Wei Xiaoli's full staff's letter: family letters, military warrants and guilt edicts

Sales are the solution to all problems

Author | Ginger intermediary

Cover source | He Xiaopeng Weibo

At the beginning of 2023, in less than a month, the heads of the three new forces of NIO, Xiaopeng and Ideal (hereinafter referred to as "Wei Xiaoli") have successively issued letters from all employees, although the style and content are different, but the words reflect a deep sense of crisis and anxiety about the future.

"The process of economic recovery and consumer confidence after the epidemic will be relatively long, especially high-end models, while market competition is becoming more and more fierce, products and technologies are becoming more and more homogeneous, and differentiated competitive advantages are becoming more and more difficult to obtain." In his internal letter, Li Bin made this judgment on the future competitive situation.

The past year of 2022 is still a year of thin ice for Wei Xiaoli, with annual KPIs set by the three companies of 150,000 vehicles, 250,000 vehicles and 170,000 units, and actual sales of 122,500 vehicles, 120,700 vehicles and 133,000 vehicles respectively, and none of them completed the task. With the further intensification of market competition, how to boost sales has become the primary problem facing Wei Xiaoli.

In the internal letter, the three leaders summarized the company's situation in the past year.

Li Bin's attitude is quite sincere: "In 2022, we have hard work and merit, but we must be soberly aware that many peers have performed better than us in the same period. ”

He pointed out in the internal letter that the team will continue to expand in 2022, but unclear responsibilities, inconsistent goals, imperfect processes, and repeated construction are everywhere, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in efficiency. Li Bin believes that NIO has set a firm direction, as long as it can focus on execution and make the way of working more efficient and agile, it can achieve its goals. But if it is a decision that goes against the laws of the market, then the stronger the execution, the greater the probability of deviating from the normal track.

Li Bin introspected, He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang put more ink on rendering the sense of crisis, expressing determination, and motivating employees. He Xiaopeng believes that "the company has reached the moment when there is no way back and the cauldron is broken", and also issued a military order of "delivering 200,000 vehicles in 2023"; Li Xiang's vision for the future and his emphasis on the company's mission, vision and values are not lacking in a bit of family letters. "All partners will trust you, no one will complain about you when there is a problem, there will be partners who will help you when you encounter difficulties, and there will be partners to support you when you fall down."

Compared with the enthusiasm when they were just starting out and entering the field of new energy vehicles, He Xiaopeng, Li Bin and Li want to bear more responsibilities and pressure. After completing the starting from 0 to 1 and the initial accumulation from 1 to 10, on the long march from 10 to 100, the three companies started from the basic business and put forward a series of rectification priorities.

Although He Xiaopeng is an Internet company, the company's operation has long relied on a team with a background in traditional car companies, and the company's overall framework design is technology-oriented. Several former BAT employees who switched to Xpeng due to the rise of new forces told Snow Leopard Finance and Economics that Xpeng's internal engineering culture is still dominated by the engineer culture of traditional car companies, and Internet forces should serve manufacturing, hardware technology and other links.

Among the three all-staff letters, He Xiaopeng also most directly locked the main theme of the full text on sales. Shortly after the letter was issued, on January 30, Wang Fengying, former general manager of Great Wall Motor, officially became the president of Xpeng Motors, fully responsible for the company's product planning, product matrix and sales system. This is similar to the operating logic of some mature car companies: after building the basic structure of the company, which link has a problem will be directly prescribed to solve the problem, and if it cannot be solved internally, it will look for "airborne troops".

Li Bin's prescription for NIO focuses more on organizational efficiency. He listed eight areas where the team was deficient, including relatively backward delivery growth, insufficient response to supply fluctuations, software and hardware quality problems before and after the launch of new vehicles, test vehicle accidents and data security issues. He also put forward requirements for important departments of the whole company one by one, such as the R&D team to evaluate and review the progress of R&D projects at any time, and find and correct problems in time.

In contrast, Li Xiang's internal letter style is relatively mild, focusing on the reaffirmation and interpretation of mission, vision, values, and code of conduct. In his view, the company's ability to achieve the first place in many subdivisions is "due to the long-term adherence to corporate culture for more than seven years." Li Xiang also jumped out of the automotive circle and put forward a grander vision: "by 2030, become the world's leading artificial intelligence company".

From the actual sales point of view, Wei Xiaoli is in the middle waist of the second echelon of new energy vehicle companies, not only has a significant gap with the first echelon, but also has not established an absolute advantage over the third echelon, and even can no longer represent the new forces of car manufacturing in terms of sales. In 2022, Nezha completed the surpassing of Wei Xiaoli with the delivery of nearly 150,000 vehicles.

At the same time, the head player's food grabbing also had a huge impact on Wei Xiaoli.

Li Bin once defined competition in the post-subsidy era as a knockout tournament. As soon as 2023 began, Musk blew the piercing whistle for this brutal knockout match.

In January, Tesla carried out the largest price reduction promotion in history in the Chinese market, and the seemingly calm Chinese car market was instantly blown up by this bombshell. Musk has repeatedly signaled in public: Tesla still has room to cut prices in the future. (For details, see Snow Leopard Car Observation "Tesla Swings Seven Wounded Fists, "Butcher Knife" Slashes at Wei Xiaoli")

In addition to the core battlefield, "new forces" such as Xiaomi Auto have entered the market one after another. "The three years from 2023 to 2025 are extremely brutal knockouts because I don't think you need that many companies." Li Xiang once described the future market environment.

In order to win this knockout race, all car companies, including Wei Xiaoli, did everything they could to point to the same goal: to sell the car well.

From the sales data, Xpeng's KPI completion is the lowest, and it is also the three companies that have clearly set "selling cars" as the main theme in the coming year. In an internal letter, He Xiaopeng said that the goal for 2023 is to deliver a cumulative total of 450,000 vehicles, that is, nearly 200,000 new vehicles in 2023. Ten days before the release of the internal letter, he also put the growth task at the company's annual summary meeting first: "The company's medium- and long-term management policy, the first point is to take scale growth as the first priority. ”

Wang Fengying's arrival may only be the first step in Xiaopeng's transformation of the sales system, and there will be more actions in the future. Wang Fengying has successfully opened up an SUV product line for Great Wall Motor, and her addition may bring new solutions to the much-criticized G9 model.

NIO and Ideal did not emphasize scale growth like Xpeng in their internal letters, but they were trying to expand the price band and enrich the product matrix to increase sales. NIO's three new NT2-based models were introduced to the market last year. Previously, the ideal of the main single product explosion, last year successively launched L9, L8 and L7, and at the same time discontinued the ideal ONE. On the one hand, Ideal also strengthens the exploration in the field of pure electricity, and on the other hand, it is planned to expand the direct operation system to more cities: the third-tier cities are fully covered, and the fourth-tier cities must at least enter the head cities.

For Wei Xiaoli, 2023 is destined to continue the thin ice of 2022, like approaching the abyss, under the guidance of the central idea of "anti-falling team", sales are both the lowest line and life-saving line, but also the highest requirements. Even the winner who retains his position in the knockout round can be a crushing victory.