Good customer relations can create greater sales! Sales terminals need to be grabbed, but sales customer relations need to be strong. In fact, terminal customer relations are more important than grabbing terminals. First, without good terminal customer relations, various terminal tasks are difficult to carry out smoothly; Second, without good terminal customer relations, some terminal investments may not play their role, while good terminal customer relations can maximize the benefits of terminal investments; Third, terminal customer relations themselves have direct terminal promotional power. Good customer relations make it easier to achieve twice the result with half the effort: For example, in product recommendations, terminals are willing to recommend your products to customers and actively sell your company's new products and new packaging; For example, in product display, terminals are willing to let your products maintain good display positions and proactively do merchandising and maintenance; For example, in visual merchandising, terminals are willing to let you post POP advertisements and prevent others from damaging or covering your POP advertisements; For example, in promotional activities, terminals are willing to cooperate with your in-store promoters and store promotions; For example, in product sell-through, terminals are willing to accept your sales suggestions and are willing to think and find ways to sell your products; For example, in ordering and payment, terminals are willing to pay on time and actively replenish stock to prevent stockouts or sellouts; for example, in information collection, terminals are willing to disclose market information and trends to you, especially about competitors; for example, in customer service, terminals are willing to proactively handle customer complaints about your products; Sometimes, emotional relationships can compensate for insufficient benefits and make it easier to forgive your momentary negligence and mistakes. Therefore, the weaker the market and the off-season, the more customer relations become the top priority, even surpassing stocking pressure, because at this time, sales only come with customer relations; sales are grabbed, not pressured.

  • Customer relations are built by visiting; diligence can compensate for clumsiness. Terminal customer relations are built by visiting; terminal visits are the basic method for maintaining good customer relations. Good terminal customer relations always belong to diligent terminal salespeople. Terminal customers will never decide whether to help you sell based on your position, but rather on how familiar you are and how good the relationship is. When leaders of some companies go to the market frontline to inspect terminal work, they may personally do displays, but because they are not familiar with the terminal, they may be stopped by the store owner or staff, or even scolded. This happens quite often, and these matters are easily resolved by a junior salesperson. Therefore, to maintain good customer relations with terminals, it is necessary to do daily visits. While doing terminal visits, terminal salespeople should gather personal information about key personnel in terminal stores, such as family situation, personality, hobbies, and birthdays, and establish detailed customer profiles and files. Give small gifts during festivals or irregularly, send gifts and greetings on birthdays, and help customers solve non-work-related problems as much as possible. Transform business relationships into personal friendships and build friend-like feelings. Terminal customer relations are built by visiting, but it cannot be achieved overnight; the key is to conduct terminal visits unwaveringly and continuously. Terminal visits are a marathon without an end, a long-term, continuous task that can never be relaxed. How can we ensure unwaveringly and continuously conduct terminal visits? Enterprises must establish a "store visit system" to manage and continuously operate through the system. Then follow the common steps of the "store visit system":
  1. Establish detailed terminal files, including terminal name, address, business area, staff names, birthdays, etc.;
  2. Divide the market into several districts and assign corresponding terminal salespeople to each district;
  3. Classify terminals into A, B, C categories;
  4. Reasonably determine visit cycles based on terminal category and set corresponding visit frequencies;
  5. Draw terminal distribution maps;
  6. Develop terminal visit route maps;
  7. Also develop a "visit process" specifying what work to do at each terminal, how to do it, and what standards to achieve. Do not underestimate these basic processes and standards. Once you establish a rhythm, you will feel both relaxed and immensely benefited, but these are not suitable for new product launch stages or promotional blitz stages.
  • Activities and gatherings: get together often, sales and stocking happen in play. Activities are a good means to build terminal customer relations. Activities provide a platform for communication and exchange between enterprises and terminals, increasing mutual contact and narrowing the distance. Enterprises can adopt flexible and diverse methods, regularly hold various activities such as symposiums, social gatherings, terminal celebration meetings, tourism activities, brewery visits, tasting sessions, learning lectures, ordering meetings, new product launches, etc. These activities can also include entertainment like lucky draws, cash grabs, and product or corporate culture elements. Through these activities, you can strengthen relationships, deepen understanding, and promote the company and products. Third, do terminal support work well to ensure customer relations do not depreciate. To build good terminal customer relations, you cannot rely solely on material incentives or small gifts and emotional investment. To establish stable and lasting terminal customer relations, enterprises need to provide systematic support and good terminal services. Helping terminals is helping the enterprise itself. Providing systematic support and services to terminals not only enhances terminal customer relations and cooperation but also effectively obtains terminal promotional space and display resources, thereby promoting product sales and improving sales performance. First, provide sales support to terminals. As an enterprise, actively helping terminals improve sales performance is a duty. Sales support provided to retail terminals mainly includes:
  1. Provide advertising support to terminals;
  2. Provide product display, in-store advertising, and point-of-sale promotion support;
  3. Personnel support, dispatch promoters for in-store promotion (for certain stores);
  4. Provide sales tools and equipment assistance, such as free shelves, freezers, and store signs;
  5. Timely delivery, ensure supply, always know the terminal's reasonable inventory, and replenish promptly;
  6. Assist terminals in putting products on shelves and do merchandising and maintenance;
  7. Timely handle returns and adjust slow-moving inventory;
  8. Provide after-sales service, handle customer complaints and claims proactively;
  9. Communicate frequently with terminals and solve difficulties and problems they encounter in sales. Second, provide business guidance to retail terminals. In addition to sales support, enterprises should also provide guidance and coaching related to operations to terminals as much as possible, propose reasonable suggestions for problems in terminal operations, help terminals solve operational difficulties, thereby enhancing their sales power and competitiveness, and improving overall operational level. For example, provide guidance and coaching in store decoration, product display, reasonable inventory, sales increase, cost saving, profit increase, advertising planning, and promotion. Give a plum and return a peach; when terminals benefit from enterprise guidance, enterprises can gain more from terminals. There are two different ways of thinking about how to conduct terminal customer relations, and the effects are completely different. Method 1: How can I solve my enterprise's problems through terminal customer relations? Most enterprises, when conducting terminal customer relations, usually think: A. What problems do I need to solve? B. How can I solve my enterprise's problems by doing terminal customer relations well? This is thinking from the enterprise's perspective. Of course, public relations plans designed this way can also achieve good results. However, merely starting from solving the enterprise's own problems to design customer relations plans for terminals is always passive and not the highest level of terminal customer relations. Method 2: How can I solve my enterprise's problems by solving terminal problems? Enterprises have their problems, and terminals have theirs. If we can break through the usual way of thinking and consider whether we can solve our enterprise's problems by solving terminal problems, and whether we can embed solving enterprise problems into solving terminal problems, this is a reverse way of thinking, thinking from the terminal's perspective. This way of thinking is: A. For terminals, what problems and difficulties do they encounter in operations? Or what problems and difficulties have not been well solved? B. If we use our enterprise's resources and integrate the terminal's own resources, can we solve some of the terminal's problems and difficulties? C. What are my enterprise's problems? Can we solve my enterprise's problems by solving terminal problems? In this way, enterprises and merchants integrate each other's resources for their own use, obtain resources they lack from each other, and thus solve their respective problems in a more economical way. Fourth, profit guarantee is the foundation for evergreen terminal customer relations. Customer relations can compensate for insufficient benefit relationships, but they cannot replace benefit relationships. Customer relations without benefit guarantees are not solid and cannot last. To make customer relations solid and lasting, both benefit guarantees and emotional communication are indispensable, but benefit guarantees are always primary, and emotional communication is secondary. Ultimately, the fit point between enterprises and terminals is benefits; benefits are the hard truth. Enterprises should meet terminals' profit requirements, ensure reasonable and continuous profits for terminals. Enterprises should scientifically set pricing policies to ensure reasonable unit profits for terminals; promote product sales, increase sales volume, make products sell well, and ensure total profits for terminals; manage the price system to ensure continuous profits for terminals. In addition, enterprises can also find new profit growth points for terminals. This article is reprinted from the public account: Li Chenglin. Editor's PS: The editor has selected 1067 articles from nearly 1900 articles published in this public account, divided them into 14 categories and 57 knowledge points, systematically organized frontline marketing management content into a library for everyone's learning. From market to customers, focusing on practical combat and management, all are dry goods. Follow the public account and reply with the number "1" to browse related content.