---
title: "Who Should Manufacturers Sell Premium Products to First?"
description: "Most manufacturers have less-than-ideal product structures, with premium products accounting for too small a share, making it hard to sell profitable items. Despite significant investment and channel incentives, premium products often fail due to internal channel resistance. The key is to first 'sell' premium products to frontline sales staff by aligning their understanding and willingness, using targeted strategies."
author: "潘文富"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-02-22"
language: "en"
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# Who Should Manufacturers Sell Premium Products to First?

> Most manufacturers have less-than-ideal product structures, with premium products accounting for too small a share, making it hard to sell profitable items. Despite significant investment and channel incentives, premium products often fail due to internal channel resistance. The key is to first 'sell' premium products to frontline sales staff by aligning their understanding and willingness, using targeted strategies.

**Click the image for details**
Most manufacturers have less-than-ideal product structures. Simply put, the proportion of premium products is too small; what sells well doesn't make money, and what makes money doesn't sell well. Of course, manufacturers do value premium products, even elevating them to the level of corporate strategy. They invest considerable effort and money in product development, market promotion, advertising, and in-store promotions. Previously, manufacturers monopolized the profits from premium products, but now they are even sharing a significant portion with channel partners (distributors, dealers, retailers). Some manufacturers even give the lion's share of profits to channel partners, with the sole aim of getting everyone to successfully promote premium products.

One would think that with decent brand strength, good premium products, substantial marketing efforts, and attractive channel margins, plus alignment with market trends and consumer preferences, everything seems favorable. Yet premium products still fail to take off. Manufacturers' bosses are anxious, issuing repeated demands and even bundling premium products with bestsellers in channel orders, but premium products remain difficult to sell.

**In fact, manufacturers' bosses might consider a different perspective: the simplest logic of product sales is that the vast majority of products are sold through human effort, and it's the result of a group's work.** Analyzing the sales issues of premium products can also be done from the 'human' axis, from top management to end consumers. Each level's genuine acceptance and willingness toward premium products will inevitably differ, creating discrepancies and problems that collectively form a massive resistance hindering premium product sales.

Let's first list a simple table, arranging channel personnel at all levels, and you can mark their respective statuses yourself:

In reality, whether premium or ordinary, products pass through many levels from manufacturer to consumer, involving many people. **Every member of the channel, regardless of rank or function, is a channel member and affects product sales. Properly managing each channel member's perception, sales confidence, profit distribution, and willingness is what truly constitutes channel management.**

Currently, most manufacturers' channel planning is overly simplistic: they consider institutions but not individuals; they consider company owners' interests but not employees' personal interests; they emphasize the relationship between products and consumers but not between products and sales personnel. **This leads to inconsistent understanding and sales significance of premium products among channel members during actual sales, making progress difficult. Many premium products don't die at the hands of consumers but at the hands of channel members at various levels.**

What to do? Manufacturers should first sell premium products to frontline sales staff!

From a promotional structure perspective, the first issue to address in selling premium products is not consumers but channel members at all levels, especially frontline sales personnel at the terminal, such as basic salespeople and in-store promoters. So how do we gradually 'sell' premium products to these frontline sales staff?

**1. Establish Goals**
Achieve consistency in understanding and sales willingness for premium products among all channel members, reducing internal friction.

**2. Identify Targets**
Primarily frontline sales personnel.

**3. Basic Awareness**
1. Internal product briefings (pre-launch internal briefings; this simple basic task is often not done by most dealers).
2. For lower-value products, give them directly to relevant sales staff; for higher-value items, offer loans or special pricing so all sales staff can experience the product firsthand, understanding its quality and advancement, building comprehensive awareness and initial favorability.
3. When sales staff try products themselves, they may extend to giving or trying with friends and family. Generally, close friends and relatives will give positive feedback, which effectively reinforces sales staff's confidence in the product.

**4. Understanding Premium Consumers**
Premium products are, of course, sold to premium consumers, who mainly fall into three categories:
1. Those with money.
2. Those willing to spend.
3. Those whose heads are on others' shoulders—i.e., easily influenced.

Among these, wealthy consumers constitute the majority of premium consumers. There's a practical contradiction: frontline sales staff earning a few thousand yuan a month find it hard to understand consumers earning tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands monthly, in terms of values, shopping habits, communication styles, and service experiences. These aspects are often asymmetric, leading ordinary wage earners to use their own consumption values and fixed sales scripts to pitch premium products to high-end consumers—the effectiveness is predictable.

To address this, several tasks are needed:
1. Arrange for frontline sales staff who directly face premium consumers to visit places where premium consumers gather, such as model rooms in upscale communities, hotel lobbies, 4S stores for luxury cars, and high-end furniture showrooms, for tours or experiential consumption, to personally experience high-standard service systems.
2. Internally, by improving living facilities and introducing internal service measures, let frontline sales staff first experience being served and respected by the company, further guiding them to transfer that service awareness to consumers.

**5. Independent Sales Techniques**
It's crucial to clarify that the sales system for ordinary products does not apply to premium products. New sales processes, scripts, service standards, and even supporting equipment need to be established for premium products.

**6. Not Everyone Can Sell Premium Products**
Selling premium products requires certain sales skills and drive, so not all sales staff are suitable. Forcing it may harm the premium product's image. Therefore, in sales promotion, premium product sales can start with a few employees and gradually expand. For those truly unsuitable, there's no need to force it. To some extent, the right to sell premium products can become an indirect form of recognition for employees.

**7. Managing the Order of Assessment**
Driving sales staff to sell premium products requires both motivation and pressure, forming a combined driving force. However, **in the initial stage, when sales of newly launched premium products are still unstable, to protect sales staff's enthusiasm, an assessment model with motivation but no pressure can be adopted**—that is, new premium products are not included in performance assessments; not selling them won't result in deductions, but achieving sales brings extra bonuses. This protects sales staff's interest in engaging with the product, allowing them to explore sales strategies in a relaxed environment. Including premium products in assessments from the start can easily lead to resistance, as they bring pressure and reduced income, naturally diminishing interest in learning. Of course, **once premium products have achieved baseline sales, pressure can be added by including them in assessment departments to prevent complacency.**

Author: Pan Wenfu
Originally a private business owner, he managed a family-owned distribution company for years and concurrently served as a business manager and trainer for several manufacturing companies. His research focuses on internal management of small and medium-sized private enterprises, with main topics including personnel management, cost control, management backend setup, and the integration of retired military personnel into private enterprises. He continuously breaks down over 400 topics related to internal management of private enterprises, maintaining material collection and solution updates.

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