---
title: "Ten Ways to Get Terminal Owners to Stock Up and Reduce Your Inventory!"
description: "How can you quickly cycle through distribution? Today, we bring you 10 tips for accelerating terminal distribution, summarized from eight years of experience by a top salesperson. Learn these and you'll have terminal owners stocking up while your inventory shrinks!"
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-08-17"
language: "en"
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# Ten Ways to Get Terminal Owners to Stock Up and Reduce Your Inventory!

> How can you quickly cycle through distribution? Today, we bring you 10 tips for accelerating terminal distribution, summarized from eight years of experience by a top salesperson. Learn these and you'll have terminal owners stocking up while your inventory shrinks!

How can you quickly cycle through distribution? Today, we bring you 10 tips for accelerating terminal distribution, summarized from eight years of experience by a top salesperson. Learn these and you'll have terminal owners stocking up while your inventory shrinks!

**1. Find Opportunity Stores**
When launching a new product, it's always the case that out of 100 stores, most don't sell well, but a few do.
During the distribution phase, sales supervisors should focus on these high-performing outlets. Walk through these stores, chat with the owners, and observe what makes these stores unique—their product mix, displays, promotions, pricing, etc. As long as you look, ask, and learn with intention, you'll find patterns.
Then it will dawn on you: "Ah, I see! The stores that aren't selling are too low-end; we need to concentrate on A and B class stores." "Ha, I found the trick! I'll have my sales reps walk the entire territory, build customer profiles, and identify stores that have unresolved issues, complaints, or grievances with competitors—these stores are easier to win over." "Ha, I get it! My first step is to target the surrounding township markets. The competitor is strong in the city, but their distributor's delivery capability and service in these areas are poor."

**2. Focused Visits to Opportunity Stores**
In areas where brand appeal is not strong, don't follow the traditional once-a-week route visits—weak brands rarely get orders from broad visits.
First, identify your opportunity stores and arrange for sales reps to visit them intensively. Design promotional policies for these stores to win them over and establish a "revolutionary base" for the new product. Once the product is distributed, moving, and "established" in these outlets, then expand the visit scope.

**3. Free Hierarchical Visit Model**
This is the most extensive model: assign sales reps a territory, build basic customer profiles, and set order targets, letting them decide which customers to visit each day. Reps know best which stores need more visits and which need fewer.
At the same time, set a minimum visit frequency for all terminals: let reps decide which key accounts to visit more often and which small stores less often, but all terminal customers must be visited at least once a month. Otherwise, it's considered a missed visit or absenteeism and will be penalized—this method suits small and medium liquor companies and distributors with loose management.
Note that this model gives employees high daily autonomy, which means high variability. High variability can lead to laziness and skipping work. Therefore, require employees to visit a fixed number of stores daily, e.g., choose 30 stores to visit, and record details. Supervisors should spot-check workloads to see if they are missing visits or falsifying reports.

**4. 5+1 Hierarchical Visit Model**
Six days of visits per week: 5 days are regular route visits, e.g., visit 30 customers per day in route order. On Saturday, take a day to do a second visit to opportunity outlets, big stores, or key stores.
Key points to note:
- Stores where new products have been placed and competitors are entering need high-frequency visits to squeeze out their displays and increase our terminal relationships and sell-through opportunities.
- Stores with our new product placements need high-frequency visits to increase displays, execute promotions, and boost sell-through.
- Stores with our display agreements, exclusive agreements, or promotion agreements need high-frequency visits to maintain compliance.

**5. 20+10 Hierarchical Visit Model**
Classify terminals into A, B, C grades based on area, sales volume, etc.
A-grade stores are big stores; it's best to separate them and create a route manual with dedicated personnel visiting every two days.
The quality requirements for reps covering KA supermarkets and large restaurants differ from those covering small stores; it's best to separate these visits.
For B and C stores, create a hierarchical route manual. For example, if a rep visits 30 stores daily, 20 C stores are visited once a week, and 10 B stores are visited twice a week. That means B store names may appear twice in the same route manual.
This method is similar to the 5+1 model, but 5+1 concentrates repeat visits on one day, while 20+10 first pulls out A stores for dedicated visits, then B stores get a regular visit and a repeat visit on another day of the week, and C stores are visited once a week on their route.

**6. Optimize Terminal Visit Routes**
Building basic terminal visit data is to help reps visit terminal customers systematically, converting blank stores into stocked stores, single-product stores, multi-product stores, and model stores.
Supervisors can analyze the data to see the structure of blank stores, single-product stores, etc., assess market potential, and set sales and distribution targets for reps, thereby locking down target outlet lists. However, improper use of route data can hurt distribution performance, so continuous optimization is needed.

**Route Manual Updates**
Each year, 20-30% of restaurants and small tobacco/alcohol stores close, and new ones open. Failing to update terminal customer data in time wastes terminal resources, leads to incomplete visits, and causes idle work. For example, a route might have 30 stores today, but due to demolition, 9 have closed. So reps should note new openings and close accounts in their areas. Supervisors should reward reps for reporting new stores and penalize them for missing new openings.

**Temporarily Stop Regular Route Visits to Focus on Key Areas**
Once-a-week route visits are the standard method. But what about unusual situations, like competitors aggressively distributing to attack our market, or the need to push inventory before Chinese New Year? Then you must temporarily stop regular routes and concentrate on visiting competitor-distributed outlets to counter them, or focus on loading trucks for pressure stocking.

**7. Exploit Time Differences in Visits**
Even a tiger has moments of sleep; that's when you can snatch food from its mouth.
During Chinese New Year, most companies give 7 days off. What do they do when they return on the 8th? Many hold annual meetings, team-building events, training, and set annual targets, still immersed in the festive atmosphere. They usually don't hit the market until after the Lantern Festival (15th day). Then they'll have drinks with distributors, and before you know it, it's the 20th.
Think about it: in the north, there's the tradition of "opening on the fifth day of the New Year." Many terminals open their doors with firecrackers on the fifth. At that time, they have money—lots of cash from selling New Year goods. Their warehouses are empty—they sold everything during the holiday. They have money but no stock, and competitors are still off work. This is the hunger period for terminal restocking—a paradise for sales reps!
Once, a company had employees return on the 4th (and required distributor staff to open on the 5th). On the 5th, company leaders personally led teams out to distribute. It was amazing! It wasn't selling; it was unloading! Customers who usually ordered one or two cases were now ordering ten cases without hesitation.
The first year, we felt a bit guilty, thinking it was too harsh on employees. But that month's performance nearly doubled compared to the same period last year, without spending an extra cent on promotions. At month-end, we held a celebration, gave bonuses, paid triple overtime, selected a performance champion, and arranged compensatory time off for employees in the following months. Morale was high, and it didn't hurt at all. I've used this method for years, but competitors' executives are still asleep during the New Year.

**8. Improve Efficiency of Vehicle-Based Distribution and Loading/Unloading**
This method is suitable for vehicle-based distribution and can improve efficiency.

**Save Time on Empty Runs**
Before departure, call key accounts, big bosses, and customers who are often away to inform them of your distribution policy and approximate arrival time, asking them to wait at the store and preferably have payment ready to avoid wasted trips.

**Save Time on On-Site Picking**
At the distribution site, arrange goods in the vehicle by category and neatly to save time for reps searching for items.

**Save Time on Return Loading**
For long-distance vehicle sales, like going to townships, if a certain item runs short, it can affect distribution results, and returning to load more wastes time. Use several small box trucks to distribute ahead, with a large truck following as a mobile warehouse to save time on return loading.

**9. Team Distribution**
A single rep might not get orders from terminals. For key routes and stores, switch to team distribution: a vehicle with 3-5 people. Upon arrival, one person shows samples, sells, delivers, collects payment, and keeps records; one helps the owner organize shelves and displays; one puts up posters and does visual merchandising; one calls out to other stores for delivery; one watches the vehicle and goods... With strength in numbers, distribution results are often better than solo efforts.

**10. Improve Order Delivery Rate**
**Standardize Orders**
Especially at the start of route visits, when the distributor's order delivery process isn't yet smooth, first clarify with the distributor what constitutes a valid order, e.g., whether orders must exceed one case, and whether the distributor agrees to split-case delivery.

**Clear Addresses**
When a rep takes an order on the first day, they must write the customer's address clearly according to standards, even with a sketch, and get supervisor approval before handing it to the distributor for delivery.

**Feedback on Abnormal Deliveries**
When distributor drivers encounter orders with undeliverable addresses or refusals, they should report to the supervisor. The supervisor should verify and inform the driver whether to cancel or redeliver.

**Reps Track Delivery Rate**
During new product distribution, require reps to call on the third day after taking an order to confirm delivery. If not delivered, immediately report to the supervisor to track why the distributor's driver didn't deliver.

**Weekly Review Meetings**
Supervisors meet weekly with distributors and their drivers to review orders that weren't delivered on time. Both sides confront each other, explain reasons, decide whether to cancel or redeliver, and assign responsibility. Penalize distributors according to agreement, deducting delivery subsidies or rebates.

Source: China Good Wine Recruitment Network
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