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The market always has gaps, and the development of new customers should be an ongoing process, especially for small terminals that are not KA (Key Accounts) or chain stores. These include various small retail stores, restaurants, tobacco and liquor stores, grocery stores, specialty stores, and so on.
Traditionally, development is handled by the salesperson in the region. According to the boss's expectations, the salesperson should keep an eye on gaps and proactively develop them. Some bosses even offer financial incentives for new store development. However, reality is often not as simple as the boss imagines. Salespeople are not enthusiastic about developing new customers, and even turn a blind eye to new terminals. Even with special development rewards, they are unwilling to develop. The reasons are simple: either they find it troublesome, laborious, and time-consuming, with no guarantee of success; or they lack the skills for new customer development, leading to low success rates, and over time, they lose confidence and stick to existing customers. Another possibility is that salespeople have selfish motives, using work time for personal matters, or playing cards or sleeping, leaving no time for new customer development.
From the company's operational perspective, the downstream customer base is the company's livelihood. Moreover, the number of existing customers will gradually decrease due to various factors. Without continuous replenishment of new customers, the overall customer base will inevitably decline.
However, from the salesperson's perspective, without clear development goals, lacking new customer development skills, and without corresponding backend support, relying solely on personal awareness and technical ability to develop new customers is indeed challenging.
In summary, on this issue, bosses should not rely on salespeople's initiative and personal abilities, but rather adopt a "group development" approach to advance new customer development.
So-called group development involves breaking down the work involved in new customer development, establishing corresponding technical standards, and assigning the related tasks to different positions:
I. Work Breakdown
New customer development can generally be broken down into the following process:
Set overall development goals, i.e., the overall market coverage rate target (on an annual basis).
Conduct a comprehensive street sweep to identify all blank terminals.
From all blank terminal groups, based on actual development and operational value, separate out development targets: that is, clarify the development workload, which can be included in the sales department's assessment indicators.
Set the development action process and arrange corresponding execution personnel.
After successful development, transfer the customer to the corresponding salesperson.
II. Technical Standards for New Customer Development
From a technical difficulty perspective, developing new customers is definitely more difficult than maintaining existing ones. The other party is unfamiliar, neither side knows each other, there is no trust or rapport as a foundation, and new customer development is like playing an away game, challenging the salesperson's business ability and psychological quality. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the relevant technical standards in advance, and then conduct corresponding technical training.
New customer development mainly involves the following technical categories:
Classification of customer types.
Basic process of preliminary street sweeping.
Customer development standards, i.e., what kind of customers are worth developing.
Pre-development door-to-door investigation and reconnaissance.
Basic files of target customers.
Overall process of the first door-to-door visit.
Actions during the first door-to-door visit.
Script for the first door-to-door visit.
Company customer service personnel's connection with new customers.
Opening accounts for new customers.
Establishment of complete customer files.
Process of transferring to the responsible salesperson.
Common problems in new customer development and preventive measures.
III. Position Breakdown
New customer development involves many business technical categories and is also related to personal personality, psychological quality, appearance, language expression ability, observation ability, etc. It is difficult for one salesperson to possess all these abilities simultaneously. The traditional approach is for the boss to have all salespeople do development work, but often everyone fails. If positions are broken down, the new customer development work can be divided among several employees, with each responsible for only one module.
Employees who are introverted or newly hired with little work experience can do the street sweeping and observation work in the early stage. This does not require communication; they just need to use their eyes to observe and take simple photos for records.
Salespeople with good appearance and strong communication skills can be responsible for the first door-to-door communication (only the first visit, not the later maintenance).
Logistics personnel with gentle personalities and meticulous work can handle customer service, establishing contact with new customers via phone and WeChat, and completing basic customer files and account opening.
Salespeople with average business ability are responsible for the handover after successful development, transitioning to regular business maintenance.
New customer development does not need to be done every day; two or three concentrated development drives per year are sufficient. The first door-to-door development, which is more difficult to communicate, does not require a full-time development specialist; instead, it can be handled by some qualified salespeople on a part-time basis. They are busy with their own work normally, but during concentrated new customer development periods, they temporarily conduct door-to-door communication. For ordinary salespeople, having others come to their area to sweep streets and develop customers, then hand over to them, is both support for their work and a form of pressure. They can no longer ignore new customers in their area, and since others have developed them and handed them over, if they cannot maintain them, the responsibility lies with them.
Author: Pan Wenfu
Originally a private business owner, he managed a family-owned distribution company for many years, during which he also served as a business manager and trainer in several production enterprises. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend construction, and the integration of retired military personnel into private enterprises. He has continuously broken down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises, and keeps updating his material collection and solutions.