Click to view details There is still one month until Spring Festival, which is also our best time to sprint; Teacher Jiang Meng shares dozens of methods to unblock channels, hoping they will be helpful to everyone: Strategy 1 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Use Emotion to Market to Channel Partners: Don't hit 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 long time, maybe channel partners are worried about pre-Spring Festival promotions. Go to the deepest part of the market, visit channel partners, communicate, and care. Because Chinese people still value emotions.
Specific Action 1: Make a phone call to greet them, at least showing you care.
Specific Action 2: Find time to visit them in person.
Specific Action 3: Compare the channel partner's sales from last year and the first half of this year.
Specific Action 4: Provide support within your capabilities.
Specific Action 5: Offer advice and strategies to the channel partner.
Specific Action 6: Don't forget to give channel partners confidence and goals, and apply appropriate pressure. Strategy 2 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Go Down with the Delivery Vehicles: Ride in 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 suggestions at the terminal, help terminal customers plan sales, and provide adjustment plans. This makes distributors and terminal customers feel cared for. Example: Once, Teacher Jiang Meng followed a manufacturer's salesperson to visit a distributor and found the distributor was young and lacked management skills, especially his team arriving late, having no goals, no motivation, and doing sloppy work. There are many distributor teams like this. Personally, I think when managing such customers, you can't use strong measures, or they will resent it. You should start with the boss, give the boss confidence, let the boss change, and then continuously influence the team below. Persist in continuous adjustment. Lift the team's spirit. Strategy 3 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Optimize the Distribution Structure and Quantity Under Distributors: Once, Teacher Jiang Meng was visiting county markets. Every county has distributors. Some distributors develop township markets by opening one customer per township, while others open multiple customers per township. They think opening one customer yields low sales, and opening multiple customers yields more sales, but reality is not always like that. Opening multiple customers can lead to price wars and unhealthy competition. So Teacher Jiang Meng believes that what is suitable is best; don't blindly seek quantity. How to optimize distribution quantity and structure: Observe the sales performance and market stability of downstream distribution customers. If the market is too chaotic, reduce some and eliminate others. Let capable ones leverage their abilities more. Strategy 4 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Find Quality Terminal Outlets and Focus on Serving Them: Spend limited time on capable outlets; in every region, you can find quality outlets, list them, and provide focused service and follow-up, because they are the foundation and basis for your sales growth. Motivating them is very important. Strategy 5 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Adjust and Optimize Terminal Distribution and Sell-Through Strategies: Maybe our promotional policies are not targeted, maybe our gifts are not interesting to consumers. When we visit terminals, people will report these issues, and even our promotional policies may be less stimulating than competitors'. We can appropriately optimize and adjust. Finally, sprint. Gifts should differ by channel: Example: If we sell FMCG products, we have roadside shops, restaurants, and KA hypermarkets, etc. Our terminal distribution policies should differ, and gifts should also differ, choosing promotional products they like based on each channel's characteristics. Strategy 6 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Eliminate Terminal Merchants' Concerns, Lower Thresholds, and Relax Return/Exchange Policies: Many terminal merchants dare not stock up or take too much; it's understandable—they worry about not selling. We can do case-opening distribution, mixed-case distribution, lower the threshold for terminal merchants to stock, offer favorable return/exchange policies for new products, then quickly distribute to improve efficiency. Terminal distribution is very important for a company; for distributors, it's a critical issue. It's like a river—if it's not smooth, it can break the banks, causing poor flow, product backlog, payment backlog, leading to greater pressure on the manufacturer's regional sales staff, failure to complete tasks, or even worse, distributors turning against you, not working well, having emotions, etc. All these require us to have a reasonable, feasible terminal channel sales strategy. Combined with the previous sharing, Teacher Jiang Meng continues to provide the magic bullet for skyrocketing terminal sales. Whether it works, you'll know after trying. Strategy 7 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Adjust Distributor Employee Incentive and Assessment Systems: Scenario review: One day, a distributor boss got up early, ran to the office, very happy, called a meeting and said: "Today, deliver goods well. For your groups, those with good sales will each get a 200 yuan reward." 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 before. After the meeting, employees were as energized as if they'd taken Viagra, quickly preparing to go to the market to deliver goods, because they all wanted the reward. After a while, the boss's wife came back, saw the employees so motivated, and asked what happened. The employees repeated what the boss said. The wife immediately said: "Who said that? How can there be such a big reward? No, at most 50 yuan." Instantly, the employees were speechless, like deflated balloons, not knowing who to listen to. Things like this often happen at distributors. The key reason is that distributors don't know how to manage, changing orders at will, multiple leaders, blind excitement. Employees are at a loss. Employee incentives include material and spiritual incentives: Spiritual incentives: Employee dinners, birthday parties, caring for employees' families, empathizing with employees' hearts, caring about their dreams and difficulties, understanding employees, praise at meetings, verbal compliments, an envious smile, an encouraging gesture, handling and coordinating relationships among employees, etc. These are all spiritual incentives. Material incentives: As we often say, giving them material and monetary rewards. This method is the most direct and effective, but its duration is relatively short. Incentive atmosphere: positive and negative incentives Always positive is not good, always negative is not good either; use them reasonably in combination. Each employee's incentive can be designed like this: For example, if the goal is to complete 5,000 boxes, give 0.1% commission; for the excess part, give 0.2% commission, encouraging them to exceed the target. If below 5,000 boxes, commission decreases or none. The principle: What we need, we assess; what we encourage, the sales staff will strive for. Strategy 8 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Use the Product You Want to Push to Incentivize Employees: When motivating employees, there is another very important rule: If you want employees to do well in a certain area, assess and incentivize that area. Example: Many distributors have good incentive systems, but when employees drive out, do they go to customers or sleep on the road? We don't know. This requires process supervision and management. How to operate: 1: Create a customer visit form; when they visit a customer, have the customer sign and leave a phone number.
2: The company can use satellite positioning for each person to know their route for the day and check in.
3: Company staff can call back customers on the list to verify whether visits actually occurred.
4: Provide appropriate rewards for visiting more stores, e.g., if the plan was five stores, reward 5 yuan per extra store.
5: Conduct daily evaluations; reward the first place and punish the last. This gives employees a sense of urgency every day and makes them aware of their goals daily. Strategy 9 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Get Distributor Bosses Moving, Walking Among the People, Appearing at the Deepest Part of the Market: Example: Teacher Jiang Meng served a distributor client, gave them lectures, and observed that the team was not very proactive, and the boss had a bad temper. Later, the boss said: "Last year we lost money, I'm in a bad mood, hesitant about whether to continue." What was the reason? I found several problems with this client: Problem 1: The boss manages impulsively and is easily rash;
Problem 2: The boss lacks his own management skills;
Problem 3: The boss doesn't go to the market himself, spends all day drinking and playing.
Problem 4: The team has issues but doesn't dare speak up or report, fearing criticism.
Problem 5: Facing problems, the boss doesn't have a positive attitude to deal with them. Think about it: We may encounter such distributor bosses—bad temper, low education, poor management, poor performance, and unwilling to listen to advice. How to solve this problem? I think we should start with the boss himself, give him some incentives and suggestions. Invite senior company management to come forward, give him encouragement and development suggestions, let the distributor go to the depths of the market, and solve specific sales problems. Use your own actions to influence him and let him see his shortcomings. Strategy 10 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Bundle Sales with Other Products the Distributor Represents: If our product lacks awareness, competitiveness, advantages, and is hard to distribute, we can see if the distributor has products with good sales, combine them, and use promotions to get terminals to accept them. Example: If the customer's cola sells well, JDB sells well, Nongfu Spring sells well, we can combine cola, JDB, Nongfu, and our product into a set of four products. For every four sets ordered, reward one case of cola, etc., similar bundling sales. Notes: First: Our product should not be a gift; otherwise, customers won't value it; Second: At the terminal, it's best to display our product together with bestsellers; Strategy 11 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Improve Distribution Efficiency and Systematically Train Distribution Staff: Based on your industry and customer service situation, systematically train the workflow: Terminal visit and customer service process: First: Handle customer complaints: delivery, product damage, promotional item delivery, rebate distribution, etc., and any opinions.
Second: Arrange promotional materials, put up posters, change posters.
Third: Organize shelves, display products well, wipe clean;
Fourth: Count inventory: first-in-first-out, inventory check, reasonable safety stock;
Fifth: Provide marketing and promotion suggestions, guide customers to proactively market;
Sixth: Provide stocking suggestions, convey manufacturer promotional policies; Strategy 12 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Create and Enhance the Best Terminal Image and Largest Display: Our products must constantly appear at the terminal so consumers can see, buy, and hear about them, enabling terminal sell-through. To let consumers buy at the terminal, we must enhance the terminal image. What are the impacts of enhancing terminal image and making the largest display? 1: Let consumers see us and leave a good impression;
2: Create a good feeling about the company brand;
3: Attract customers' attention;
4: Increase consumer trust;
5: Increase exposure;
6: Increase customers' purchase desire;
7: Attract foot traffic. Since we know the benefits of enhancing terminal image and largest display, how do we operate? Teacher Jiang Meng summarizes the following operational ideas: Operational Idea 1: Improve terminal hygiene, especially for FMCG. With Spring Festival coming, give customers a clean and hygienic image, mobilize terminal staff to act together. Operational Idea 2: Enhance the festive feel of terminal product packaging. During Spring Festival, everyone hopes for auspiciousness and harmony. Operational Idea 3: Terminal signage—make it eye-catching, generous, and attractive; Operational Idea 4: Terminal banner ads—banner content should include words like gift-giving, holidays, discount intensity, etc. Operational Idea 5: Terminal posters—posters should have focus, not too much content. Operational Idea 6: Displays should be unique, different, large, and eye-catching. Operational Idea 7: Train terminal promotional staff thoroughly; Operational Idea 8: Follow up with old customers, old customer tastings; Operational Idea 9: Develop promotional strategies and train thoroughly; Example 1: A few days ago, my wife came back from outside and told me: "The bakery outside the community is having a buy-one-get-one-free promotion. Let's buy some." I said okay, you can go buy some another day. The next day, she came back and said the promotion hadn't started yet; it would start in a few days. I went to check myself and saw a banner saying: "From January 19-26, egg tarts buy one get one free." We can think: This bakery uses a banner to attract attention, buy one get one free, quite a big discount. It's unrealistic for all products to be buy one get one free, so they use one product to draw customers in. Example 2: Recently on my WeChat, I saw a client I served, Site Wine. One of its distributors invited old customers to a hotel for a meal, wine tasting, experience, and entertainment. This is also using old customers for terminal sell-through activities. Strategy 13 for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Increase Consumer Experience: If your product allows consumer experience, mobilize terminal staff to let consumers try and taste. If you sell food or drinks, you can definitely do this—milk, snacks, bread, milk powder, etc. Whether you are a first-tier brand or a small brand, I think you cannot ignore the consumer experience. Consumer experience allows the product to communicate with consumers, enabling better performance and increasing purchase desire. Benefits of consumer experience: Benefit 1: Leave a deeper impression on customers; Benefit 2: Enhance consumer awareness of the product; Benefit 3: Continuously break down consumer resistance; Benefit 4: Increase consumer purchase desire; Strategy 12 (repeated) for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Focus on Key Terminals and Sales Opportunity Terminals with Priority Service and Follow-Up: This increases customer trust, improves relationships, and gives them motivation to recommend our products to customers. Sometimes, before Spring Festival, we are busy and can't visit all stores. We can adjust by focusing on some good stores to boost sales, increase confidence, and improve profits. Avoid grabbing everything and ending up with nothing. Strategy 13 (repeated) for Skyrocketing Terminal Sales: Focus on Key Terminals and Sales Opportunity Terminals with Priority Service and Follow-Up: Five preparations for channel communication management: 1: Clear visit objectives; 2: Adequate preparation of relevant materials; 3: Review customer sales for the same period last year, last month, etc.; 4: Reasonable visit route design; 5: Preferably make appointments to avoid wasted trips; Four must-discuss topics in channel communication management: 1: Sales and goals; 2: Market promotion and network management; 3: Market trends; 4: Company policies; Three must-visit places in channel communication management: 1: Warehouse; 2: Terminal; 3: Storefront; Every time we go to the terminal, we should maximize value and avoid wasting time or unclear goals. -END-