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A regional marketing plan is an indispensable tool to help distributors complete their regional sales tasks.

Confusion Between Plans and Goals

Some distributor friends do not agree with the author's statement, and of course, the majority of salespeople in that company disagree even more. Clearly, Ren Lijun's assertion touches a nerve for sales personnel and distributors.

Old Liu, a distributor from Liaocheng, Shandong, pointed out, "Our Liaocheng region does have a marketing plan, but we just can't seem to actually complete it. How would you explain that, Mr. Ren?" He said, "Our monthly sales plan for Liaocheng is 180,000 yuan, with 90,000 yuan targeted at distributors and 90,000 yuan at retail terminals. However, we have failed to meet our targets for five consecutive months. It's not that we don't try. My salesperson Xiao Cheng and I do a summary every month, but sometimes we can't even find the reason."

When Old Liu was asked, "Do you have a more specific execution plan?" he looked a bit embarrassed. Ren Lijun pointed out that goals, tasks, and plans are the three major steps in regional marketing. First, sales personnel must clarify the sales goals for each sales stage with the distributor. Where do goals come from? How should goals be broken down? Where are goals headed? These are questions that sales personnel and distributors need to seriously consider. Usually, when discussing goals, everyone will use the SMART principle to assess whether the goal is valid—that is, goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Second, to accomplish the above goals, both parties must practically define several tasks to be completed. Some sales personnel make tasks too general. Ren Lijun pointed out that sales tasks must be broken down into specific categories, dividing different work tasks based on the nature of the work. Third, there is the specific execution plan: what specific work will each relevant person do to complete the tasks? This execution plan must be specific, clear, controllable, and have CPI (Critical Performance Indicators).

As long as you spend a day or two at the beginning of each month to clarify these three issues, then everyone can go about their own business, and the goals will definitely be achieved.

Many sales personnel and distributors think they have a plan, but they often mistake the company's sales task target for the regional market as a marketing plan. These are two completely different concepts.

Principles for Developing a Regional Marketing Plan

We have already discussed what a marketing plan is above. Next, we need to determine how this marketing plan can help distributors.

We say that a salesperson can help distributors in two ways: First, incorporate the company's regional marketing policies into the distributor's marketing plan; Second, integrate the resources of the distributor and its sub-distributors and retail terminals to formulate a reasonable action plan. In regional marketing practice, we cannot ignore any marketing resource that the enterprise and distributor can utilize; therefore, it is often necessary to comprehensively leverage marketing effects.

Typically, we require regional sales personnel to coordinate with distributors to develop the following specific action plans to ensure the effective use of various marketing resources, achieve marketing goals, and complete sales tasks:

1. Action Plan for Regional Marketing Personnel

The action plan for regional marketing personnel needs to ensure the completion of two important tasks: First, the implementation of the company's regional marketing policies and strategies. This is the primary task for regional sales personnel and must be completed on schedule according to the plan nodes. Second, align the company's regional marketing policies and strategies with the distributor's monthly action plan. Marketing planning expert Ren Lijun pointed out that the former is self-driven, ensuring implementation, while the latter is about cooperating and assisting the distributor, ensuring seamless integration between the two parties, focusing on integration rather than coercion.

2. Distributor Action Plan

Generally, distributors have a complete marketing plan each month, but often it is developed for all the products they distribute. In this case, regional sales personnel should find ways to make this action plan bring more promotional effect to their own product sales. Sales personnel typically approach this from two aspects: First, provide strong policy resources to support the distributor's sales; Second, encourage the distributor to tilt their energy and resources toward their product.

3. Distribution Strategy and Action Plan

Distribution is always the most efficient thing distributors do. Regional sales personnel should develop distribution strategies and action plans based on the different capabilities of distributors. Some distributors can achieve proactive distribution by utilizing sub-distributor resources in the region, while others cannot. In such cases, regional sales personnel need to assist with distribution, making it necessary to formulate practical and reliable strategies and action plans. Usually, distributors feel helpless when facing distribution problems, so sales personnel should think more for distributors on this issue and make a good distribution plan.

4. Terminal Strategy and Action Plan

Terminal construction is always the theme of regional marketing. Typically, terminals can be divided into two types: one is large chain terminals that are minimally influenced by the enterprise. For these, it is important to grasp the rhythm of terminal construction and promotion, and the plan should be made according to this rhythm. The other is small and medium-sized terminals or special terminals that are more easily influenced by the enterprise. For these, the enterprise can even set its own terminal construction and promotion rhythm, and the enterprise can fully take the lead in formulating corresponding marketing plans.

"The terminal is king"—this saying is still not outdated. When formulating marketing plans, enterprises should be meticulous, with standards, norms, supervision, and inspection to ensure the effective implementation of the plan.

5. Sales Promotion Strategy and Action Plan

Usually, the company will have a unified sales promotion strategy and action plan. For this part, regional sales personnel only need to align with the regional market. In addition, there are some sales promotion strategies that need to be formulated and implemented independently. This is the most important test of regional sales personnel's capabilities. Sales personnel should not only consider the current month's plan but also have a medium- and long-term perspective to ensure the medium- and long-term impact of the sales promotion strategy. Furthermore, for the parts that can be decided independently, sales personnel must reasonably evaluate all aspects of regional marketing and focus on weaker areas to ensure that these sales promotion strategies are more effective.

Conclusion

From marketing practice, many enterprises fail in regional marketing because they do not know how to make a regional marketing plan. This is the conclusion made by marketing planning expert Ren Lijun. Some may not agree, but in fact, although many marketers have been in the market for years, due to laziness or not knowing how to make plans, they directly lead to poor regional marketing performance. Therefore, while marketing gurus focus on grand strategies and tactics, I advise enterprise marketing personnel to be down-to-earth, make good plans, execute well, and results will naturally come.

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