---
title: "Regional Markets: How to Drive Sales from Sales Representatives"
description: "With the development of the food industry and intensifying competition, many food companies are adopting a 'deep distribution model' to achieve comprehensive competitive advantages in regional markets. The success of this model depends on the company's own marketing resources and capabilities, with the quality, management, and execution of channel members—especially terminal sales representatives—directly determining regional sales volume. This article addresses three key issues: low quality and skills of terminal sales reps, skipping small stores and missing visits, and focusing only on best-selling products while neglecting new product promotion."
author: "师顺宽"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-03-30"
language: "en"
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# Regional Markets: How to Drive Sales from Sales Representatives

> With the development of the food industry and intensifying competition, many food companies are adopting a 'deep distribution model' to achieve comprehensive competitive advantages in regional markets. The success of this model depends on the company's own marketing resources and capabilities, with the quality, management, and execution of channel members—especially terminal sales representatives—directly determining regional sales volume. This article addresses three key issues: low quality and skills of terminal sales reps, skipping small stores and missing visits, and focusing only on best-selling products while neglecting new product promotion.

With the development of the food industry and intensifying competition, many food companies are adopting a 'deep distribution model' to achieve comprehensive competitive advantages in regional markets. From the deep distribution model, it is clear that the success of this approach hinges on the company's own marketing resources and capabilities. The quality, management, and execution of channel members, especially terminal sales representatives, directly determine the sales volume in regional markets. What are terminal sales representatives? They are the salespeople in the food industry specifically responsible for developing and maintaining street-level terminal stores. They carry customer data and route maps daily, completing the development and maintenance of a specified number of terminal stores (typically 30 to 50) along designated routes. They hold the most basic positions in food companies, work hard, earn relatively low wages, and are numerous and dispersed. Managing such a team is uniquely challenging. Unlike workshop or office management where all subordinates work under your direct supervision, these reps, after the morning meeting, scatter like molecules in random motion across the city's streets and alleys on bicycles or electric bikes to develop and maintain terminals, working in rain, snow, or scorching heat. Thus, their 'quality, management, and execution' directly and decisively impact regional market sales. This article will provide strategies to address three problems that hinder regional sales growth: low quality of terminal sales reps, skipping small stores and missing visits, and focusing only on best-selling products while neglecting new product promotion.

**Lack of targeted and effective training leads to low quality and skills**

[Case] Xiao Li is a terminal sales representative at a beverage company's office. After joining, he did not receive onboarding training; he followed an experienced salesperson for a few days and then independently managed a territory. As a result, he could not fully grasp product knowledge, sales skills and techniques, or the psychology of terminal store owners and consumers. When store owners raised common objections like 'I've sold your products before, but they moved slowly, so I don't want to sell them now,' 'No consumers ask for your products, so they won't sell well,' 'What if we can't sell them? Will you take returns? What if you don't keep your word?' he didn't know how to respond, hurting his sales performance.

[Strategy] Establish a training system, develop training plans, and enhance the relevance and effectiveness of training. Training terminal sales reps is crucial because 'people are the first factor'; their quality and skill level determine outcomes. Training is the essential path to improve salespeople's quality and skills, fostering shared values and equipping them with more sales methods and techniques. Additionally, during daily morning meetings, address problems encountered the previous day, record them, and standardize responses into terminal scripts for reps to memorize. Have top performers share their experiences. Also, introduce policies to encourage self-improvement, such as attending external training courses, to continuously enhance their overall competence. Once the salespeople's standards rise, performance will inevitably improve!

**Skipping small stores, missing visits and orders**

[Case] A company's office requires each salesperson to visit 40 terminal stores daily on a fixed route. To project a professional image, ensure thorough work, and secure sufficient orders, they must follow the eight-step terminal visit procedure: pre-store preparation, check outdoor advertising, greet the customer, product display, inventory check, sales confirmation, ordering, and thanking the customer and informing them of the next visit. However, this is demanding, and some salespeople only cover the first half of the route, skipping the rest, leading to stockouts and lack of maintenance. Others simply ask the store owner 'Need any goods?' without doing anything else, or even stay on their bikes, one foot on the ground, ask that question, and ride off. They finish 40 stores in two hours, but with such superficial visits, they get few orders and neglect display and inventory checks. Some, familiar with their routes, only visit high-volume stores, skip small ones, and spend the rest of the time in internet cafes.

[Strategy] Establish comprehensive management, assessment, reward, and punishment systems. Clarify job requirements, work content, and processes. Strengthen the completeness of the four links: planning, execution, inspection, and feedback. Crucially, build an objective and effective inspection system to track execution in real time and on site, ensuring implementation. This means setting standards beforehand, controlling during the process, and summarizing afterward, achieving 'management by systems.' Since salespeople visit 40 stores daily, if they strictly follow the eight steps—preparation, checking outdoor ads, greeting and filling in customer cards, checking displays, and inventory—the difference in orders and performance is significant compared to superficial visits. A thorough visit to 40 stores might yield 30 orders, while a casual visit might yield only 5. Therefore, any market sales problem should first prompt reflection on personnel management and execution, because if the process is done well, results will naturally follow. Below is an example of an office strengthening sales management and execution through pre-set standards, in-process control, and post-summary:

Pre-set standards: Establish standards for daily tasks and codify all potential issues into systems, such as:
1. Work time standards: morning meeting time, work start/end times, and afternoon work summary time.
2. Visit standards: Each salesperson must strictly follow the eight-step terminal visit procedure for 40 stores daily.
3. Display standards: Two POP posters outside each store, two inside at prominent positions, and each product SKU displayed with three facings on shelves visible immediately upon entry.
4. Sales standards: Sell 50 cases of products, with specific items...
5. Relationship standards: Store owners know the salesperson's name.
...
8. Reward and punishment standards: Late arrival or early departure: fine 10 yuan; missing a store visit: fine 10 yuan; not following the eight-step procedure: fine 5 yuan per store; failing to meet daily sales target: fine 2 yuan per case short; exceeding target: reward 2 yuan per case; highest overachiever gets an extra 10 yuan; daily visit report (see table below) must be filled in with a pen...

In-process control: All the above standards must be based on monitoring and tracking. Ensure the entire process is under your control, not only progress but also fostering competition. For example:
1. At 11 a.m., the office director calls Xiao Zhang using the landline:
Director: Xiao Zhang, where are you now?
Xiao Zhang: I'm at ***
Director: No problem, just checking how many stores you've visited.
The director then goes to that location. If Xiao Zhang isn't there, he calls and asks him to arrive at a specific store within minutes. If he can't, it proves he left early, and he is immediately penalized according to standards. The director then calls other salespeople to inform them: 'Xiao Zhang was caught leaving early. I hope you won't be caught too, understand?'
2. The director calls Xiao Li:
Director: Xiao Li, how many cases have you sold?
Xiao Li: I've sold 30 cases.
Director: Zhang San, how many have you sold?
Zhang San: I've sold 35 cases.
Director: Xiao Li, you're only 3 cases behind Zhang San. Keep it up!
Director: Zhang San, you're only 5 cases ahead of Xiao Li and 2 ahead of Li Si. Work hard; today's first place could be yours!
...
This encourages continuous competition.
...

Post-summary: Management is based on inspection, and inspection is based on knowledge. For salespeople, without inspection and rewards/punishments, management is impossible.
In the evening meeting, summarize the day's work: reward or punish according to the day's standards, share successful experiences, and discuss and guide those who underperformed...

**Focusing only on best-selling products, not promoting new products**

[Case] A beverage company, to expand market share, improve competitiveness, increase channel profits, and boost brand vitality and regional sales, launched several new flavored drinks in a regional market this year. After some time, there was no significant improvement; both new product distribution rate and sell-through rate were poor. The reason was that salespeople were unwilling to put in the effort to promote new products, instead concentrating on promotions for best-sellers to quickly boost volume. This made their work easier and sales increases more visible. Reluctance to promote new products is common among salespeople because new products in the introduction phase require effort and yield slow results, while best-sellers have gone through introduction, growth, and maturity. However, once a product reaches maturity, channels become transparent, losing channel push, and it enters decline. If new products aren't successfully launched during this phase and the company relies on continuous promotions of old products, the brand in the regional market will face a dire situation—'squeezing urine from a toad'—and be close to death.

[Strategy] Before launching new products, hold training sessions for salespeople on the importance of new product promotion, boosting their attention and morale, and motivating them to actively promote new products. Explain that new product promotion is an effective way to enhance brand awareness, rapidly increase sales, and sustain market development. For salespeople, it's a way to improve performance, increase income, and demonstrate personal capability. Additionally, set specific process indicators for new product launches and assess salespeople accordingly, accelerating distribution and creating a sales atmosphere. Let them understand that 'if the process is done well, results will naturally follow.' As long as they implement the process indicators (distribution rate, display, promotion, etc.) effectively, sales will improve. For example:
1. Set specific new product sales tasks for all sales personnel.
2. Give special attention to new product sales performance in daily sales reports and meetings, establishing a comprehensive performance analysis system to monitor new product promotion dynamics.
3. Make new product performance a key agenda item in sales meetings during the execution period. Markets failing to meet new product promotion tasks must provide a 'variance explanation' and face rewards or penalties.
4. Hold sales competitions (e.g., New Product Sales Champion) with public recognition and rewards for winners.
5. In the bonus assessment system, separate new product sales achievement from total sales achievement for individual assessment.

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