With one month to Spring Festival, it's the best time to push for sales. Teacher Jiang Meng shares dozens of methods to unblock channels, hoping they help you:

Strategy 1: Use Emotion to Market to Channel Partners Don't beat them, don't scold them, just warm them with emotion. Maybe no one has visited the terminal for a long time, maybe you haven't contacted channel partners for a while, maybe they are worried about pre-Spring Festival promotions. Go deep into the market, visit channel partners, communicate, and show care. Because Chinese people value emotions.

Specific actions:

  1. Make a phone call to greet them, at least show you care.
  2. Find time to visit in person.
  3. Compare their sales from last year and the first half of the year.
  4. Provide support within your means.
  5. Offer advice and strategies for their business.
  6. Don't forget to give channel partners confidence and goals, and appropriate pressure.

Strategy 2: Go Along with Delivery Vehicles to See the Market Ride with the distributor's vehicle, speak politely and gently, buy a pack of cigarettes, have a meal, share a bottle of water, a cigarette, personally participate in distribution, give advice at terminals, help terminal customers plan sales, and propose adjustments. This makes distributors and terminal customers feel cared for.

Example: Once, Teacher Jiang Meng accompanied a factory salesperson to visit a distributor. They found the distributor was young and lacked management skills, especially his team arrived late, had no goals, no motivation, and worked carelessly.

Many distributor teams are like this. In my opinion, when managing such customers, you can't use harsh measures, or they will resent it. You should start with the boss, build his confidence, let him change, then gradually influence the team. Persist in continuous adjustment to lift the team's spirit.

Strategy 3: Optimize the Distribution Structure and Quantity Under Distributors Once, Teacher Jiang Meng visited county markets. Each county has distributors. Some distributors develop township markets by opening one customer per township, others open multiple customers per township. They think one customer means less sales, multiple customers mean more sales, but reality isn't always so. Multiple customers can lead to price wars and unhealthy competition. So Teacher Jiang Meng believes the right fit is best; don't blindly pursue quantity.

How to optimize distribution quantity and structure: Observe the sales performance and market stability of downstream customers. If the market is chaotic, reduce or eliminate some. Let capable ones leverage their strengths.

Strategy 4: Find Quality Terminal Outlets and Focus Service on Them Spend limited time on capable outlets. In every region, you can find quality outlets. List them and provide focused service and tracking, because they are the foundation of your sales growth.

Motivating them is crucial.

Strategy 5: Adjust and Optimize Terminal Distribution and Sales Promotion Strategies Maybe our promotional policies aren't targeted, maybe our gifts aren't interesting to consumers. When visiting terminals, people will report these issues. Even if our promotions aren't as stimulating as competitors', we can optimize and adjust. Make a final push.

Gifts should differ by channel: Example: If we sell FMCG, we have roadside shops, restaurants, KA hypermarkets, etc. Our terminal distribution policies and gifts should differ, choosing promotional products based on each channel's characteristics.

Strategy 6: Eliminate Terminal Merchants' Concerns, Lower Entry Barriers, and Relax Return/Exchange Policies Many terminal merchants are afraid to stock up or take too much, which is understandable; they worry about slow sales.

We can distribute by case, use mixed cases, lower entry thresholds, offer return/exchange incentives for new products, and quickly distribute to improve efficiency.

Channel terminal distribution is crucial for a company and critical for distributors. It's like a river; if it's not smooth, it can break the banks, causing product and payment backlogs, increasing pressure on regional sales staff, failing tasks, or even worse, distributors defecting or becoming disgruntled. All these require a reasonable, feasible terminal channel sales strategy. Combined with previous sharing, Teacher Jiang Meng continues to provide the magic bullet for skyrocketing terminal sales. Whether it works, you'll know by using it.

Strategy 7: Adjust Distributor Employee Incentive and Assessment Systems Scenario review: One day, a distributor boss got up early, went to the office happily, called a meeting, and said: "Today, deliver goods well. The group with the best sales gets 200 yuan per person." Employees looked at each other in surprise. What's wrong with the boss today? Has he lost his mind? He's never been so generous. After the meeting, employees were energized, preparing to hit the market. They all wanted the reward. Later, the boss's wife returned, saw the enthusiasm, and asked what happened. Employees repeated the boss's words. The wife immediately said: "Who said that? That's too much. No, at most 50 yuan." Employees were speechless, deflated like balloons, not knowing whom to listen to.

Such things often happen with distributors. The key reason is they don't know how to manage, changing orders frequently, multiple leaders, blind excitement. Employees are at a loss.

Employee incentives include material and spiritual: Spiritual: team dinners, birthday parties, caring for employees' families, empathizing with their hearts, caring about their dreams and difficulties, understanding, praise in meetings, verbal compliments, envious smiles, encouraging gestures, handling relationships and coordination. All these are spiritual incentives. Material: giving material and monetary rewards, the most direct and effective but short-lived.

Incentive atmosphere: positive and negative incentives. Always positive isn't good, always negative isn't good either. Use them reasonably.

Design incentives per employee: For example, if the goal is 5,000 cases, give 0.1% commission; for excess, 0.2%, encouraging them to exceed targets.

If below 5,000 cases, commission decreases or none. The principle: what we need, we assess; what we encourage, salespeople strive for.

Strategy 8: Use the Product You Want to Push as an Incentive When motivating employees, there's a key rule: what you want them to do well, assess and incentivize that.

Example: Many distributors have good incentive systems, but when employees drive out, do they visit customers or sleep on the road? You don't know. This requires process supervision and management. How to do it:

  1. Create customer visit forms; have customers sign and leave phone numbers.
  2. Use satellite positioning for each person, know their daily routes, and check in.
  3. Company staff call back to verify visits.
  4. Reward extra visits, e.g., if planned five stores, reward 5 yuan per extra store.
  5. Daily competition: first place rewarded, last place punished.

This creates urgency and keeps employees aware of their goals daily.

Strategy 9: Get Distributor Bosses Moving, Walk Among the People, Appear Deep in the Market Example: Teacher Jiang Meng served a distributor client, gave lectures, observed the team wasn't proactive, the boss had a bad temper. Later, the boss said: "Last year I lost money, I'm in a bad mood, hesitant about whether to continue."

What were the reasons? I found several issues:

  1. The boss managed impulsively.
  2. The boss lacked management skills.
  3. The boss didn't go to the market, spent days drinking and playing.
  4. The team was afraid to speak up or report issues, fearing criticism.
  5. The boss didn't have a positive attitude toward problems.

Think about it: we may encounter such distributor bosses—bad temper, low education, poor management, poor performance, unwilling to listen. How to solve this?

I think we should start with the boss, give him incentives and advice.

Invite senior company leaders to encourage him and provide development suggestions, get the distributor to go deep into the market, and solve sales problems specifically.

Use your actions to influence him, let him see his shortcomings.

Strategy 10: Bundle Sales with Other Products the Distributor Represents If our product lacks awareness, competitiveness, advantages, or is hard to distribute, look at what sells well among the distributor's other products and combine them through promotions to get terminals to accept.

Example: If the customer sells Coke, JDB, and Nongfu Spring well, we can combine Coke, JDB, Nongfu, and our product into a four-product set. For every four sets ordered, reward one case of Coke, etc.

Notes:

  1. Don't make our product a free gift; otherwise, customers won't value it.
  2. At terminal displays, ideally combine with bestsellers.

Strategy 11: Improve Distribution Efficiency with Systematic Training for Distribution Staff Based on your industry and customer service, systematically train the workflow:

Terminal visit service process:

  1. Handle customer complaints: delivery, damaged products, promotional items, rebates, etc.
  2. Arrange promotional materials: put up posters, replace posters.
  3. Organize shelves, display products neatly, wipe clean.
  4. Count inventory: FIFO, inventory check, reasonable safety stock.
  5. Provide marketing and promotion suggestions, guide customers to proactively market.
  6. Suggest orders, convey manufacturer promotion policies.

Strategy 12: Create and Enhance the Best Terminal Image and Largest Display Our products must constantly appear at terminals so consumers can see, buy, and hear about them, enabling terminal sell-through. To let consumers buy at terminals, we must enhance terminal image.

Benefits of enhancing terminal image and largest display:

  1. Let consumers see us, leave a good impression.
  2. Create a positive feeling about the brand.
  3. Attract customers' attention.
  4. Increase consumer trust.
  5. Boost exposure.
  6. Increase purchase desire.
  7. Attract foot traffic.

Since we know the benefits, how to operate: Teacher Jiang Meng summarizes:

  1. Improve terminal hygiene, especially for FMCG. With Spring Festival coming, give customers a clean image; mobilize terminal staff.
  2. Enhance festive packaging; during Spring Festival, everyone wants auspiciousness and harmony.
  3. Make terminal signage eye-catching, generous, and attractive.
  4. Use banners with words like "gift," "festival," "discount."
  5. Posters should have a focus, not too much content.
  6. Displays should be unique, large, and eye-catching.
  7. Train terminal promoters well.
  8. Follow up with old customers, hold tasting events.
  9. Develop promotion strategies and train thoroughly.

Example 1: A few days ago, my wife came back and said: "The bakery outside the community is having a buy-one-get-one-free promotion. Let's buy some." I said okay, go buy it another day.

The next day, she returned saying the promotion hadn't started yet; it would start in a few days.

I went to check myself. The banner said: "Jan 19-26, buy one get one free on egg tarts."

Think about it: the bakery uses a banner to attract attention, buy-one-get-one-free is a big deal. It's unrealistic for all products, so they use one product to draw customers.

Example 2: Recently on WeChat, I saw a distributor of Sitai Liquor, a client I served, hosting a dinner at a hotel for old customers, tasting, experiencing, and enjoying performances. This is using old customers for terminal sell-through.

Strategy 13: Increase Consumer Experience If your product allows consumer experience, mobilize terminal staff to let consumers try and taste. If you sell food or drinks, this works—milk, snacks, bread, milk powder, etc. Whether you're a top brand or small brand, don't ignore consumer experience.

Consumer experience allows product-consumer communication, leading to better results and increased purchase desire.

Benefits of consumer experience:

  1. Leave a deeper impression.
  2. Enhance product awareness.
  3. Continuously break down consumer resistance.
  4. Increase purchase desire.

Strategy 14: Focus Service and Tracking on Key Terminals and Sales Opportunities This increases customer trust, improves relationships, and motivates them to recommend our products. Sometimes, before Spring Festival, we're busy and can't visit all stores. We can adjust to focus on good stores to boost sales, increase confidence, and improve profits. Avoid trying to do everything and ending up with nothing.

Channel Communication Management: Five Preparations

  1. Clear visit objectives.
  2. Prepare relevant materials.
  3. Check customer's sales for the same period and last month.
  4. Design reasonable visit routes.
  5. Preferably make appointments to avoid wasted trips.

Four Must-Discuss Topics

  1. Sales and goals.
  2. Market promotion and network management.
  3. Market trends.
  4. Company policies.

Three Must-Visit Places

  1. Warehouse.
  2. Terminals.
  3. Stores.

Every time we visit terminals, we should maximize value, avoid wasting time, and know our objectives.

If we can implement all these suggestions, they will definitely help. Let's gradually internalize them. I'll continue sharing related articles for discussion.

About Teacher Jiang Meng Awarded 2011 China's Best Marketing Management Trainer; Operator of Nongshe Wugu Food Co., Ltd.; Distributor of Jinmofang Wugu Food; Distinguished Lecturer at Tsinghua University; Main courses: "FMCG Channel Construction, Operation and Management Practice," "FMCG Sales Personnel Sales and Management Ability Improvement Training," "Breaking Limitations - Rapid Growth Operation Ideas for FMCG Distributors," "Distributor Profitability Improvement and Channel Expansion," "KA Channel Sales Negotiation Strategy Training Camp"; Senior Marketing Management Consultant; Author of bestsellers; Recorded multiple sales CDs and videos; WeChat: jiangmeng2014; Weibo: http://weibo.com/u/1678318123

-END-

Content Selection Reply with the following keywords to search and read related articles: Sales Supervisor, Second-Tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Slow Sales, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Channel Promotion, Sales Misconceptions, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Closing Deals, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Increase, Agency Products, Cross-Region Sales, KA, Terminal Visualization, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, New Salespeople, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Attraction, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Assessment, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Stock Pressure, Festivals, Distributor Cost Control, Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Work Report, Work Report.