---
title: "What Do Distributors Really Lack in Market Promotion? A Customer Management Plan!"
description: "Many distributor owners complain that their staff cannot keep up with their ideas, resulting in poor execution. The root cause is not the staff's capability but the lack of standardized management and customer management plans. This article provides a practical customer management plan for distributors, including customer classification, visit procedures, and customer relationship levels."
author: "马兴强"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-05-07"
language: "en"
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# What Do Distributors Really Lack in Market Promotion? A Customer Management Plan!

> Many distributor owners complain that their staff cannot keep up with their ideas, resulting in poor execution. The root cause is not the staff's capability but the lack of standardized management and customer management plans. This article provides a practical customer management plan for distributors, including customer classification, visit procedures, and customer relationship levels.

**Preface**
Many distributor owners, when reviewing the actual work status of their companies, often complain that their subordinates cannot keep up with their thinking, either lacking momentum or deviating from the plan, causing the boss's ideas to fail to be implemented properly, leading to anxiety. Shangdao Marketing Planning believes that the root cause of this phenomenon is not the execution ability or quality of grassroots staff, but the lack of established guiding measures such as contingency management and standardized management, and the lack of practical strategic support for salespeople. Among these, the customer management plan is a common gap in customer management practical strategies for distributors.
From the current market performance of salespeople, what do they lack most? A customer management plan.
**Customer management is an important and complex matter, a top-level skill in business techniques.** Many distributors lack specific guidance for this skill, only providing descriptive and summary guidance (such as "visit more, be sweet-tongued, move customers"), and mostly leave it to the salesperson to improvise on the spot. The result is predictable: customers are industry veterans, and without targeted plan guidance, expecting these inexperienced salespeople to handle old-hand customers is just relying on luck, not "managing" customers.
Distributors should analyze and discuss actual customer management cases in their own companies, select lessons learned, replay and deduce, summarize scenario-specific dialogues, and compile these into a company customer management operational manual, serving as a reference for salespeople's customer management work and providing practical strategies.
The customer management plan, based on the customer management contingency strategy, requires salespeople to make clear management plans for each customer in their area, and to make detailed contingency plans for "customer status," "customer warning indicators," and "customer breakthrough directions." "Customer status" refers to the stage the customer is in: discovery, development, maturity, decline, or deterioration. "Warning indicators" for each type of customer refer to tracking changes in customer sales dynamics, purchase intervals, inventory, and competitor indicators. "Breakthrough directions" for each customer refer to key person breakthroughs, matter breakthroughs, and product breakthroughs.
**Customer Management Plan**
Salespeople should have detailed knowledge of customer information in their service area, classify customers according to different management criteria, and clarify corresponding work ideas and management plans.
1. Define customer types based on store sales characteristics: storefront, group purchase, wholesale, famous tobacco and liquor store, convenience store, and master the market management principles for corresponding customer types, especially anti-channel conflict management principles. For customers suspected of channel conflict or price undercutting, salespeople should implement risk prevention measures. If they know but do not report, or condone market disruption, the company should hold the salesperson accountable for market management.
2. Classify customers into large, medium, and small based on sales scale, and clarify the main work items and differences for each type.
3. Classify customers into key and general based on potential, and form a potential development plan for each key customer, especially potential goals and pathways; set annual targets for increasing potential and key customers.
4. Classify customers based on current relationship status: loyal customers, quality customers, general customers, and problem customers, especially identifying channel conflict and price undercutting customers among problem customers. Set annual targets for increasing loyal and quality customers.
The above customer classification work should be regularly reviewed, at the beginning of each quarter and before the two festivals' market collection, to set short-term performance goals. This work can be done together with the department supervisor or the previous salesperson for the area.
**Customer Visit Process**
The daily work efficiency of salespeople depends on the visit plan, visit process, and visit quality they execute.
Salespeople should strictly implement the company's customer visit system: divide the service area into routes, with five routes in urban areas and eight in townships. Number customers in order on each route, draw a visit route map, and report it to the finance department for filing.
1. Daily customer visits should follow the route, generally cycling through the routes, and not skipping routes arbitrarily. Within a route, visit customers in order, and do not visit out of order. Special circumstances require reporting to the department supervisor and submitting a follow-up visit plan.
2. Implement visits according to the standard business visit process: (1) Before entering each store, confirm the visit target issues (e.g., replying to questions, discussing issues, collecting payments, conveying policies, resolving legacy issues); (2) Check and arrange displays, shelves, and products according to display standards, striving for vivid displays and ensuring sufficient quantity; (3) Count customer inventory and organize turnover stock for easy access; (4) Draft a purchase plan based on 1.5 times the cycle sales volume (excluding displays); (5) Communicate with the boss about target issues, learn about in-store sales information and opportunities, and boost customer morale (do not spread negative information); (6) Record issues to resolve after returning, and record issues the customer cares about in front of the customer; (7) Fill in the "Customer Visit Cycle Form" and take photos of displays to upload.
3. During visits, be good at boosting customer morale, maintain good communication, and improve customer relationships.
**Four Levels of Customer Relationship Appearance Indicators**
- Customer remembers you: They have your contact number in their phone. When they need goods or want to inquire, do they call you or the supervisor, company, or other salespeople?
- Customer trusts you: They actively participate in all promotional activities and give you advice.
- Customer likes you: During visits, they often chat with you proactively, appreciate your efforts, cooperate with what you strive for, entrust you with matters, and give you small gifts (quality customers).
- Customer relies on you: They proactively call you to inquire, seek your opinion on uncertain matters, treat you as a friend, invite you to dinners or activities, and when needed, can you talk with the customer for an hour with their active cooperation? (loyal customers).
The above is part of a customer management plan designed for a liquor distributor, shared with distributor friends, hoping to provide useful help in customer management plans.
— Excerpt from Shangdao Marketing Planning's "Core Skills for Grassroots Sales Staff: Customer Management"
This platform will soon organize several experience-sharing salons titled "**How Distributors Should Operate B2B**". We will invite some distributors who have actually operated for a period to share their experiences and how they operate in their local markets. Interested distributor friends can long-press the QR code below to add the author's WeChat and participate in the sharing and exchange:
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