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Articles by 张宇
Browse 27 New Distribution articles by 张宇.
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27 articles · Page 1 of 2
Instant Retail: A War FMCG Brands Must Win
The retail ecosystem is undergoing profound transformation. Facing fragmented channels and declining consumption, brands are under dual pressure. Even giants like P&G, Unilever, and Durex are reacting defensively. This article analyzes the underlying logic of the instant retail subsidy war, urging brands to move beyond short-term subsidies and build long-term capabilities in product strategy, system synergy, and scenario penetration to secure their place in the future of retail.
张宇Spring Plowing Has Arrived: How Distributors Can Choose Products to Seize the Wind and Make Big Money
As spring begins, distributors are adjusting their product portfolios. In today's market of overcapacity and stock competition, there is no shortage of products, but choosing products with strong sell-through is half the battle. Distributors focus on four key factors: brand strength, product strength, precise market timing, and consumer reach assurance. This article uses the new product logic of leading company Labixiaoxin to address these pain points.
张宇Case Analysis | Distributors Achieve New Product Success in "Eight Steps"
How can distributors ensure the success of new products in regional markets? While each experienced distributor has unique insights, commonalities exist. This case study analyzes the general approach and methods of an excellent distributor in launching new products.
张宇Three Fundamental Principles for Marketing Personnel to Operate Terminals and Build Point-of-Sale Visual Merchandising
Marketing has three transformations: terminal as media, sales as communication, and PR as implementation. These are the three fundamental principles for FMCG marketing personnel operating retail terminals and building point-of-sale visual merchandising. With increasingly fierce market competition, achieving these requires good customer relations and sufficient market expenses, but almost all sales personnel feel funds are insufficient. This article analyzes how to effectively use market display expenses to enhance terminal visual merchandising, emphasizing empowerment of frontline staff, motivating store owners, and third-party verification.
张宇Three Fundamental Principles for Marketing Personnel to Operate Terminals and Build Point-of-Sale Visual Merchandising
Marketing has three transformations: terminal as media, sales as communication, and PR as implementation. These are the three fundamental principles for FMCG marketing personnel operating retail terminals and building point-of-sale visual merchandising. With increasingly fierce market competition, achieving these requires good customer relations and sufficient market expenses, but almost all sales personnel feel funds are insufficient. This article analyzes how to effectively use market display expenses to enhance terminal visual merchandising, using a case study of a leading brand's 'Heaven-sent Wealth God' display activity.
张宇How to Operate a Weak Market by Returning to the Basics?
As the beverage peak season approaches, task targets increase sharply, and weak markets face numerous challenges. This article analyzes how distributors and sales personnel can move forward quickly by returning to the basics, emphasizing solid market and sales foundation work, and highlights the importance of ice-cabinet management.
张宇The Manufacturer-Dealer Relationship Is Like a Marriage: Three Key Tips to Maintain It!
The relationship between manufacturers and dealers is often debated, with various metaphors like fish and water, partners, or lovers. This article argues that it is best understood as a marriage, where both parties have mutual needs and must practice giving, understanding, and sharing responsibilities to maintain a healthy, long-lasting partnership.
张宇The 7 Tactics Second-Tier Distributors Use to Bargain with Sales Reps, and the 17 Ways to Counter Them
Second-tier distributors commonly use seven negotiation tactics to bargain with sales representatives, such as claiming the price is too high, asking for further discounts after a minimum price is offered, demanding freebies, requesting credit, and more. To counter these, sales reps should adhere to 20 principles, including never making concessions without conditions, never revealing the bottom price first, and always exchanging conditions for benefits.
张宇Three Basic Principles for Marketing Personnel to Operate Terminals and Build Vivid Point-of-Sale Displays
Marketing has three transformations: terminal mediaization, sales communication, and PR implementation. These are the three basic principles for FMCG marketing personnel to operate terminal retail stores and build vivid point-of-sale displays. In increasingly fierce market competition, achieving these requires good customer relations and sufficient market expenses, but almost all sales personnel feel funds are insufficient. Fan Xianguo, chairman of Jinmailang, once joked: 'If I give 2 jin of beef with every pack of braised beef noodles, what do we need marketing personnel for?' Indeed, a marketing person's value lies in maximizing sales with minimal market resources.
张宇Beware! Aggressive Distribution Has Risks—Dealers Should Not Rush!
For dealers, distribution is crucial because only by moving products from warehouse to retail outlets can sales opportunities arise. However, successful distribution requires clear goals, careful planning, and effective execution, yet risks remain, and many dealers only realize failures after the fact. This article analyzes the causes of distribution failure through a case study.
张宇Distributors | Are High Sales Costs All the Fault of Van Sales and Visit Sales?
Almost every distributor starts with van sales in the early days of their business. In a sense, van sales is the simplest and most practical sales model, where salespeople carry goods in vehicles to visit customers, sell and collect payment on the spot, and handle tasks such as posting promotional materials, product display, and customer complaints, making management relatively easy for distributors. However, as labor, fuel, and vehicle costs continue to rise, and competition among homogeneous products intensifies, higher demands are placed on distributors' terminal operations. Many distributors complain that van sales costs are too high and inefficient, but the root cause lies in the inherent drawbacks of the van sales model. So, how should distributors adjust and improve their sales models to maximize profits?
张宇Distributors | 4,000-Word Guide with Cases: Mastering KPI Performance Appraisal
For distributors, performance appraisal is familiar and runs through daily management and work content. From frontline sales staff to back-office accountants, almost every position is tied to performance appraisal. As a yardstick for judging employee performance, it serves both as an evaluation system and a management tool. According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of a company's tasks are completed by 20% of key behaviors, and analyzing and measuring these key behaviors is what we call KPI performance appraisal.
张宇Case Analysis | "Eight Steps" to Make New Products Sell Well, Distributors Must Do This! (Recommended for Collection)
How can distributors ensure the success of new products in regional markets? Every distributor with years of experience has their own unique insights and lessons. Due to differences in regional market characteristics, category and channel operations, and varying manufacturer-dealer strategies, each new product success is somewhat unique and hard to replicate, but there are commonalities. Here, we don't rush to answer the question but analyze the general approach of excellent distributors through a specific case...
张宇Distributed E-commerce: How to Reshape the Platform Value of Distributors?
In 2016, B-end e-commerce surged, bringing transformation to the FMCG industry. Amid the wave of 'disintermediation,' Piduoduo consistently advocated and practiced the distributed B-end e-commerce model, adhering to distributors as the mainstay, without burning money, subsidies, price disruption, or hijacking, helping distributors complete their transformation into platform operators. In fact, distributors, as the link connecting upstream and downstream resources in the industry chain, are themselves platforms, just not yet fully platformized. As long as distributors fully recognize and leverage their platform value, they can gradually shift from a simple agency sales role to becoming regional market operators, and thus become true platform operators.
张宇Under the New Normal, Traditional Marketing Fails! What Drives Product Movement to Thaw the Freeze?
As the FMCG industry evolves and the information age arrives, product movement has become the primary factor determining the rise or fall of the entire FMCG supply chain. Enterprises, distributors, and retailers must all focus their efforts on driving product movement, with enterprises bearing the greatest responsibility as the industry's leading force. This industry-wide examination led by product movement poses a significant challenge to FMCG manufacturers and distributors, while also prompting a collective reflection on traditional marketing thinking.
张宇The 7 Tricks Distributors Use to Bargain with Sales Reps, and the 17 Ways to Counter Them
Distributors often use seven bargaining tactics to pressure sales reps into lowering prices, such as claiming prices are too high, asking for further discounts after a deal, demanding freebies, requesting credit, and more. To counter these, sales reps should follow 20 principles, including never making concessions without conditions, never revealing their bottom line, and always trading concessions for something in return.
张宇Webinar Registration | Common Issues in Beverage Market Operations for Grassroots Managers
Note: The "Manufacturer Beverage Operation Skills Series" is now open for registration. Click "Read Original" for course details! Below is the outline for Thursday's 8 PM class. Grassroots managers often face common issues in market operations. This article compiles and addresses frequently asked questions from frontline sales managers, branch heads, and directors to help these confident, passionate, and capable but method-less managers improve efficiency, boost performance, and work with ease. First, understand a principle: confidence + clear methods = success; confidence + unclear direction and methods = failure.
张宇Distributed E-commerce vs. JD-style E-commerce: Which is the Future of B2B E-commerce?
The article compares JD's centralized B2B e-commerce model with the distributed model represented by Piduoduo, analyzing their respective advantages and disadvantages in terms of terminal experience, operational costs, and efficiency. It concludes that distributed e-commerce, which leverages existing distributors, may achieve lower costs and higher efficiency than JD's approach.
张宇“De-intermediation” Targets Second-Tier Distributors: Will B2B E-commerce Really Kill Them Off?
In the past, the phrase “second-tier distributors will die” referred to their gradual elimination with the times—a natural death. Now, B2B e-commerce aims to kill them off, claiming to replace them. Can B2B e-commerce fully replace second-tier distributors?
张宇How to Operate a Weak Market by Returning to Basics?
As the beverage peak season approaches, task targets increase sharply. How should weak markets operate? Facing various market problems, how to move forward quickly with burdens has always troubled distributors and manufacturer sales staff. This article analyzes these issues, emphasizing that the higher the sales target, the more you must start from the basics. Only by accumulating from basic sales and market work can you achieve sustained sales.
张宇When a Distributor Marries a Manufacturer: How to Manage the Marital Relationship
The relationship between manufacturers and distributors is often likened to a marriage: equal, mutually beneficial, and goal-aligned, with occasional minor conflicts. This article explores how to maintain this relationship by understanding each other's needs, choosing the right partner, and applying the three key principles of mutual giving, understanding, and responsibility.
张宇How Distributors Can Establish a Systematic Accounts Receivable Management System (With a 3,000-Word Case Study)
For distributors, accounts receivable are a vital component of current assets, and establishing a systematic management process is a common concern. Chen Lei (pseudonym), general manager of Wuhan Shengyuan Trading Co., Ltd. in Hubei, shared his company's accounts receivable management system. He stated, "Establishing an accounts receivable management system ensures the company maximizes the use of customer credit to expand the market, which not only facilitates product sales but also minimizes the cost of bad debt losses, shortens the time funds are tied up in receivables, and accelerates capital turnover, thereby safeguarding the company's capital and preventing operational risks."
张宇How to Leverage Company-Invested Funds to Make Outlets Both Productive and Attractive?
Marketing has three transformations: terminal media, sales communication, and PR implementation. These are the three basic principles for FMCG marketers to operate retail stores and create point-of-sale visual merchandising. With increasingly fierce market competition, achieving these requires good customer relationships and sufficient market funds, but almost all salespeople feel funds are insufficient no matter how they save. Jinmailang's chairman, Fan Xianguo, once joked: "If I give away 2 jin of beef with every pack of braised beef noodles, what do we need marketers for?" Indeed, a marketer's value lies in maximizing sales with minimal market resources. This article focuses on how to effectively use market display funds to enhance terminal visual merchandising, addressing common problems and offering solutions such as empowering frontline salespeople, motivating store owners, and third-party verification.
张宇How Should Beverage Manufacturers and Distributors Operate Regional Markets in 2016? (Product Selection)
This article analyzes 2016 beverage market data to guide manufacturers and distributors in market operations, emphasizing the growing importance of lower-tier cities and the shift towards mid-to-high-end products, functional beverages, and bottled water, while providing strategic advice on product selection and brand partnerships.
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