Today I'm sharing several questions that sales friends often mention. When we think about problems, we should focus on the essence to grasp the root of the problem and find the key points and true methods for solving it. 1. Why do consumers buy your product? We need to put ourselves in the consumer's shoes, seeing our own consumer psychology and behavior. Think carefully: under what circumstances do we generate consumption behavior? The premise of consumption is demand; this demand must exist because it is the motivation for consumption. But apart from demand, what other factors are related to our consumption? Some might say it's related to brand influence, but what if the product we consume is not a brand? In fact, brand is a result, something created; no product is born with a brand, but rather it is built through our efforts in the market. Others might say it's advertising, promotions, or friend recommendations that create the motivation to consume; when there is a demand, we remember the product. Still others say that product differentiation attracts us at the point of purchase, making us want to try it. In short, it must be external factors (forces) that create influence. Whether you are a brand or not, only with influence can there be consumption power and sales power. So how do we create influence? How do we let consumers see, hear, and experience our product? Different companies have different resources and adopt different methods; different product categories and price positioning require different core influence tactics. But at the very least, we should make the product stand out at the moment of consumption, have others recommend our product, or make consumers feel that your product is trendy and easy to choose. First, A=attention. Do everything possible to make consumers notice your product and put it in front of them. Second, once consumers notice the product, its appearance, packaging, cost-effectiveness, and other features generate interest and impulse, creating purchase desire and leading to action. In short, it is external factors that create influence, giving consumers a certain awareness of the product, which then generates interest and purchase desire. This is the motivation for why consumers buy your product. 2. Why do consumers continue to buy your product? There must be internal factors here. The product satisfies the consumer's needs (Maslow's hierarchy) at five levels: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization—one or several levels. Consumers consume according to a hierarchy from low to high. In real life, multiple needs are combined. Additionally, they have economic affordability. Beyond appearance and cost-effectiveness, there is a key factor, perhaps a psychological need such as face or value; your product must be relatively popular. It might be popular among the masses or within their social circle. Sustained consumption must stem from popularity; without popularity, there can be no sustained consumption, nor can a true brand be created. How do you create popularity? Popularity doesn't start on a large scale; it always erupts from a specific point. Grasp the product positioning, target group, core channels, and breakthrough points. Use opinion leaders, core channel promotion, terminal sales interception, and diversified market actions in small regional markets, then radiate to other regions. For liquor, it must first be drunk by a small group or in a small area, become popular in a certain occasion or channel, and then there is a chance for widespread popularity. To make your product continuously consumed, you must create popularity, starting from a single point. 3. Why do retailers sell your product? High profit? Good relationships? The product is a brand? These are not the obvious reasons. From another angle, what is the real reason retailers don't accept your product? Some say poor relationships, product profit doesn't move retailers, or new products are hard to sell. In the end, it's just one word: "fear"—fear that it won't sell well, taking up their space, money, and energy. So why do retailers accept your product? They feel good about the product and the people, approve of the market operation methods, and believe the product can bring value—selling well and selling fast. These are the internal reasons retailers accept your product. So if we only consider high profit and good relationships without thinking about how to help retailers sell the product quickly and well, they won't accept it. That's normal. If a retailer accepts your product, it's because of good relationships, but how long can relationships sustain sales? So retailers accept our product because they accept the solution and the salesperson; profit is just a basic motivation. The key is the planning scheme for how to make the terminal sell the product quickly. Promotional plans, market operation plans, helping stores with sell-through, creating market atmosphere to attract consumers, activities that bring traffic to stores—these are the core reasons retailers accept the product. 4. What is the real job of a salesperson? How can they help sales? Is it just distribution, boasting, visits, collecting basic information, terminal atmosphere, inventory, and restocking? That would be a big mistake. These are just basic actions and standard processes. What is the essence of a salesperson's job? It must be work that helps the terminal generate sales, doing things that produce results, not just going through the motions. So many salespeople say, "I do everything, but the product just doesn't move." Yes, they work hard, but they don't do effective work targeting the market and terminals, and they lack real solutions. For example, if the terminal owner thinks your product has high profit and good relationships, and they push our product, but they don't know how to push it, how do you teach them the reasons and methods? If consumers don't accept it, how do you help the terminal owner? Could you bring the terminal owner's regular customers over for a tasting event or consumer pull activities? We don't do things for the terminal owner or the company; we do them for ourselves. If the product can't surpass competitors, it can't attract consumers' attention and stand out from the crowd. Going through the motions doesn't generate sales. Another example: I often see salespeople who, when the company requires at least five posters, only put up five. That's just going through the motions, not creating sales, material coverage, or advertising atmosphere. Some salespeople prefer to visit terminals where the owner is easygoing, but those don't generate sales. Terminals that could generate sales, they avoid after a few setbacks. 5. Why does your product sell less and less? Why does the market shrink? If you're just selling every day, why do you lose one terminal after another? Because the product moves slowly. If a product doesn't sell a case in three months, the terminal loses confidence and stops ordering after the second or third time. You keep developing new stores, using policies, even sacrificing sales commissions to stimulate orders, until there are no new stores to develop. Then you go back to terminal owners hoping they'll order again, but they get angry: "The product doesn't sell, and you're increasing the policy?" This worsens relationships. Salespeople change companies, but the same problem persists. It's not about having few stores or regions; sustained product sales are key. Based on the terminal network situation, actual store sales, influence, product fit, and competition, tackle each terminal one by one, making targeted activities to make the market more dynamic. Only then will you avoid the dilemma of products becoming harder to sell and the market shrinking. 6. Why does the market not improve even after doing everything? Doing everything means doing nothing. Resources are too scattered to create impact or influence. Excluding small regional situations, in large regions, doing everything is equivalent to doing nothing. Here we need to talk about the concept of focus. Only by concentrating forces can you create distinctiveness and momentum. Focus and excellence create highlights. Concentrate forces on local priorities and single-point breakthroughs. In the marketing 4Ps—price, product, promotion, and place—it's a cone formed by 1P+3P that truly breaks through the market. Not launching on all fronts simultaneously makes it hard to achieve results, unless resources are very strong. Next, I'll introduce seven aspects of focus.

  1. Product focus: Create a super single product, using the leading product as the breakthrough point to make a deep impression on consumers.
  2. Regional focus: Choose one region to blow up, then replicate.
  3. Promotion focus: Core store atmosphere, consumer tasting experiences, and pull activities.
  4. Channel focus: Based on product positioning and market differences, choose the main channel to perfect, making it deep, thorough, and explosive.
  5. Resource focus: Concentrate on limited regions and core outlets.
  6. Personnel focus: Let excellent talent focus on core outlets, attacking a small area to achieve rapid sell-through.
  7. Consumer focus: Make selective and targeted moves on opinion leader groups. So to make your market improve quickly, it's not about doing all actions, but doing them selectively and targeted. Focus on leading regions to create models, leading channels for breakthroughs, leading terminals for leadership, leading consumer groups for marketing, single promotion methods for momentum, and leading salespeople as examples. -END- The best FMCG distributor learning platform in China Focuses on providing professional, practical, and actionable tutorials for enterprises and distributors Committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry Reply with the red number below to get the corresponding content Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base | 001 Excellent Article Selection | 002 Distributor Market Operations | 003 Terminal Visit Management | 004 Sales Supervisor Skills | 005 Sales Improvement Techniques | 006 Channel Expansion | 007 Managing Distributors | 008 Distributor Development | 009 Distributor Internal Operations Management | 010 Team Management | 011 Efficient Distribution Techniques | 012 Sales Manager's Skills | 013 KA Operation Methods and Strategies | 014 First Lesson for New Salespeople | 015 Internet, Brand | 016 Distributor B2B Transformation | [Long press QR code to follow]