The "Wash"

I was having lunch with another blogger yesterday afternoon. 

It was one of those "talk male chicken" sessions.

And the topic somehow touched on my weekend sales "manipulations".



In our industry, the local lingo in Hokkien is "shueh" or "wash".

Companies usually will employ either or both pull and push strategies when it comes to marketing and sales.

Pull is to psycho the customers through advertising, social media advertorials, or public relations campaigns, to seduce the customers to ask for your brands/products when they walk into a store or browse any online shopping platforms. Top-down.

Push is what we do inside the stores or online shopping platforms to steer you to our brands/products. Bottom-up  



There are some smaller brands of home appliances that don't employ Pull strategies. 

What they rely on is the skill and incentives they provide to their promoters to push their brands out to customers in the stores. 

Contrary to what you expect, the bigger and more famous the brand, the less attractive the commissions scheme will be.

Think about it for a moment. 

Would you need to give more or less commissions to promoters to help you sell Apple phones versus if you were selling "unkown" brands from China?

Same logic works for Term insurance policies.They sell by themselves for financially savvy customers. But for wholelife and endowment policies, you need to incentivize your insurance agents to push these out right?

When your investment bank recommends you unrated corporate junk bonds over those that are rated, make a wild guess why?

Now you know why peer-to-peer lending platforms can offer up to 18% interests to attract willing "philanthropists". Wink.



So when a brand advertises and attracts customers to a store, a percentage of the customers will end up buying other brands when they walk out.

If it happened to you, you've been "washed"!

And that is all thanks to the promoter's "washing" skills.



Put yourself in the promoter's shoes.

If I sell brand X I get $200; and brand Y gives $300.

Which brand would you promote?

Shh...