Source: Stills from "Nine Pin Sesame Officer"
"Sell cars in 1,000 stores, sell 30 cars a month (per store), and sell 300,000 cars a year." At the end of 2021, Huawei's smart car BU Yu Chengdong boasted of Haikou to challenge the sales target of 300,000 vehicles in 2022. To illustrate that 300,000 vehicles are within reach, he used a simple algorithm that is intuitive and attractive.
Since the listing of the Q&I M5, the signal of Huawei's car manufacturing has been very obvious. The first-line visit to the car market Monogatari also found that Huawei, which seriously builds cars, is also seriously selling cars. We got some information through Huawei stores in Beijing and Shanghai: a car is equipped with at least 6 sales service customers, users must respond within two hours of booking cars and test drives online, and sales staff bear 12 indicators per month...
The first in-store M5 | Car Market Story Photo
Of course, Huawei's sales target of 300,000 vehicles may not only be a model of the world, but also a Cyrus model. According to another insider, in the future, the two major brands of Polar Fox and Avita will also be sold through Huawei channels. The four important brands add up to form a puzzle of Huawei's sales target of 300,000 vehicles.
A strong channel network, the comprehensive strength bonus of multiple brands, and Huawei's strong endorsement ability are the strength of Huawei to challenge 300,000 vehicles in 2022. However, Wei Xiaoli has been operating hard for many years, and has just crossed the door of 100,000 vehicles, can Huawei complete such a grand goal in 1 year?
01 Q&C M5 listing Huawei sells cars very seriously
On the eve of the Spring Festival, Xiaokang co., Ltd. held a production guarantee conference to produce 10,000 M5s in the first quarter. It will only be launched on December 23, 2021, and the production target of 10,000 vehicles will be completed in one quarter, which shows the popularity of the M5.
"The first batch of users placed orders at the end of December last year, and they can be delivered from the end of February to the beginning of March. Place your order now and extend the lead time to about 10 weeks. Wang Cheng (pseudonym), a salesman at a Huawei authorized store in Beijing, told The Story of the Car Market that although the M5 was listed for a short time, it received relatively high attention.
The M5 | sold at a Huawei store in Shanghai Car Market Story Photo
Judging from the delivery cycle revealed by Wang Cheng, it is also consistent with Huawei's official delivery plan. According to the plan, the M5 is expected to achieve small batch deliveries in February and the first batch of 5,000 users in March.
From the sales side, Huawei has also made a lot of efforts in resource investment and staffing in order to sell good cars. According to Wang Cheng, the first batch of M5 sales staff in the world must first go to Chongqing for training before they can take up their posts. "Now the people who sell cars in the store are those who sell cars, and those who sell mobile phones are those who sell mobile phones, and their respective businesses are separated."
At the sales site of a store in Shanghai, Cheshi Monogatari found that a new car was equipped with six salesmen. In addition, due to the fact that the M5 has not been in the store for a short time, employees are conducting one-on-one training, learning through video explanations, and answering questions for new sales. Overall, the car sales staff in Huawei stores are not less professional than the new energy vehicle sales of traditional car companies.
In order to sell the M5, Huawei also issued sales tasks to sales personnel. Wang Cheng told the car market that at present, the monthly sales task of a sales staff is 12 vehicles, and there will also be relevant requirements in terms of service attitude and service professionalism.
The sales staff carefully explained the functions of the M5 for customers | Car Market Story Photo
The reason why it is so serious about selling cars is not unrelated to the grand goals set by Huawei at the end of last year. For the challenge of the annual sales target of 300,000 vehicles, Huawei believes that the first is to see whether the product is good enough, and whether the user can buy it; the second is to see whether the sales channel is strong and perfect enough to sell the car.
02 Neptune Huawei: Will one store sell four brands?
In Huawei's sales target of 300,000 vehicles, there are not only AITO (Aitu) brands, but also friendly brands with in-depth cooperation. Cheshi Monogatari learned through informed sources that in the future, Huawei will sell both the Jihu brand and the Avita brand in the future channel. Of course, the Xilis brand has not been discontinued at present, and it can also be booked through Huawei channels. At that time, Huawei stores will sell four major brand models at the same time.
The information on the sale of Jihu brand models on Huawei channels has a long history. In September 2021, Beiqi Blue Valley announced that the Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI version will enter the Huawei channel at the end of that year and achieve mass production delivery in the fourth quarter. However, it was not until the end of January this year that the Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI version model officially landed on Huawei's Beijing showroom.
Judging from the scene, this Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI version model is only a trial model, and many functions have not yet been perfected. Zhang Bin (pseudonym), a salesperson at Huawei's direct store, told The Story of the Car Market, "At present, this model can only be visited by customers, and the specific configuration has not yet been clarified." "If users have purchase needs, Huawei stores will pass on the information to the Jihu store."
The Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI Edition in the Huawei showroom | Car Market Story Photo
That is to say, at present, Jihu only borrows Huawei stores for model display, and the specific direction of future cooperation is not clear. In addition, the Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI version model can only be officially delivered in June this year, and Huawei channels may be saddled with sales targets of 10,000 Extreme Fox models in the future.
On the other hand, the information on the sale of Avita models in Huawei stores has not gone away. The Avita brand is a high-end brand jointly created by Changan, Huawei and CATL. It is reported that Avita's first pure electric coupe SUV Avita 11 will be listed in the second quarter of this year, and the first batch of mass production and user delivery will be achieved in the third quarter. It can be seen that Huawei's responsibility in it is very heavy, and the channel function may be Huawei's top priority.
It is initially speculated that if the mass production plan of major brand models goes smoothly, Huawei will simultaneously sell the Inverse M5, Cyrus SF5, Polar Fox Alpha S (ARCFOX αS) HI version, Avita 11, as well as the planned Inquisitive M5 pure electric model and medium and large range extender SUV in 2022. If nothing else, all six models will enter huawei channels.
From this point of view, Huawei stores will not lack key models, it is the ammunition depot is full of bullets, Huawei to challenge the target of 300,000 vehicles is full of confidence.
03 Can a mobile phone store sell 300,000 cars a year?
Although Huawei's confidence in challenging 300,000 vehicles is sufficient, the car market story still found a hint of hidden worry.
Judging from the situation of product sales, Huawei stores will not lack heavy sales models, but they will also face problems of resource allocation and brand competition.
The Cyrus brand is the prelude. After the Sf5 was removed from Huawei stores, it has aroused the doubts of many car owners. To this end, Cyrus officials said that Cyrus SF5 will continue to accept user orders. In addition, the first owner of the SF5 has many benefits, and if you buy other models of the company's vehicles within 4 years, the relevant rights and benefits will also increase.
Despite such preferential measures, Cyrus also has an unpredictable fate. As Wang Cheng said, "The Selix SF5 and the Inquisitor M5 overlap in positioning, and the M5 software and hardware configuration will be higher." Wang Cheng's implication is that the M5 is the main model promoted by China, and although the Cyrus SF5 will still be sold, Huawei will not invest more channel resources.
Will the Polar Fox brand and the Avita brand face the same dilemma in the future? The Car Market Story Survey found that the sales staff was not enthusiastic about the promotion of the Jihu brand, and when asked about the model, it was only a few words, and when asked about the situation of the M5, the enthusiasm was obviously higher.
In addition, Huawei stores in different regions have different attitudes towards the Polar Fox and Avita brands. The sales staff of Huawei's Shanghai main store told the car market Monogatari, "Our Shanghai store will not sell Polar Fox, and the Polar Fox model in Beijing is only for display." ”
Even if Huawei channels are shared, different brands will be close to each other. As for who can obtain more channel resources from Huawei, and how to achieve the organic integration of its own product strength and Huawei's channel capabilities, it will inevitably be an important issue.
Another question worth mentioning is the current real order situation of the M5. Cheshi Monogatari visited a number of Huawei stores and found that the sales staff had different calibers of orders for the M5. Roughly summarized, Huawei's directly operated stores claim that the number of M5 orders is about 7,000, while the sales staff of Huawei's authorized experience store claims more than 9,000 vehicles.
Asked how many orders there are in the boundary M5, the official has not yet given a unanimous statement. According to the analysis of Wang Min, a person in the automotive industry, most of the current M5 may be small orders, and users can be refunded at any time, and have not officially entered the large order stage. In addition, perhaps in order to avoid the embarrassment that the actual order of Cyris was much lower than the advertised order, huawei officials were very conservative about the promotion of the M5 order.
Huawei has only relied on its own strong channel network to set a sales target of 300,000 vehicles, which has also been questioned by many people. According to Yu Chengdong's calculation method, at the end of 2022, 1,000 stores will be used to sell cars, each store can sell 30 vehicles per month, and the monthly sales can reach 30,000 vehicles, and it is possible to exceed 300,000 vehicles a year.
To this day, Huawei has no successful cases to learn from. The car market story combing Wei Xiaoli these new forces found that although the Wei Xiaoli sales network has been continuously improved, product strength is also constantly improving, but the overall sales have just exceeded 100,000 vehicles, from the target of 300,000 vehicles is still a long way away.
Although Huawei has taken out 1,000 stores to sell new energy vehicles in one go, there are many differences between selling cars and buying mobile phones in mobile phone stores, and it is not a simple thing to convert user intentions into actual orders in a short period of time. Cars are commodities, users buy less frequently, Huawei selling cars as an arithmetic problem, may still think of some simple.
Note: Liu Honglong also contributed to this article.