---
title: "No Display, No Sales! The Display Revolution in Terminal Management"
description: "Terminal display, when done well, benefits both manufacturers and distributors; when done poorly, it wastes manpower and resources, leading to significant sales losses. This article analyzes the current state of terminal displays, identifies key reasons for ineffective displays, and provides practical cases and strategic shifts toward depth and width in display management."
author: "罗宏文"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-06-28"
language: "en"
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---

# No Display, No Sales! The Display Revolution in Terminal Management

> Terminal display, when done well, benefits both manufacturers and distributors; when done poorly, it wastes manpower and resources, leading to significant sales losses. This article analyzes the current state of terminal displays, identifies key reasons for ineffective displays, and provides practical cases and strategic shifts toward depth and width in display management.

Click 'Read Original' for details.
Terminal display, when done well, benefits both manufacturers and distributors; when done poorly, it wastes manpower and resources, leading to significant sales losses.

**Current State of Terminal Displays**
Displays look beautiful but don't drive sales. Many buyout displays yield no results. Consequently, many say displays are useless and too traditional, questioning their significance. The dilemma: do it and worry about effectiveness, or don't and watch competitors do it.

Why this situation? In my view, if displays seem useless, it's because your displays are ineffective.

Main reasons for ineffective displays: out-of-stock or stockouts at buyout shelves, displays blocked by competitors or other items, unreasonable scheduling of activity start or check times, improper use of POP price tags and other sales aids, and poor buyout or placement positions. Another scenario: distributors have different perceptions of promotional activities, thinking it's free money from manufacturers, so they use it carelessly. In my view, manufacturers partnering with such distributors are truly at a loss.

Do manufacturers and distributors know how much sales loss and promotional resource waste a poorly executed promotional display activity can cause, especially when done just to complete tasks or extract fees?

**Sales Loss and Resource Waste from Improper Displays**
Every step in a display activity, if you take shortcuts without careful thought or thorough execution, can cause unnecessary sales loss and waste of promotional resources. It's no exaggeration that at least half of your promotional budget is wasted, and you don't even know where!

Check the following behaviors to see the economic losses they cause:

- If sales reps fail to visit or restock in time, leading to insufficient product quantity or no product at buyout positions, this causes a 12.6% sales loss and 8% promotional resource waste.
- When buyout positions are squeezed by competitors or blocked by other items, this causes a 6% sales loss and 2.7% promotional waste.
- If there are no prominent price tags, POP posters, or other attractive signage during normal and buyout displays, this causes an 18.3% sales loss and 1.5% promotional waste.
- In retail stores, the best positions are at the front entrance or the front of brand displays; the worst are dead corners out of sight. Since prime positions are limited, if you get a poor position or your stack lacks presence compared to competitors, this causes a 25% sales loss and 9% promotional waste.
- For a promotional activity, supervisors must carefully schedule start and end times, especially during major holidays. Unreasonable timing or policy misuse causes a 16% sales loss and 38% promotional waste.

Why do these situations occur? Simply because human nature tends to choose easy tasks over complex thinking. Main manifestations include:

> - Focusing on quantity of displays without deeper thought on quality;
> - Inadequate preparation and lack of standardized, regular after-sales service;
> - Improper use of sales aids;
> - Different perceptions between manufacturers and distributors on display activities;
> - Poor time management, policies constrained by systems, and unreasonable supervision and follow-up schedules.

**Case 1: Prize Policy in Activities**
Two beverage companies ran summer display prize activities. Company A gave terminals a monthly reward of 4 cases of water (400ml*20), market price 14 yuan per case, frozen retail price 1.5 yuan per bottle, total profit 120 yuan, terminal profit 64 yuan. Company B gave terminals a monthly reward of 2 cases of tea (500ml*15), market price 28 yuan per case, frozen retail price 3 yuan per bottle, total profit 90 yuan, terminal profit 34 yuan.

In this case, costs are both 56 yuan. Without careful study, the rewards seem similar. But from the terminal owner's perspective of quick profit, Company A's reward is nearly double Company B's, meaning from the start, Company A's reward is more accepted, and Company B loses at least 50% to Company A.

**Case 2: Activity Check Scheduling**
> Activity holiday: 2019 Dragon Boat Festival (June 7)
> Activity product: Y product, centralized stack display of 50 cases
> Activity duration: 30 days during the Dragon Boat Festival period
> Check requirements: Three irregular checks, daily centralized display of 50 cases, immediate restocking if insufficient.
> Prize policy: Reward 5 cases of Y product if requirements are met.
> Question: Which manager's check schedule is most reasonable and why?
> Manager Zhang: Starts June 1, checks on 10th, 15th, 25th
> Manager Wang: Starts May 25, checks on 5th, 10th, 20th
> Manager Ma: Starts June 5, checks on 10th, 20th, 25th

Based on the author's nearly 10 years of practical tracking and exclusive research by Shenzhen Expressway, the above five actions in a display activity cause sales loss and promotional waste, conservatively discounted by 50%, of 15.58% and 11.84%. For example, if a company has annual sales of 500 million yuan and invests 50 million in promotions, it loses at least 7.79 million yuan in sales and wastes at least 5.92 million yuan in promotional fees on display activities alone. If a distributor does 5 million yuan in annual business, about 500,000 yuan comes from promotional activities; by truly doing display activities well, they can earn an extra 137,100 yuan.

In Case 2, the best practice is Manager Wang. The Dragon Boat Festival is June 7, with holidays on 7th, 8th, 9th. Checking on the 5th allows early restocking; checking on the 10th allows timely restocking; checking on the 20th, close to the end, allows one more restock, ensuring good display atmosphere for at least 10 days after the activity ends, effectively extending the activity. I call this time management 'staggered time benefit.' Did you get it right? Over 95% of business managers get it wrong. If you didn't, you've already caused at least 16% sales loss to your company.

**Direction Shift in Terminal Display Management**
In the fiercely competitive terminal environment, if you don't do display activities, your product may quickly be squeezed out of the market. But if you do, you waste manpower and money without results. Should you do terminal display activities? This has become a puzzle.

The answer is simple: display activities are the most basic action for products to reach the market and drive sales. They are the only way for FMCG to compete for terminal purchase resources. There's no shortcut. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kangshifu, Master Kong, Mizone, Wahaha, Six Walnuts, Mengniu, Yili, Jiajiahong, Jinmailang, Daliyuan, Nongfu, VV, and countless small brands all do it. Whoever truly masters terminal display will win the future terminal market!

So, how should displays evolve?

Shifting toward depth and width in displays is the necessary direction for current and future displays. Three reasons:

**First, display lifespan.** Based on experience from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and P&G, a regular display activity maintains 100% standard image in the first week, drops to about 75% in the second week, and by the third week, maintaining 65% is good. Therefore, from the second week, you must analyze and develop countermeasures to ensure 100%.

**Second, consumer behavior awareness.** In the past, consumers decided to purchase within about 2 seconds under the visual impact of product displays. But with improved living standards and more rational, decentralized consumption, many beautifully displayed products are only looked at, not purchased. It's said that 75% of consumption comes from impulse buying, but the key trigger is unknown. Today, consumers go through a process of see-stop-see-buy, which aligns with the past concept of attracting attention through displays. Therefore, we must change perspective or thinking. Besides displaying, we need to consider who will drive the product to attract attention and purchase, i.e., how to make products move.

**Third, learn from depth display champions.** By visiting markets and studying excellent display activities, see what champion brands do differently. With deep learning, you'll find that best-selling products use traditional methods, doing various display activities in depth and width, characterized by thorough preparation, fast execution, more share grabbing, precise and wide distribution, and beautiful, festive displays. Every detail is meticulous, but fewer than 10% of companies achieve this. If you don't change your display direction and aren't in that 10%, your product won't move.

**Specific Operational Methods for Terminal Display Revolution**
A famous person said: analyze the most traditional and simple things thoroughly and to the extreme, and you'll be the leader in that field. So, how to achieve the shift toward depth and width in terminal displays?

The only constant in the market is change. I believe: rely on thought and concept, rely on money and maintenance, rely on cleverness and patience, rely on intervention and action, rely on seizing and customer relations. These are effective and important operational methods.

**Rely on Thought and Concept**
Thought and concept are intangible. From a market perspective, in the combination rules for benchmark markets, whether a product succeeds in a market is entirely influenced by thought and concept. Your cognitive and conceptual awareness determines your behavior patterns in market and product development, which in turn produce habitual market actions and results, directly determining the boss's success and product sales.

**Question: If you were Manager Li, what would you do?**
In this practical exercise, Manager Wang's schedule is most reasonable. Did you get it right?

The activity conditions are clear: maximum 30 days, daily display of 50 cases, three irregular checks, and reward of 5 cases if requirements are met. The key is to grasp the start and end times, which directly affect input-output efficiency, i.e., time management.

Earlier, I mentioned staggered time benefit. There's another hidden factor: during holidays, terminals habitually display products. During festivals, any terminal without城管 interference will put out as much product as possible on the roadside. Manager Wang cleverly used this detail. By shortening the display period and saving costs, he increased rewards, requiring participating stores to comply. By checking and rewarding only those that meet requirements, even after the activity ends on the 12th, stores under Manager Wang's jurisdiction still have enough product to sell during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

To fully utilize promotional funds, if Manager Wang also used the saved funds on store owners, such as helping distributors manage communities during the Mid-Autumn Festival, and giving high red envelope rewards for any Y product sold on the 7th, 8th, and 9th, I believe the activity would have the best sales effect and sell the most products.

**In sales, change is key. Don't let habitual actions and conventional practices limit our imagination.**

Source: Business Expert (ID: htsxy88)


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