---
title: "Six Steps for Regional Market Marketing"
description: "Regional market operations are an integral part of a company's overall marketing strategy and its concrete embodiment in execution. Based on practical experience, six steps can be taken: dividing the regional market and setting strategic goals, conducting in-depth surveys and building customer files, decomposing targets internally and assigning responsibility to individuals, positioning competitors and formulating attack and defense strategies, refining customer management and consolidating market foundation, and improving incentive measures to boost sales momentum."
author: "徐应云"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-06-20"
language: "en"
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# Six Steps for Regional Market Marketing

> Regional market operations are an integral part of a company's overall marketing strategy and its concrete embodiment in execution. Based on practical experience, six steps can be taken: dividing the regional market and setting strategic goals, conducting in-depth surveys and building customer files, decomposing targets internally and assigning responsibility to individuals, positioning competitors and formulating attack and defense strategies, refining customer management and consolidating market foundation, and improving incentive measures to boost sales momentum.

Regional market operations are an integral part of a company's overall marketing strategy planning and the concrete embodiment of that strategy in execution. It can be said that the success or failure of regional market operations largely determines the company's overall marketing performance. Based on my practical experience, I believe the following six steps can be taken to carry out regional marketing work:

1. Divide the regional market and determine strategic goals

First, determine the scope, position the type, and make the regional marketing strategy specific.

Generally speaking, market and sales expansion always involves a gradual process; few companies start by developing the national market all at once. This requires companies of different sizes, strengths, and product structures to determine target regional market scopes of varying sizes.

After determining the regional scope, it is necessary to classify and position the regional market, dividing it into different types, such as home base regions, base regions, mobile regions, and guerrilla regions. Different types of regions implement different marketing strategies:

1. Home base regions are areas where the company has absolute dominance (market share above 60%). For such regions, the company must ensure investment, establish marketing branches down to the county or even township level for deep distribution, firmly occupy terminal networks, and cultivate the regional market intensively.

2. Base regions are areas where the company has absolute control (market share above 40%). For such regions, the company should focus investment, adopt a channel strategy combining distributors and terminals (30% of investment on distributors, 70% on terminals), and compete with competitors in a targeted manner.

3. Mobile regions are areas where the company, without corresponding investment, cannot easily dominate in the short term. Therefore, it is best to compete by avoiding the enemy's strengths and attacking their weaknesses, using retail terminals to drive distributor volume (70% of investment on distributors, 30% on terminals), and striving to control market share at around 20%.

4. Guerrilla regions are markets where the company has no customer base yet. For such regions, there is no need to invest human, material, or financial resources; simply adopt a cash-on-delivery marketing model.

Second, conduct regional segmentation and determine specific business development goals for each sub-region.

After determining the regional scope, further subdivide the region into several sub-regions, considering factors such as administrative divisions, population, consumption levels, transportation conditions, customer distribution, and policy investment. Specifically determine the market development and product promotion progress, target tasks (including sales volume and sales amount), target market share, and names of target distributors and retail terminals for each sub-region. For example, a pharmaceutical manufacturer divides the country into major regions such as Central China, South China, North China, and East China; further divides Central China into six sub-regions: Henan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Chongqing, and Hubei; in the Hubei sub-region, it targets distributors like "Jiuzhou Tong" and "Xinlong" and retail terminals like "Zhonglian," "Mayinglong," "Tongjitang," and "Sanjiu," striving to achieve sales of 5 million yuan and a market share of over 50% by the end of 2004.

2. Conduct in-depth surveys and establish customer files

Although the names of target distributors and retail terminals in the sub-region have been determined, we may still know little or not enough about them. This requires our sales personnel to conduct further in-depth surveys to understand their relevant situations in detail and truthfully. The usual practice is to establish target customer files. There are three points worth noting in customer file building:

First, the file information must be comprehensive and detailed. The customer information reflected in the file is an important basis for us to determine specific one-on-one sales policies for that customer. Therefore, in addition to the most basic information such as customer name, address, contact person, and phone number, the file should also include deeper factors such as their business characteristics, industry position and influence, distribution capability, financial strength, commercial reputation, and willingness to cooperate with our company.

Second, the file content must be truthful. This requires that the survey work of sales personnel be in-depth and practical. The practice of fabricating customer files behind closed doors to cope with inspections is the most undesirable.

Third, the established files must be managed dynamically. Establishing customer files is not a one-time task. If after filling out a form at the beginning of market development, it sleeps in the file cabinet, such files are of no help to our marketing work. Our sales personnel need to visit customers frequently, promptly learn about various changes and alterations, and update the corresponding file information to match the actual market and customer conditions.

3. Decompose targets internally and assign responsibility to individuals

Each sub-region is the most basic marketing team of a company. Although this team may have only 2-3 people, it is still necessary to assign sales targets and tasks to each salesperson in the sub-region, rather than just to the sub-region as a whole, let alone only to the regional branch. From company to region, from region to sub-region, and from sub-region to individual, this is a complete route for internal decomposition of marketing targets.

Assigning responsibility to individuals ensures the possibility of achieving target plans, because it breaks down long-term and overall goals into short-term and partial goals, making them more tangible and boosting morale. It also allows for a true evaluation of each salesperson's performance. If a region or sub-region fails to achieve its sales target, it does not mean that all sales personnel within that region or sub-region have failed. Assessment at the individual level helps motivate the advanced and spur the backward, helps discover and cultivate new business backbone, and helps prevent premature aging of the regional marketing team.

To encourage each salesperson to complete as many sales tasks as possible, sales competitions can be held with months, quarters, or years as the competition period, and the regional market or even the company as the competition area, allowing salespeople to complete tasks in a pleasant atmosphere of learning, comparing, catching up, and surpassing.

4. Position competitors and formulate attack and defense strategies

(1) Focus on breakthroughs and target precisely.

When competing with peers in the regional market, there is no need to treat all peers as competitors. Peers are not necessarily "enemies." Although they are in the same industry, their product structures may be completely different, channel strategies may differ greatly, and target customers may be entirely different. Attacking all peers with a "machine gun sweep" approach will only waste your own strength. The wise approach is to carefully compare product structures, channel strategies, target customers, and other factors between the two sides, select 1-2 opposing peers as our competitors, and then concentrate firepower to defeat them.

(2) Conduct systematic analysis to know yourself and know your enemy.

Market is like a battlefield; only by understanding yourself and your competitors can you win every battle. To know yourself and your enemy, regional marketing personnel must conduct systematic analysis of themselves and their competitors. Specifically, we can use the SWOT analysis method, starting from aspects such as product efficacy, production process, technical content, packaging grade, price positioning, brand image, channel strategy, sales policy, and promotional support; see in which aspects we have absolute advantages and in which we are at a relative disadvantage; what is the biggest threat from competitors, and how great is our opportunity to defeat competitors and control the market. Only by using our strengths to attack others' weaknesses, avoiding our weaknesses and defending against others' strengths, leveraging our competitive advantages, and finding the breakthrough point to attack the opponent can we remain invincible in competition.

5. Refine customer management and consolidate market foundation

Customers need incentives, but they also need management. Excessive incentives can easily let customers lead us by the nose; only refined management can ensure long-term stability of the regional market. This refinement is usually reflected in the management of customer tasks, prices, credit, and cross-region dumping.

(1) Task management

In the third step, we have already decomposed sales targets within the region. But this is not enough, because it is not yet the market decomposition of sales target tasks. Only when annual and monthly sales tasks are assigned to the specific customers that each salesperson is responsible for completing sales with, can the tasks be considered truly implemented. Thus, the complete route for external decomposition of regional sales targets should go further on the basis of internal decomposition, that is, from company to region, from region to sub-region, from sub-region to individual, and from individual to customer.

(2) Price management

For customers, the stability of product supply and sales prices is more attractive than the size of product profit margins. Some regional managers, in order to show different levels of attention or support to large and small customers (here "large and small" refers only to the customer's own scale, not the proportion of our products in the customer's sales), often determine supply prices based on customer size rather than customer type, resulting in chaos in price management.

To maintain price stability, first, ensure that the same type of distribution customers enjoy the same price policy, such as all wholesale-type customers enjoying one price and all retail terminal-type customers enjoying another; second, assist different levels of wholesale customers in unifying their secondary distribution prices, because some wholesale customers, in order to increase volume, often advance the supplier's year-end rebates or other incentive policies to their downstream customers in advance, leading to inconsistent secondary distribution prices for the same product in the same region.

(3) Credit management

If we neglect to assess the credit rating and financial strength of distribution customers during product distribution, it may ultimately lead to customers completing sales tasks but disrupting the market, or even "relocating, closing down" overnight, causing huge bad debts for the company. Therefore, we must always grasp the sales dynamics of each customer, especially controlling the cumulative distribution amount. Specifically, we can establish customer management cards, adopt credit rating assessments, set saturation distribution volumes, control payment settlement cycles, and other methods to strengthen credit management.

(4) Cross-region dumping management

Cross-region dumping most easily damages the local supply and sales price system and also most easily makes distribution customers lose confidence in the future sales of the product. To detect dumping in time, sales personnel only need to visit customers frequently and check the sales flow of products; but to effectively prevent dumping, I believe we must take a path that addresses both symptoms and root causes.

The main symptomatic treatments are as follows: 1. Clarify dumping responsibility in advance. Sign responsibility agreements between the company and sales personnel, and sign strict sales contracts between the company and distribution customers, with tripartite written agreements in advance to provide legal basis for punishing malicious dumpers. 2. Join hands with distribution customers to resist. Accumulate the sales amount or volume of the current batch of dumped goods into the performance of distribution customers in the invaded region as one of the effective tasks. At the same time, deduct the corresponding portion from the completed sales amount or volume of the dumping customer and the corresponding salesperson. 3. Order the dumper to repurchase at retail price, cancel incentives, or deduct corresponding deposits. 4. Implement packaging differentiation by region. Track product flow through batch number management, regional exclusive sales control, and other methods.

The key to addressing the root cause lies in establishing a manufacturer-distributor integrated strategic alliance, where both parties form a community of interests and treat product sales as their own business, only then can true market control be achieved and the dumping problem be completely solved. Of course, this also relies on the transformation of overall marketing concepts and the improvement of marketing levels.

6. Improve incentive measures and boost sales momentum

After completing the basic work of regional division, field surveys, target decomposition, competitor positioning, and customer management, each salesperson and the customers they are responsible for have achieved their own sales performance. The next step is to open the merit book and reward achievements.

(1) Incentives for internal sales personnel

Regarding the assessment and incentives for our own sales personnel, although different companies have different assessment methods, through research and comparison, I have found that these methods invariably share the following commonalities:

1. The overall principle is "numbers determine heroes, performance determines success or failure." Because the market does not believe in tears and sweat, nor in hard work and fatigue, only in achievements. All achievements must be proven by specific numbers and performance. So-called wages determine grades, bonuses depend on performance; income depends on real ability.

2. There are relatively comprehensive assessment indicators and relatively detailed reward and punishment rules. Not one-sided, nor relying on intuition without specific standards for rewards and punishments. Taking the comprehensiveness of assessment indicators as an example, most companies use payment collection, profit, tasks, expenses, accounts receivable, product structure, daily work, etc. as basic assessment items.

3. Assessment measures are stable but with changes. As regional marketing work develops from one stage to another, the corresponding assessment management methods will also advance with the times and gradually improve.

4. Combine vertical and horizontal comparisons. Because the foundation of each salesperson and each sub-region is different, salespeople in well-established regions may reap without sowing, while those in poorly established regions may struggle to barely meet standards. If we uniformly adopt absolute performance assessment, it will be unfair. Vertical comparison compares a salesperson's performance in this assessment cycle with their performance in the previous cycle, such as a salesperson's performance growth rate = (actual payment collected this month - actual payment collected last month) ÷ actual payment collected last month; horizontal comparison compares a salesperson's individual performance with the overall performance of the regional marketing team, such as a salesperson's performance share = individual payment collected ÷ regional total payment collected. These vertical and horizontal relative ratios are the final performance data for team member ranking.

(2) Incentives for external distribution customers

In addition to internal sales personnel, external distribution customers also need incentives: customers who complete tasks well will ask the company for more and greater policy support; customers who perform poorly will also ask the company to adjust task indicators. Regarding customer incentives, I believe there are two points to pay special attention to:

1. Customers also need comprehensive and integrated assessment. Some people hold a simple attitude of "whoever gives milk is mother," only assessing the customer's absolute purchase volume, which is unscientific. We should comprehensively assess a series of customer indicators: such as task completion rate (customer's contract sales completion), sales share (the proportion of our product sales in the customer's total sales of similar products), sales growth rate (compared with the same period last year or compared with the previous month), profit rate (must deduct costs, promotions, rebates, and other policy investments), price management, dumping control, payment collection cycle, etc.

2. Do not make false incentive promises in a moment of enthusiasm to make customers value our products; do not easily change existing incentive measures to reduce incentive strength, or withhold the company's incentive policies for personal use. Greed for small gains will only permanently lose customers and market.

Fair and reasonable assessment and incentive measures that consider both internal and external factors will lay the foundation for regional marketing work in the next marketing cycle and boost momentum. Having reached this step, regional marketing work can be considered complete.

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