---
title: "Without Strong Customer Relationships, Don't Even Think About Sales! The Slower the Market, the More You Need to Follow This Approach Step by Step!"
description: "Strong customer relationships can generate greater sales. Terminal customer relationships are more important than competing for terminals. Without good terminal relationships, various terminal tasks are difficult to carry out, and some terminal investments may not yield results. Good relationships maximize the benefits of terminal investments and have direct promotional power. Moreover, good relationships make it easier to achieve twice the results with half the effort, such as terminals being willing to recommend your products, maintain displays, and cooperate in promotions."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2015-08-04"
language: "en"
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# Without Strong Customer Relationships, Don't Even Think About Sales! The Slower the Market, the More You Need to Follow This Approach Step by Step!

> Strong customer relationships can generate greater sales. Terminal customer relationships are more important than competing for terminals. Without good terminal relationships, various terminal tasks are difficult to carry out, and some terminal investments may not yield results. Good relationships maximize the benefits of terminal investments and have direct promotional power. Moreover, good relationships make it easier to achieve twice the results with half the effort, such as terminals being willing to recommend your products, maintain displays, and cooperate in promotions.

Strong customer relationships can generate greater sales.
Sales terminals need to be fought for, and sales customer relationships need to be strong. In fact, terminal customer relationships are even more important than competing for terminals.
First, without good terminal customer relationships, various terminal tasks will be difficult to carry out smoothly.
Second, without good terminal customer relationships, some terminal investments may fail to play their role, while good terminal customer relationships can maximize the benefits of terminal investments.
Third, terminal customer relationships themselves have direct terminal promotional power.
Moreover, good customer relationships make it easier to achieve twice the results with half the effort:
In product recommendation, terminals are willing to recommend your products to customers and actively sell your company's new products and new packaging.
In product display, terminals are willing to keep your products in good display positions and proactively do tidying and maintenance.
In visual merchandising, terminals are willing to let you post POP advertisements and prevent others from damaging or covering your POP ads.
In promotional activities, terminals are willing to cooperate with your in-store promoters and store promotions.
In product sell-through, terminals are willing to accept your sales suggestions and think of ways to sell your products.
In ordering and payment, terminals are willing to settle payments on time and actively replenish stock to prevent stockouts or sellouts.
In information gathering, terminals are willing to share market information and dynamics with you, especially about competitors.
In customer service, terminals are willing to proactively handle customer complaints about your products.
Sometimes, emotional relationships can compensate for insufficient benefits and make it easier for them to forgive your momentary negligence or mistakes.
Therefore, the slower the market and the off-season, the more customer relationships become the top priority, even surpassing stocking pressure, because at this time, sales only come with good relationships. Sales are fought for, not pressured.

1. Customer relationships are built by visiting; diligence compensates for lack of skill.
Terminal customer relationships are built through visits. Terminal visits are the basic method for maintaining good customer relationships. Good terminal customer relationships always belong to diligent terminal salespeople.
Terminal customers will never decide whether to help you sell based on your position, but rather on how familiar you are and how good the relationship is.
Some enterprise leaders, when inspecting terminal work, may personally do displays, but because they are not familiar with the terminal staff, they may be stopped or even scolded by the store owner or staff. This happens quite often, and these matters are easily resolved by a junior salesperson.
Therefore, to maintain good terminal customer relationships, it is essential to do daily terminal visits. While doing terminal visits, terminal salespeople should gather personal information about key terminal staff, such as family situation, personality, hobbies, and birthdays, and establish detailed customer profiles and files. They should give small gifts during holidays or irregularly, send gifts and greetings on birthdays, and help customers solve non-work-related problems as much as possible.
Transform business relationships into personal friendships, building feelings of friendship.
Terminal customer relationships are built through visits, but not overnight. The key is to conduct terminal visits unwaveringly and continuously. Terminal visits are a marathon without an end, a long-term, continuous task that can never be relaxed.
How can we ensure unwaveringly and continuously cycling terminal visits? Enterprises must establish a "store visit system" to manage and operate continuously.
Follow the common steps of the "store visit system":
1. Establish detailed terminal files, including terminal name, address, business area, staff names, birthdays, etc.
2. Divide the market into several districts and assign corresponding terminal salespeople to each district.
3. Classify terminals into A, B, C categories.
4. Reasonably determine visit cycles based on terminal category and set corresponding visit frequencies.
5. Draw terminal distribution maps.
6. Develop terminal visit route maps.
7. Also develop a "visit process" specifying what work to do at each terminal, how to do it, and what standards to achieve.
Do not underestimate these basic processes and standards. Once you establish a rhythm, you will find it both easy and beneficial, but these are not suitable for new product launch stages or promotional blitz stages.

2. Activities and gatherings: get together often, sales and stocking happen through play.
Activities are a great way to build terminal customer relationships. They provide a platform for communication and exchange between enterprises and terminals, increasing mutual contact and narrowing the distance.
Enterprises can adopt flexible and diverse methods, regularly holding various activities such as symposiums, social gatherings, terminal celebration parties, travel activities, brewery visits, tasting sessions, learning lectures, ordering conferences, new product launches, etc. These activities can also include entertainment like lucky draws, cash grabs, and product or corporate culture elements. Through these activities, you can strengthen relationships, deepen understanding, and promote the company and products.

3. Do a good job in terminal support to ensure customer relationships do not depreciate.
To build good terminal customer relationships, you cannot rely solely on material incentives or small gifts and emotional investment. To establish stable and lasting terminal customer relationships, enterprises need to provide systematic support and good terminal services.
Helping terminals is helping your own company. Providing systematic support and services to terminals not only enhances terminal customer relationships and cooperation but also effectively obtains terminal promotional space and display resources, thereby promoting product sales and improving sales performance.
First, provide sales support to terminals.
As an enterprise, actively helping terminals improve sales performance is a duty. Sales support to retail terminals mainly includes:
1. Provide advertising support to terminals.
2. Provide sales aids such as product display, in-store advertising, and point-of-sale promotions.
3. Personnel support: dispatch promoters for in-store promotions (in certain stores).
4. Provide sales tools and equipment assistance, such as free shelves, freezers, and store signs.
5. Timely delivery to ensure supply, always know the terminal's reasonable inventory, and replenish promptly.
6. Assist terminals in putting products on shelves and do tidying and maintenance.
7. Timely handle returns and adjust slow-moving inventory.
8. Provide after-sales service, proactively handle customer complaints and claims.
9. Communicate frequently with terminals to solve difficulties and problems they encounter in sales.
Second, provide business guidance to retail terminals.
In addition to sales support, enterprises should also provide guidance and coaching related to operations, offering reasonable suggestions for problems in terminal operations, helping terminals solve operational difficulties, thereby enhancing their sales power and competitiveness, and improving overall business level. For example, provide guidance on store decoration, product display, reasonable inventory, sales increase, cost saving, profit increase, advertising planning, and promotions. Give a peach, return a plum; when terminals benefit from enterprise guidance, enterprises can gain more from terminals.
Enterprises have two different ways of thinking about how to conduct terminal customer relationships, and different ways of thinking produce completely different results.
Method 1: How to solve my company's problems through terminal customer relationships?
Most enterprises, when conducting terminal customer relationships, usually think:
A. What problems do I need to solve?
B. How can I solve my company's problems by doing good terminal customer relationships?
This is thinking from the enterprise's perspective. Of course, public relations plans conceived this way can also achieve good results. However, merely starting from solving the enterprise's own problems to design terminal customer relationship plans is always passive and not the highest level of terminal customer relationships.
Method 2: How to solve my company's problems by solving terminal problems?
Enterprises have their problems, and terminals have theirs. If we can break through conventional thinking and think: Can we solve our company's problems by solving terminal problems? Can we embed solving enterprise problems into solving terminal problems? This is a reverse way of thinking, from the terminal's perspective.
This way of thinking is:
A. For terminals, what problems and difficulties do they encounter in operations? Or what problems and difficulties have not been well solved?
B. If we use our company's resources and integrate the terminal's own resources, can we solve some of the terminal's problems and difficulties?
C. What are my company's problems? Can we solve my company's problems by solving terminal problems?
In this way, enterprises and merchants integrate each other's resources for their own use, obtaining resources they lack from each other, thereby solving their respective problems in a more economical way.

4. Profit guarantee: the foundation for evergreen terminal customer relationships.
Customer relationships can compensate for insufficient benefit relationships, but they cannot replace them. Customer relationships without profit guarantees are not solid and cannot last.
To make customer relationships solid and lasting, both profit guarantees and emotional communication are indispensable, but profit guarantees are always the first priority, and emotional communication is second. Ultimately, the fit point between enterprises and terminals is profit; profit is the hard truth.
Enterprises must meet terminals' profit requirements, ensure reasonable and sustained profits, scientifically set pricing policies to guarantee reasonable unit profits for terminals; promote product sales, increase sales volume, make products sell well, and guarantee total profits for terminals; manage the price system to ensure sustained profits for terminals.
In addition, enterprises can also find new profit growth points for terminals.

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