!" The dealer's vision was limited, and the company side wasn't progressing either. So I resigned at the end of June. Looking back, I was too young and naive! A region with a monthly sales of just over a million is nothing; even without a capable person like me, at most, they'd lose two to three million in annual sales. What's the big deal? That sales volume can't compare to authority and stability. The previous supervisor had also told me about retiring after success. When the company promoted him to regional manager, the big boss tried hard to keep him, even promising shares. Now that the market is doing well, the commission dropped from 1% to 0.5%. What about the shares promised years ago? Haha, we all tacitly agreed not to mention it. The dealer's vision is small; if there's an opportunity, you should develop toward the factory side. I'm so young; of course, I wouldn't wait for the boss... Being wise, we can still be friends later. The market was mature, so I resigned! Where should I go next? Can I create brilliance again? In early July, this platform will organize the third B-end e-commerce inspection class, visiting B-end e-commerce platforms that are useful for dealer transformation. Interested friends can long-press the QR code below to register. Organization Format 1. Company visit 2. Actual market case visit 3. On-site explanation 4. One-on-one communication Each registered friend only needs to pay a 200 yuan organization fee. Interested dealer friends can long-press the QR code below to register. 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