KC | Chapter 19

The cup of water in his hand was still carrying a wisp of heat. Chen Xi, as if guided by some mysterious force, picked up the cup and drank from the spot on it marked with water stains.

Chen Xi temporarily focused his attention on the key client, using “key client” to offset “Lin Yiran”.

Without a solution, what was there to go see the client for, awkward small talk?

What the client cared about most was the rebate. If he could not ask it directly, then he might as well switch to another angle.

Chen Xi asked himself, what was the reason the client cared about the rebate?

It was profit!

So, what the client ultimately cared about was the transaction cost, then the customer resource cost, and only after that the rebate.

Chen Xi broke it down layer by layer and saw through the client’s real needs.

The so-called “customer resource cost” was the money the client spent to get customer information through ad placement. Customer resource cost was also called “lead cost”, that is, “lead price”.

Suppose the client could convert one deal out of every 20 customer resources, and the lead price was 250, then the conversion cost of one deal would be 5000. If the lead price was 200, the conversion cost would be 4000. So the lower the lead price, the lower the client’s cost of converting customers, and the greater the profit obtained.

The client could cooperate steadily for one year, which showed that Lanhai’s operating transaction cost had no problem. In addition, over this past year, Lanhai’s promotional account had been continuously adjusted and optimized, and it would absolutely be more stable than the lead price of channels that had just opened accounts elsewhere.

The solution became concrete in his mind, points connecting into lines, lines linking into a route, pointing toward the optimal solution.

What he needed to do was tell the client: if you spend 10K at a channel company, you can get 400 customer resources, with a lead price of 250 yuan. If you spend 10K at Lanhai, you can get 500 customer resources, with a lead price of 200 yuan. The channel company gives you a 20% rebate, and the final converted lead price will be above 200 yuan, while our operating lead price is within 200 yuan.

He had to shift the focus of the negotiation to “lead price” instead of fighting the channel company over “rebates” and losing gross profit. Negotiating from this angle could highlight Lanhai’s advantage, guarantee the client’s conversion results, and not hurt his own performance.

He had to export the customer resource list operated by Lanhai in detail, analyze the data, and explain the interests to the client. Only then would there be a chance to win the customer back.

Chen Xi drank the water in the cup dry, and only after a beat did he put the cup down, touch his lips, and slap his head hard, knocking Lin Yiran out of his mind before standing up and walking out of the office.

The Kechuang Center was located in the north of Yucheng, half an hour by car from Lihua Building, and the subway went straight there.

The last time Chen Xi came here was a year ago. Back then there was no parking lot, and three or five sedans were parked in a messy, disorderly way. Now a parking lot had been built here, and three or five hundred cars were parked in an orderly fashion. In the alley beside the parking lot, there were many vendors pushing snack carts, and white-collar workers lined up to buy breakfast.

The office building that once had no people around had now become a gathering place for office workers. It was no longer what it used to be.

「晨曦：孙总，我到楼下了，麻烦叫一下电梯。」

「事事顺利888：好。」

Chen Xi took the elevator to the 8th floor, where a young girl in formal attire was waiting at the entrance.

“Hello, are you Manager Chen? President Sun is in a meeting, and he asked me to come to the elevator and meet you.” The front desk receptionist smiled at Chen Xi. “Please wait in the reception room first. He’ll come find you when he’s finished.”

Chen Xi nodded and followed her into the client’s office area.

A display wall about 5 meters long rose from the floor all the way to the ceiling. Under the front desk spotlights, several large words glowed: “Shiny Catering Management Company”.

Around the front desk were different snack tasting areas, displaying milk tea and juice, fried chicken and burgers, rice noodles and vermicelli, Chinese fast food, and more than 10 other categories. The whole reception hall looked like a snack street.

Many clients coming to inspect investment and franchise opportunities came from out of town, and most arrived in the afternoon. It was 10:00 in the morning now, and there were already many salespeople in the inspection area bringing franchise prospects to sample snacks. Business in the afternoon was obviously going to be even hotter.

The receptionist led Chen Xi through the “snack street” to the reception area, where consultants were explaining the franchise process to prospective franchisees. Going farther inside was the enclosed telemarketing area, where the customers brought in through online ad placements were all handled by telemarketers for appointment setting. The receptionist brought Chen Xi to the reception room beside the telemarketing area and had him wait there for President Sun.

After the receptionist left, Chen Xi pushed open the door of the reception room and turned into the telemarketing area.

Keep me hanging and still expect me to sit quietly? Dream on.

Chen Xi pushed open the door to the telemarketing area. It was as if he had walked into an internet cafe from 10 years ago with terrible ventilation, and a smell unique to a server room rushed at him.

The cramped room, the air conditioner unable to move the stifling air, the employees packed shoulder to shoulder, each workstation about half the size of Chen Xi’s own. There were about 40 telemarketers in the room, all talking on the phone in low voices. The sales supervisors kept patrolling the floor, urging the employees to make calls like they were monitoring slaves. This was the real “pyramid scheme organization”, with all the salespeople treated like phone-calling machines.

If Lanhai Commerce was brainwashing-style sales, then the telemarketing here was bombardment-style sales. A client that only calculated profit would count sales labor costs into the overall investment return ratio and keep squeezing employees. Compared with Shiny, Lanhai’s management model, although strict, was not so tense. This was the first time Chen Xi had felt Lanhai’s human touch.

Looking at the densely packed workstations, Chen Xi’s mind moved fast: if each salesperson was assigned 20 ad customer resources per day, then these 40 people would need 800 leads per day. If the lead price was 200 yuan, then the daily ad spend would be 16,000 yuan, and the quarterly ad spend would be 1.44 million yuan. Calculated at a gross profit of 20%, the conservative estimate would be 280,000 yuan in gross profit, not 40,000 yuan.

He did not need 280,000 yuan in gross profit. If he could get half of that, 140,000 yuan in gross profit would be enough for him to coast through this quarter!

If he could get Shiny to resume ad placement and tilt the ad budget toward Lanhai, then he could just lie flat this quarter!

This counted as the first good thing Chen Xi had encountered this month. The gloomy mood that had been suppressed for half a month vanished instantly. To Chen Xi, Shiny was like a lighthouse on the sea, illuminating the dead, dull ocean of his heart and burning away the painful life.

He was going to make Shiny resume ad placement again, and he had to get at least 50% of their ad placement budget.

The contract was a sure thing!

A year ago, there were only 5 telemarketers here, and the daily ad spend was only a few thousand yuan, but back then the amount invested was already all the client could bear. Now they were spending more than 10,000 yuan a day on ads here, while what he was still allocated was only a few thousand yuan. It looked like the client had long since shifted their placement channels, and he had been kept in the dark the whole time.

So the opportunity had been right beside him all along, he had just not paid enough attention.

The sales supervisor saw Chen Xi and frowned. “Hello, if you want to inspect the project, you can go to the tasting area. This area is not open to outsiders.”

Chen Xi was just thinking about how to explain himself when he suddenly saw a familiar face on a sales workstation near the door.

“I’m from the advertising company. I’m here to find the operations manager, Chen Bin.”

The operations person in charge of the client’s ad placement also had the surname Chen, and was from the same clan as Chen Xi. Back when the contract was just signed, Chen Xi had been in charge of connecting with his online promotion process.

Chen Bin stood up and said, “Let’s talk in the reception room.”

Chen Xi nodded and went back to the reception room with Chen Bin.

“We spend a lot on online ads, so naturally we should choose a partner with good policies.” Chen Bin cut straight to the chase and slapped Chen Xi in the face from the start, meaning, we have money, we’re just not giving it to Lanhai.

Chen Xi was not angry either. He smiled and said, “You’re right, we all have to look at efficiency.”

Sun Xingshun can keep me hanging and give me a show of force, fine. But you’re putting on airs too? Still, this fool was straightforward and quick to speak. Maybe he could be tricked into revealing something.

“To be honest, I applied for policy for our side a long time ago, but the company leadership kept blocking it.” Chen Xi pushed all the responsibility onto “company leadership” to distance himself. His goal was to make Chen Bin relax his guard and explain as much useful information as possible. “Brother Bin, how many channel companies are we working with for ads right now?”

Chen Xi got close to him, thinking, I can’t call you “brother” for nothing. This fool definitely could not handle it.

“Right now we’re cooperating with 3 channel companies, all in other provinces.” Chen Bin sounded very proud when he brought this up. “Two of them were introduced by my friends, and the policy was given to the max.”

Ha, this fool even knew how to talk policy with people? Maybe your “friends” were just conning you.

“Brother Bin, you’re amazing, that’s too awesome!” Seeing that Chen Bin was interested in this area, Chen Xi praised him while chatting. “You’re definitely more professional than me when it comes to operations. I’m also trying to learn from you. It’s just a little hard to understand. If the policy is all the same, wouldn’t it be better to take accounts from one company? Isn’t finding so many channel companies just splitting your traffic?”

You cooperate with multiple channel companies precisely to keep each other in check and get the best policy. Channel companies are all behind on performance at the end of the quarter, so to grab volume, they’ll definitely give rebates to the death.

I know that, but I’m not saying it.

Because I need to trick you into talking and saying more.

“You don’t get it, do you? Accounts from different companies are not the same. Although the account structures are all the same, some accounts ramp up fast, and some ramp up slowly.” Chen Bin was extremely confident in his own operations level, and he knew no restraint when speaking. “And even for the same kind of account, some plans have a low lead price, and some plans have a high lead price. There are a lot of explanations in this, and outsiders definitely wouldn’t understand.”

“Ah, I see. I thought the lead price was all run out by models. How much difference can there be between the lead prices of different accounts? Is it really that magical?” Chen Xi blinked and pretended not to understand.

“Of course. The lead price for channel accounts in Beishi is 340, and the lead price for channel accounts in Fengcheng is 250, almost a 100 yuan difference.” Chen Bin said, “You people in sales only know that signing contracts takes money. You don’t understand accounts at all.”

“Yes, yes, yes, you’re right. Today I really learned something from Brother Bin.” Chen Xi scratched his head and grinned foolishly.

All thanks to the guy surnamed Sun hanging me out to dry, I had the chance to pry this information out of this reckless kid’s mouth.

Why would I need to understand so much? Being able to get you to say that the lead price for channel accounts was between 250 and 340, much higher than Lanhai’s, was already enough.

A blessing in disguise.