In the previous article on the bC integration topic, I introduced the role of WeChat mini-programs in connecting stores and reaching consumers. Today's case does not fall under the bC integration category—due to the nature of their products, reaching the stores is sufficient. But this case is truly impressive: Founded just two years ago, with no local market resources, they achieved annual sales of 200 million RMB in frozen food. How did they do it? Below, I will share this company's entrepreneurial experience with you through three numbers (10, 5,000, 200,000,000), hoping it inspires you.
Field Promoters: 10
Xiaocan Frozen Food, founded in Guangzhou in June 2019, with founder Zheng Jiale: Our main business is delivering frozen food to catering outlets. For example, a street-side malatang shop orders 50 jin of beef meatballs, and Xiaocan delivers them. This is a very traditional B2b distribution business. To achieve such results, how many sales representatives would you need? 10! Strictly speaking, they are not sales representatives; they are field promoters. Field promoters? Yes, they do not introduce products, do not place orders on behalf of customers, and do not provide credit. They only tell customers that there is a platform with products they can browse and order from, but they cannot help with anything else. What platform? A mall developed based on WeChat mini-programs. We create a unique mini-program code for each field promoter. After introducing the service, they tell the restaurant owner to scan the code. Scanning codes is familiar to over a billion people in China, so there is no burden. After scanning, do they register as mall users? No login or registration is required. Customers can add products to the cart directly, and only at the final payment step do they need to authorize their phone number and nickname. Is this to avoid interrupting the ordering process? Yes. Some mini-programs require authorization upon entry, but this depends on the specific business scenario. Some merchants do not want non-authenticated customers to see their product details, so they place authentication upfront. Traditional apps are a burden for customers; downloading and installing is troublesome, and there are subsequent updates. Moreover, with apps, you need to rebuild a user identity system, but in WeChat, we can use OpenID, which corresponds to a person's public identity in WeChat. When users enter the mini-program, we can identify them. Mini-programs also help us with personnel management. If we held meetings every day for field staff, it would be time-consuming. But if we don't manage them, they might go to internet cafes to play Honor of Kings. What to do? Through the data from restaurant owners scanning codes, we know whether field promoters are working hard or slacking off. But what if they send the QR code to others instead of visiting customers? The mini-program has a feature called Scene ID, which can identify whether a user entered by long-pressing or scanning. There was a situation where salespeople used to say that customers were busy and unwilling to scan, so they only added WeChat and then sent the QR code to the customer, who entered by long-pressing. But now we have them use Enterprise WeChat, which can determine how many customers they added today and how many were added through their recent additions. When a field promoter first hands a business card to a customer, the customer scans to enter; the second time, they might enter directly. But there are also cases where customers who have already ordered scan again, and the system can identify that. ** Author's Summary:** _ _Traditional sales personnel are not very efficient because they carry multiple functions: market development, product introduction, order placement, relationship management, after-sales service, etc. _ _They have to handle cognition, transaction, delivery, and relationship. _ _But Xiaocan's approach transforms sales reps into field promoters, focusing only on outreach and follow-up visits. They are responsible for partial cognition (introducing the mall) and partial relationship (later tracking), while transactions, delivery, and cognition (product introduction) and relationship (after-sales service) are all completed through the mini-program. _ _Moreover, the mini-program also helps Xiaocan achieve online management of sales personnel. Impressive! So, how many stores does Xiaocan currently cover?
Monthly Transaction Users: 5,000
In Guangzhou, we have over 5,000 monthly transaction users. 5,000 is not a very high number, but we have only been in Guangzhou for a little over a year, so it's acceptable. We handle over 1,000 orders daily. If we used the traditional business model, where customers order from sales reps and sales reps process orders, we simply couldn't serve that many. △ Real-time push of lost customers / redirect to order page Now, relying on the WeChat ecosystem, we have achieved a technological pathway, allowing us to reach and operate a large number of customers at a very low cost. First, look at ordering. The mini-program mall is the only ordering method; our staff cannot create orders manually. Customers must order through the mall. Field promoters focus on customer acquisition. Traditional sales reps need to do many actions, such as promoting products and processing orders, which consumes a lot of communication cost. We decided from the start not to do this. Second, look at after-sales. We have customers add our Enterprise WeChat. When goods are delivered, we push a message. If the customer is not present to sign, we also inform them via Enterprise WeChat where the goods are placed—all through template messages to form a closed loop. For after-sales issues, we create a ticket in the backend and refund the customer via WeChat Pay. Also, customer operations. Combining the mini-program with Enterprise WeChat, we can do customer operations based on the customer's OpenID. In addition to the customer-facing mall mini-program, there is an internal assistant mini-program. By directly opening the assistant mini-program, we can see the customer's past order history. Field promoters can know at any time which customer entered the mall and placed an order. Moreover, through the mini-program, we can easily monitor customer churn. △ LBS to find lost customers For example, we set a period, say 30 days. If no order is placed within that time, the customer is considered lost. The mini-program can directly call Tencent Maps, and field promoters can immediately visit the store. What if customers are unwilling or unable to order via the mini-program? Then they are not our target customers; we will give up on them! ** Author's Summary:** _ _In the previous case article, we mentioned that the biggest difference between informatization and digitalization is that informatization only lets us know, but digitalization lets us do—it directly gives us the ability to decide and act. _ _Traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is just post-hoc recording, where sales personnel manually fill in all customer information. _ _It is essentially an internal information system. Xiaocan, on the other hand, uses the combination of mini-programs, Enterprise WeChat, and internal management software to achieve data online, effectively realizing the digitalization of CRM. Understood. 10 field promoters, 5,000 monthly transaction users, all transactions completed in the mini-program. So, what is the transaction volume?
Annual Turnover: 200,000,000
Annual turnover has reached 200 million! Actually, my background is like this. Before starting my business, I worked in the WeChat team for 8 years, so I am relatively familiar with the WeChat ecosystem. On Tencent's 20th anniversary, they proposed to root in consumer internet and embrace industrial internet. I was deeply touched at that time. Also, I am from Fujian, and many of my acquaintances are traditional distributors. I felt this was an opportunity, so I paid more attention to this area. In 2018, my uncle found me. He had been in the frozen food business for over 20 years, but his business had major problems. What problems? Using an APP for business transformation was difficult because getting customers to download an APP was hard, plus updates and iterations were very troublesome. I suggested he could completely break the existing system and fully embrace mini-programs. I am a WeChat person, familiar with the WeChat ecosystem, and have such conviction. In August 2019, I resigned. I first worked in Yunnan, then we decided to expand to the Guangzhou market. In June 2020, I founded Xiaocan Frozen Food. In just two years, from 0 to 200 million, can we say the core reason is embracing mini-programs? It should be said that mainly because we built a digital system in the shortest possible time. Digitalization is not only the front-end sales interface and intelligent guidance, but also back-end management and operations. When customers give us orders, we must also have the ability to respond quickly! The combination of internal management systems and mini-programs allowed us to provide customers with the ability to serve over 1,500 SKUs within the first month. Currently, our procurement is mainly done through web pages, but our inbound and outbound deliveries are all based on mini-programs. Delivery drivers see orders through the mini-program and go to designated suppliers to pick up and load goods. After procurement returns to the warehouse, product identification and label printing can be done through the mini-program. During delivery, drivers can view dispatch tasks and complete orders online. With real-time inventory and shipment status, plus faster turnover due to self-ordering, our inventory turnover is very fast. How fast? Now we can achieve, with 3,000+ SKUs, an overall turnover speed 2-3 times that of most distributors. ** Author's Summary:** _ _Organizations are responsible for shared capabilities, individuals are responsible for delivering results. This is an important management principle and direction. ___ _What the organization shares is standardization and process. Here, standardization and process include not only the front-end market but also internal management, back-end supply chain, logistics, etc. ___ _Building a digital system in a short time is the key to Xiaocan's rapid growth from 0 to 200 million. Among these, WeChat mini-program's B2b solution and the entire WeChat ecosystem have played the role of infrastructure. Finally, summarize the difference between you and traditional models in one sentence? What we want to do is to output our service and fulfillment capabilities in a systematic and standardized way.
In Conclusion:
Why did Xiaocan succeed? On one hand, they used the combination of mini-programs, Enterprise WeChat, and internal software to digitize the entire business process. On the other hand, it is the industry resources and experience passed down from behind. Xiaocan can be seen as internet people entering the traditional distribution field, using new tools to transform traditional business models. It can also be seen as distributors with some traditional industry experience introducing new concepts and tools. Today, when we talk about new models and digitalization, it seems unrelated to traditional distributors. Not only unrelated, but distributors might even be a group that gets short-circuited. But the case of Xiaocan Frozen Food precisely brings inspiration to traditional distributors for transformation: New tools have become infrastructure. They are not weapons to revolutionize you, but tools to empower your business development. Based on industry resources and experience, actively learn and make good use of new tools. Digitalization is also your era. Ren Wenqing | Head of New Distribution Academy Focused on in-depth interviews in the FMCG industry, reflecting on the latest changes in the industry. If you want to communicate, you can add WeChat by long-pressing. When adding, please indicate your company, position, and name.