Liu Hongyu: Daring to Be a 'Crossover' Challenger

As a sales manager, Liu Hongyu keeps his mobile phone switched on 24 hours a day. During the interview his ringtone kept interrupting, and every call sounded as though it came from a customer.
He uses no flowery words, only rigorous thinking and a professional service attitude. That is the quality that makes him trustworthy, and the key to the success of his 'crossover'.
From technology to sales
In 1995, after graduating from university, Liu Hongyu joined the Lanzhou Lubricant R&D Center as a researcher. At that time he was eager to create a world of his own.
He stayed in that post for seven years. In 2002, following a change in the operating mechanism, he resolutely moved to the Northwest Sales Company and became a salesperson. The shift from technology to sales left him badly out of his depth at first. He still remembers the scene of his first visit to a customer. That day, with an anxious heart, he went to the Qinghai Power Supply Bureau and knocked on the door of the deputy director's office. Before he could finish what he had to say, the deputy director did not even raise his eyelids and said coldly: 'I am busy now, you people go out.' Hearing this, he felt both embarrassed and furious, and he really wanted to go and argue the matter out with someone. In the days that followed, having doors shut in his face became an everyday occurrence.
Recalling those early days, he says that when he had just joined the sales company he often rode a bicycle to 'sweep the streets', coming and going through wind and rain, so hot in summer that he could hardly breathe and so cold in winter that he lost all feeling in his hands. What discouraged him even more was that he sometimes fell victim to swindlers and had to pay the costs out of his own pocket. In his view, this kind of tempering is a kind of wealth and accumulation that has made him calmer in spirit. Today he no longer feels embarrassed or angry at a customer's refusal; instead he turns every refusal into a reason to visit again.
Speaking of his earlier work experience, Liu Hongyu says with great animation: 'In the process of doing sales, technology gives me more confidence.' In fact, technology has become an important advantage in his sales work. A distributor in Henan once consulted him about oil product knowledge, and Liu Hongyu gave him a detailed answer. Even after the distributor later left that line of work, he still never forgot Liu Hongyu, and whenever he came across a customer in need he was always the first person he thought of recommending. For Liu Hongyu, technology has become the booster of his sales work.
The secret of sales is integrity
For Liu Hongyu, who had been in sales for more than ten years, the greatest lesson of the work is that one must be honest. He says that only dedicated service can retain customers, and that whatever has been promised to a customer must be delivered.
The reason he values integrity so much is that one incident touched him deeply. The Wuyang Iron and Steel Plant is a 20-year-old customer of Northwest Sales. Twenty years ago, a senior senior engineer from the Lanzhou R&D Center went to the Wuyang Iron and Steel Plant to test worm gear oil. He ate and slept in the plant and spent every day with its employees, and after two months the relationship had become extremely harmonious. Even today, when Liu Hongyu goes to the Wuyang Iron and Steel Plant, people still mention that old senior engineer to him. This made him feel that because customers trust a person, they will follow him persistently; and because they trust a person, they will trust an enterprise.
A golden signboard is forged through integrity and through genuine goods at a fair price. Every competitor has its own tricks in the market, but seeking renown through quality is the true path. One day, just as the working day was ending, he received a phone call. It was from the purchasing staff of BYD in Xi'an: a vice president of BYD hoped to meet him face to face the next day. Without a second thought he agreed at once: 'Fine, let us meet at nine tomorrow morning.' After hanging up he thought it over and realized how tight the time really was, for he had both to prepare material for the exchange and to ask the R&D Center to arrange technical staff to support him. Ordinarily such things could be done with ease. But this was a trip decided on the spur of the moment, and it also involved a potential major customer, so he could not afford to be careless at any point. He carried out every step conscientiously and did not get home until the small hours. At nine the next morning, when he appeared on time in the BYD vice president's office, that vice president exclaimed: 'I never imagined a state-owned enterprise could be so efficient.' From then on, BYD became one of his loyal customers. Besides efficiency, I think, punctuality and integrity were also important reasons why BYD was won over. 'Win a customer's trust with integrity, and the customer will be willing to tell you what you want to know, and the end market will become controllable.' In Liu Hongyu's view, only by truly going deep among end customers and grasping a whole series of detailed information, namely the equipment they use oil in, the types of oil they use, their oil-change cycles, personal relationships, inventory levels, who their distributors are and what the prices are, can a customer be firmly held in one's hands.
Extending the sales force through service
'Distributors are an extension of the sales force. Only by treating them as our own people and truly serving them with heart can the sales force grow continuously,' Liu Hongyu says, and he acts accordingly.
In his eyes, the number of sales representatives is limited and so is the power to develop customers. He therefore devotes a large part of his energy to extending the sales force, guiding distributors away from the wholesale trading of the past toward developing end users, reducing the links in distribution and strengthening control over the market. With a heart for service he provides timely help to distributors and end customers and grows together with them. Every day he moves among distributors and end customers, providing technical support, doing after-sales service well and offering sales and management suggestions. In the eyes of the distributors, Liu Hongyu is their 'timely rain'.
Gansu Fenghechang Materials Co., Ltd. is an authorized distributor of Kunlun Lubricant. Once, a power plant in Baiyin, more than 100 kilometers from Lanzhou, was holding a tender. Because it was a case of first-time equipment installation and the oil volume was fairly large, the plant wanted Liu Hongyu to give a technical presentation. Without a word he agreed at once. The promise was simple, but the responsibility was heavy. The Baiyin power plant lies in a remote location, and the last five kilometers of road in front of it are rugged and uneven, impassable to vehicles, so people can only walk in. Even so, he went three times in succession: the first time to carry out preliminary research on the equipment, the construction schedule and the requirements; the second time to formally introduce the products to the person in charge of the equipment; and the third time to answer technical questions. Li Yuxia, the company's manager, said: 'Manager Liu set off before dawn every time and got home deep in the night. In the end the plant did not choose us, but Manager Liu's effort moved us deeply.' Hearing this, Liu Hongyu said with resignation: 'Effort does not always bring a return. I have done a good deal of such work in vain. But we cannot let a single opportunity slip; as long as there is a glimmer of hope we must strive for it and grasp every bit of sales volume.'
Yang Yanxu, manager of Lanzhou Huichang Materials and Petrochemical Co., Ltd., is also full of gratitude when he speaks of Liu Hongyu. Once, one of Manager Yang's customers urgently needed a batch of custom-made CKD-100 oil, without which it would have had to stop production. Manager Yang asked every friend he could ask and searched every place he could search. When there was really nothing else he could do, he telephoned Liu Hongyu. Where was the problem? Liu Hongyu made inquiries here and there and finally located the crux of the matter: CKD-100 had no material code, so production could not proceed. He then telephoned the departments one by one and settled the matter link by link. In the end everything was ready except for the approval document. As it happened, the responsible leader was away on a business trip, so in desperation he telephoned the leaders of the Beijing lubricant company. With their coordination and support, the oil could finally be produced. When he delivered the 100 drums of oil to Manager Yang's company, Manager Yang said excitedly: 'You have really done me a great favor, otherwise I would have suffered heavy losses!' One hundred drums is not a large quantity, but behind it lies a great deal of painstaking effort by Liu Hongyu.
From technical backbone to sales manager, Liu Hongyu has achieved a perfect transformation of his own role. Carrying the steadiness and persistence of a technical person, he rides the waves of the market and leads his whole sales team to outstanding sales results. After the interview he dragged his suitcase and dashed to the airport, where another week-long business trip awaited him. He spends nearly one third of the year on business trips, all of them on the road to extending the sales force. (Contributed by the Party and Mass Work Division)