In the mobile internet era, the use of instant messaging tools in sales ensures faster task completion, and the casual nature of WeChat reduces people's resistance to work, fundamentally changing the way people interact. Salespeople conducting terminal visits emphasize the eight-step visit process and customer relationship building as basic skills. Eight Steps of Visit: 1. Preparation, 2. Polite greeting, 3. Store inspection, 4. Display improvement, 5. Product promotion, 6. Purchase promotion, 7. Review and summary, 8. Recording and reporting. Four Stages of Customer Relationships: 1. No conversation, 2. Only formal talk, 3. Normal communication, 4. Open conversation. 01 Online and Offline Customer Relationships When a salesperson enters a new store, they may face the awkward situation of having nothing to say to the store owner. It is necessary to break the ice through scripts and techniques to build customer relationships. Offline Customer Relationships: These are built on traditional deep distribution and terminal visits. Through frequent contact with store owners, organizing scripts, behavioral engagement, and the impact of terminal operations, a foundation of rapport is established. It accumulates like savings. Online Customer Relationships: First, identify key people and add the store owner, owner's wife, and staff on WeChat. However, you may find that just adding them is not enough; you still face the dilemma of having nothing to say. This will inevitably affect your offline customer relationships. Use techniques to advance, perhaps starting with "likes" to break the ice and find common ground. Second, for some store owners, if you interact frequently online, offline communication becomes very smooth. Of course, I don't mean to force interaction with all terminal store owners or engage in awkward small talk, but you must understand the logic: not only build offline relationships but also establish online ones. Online customer relationships can help you advance, improve, and solidify your offline relationships. Of course, can you sell without customer relationships? Yes, but the probability is low. You'll notice that during store visits, some go smoothly, while others are difficult. Why difficult? Because there's no customer relationship. 02 Fighting for Terminal Count and Sell-Through Rate In the traditional deep distribution environment, sales volume = terminal count * sell-through rate * product variety. Without basic distribution coverage, achieving sales is difficult; even with coverage, without sell-through, sales won't be good; once terminal count and sell-through rate are solved, you need to address product variety, including increases/decreases and accurate selection and upgrades. 03 How to Solve Sell-Through In an era of material scarcity, store owners recommending our products and optimizing display positions and visual merchandising could push competitors out of the market; simple tactics worked repeatedly. Now, in an era of material abundance, the basics still exist, and we need to do even better with displays, shelf space, and visual merchandising, but these alone are not enough. We must execute at a higher level on this foundation. 04 Initiating New Communication If old communication was advertising on traditional media like TV and newspapers, then new communication is targeted communication based on sales channels. Let's simulate a sales scenario: this is a terminal store selling our products. You'll notice that store owners have a characteristic: they have a lot of free time. We can find ways to use their free time to help us with online communication. Based on your identification of terminal store owners and the advancement of customer relationships, organize your channels and distributors, and select terminals willing to help spread the word. Of course, you can also choose to spend money, but problems that can be solved with money are never real problems. Form a communication matrix with cross-coverage. How do we solve this? First, design content for communication. Use content to attract people. Second, participation must be high. Terminal stores also need to do communication. Salespeople should do the same. With aligned goals, it's like a joint IP. For example, organize multiple terminal stores to hold an interesting event. Typically, a field salesperson covers 300 stores and visits them once a week, which is tiring. Online visits twice a day are easy because you're connected to store owners online. But online visits are just a bonus; they can't replace offline activities. With the same 300 stores, we can select 30 to form a communication matrix, tap into store owners' social circles, and do joint communication. Of course, we don't encourage building communities early on because not everyone is naturally strong in organization and management, and you may face the awkward situation of a "dead group" with nothing to say. A good salesperson in the past needed to be bold and articulate. Now they must also learn a second skill: daring to connect and being good at connecting. In the past, it was exchanging business cards; now it's adding WeChat (store owner, owner's wife, staff). If you have the ability and management skills, you can build communities. But group management has its rules: group rules, management, online interaction, offline communication, entry rituals, etc. Social circles are weak ties; the purpose of WeChat groups is to build strong ties. Strong ties are generally hard to control. 05 Building Awareness Awareness comes from communication. 1. Signal source: from our communication center, from salespeople. 2. Communication channels: in the past, TV, newspapers, etc. Now, sales channels are communication channels. Running terminals is like infantry on the streets; now infantry must also have air force functions. Use all social tools to accumulate momentum. When a group does something together, the energy is immense. Finally, to build customer relationships, we need to integrate online and offline, and effectively use communication tools to acquire traffic, establish high-level awareness, and create greater value.