When it comes to boosting sales, many people's first reaction is: advertising, consumer promotions, trade promotions, pushing inventory to distributors, paying for display space... It is reasonable to believe that among these "many people" are both frontline sales staff, regional supervisors, and sales managers, because under sales pressure they repeatedly report upward, and even higher-level directors and company leaders become part of the "many."

Speaking of this, I recall a recent conversation with a person from a certain company. A asked me: "Our recent sales have hit a bottleneck; do you have any good ways to boost them?" B added: "At every sales meeting, when it comes to sales, from salespeople to sales managers, they all say, 'We are a new product, without brand awareness, with little advertising and promotion, and no display budget,' as if all problems are the company's responsibility—in reality, this is just a poor excuse for irresponsible and incapable salespeople to shirk responsibility and deceive their superiors."

In fact, besides the methods mentioned above, there are many other ways to boost sales. If we go into detail, it's not difficult to come up with dozens or even hundreds of methods. What we will explore below are some sales-boosting details that are easily overlooked but very effective.

Strengthen Category Management to Boost Sales

In Watsons, which has nearly 400 stores nationwide, the beverage area is often placed in a less conspicuous position at the back. Why? Because this category's gross profit and expense contribution lag behind in the entire Watsons system. In hypermarkets like Walmart and Carrefour, judging a brand's sales by the quality of its display position and the size of its facing is not only common sense, but also, any company that has dealt with them knows that if our sales rank in the bottom few positions for three consecutive months, we face the fate of being "eliminated at the bottom" and cleared out.

These are very basic common sense in category management implemented by stores, aiming to manage various categories, companies, and brands' products, rationally use limited resources like shelves, reduce waste, and maximize output. And what about us?

Unfortunately, most companies and people among us are indifferent and unconcerned about category management. Take one of our partner companies as an example: at a meeting, when asking the 20-30 salespeople present, "Which single product sells best? Which is second? Which is third?" No one gets it wrong, but when asked about the sales proportion of these products, only one or two can answer clearly with numbers. If asked further how to handle best-sellers, second-best-sellers, etc., in sales behavior, everyone is at a loss.

So, when we inspect the market, we naturally find: regardless of the sales situation of each product, the display space for each product is the same size; best-sellers are hidden behind non-best-sellers and no one cares; best-sellers are placed at the lowest display position, while non-best-sellers are placed in the golden position, still no one cares; when opening new stores, we still distribute products A, B, C, D evenly according to the average rule; when customers reorder, we don't provide more reasonable purchase mix suggestions based on each product's sales.

How do these problems affect sales? Let's set up a few scenarios to see the consequences.

Suppose we have three products: A is the best-seller, accounting for 50% of sales; B is second, 30%; C is the worst, 20%. But in a vertically displayed store, A is placed at a position 30-50 cm from the ground or 170-190 cm from the ground. According to experience, these two positions typically account for only about 25% of the entire shelf output, while the 50-170 cm zone can contribute about 60% of sales. Comparing the two numbers, theoretically, there is a 35% sales gap. If we consider that best-sellers have strong market acceptance and non-best-sellers might see some improvement due to better display positions, at least 20% of sales are lost because category management is not applied to display. But if we improve the display of best-sellers, wouldn't sales go up?

Maximizing the sales of individual products and best-sellers is an effective rule for achieving overall sales. We also need to remind ourselves: we should learn category management from advanced stores. This not only maximizes best-seller sales but also helps improve the efficiency of capital and inventory turnover for ourselves and our distributors, and enhances the scientific use of resources. So what should we do?

Although actual category management is much more complex than described above, even if we only do the following, it's enough to significantly boost our sales.

1. Compare and analyze sales data of each product, and be clear about their sales proportions.

2. The leading product with the highest sales should occupy the best display position and the largest display space, with more resources and attention.

3. Based on the speed and volume of product sales, proactively provide distributors with purchase mix suggestions and display experience, and better arrange our own production and inventory replenishment plans.

4. According to the above rules, improve and maintain displays ourselves.

5. For new categories, products, promotional products, and other products with different missions and life cycles in the overall product structure, formulate corresponding measures in terms of resources, energy, and sales policies.

Solve Out-of-Stock Issues to Boost Sales

Marketing is something where problems are more easily discovered and truths are more clearly seen only in the market. Therefore, for years, I have had the habit of regularly and irregularly visiting the market and terminals—whether for our own products or those of clients we provide consulting services to. In fact, every market inspection yields some findings, big or small. For example, out-of-stock situations at some points of sale are quite common.

During a recent market inspection, the problems found were related to out-of-stock. First, a dairy client of ours had an out-of-stock at a large hypermarket—to be precise, the 1L family pack was out of stock, and the display space was empty. When I found the salesperson in charge of that category area, she said, "It's been empty for about three days. I don't know if your promotion or sales staff have applied for an order?" The 1L family pack product sells nearly 40,000 yuan a month in that store. Averaged daily, this out-of-stock lost 1/10 of monthly sales. If this happens once a month, that's nearly 50,000 yuan a year—enough to cover the store's slotting fees, promotion fees, anniversary fees, and the brand service fee of over 20,000. But if it happens two or three times a month, wouldn't 20-30% more sales and profits simply evaporate?

Second, at multiple stores of a chain pharmacy, a functional food client of ours also had out-of-stocks—through the store staff, we learned that the best-selling product had been out of stock for about five days on average. Further investigation revealed that the chain pharmacy's management method for stores is: each store submits a plan for how much of each variety, brand, and product it needs each month. If they order too little and fail to meet monthly tasks, the store is responsible; if they order too much and can't sell, the store is also held accountable. So, out of caution, stores generally submit conservative plans. Is there no solution to this out-of-stock problem? Afterwards, I gave the sales supervisor three suggestions: First, offer promotional commitments to stores with good sales and frequent out-of-stocks to encourage them to increase order quantities; Second, coordinate with the pharmacy headquarters' relevant departments to increase delivery if there is inventory, or place orders if there is no inventory; Third, the company lends goods to out-of-stock stores, and the stores order more next month to return the borrowed goods. These suggestions proved feasible and effectively solved the client's out-of-stock problem.

If not solved, how much sales would the company lose? The chain pharmacy delivers to stores twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Even under normal circumstances, if a store runs out on Monday, delivery starts Tuesday, with a 50% delivery rate, the other 50% of out-of-stock stores would have to wait until Friday, resulting in over three days of out-of-stock. If delivery isn't completed by Friday, some places might not resolve the out-of-stock until a week later. Estimating roughly, about 20% of sales could be lost.

In fact, according to our experience, solving out-of-stock issues typically prevents a company from losing 20% of sales. If you completed 80 million yuan in sales last year, you can remind yourself: I could have completed 96 million yuan, because 20% of 80 million, or 16 million, was "cut off" by out-of-stocks.

From the above, we can also see that the causes of out-of-stocks are diverse. How can we solve out-of-stock issues?

1. Do a good job of sales forecasting, especially for key sales periods like holidays when sales are brisk, and treat it as a homework assignment to keep distributors' inventory at a more scientific level.

2. Classify and grade various types of terminals more finely. Among traditional A, B, C, D stores, further identify key terminals based on their sales and gross profit contribution, and provide key tracking and service to these key terminals. Reducing out-of-stocks at terminals with high sales and profit contribution means less sales loss and effective sales boost.

3. Establish and improve terminal maintenance and supporting assessment policies to ensure salespeople can detect out-of-stocks at the first time, so they can solve the problem promptly.

4. Understand the delivery processes of various types of hypermarkets and chain stores, and formulate targeted measures to prevent out-of-stocks and address them when they occur.

5. When production is limited or logistics is blocked by objective conditions (such as traffic problems caused by snow, floods, etc.), promptly allocate goods from the company or neighboring regions to ensure that best-selling areas, major customers, and various key customers do not experience out-of-stocks.

Change Cooperation Models to Boost Sales

We have a client that makes condoms. Initially, when cooperating with a chain pharmacy with over 200 stores, they negotiated a common cooperation model with 8% discount supply and entry fees. After nearly five months, sales were only over 50,000 yuan. Not to mention profitability, even just in sales, the wages of sales reps and promoters and activity costs were a huge loss. However, in the next one or two months, the company's sales changed dramatically and quickly reversed the decline—monthly sales at this chain pharmacy exceeded 70,000 yuan. What did they do?

It was related to changing the business cooperation model: they applied and coordinated to switch from the common cooperation model to a high-margin cooperation model, negotiating a more ideal 40% discount supply with the pharmacy, which gave them good display positions and larger display facings, and promoted internally.

Many friends who have dealt with OTC channels know that high-margin products and products under common cooperation models have different markings and treatments in pharmacies. Because the former contributes higher profit levels, they receive stronger resource support. Pharmacies require store staff to proactively recommend these products to customers and have certain sales assessment indicators. This obviously greatly boosts sales.

However, reaching a high-margin cooperation model with a pharmacy does not mean you can rest easy from then on. Because any chain pharmacy has its own high-margin product community, with numerous high-margin brands and products. How can you encourage salespeople to not only proactively recommend your product among multiple condom brands but also tilt their efforts toward you among competitors also under high-margin cooperation models? This company and the chain pharmacy jointly launched "Outstanding Team Award," "Outstanding Store Manager Award," and "Outstanding Staff Award" across over 200 stores. By sponsoring items that people need and are interested in (such as microwaves, shopping vouchers, laundry detergent, etc., sometimes cash bonuses), supplemented by training, social activities, etc., they increased everyone's recognition and attention to their products, so that before entering consumers' minds, their products first enter the minds of store staff.

These measures have been effective in boosting sales in this pharmacy system. Previously, this client's in-store promotions typically faced two other options: First, hire full-time or temporary promoters to enter the store. However, the wages of promoters, promotion management fees, etc., are clearly a significant expense, and due to the limited number and coverage of their own promoters, the effect on overall sales across over 200 stores is very limited. Second, "cash-for-sales," privately giving store staff commissions and reward promises, i.e., for a certain amount of sales, give staff a certain percentage of benefits. But this model has long been widely resisted by distributors. If discovered, suppliers would face the dilemma of "losing the bait to catch the fish."

In fact, the above are not uncommon models. For example, we can promise sales volume at Walmart and other hypermarkets to get support like end caps; we can leverage some powerful distributors with multiple agency brands to obtain good displays by contracting a category's shelves in some supermarkets; we can exclude competitors in the foodservice channel by buying out or exclusive arrangements. These changes in cooperation models can often help us transition from a difficult situation to a favorable one, and sales will naturally improve.

But success comes at a price. Take the high-margin cooperation model mentioned earlier: it is not suitable for every company or something every company can do. For example, if your profit margin is too small to meet the terminal's gross profit requirements, or your product differentiation is not obvious, lacking competitiveness in price, packaging, concept, etc., it's hard to catch the purchasing manager's eye, and you can't do high-margin; for example, if your brand has a high reputation and is an advertised product with some promotional strength, you are not suitable for high-margin—why easily give away the high sales and high profits that can be achieved under the common cooperation model to distributors?

Speaking of this, it naturally leads to another topic: when changing cooperation models, we need to assess the benefits and risks of the new and old models. If the new cooperation model passes this assessment, it's not too late to change.

Adjust Displays Without a Budget to Boost Sales

Channels are the foundation, display is fertilizing, weeding, pest control, and care, and sales are the fruit—I believe everyone understands this sentence easily. But it's easier said than done. For example, display is very realistic.

"The company has no display budget; how can we do displays?" Whether for our own company or clients, or during training, this question is often raised. What is the actual situation? Many executives, especially those who prefer to stay in the office enjoying air conditioning while talking big, hardly know the truth about displays.

Good displays require a price, and it has become an indisputable fact that this extends from hypermarkets and chain supermarkets to C and D class supermarkets, convenience stores, grocery stores, newsstands, etc. So, when we go to a grocery store, the owner tells us: "The display position we want is bought by a certain brand for 300 yuan in display fees." At a newsstand, the owner similarly tells us: "A certain display position was sold for 200 yuan." If we're lucky enough to catch a brand's display fee expiring, we're told: "Bring money, and your product can be placed in that display position."

Similar problems almost plague all brands and companies, even if you're as glorious as Jianlibao—companies of that caliber face the same problems when hard-selling at terminals. But without a display budget or with a small budget, can we really not improve our display quality? Can we really not boost sales by improving display positions?

The answer is definitely no. Now, let's explore ways to improve.

1. Equip our salespeople with necessary display knowledge.

We have already mentioned the importance of display to sales. But do our salespeople understand this importance? If they do, do they have the necessary display knowledge? In reality, salespeople know that the cashier counter, middle aisles, shelf ends, corners, and eye-level positions are all good sales positions. However, point-of-sale space is limited, and display resources are limited. What we often face is that the positions mentioned above are occupied by big brands, brands with high sales and high budgets. We need our salespeople to know other good positions. Knowing these is not enough; we also need to know how to obtain these positions, especially when our brand is weak, our budget is small, or even nonexistent. How to fight for these positions?

Obviously, to enable our salespeople to master this knowledge and these skills, training, exams, display competitions, and experience sharing are often indispensable.

2. Make salespeople sensitive to display issues and strengthen their initiative.

Once we have the experience of accompanying two or more salespeople on customer visits or inspecting two different regional markets, it's not hard to find: even among salespeople, A will immediately notice and seek to improve if his product is blocked behind competitors, pressed underneath... even a slight unfavorable movement in display position; while B will turn a blind eye because the clock in his head about display has never been wound. If this clock has stopped or is slow, how can we talk about sensitivity to display issues?

How to improve this problem? Market supervisors' spot checks, sales managers' accompanying visits and teaching by example, including display quality in assessment items, and rewards and penalties related to display are all daily work we need to do. At the front end, we even need to design some exam items specifically testing execution and sensitivity to related issues when recruiting salespeople.

3. Improve salespeople's level of display practice and their awareness and ability to improve displays.

To do displays well and fight for better sales opportunities, enhancing the brand, building good customer relationships, using products or promotional items to compensate for the lack of budget, mastering the timing to buy the desired display positions, etc., are all methods that can be used and produce some results. But knowing the ways in the market is one thing; how to walk these paths to achieve the goal is another. For example, just talking about how to improve displays through good customer relationships is a basketful of topics.

These all require us to continuously help salespeople improve their practice level through goal and process management, tracking and control of key links, assessment, rewards and penalties, etc., to respond flexibly and effectively. Moreover, it's hard to do without the collaborative support of sales managers for their subordinates. Take Mengniu, a leading brand in the Chinese dairy market, as an example: they have a system where regional supervisors must spend a certain number of days each month accompanying frontline salespeople on market visits to promote problem discovery and management capabilities, as well as practical skills in customer relationships and displays.

Speaking of this, I recall an experience accompanying a beverage client's salesperson on a customer visit: we visited six points of sale, and each had display issues that could be improved without much cost—at one place, our product was not displayed in the refrigerator, but the customer's refrigerator had some empty space. After some joking with the store owner, we discussed whether we could put a few bottles in the refrigerator, and while talking, we carried a few bottles toward the refrigerator. "No space, can't fit," the owner said with a troubled expression but a slight smile, not really objecting. We brazenly opened the refrigerator door, and our product gained more display and sales space. At another place, the product was on the shelf and in the refrigerator, but the display in the refrigerator was sparse and visually unappealing. When we proactively helped the customer organize the refrigerator, the fullness of our product's display emerged... This is display. Don't be fooled by salespeople who mention display fees and other conditions when talking about display.

4. Use favorable opportunities to emphasize display improvement tasks.

Everyone knows that their advertising and promotion expenses are significantly wasted, but few realize that waste is not only in the effectiveness of advertising and promotion itself; failing to use and seize advertising and promotion opportunities to do things beyond advertising and promotion is also waste. Assigning tasks to salespeople to use these opportunities to fight for good displays from merchants is such a thing.

Consider this: Why don't our products get good displays? Because merchants don't value them; our brand is weak; sales are not guaranteed, and the input-output ratio of shelf resources is relatively low; inventory accumulates, capital turnover is slow; we're reluctant to spend on display fees; customer relationships are not in place... We can find many reasons to explain: merchants would rather promote a product with a one-cent gross profit than our product with a one-yuan gross profit.

But no merchant doesn't want the products on their shelves to sell well, so almost every merchant, when we ask for more promotion and display, hopes or directly requests us to provide promoters and advertising. Obviously, advertising and promotion opportunities can play a role in improving unfavorable displays. How big is this role? According to our experience, as long as we instill the aforementioned concepts into every salesperson's mind and ensure they have some execution ability, the probability of improving display quality at points of sale is no less than 15%. That is, out of 100 points of sale, at least 15 can have improved display quality. But during advertising and promotion, do we ask our salespeople to do this? Do our salespeople have such awareness?

5. Improve cooperation models to enhance displays, with certain company support.

In fact, we have already discussed a lot of this content earlier, such as doing high-margin products, buying out, entering through large commercial companies, replacing direct display fees with purchase incentives like buy-three-get-one-free, etc. We won't go into detail here.

However, Li Zhengquan's "Foresight" believes we still need to remind ourselves: although many salespeople's words are true or false and need our discernment and verification, it is unrealistic to expect salespeople to solve all market problems; it is also unrealistic to treat our sales managers and salespeople as invincible "clever women" who can cook without rice. Otherwise, why set cooperation models, need advertising and promotion, etc.? Why would salespeople follow you?

Improve Promotional Atmosphere to Boost Sales

In daily marketing activities, buy-one-get-one, discounts, lucky draws, points rebates, promoters, etc., are commonly used promotional methods. However, many companies often affect promotional effectiveness and sales growth due to two problems: First, when there is a promotion, advertising is abandoned. A potentially attractive activity is carried out quietly in a small area, with unsystematic marketing methods and limited awareness, greatly reducing effectiveness; Second, at promotional points, the atmosphere is not emphasized, and sales results are greatly reduced—for example, a promotional point that could sell 10,000 yuan a day ends up selling only 1,000 yuan.

Speaking of this, I recall two little stories related to myself.

Several years ago, when I was still studying, I knew little about marketing. Once during winter vacation, I helped an aunt who ran a shoe store watch the shop for half a day. Before going out, she told me to set up a promotional poster for a 30% discount on all items. I thought, "This is a small matter," and readily agreed. After she left, I found a large red paper, wrote "30% off on all items" with a brush, and pasted it at the door.

What was the effect? There was! Throughout the morning, customers came in droves to buy shoes attracted by the discount. But when my aunt returned at noon, she was very dissatisfied and told me: "If you're going to have a storewide promotion, you need to make it lively, create momentum and atmosphere, so more people will buy." She asked me to write seven or eight more posters and paste them on all walls. After this adjustment, the promotional atmosphere in the store immediately changed, becoming very lively, with frequent "full house" situations, and sales were two to three times better than in the morning. Since then, from the beginning of my sales career to now, I have developed the habit of emphasizing the creation of a promotional atmosphere at promotional points.

But many companies today have not yet formed such awareness. Not long ago, I accompanied the president of Company A to visit terminals and discovered such a situation. Company A, which makes functional foods, was running a "buy three get one free" promotion at a chain system, but the promotional effect was very unsatisfactory—after three days of promotion, daily sales were not much different from usual. Where was the problem?

That day, at the entrance of a point of sale, I saw Company A's promotional table with no one around, and the promoter was playing with her phone out of boredom. There was no notice poster with promotional information, no X-stand, no stacking of outer packaging boxes. All there was: three products, each with one box on the promotional table, unpackaged tasting samples, and the promoter's shout of "Free tasting, buy three get one free" when she saw us. Outside the store was like this; what about inside? On the shelf where Company A's products were displayed, there were also no eye-catching promotional notices or activity labels, only four small new characters "buy three get one" on the price tag.

Let's imagine: when passing such a promotional point or visiting such a store, if there is no infectious atmosphere, how enthusiastic would you be to join in? Or even, how likely would you be to notice what kind of company, what kind of brand is promoting there? If you hadn't happened to hear the promoter's shout, would you know it was a "buy three get one" promotion?

In this way, it's no wonder Company A's promotional effect was poor—the three-day promotional increment was only about a dozen boxes, converted to money, less than 60 yuan, about the same as a promoter's daily wage. Later, of course, Company A improved its promotional atmosphere. What was the change in promotional effect at that point? The daily promotional increment was three to four times more than the first three days.

There are no small matters in marketing! Even a partial change in a certain link is enough to benefit us. Promotion is obviously such a link, and creating a promotional atmosphere is obviously an overlooked part. To achieve good results in promotion, we need to pay attention to these issues. Another issue is how we should pay attention to and solve these problems.

1. Once we have product packaging in various sizes, promotional materials, POP materials, promotional gifts, and promoter uniforms, we should make full use of them and let them play their role.

2. Not only should display be standardized and vivid, but also on-site promotions at points of sale, communities, office buildings, etc. To achieve this, standardizing and normalizing the creation of promotional atmosphere, and promoting and implementing it in the sales and promotion teams, is obviously indispensable.

3. Establish a responsibility mechanism among sales and promotion supervisors.

4. Follow up with corresponding inspections and assessments.

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