The ideal has a flight attendant, and the flight attendant has an ideal

"Core Tips"

Behind the beauty scheme, there is no so-called two-way rush, only value exchange.

Author | Zhu Xiaoyu

Edit | Xing Yun

To a certain extent, it can be said that the flow trend of beauties is also a vane to measure the development of the industry. Often, the industry where beauties begin to pour in, are experiencing a boom.

For example, in the era of the great development of China's aviation industry, the selection of flight attendants is like a beauty contest; when real estate is hot, beautiful sales ladies have almost become the standard; live e-commerce has become an outlet, and many eye-catching anchors have poured into the live broadcast room...... Beautiful appearance is also a scarce resource, where there is money, beauty flows.

Interestingly, there have been a lot of discussions on social media about "flight attendants switching careers to sell ideals", searching for keywords on Xiaohongshu, you can see that there are indeed many beautiful flight attendants who have officially announced that they have joined Li Auto for sales, and even the traditional luxury car brands Porsche and Rolls-Royce have also joined Li Auto. In addition, there are also some luxury cabinet sisters, real estate beauty sales, etc., who also posted photos of ideal cars in uniforms on Xiaohongshu.

For these beauties, joining Ideal may be a new starting point in their lives, and for Ideal Auto, the sales brought by the sales at this time are the key to the company's transition from 1 to 10.

According to a report by The Paper on November 22, Li Auto's 2024 sales forecast for supply chain companies is 800,000 units. This figure is 2.6 times the sales target of 300,000 units this year.

Under the huge pressure of sales, how to achieve the goal may become the top priority of the ideal moment.

1. When the flight attendants began to talk about "ideals"

The discussion on social media about "flight attendants switching to Li Auto" has attracted attention. The person in charge of public relations of Li Auto responded to Zhongxin Jingwei on December 8, saying that there was no special statistics, but the proportion of numbers is definitely not high.

Two days later, Li Auto directly posted on its official account "Revealing: Why are more and more flight attendants coming to Li Auto to sell cars?", giving the self-reported responses of 5 former flight attendants.

"Higher income" has become the reason at the top.

In the second half of this year, Chen Qianli bid farewell to the airline where she had worked for more than two years and joined an ideal car store in Shanghai, the most direct reason for which was the high salary offered by HR.

Chen Qianli told "Leopard Change" that her airline reformed in the first half of this year, not only the assessment requirements became stricter, resulting in difficulty in getting money, but also the workplace struggle became more serious.

"The basic salary during the probation period is 8,000 yuan, and the commission for each car sold is 1,000 to 2,000 yuan, and the specific amount depends on the model. Chen Qianli said that the more cars are sold, the higher the bonus performance, and the salary received in a month is 2 to 30,000 yuan. This income is more than the salary level of the airline where they work.

In fact, how much money can be made from sales mainly depends on personal ability and performance. Chen Qianli said that her monthly income during the peak period can even reach 30,000 or 40,000 yuan.

When a civil airline flies domestic routes, Chen Qianli has a monthly salary of 12,000 to 13,000 yuan when she flies at full every month, and she repeats her daily work mechanically all year round, and the promotion space is relatively limited. The slightest change in the company will prompt some flight attendants to leave.

Chen Qianli also said that joining the ideal is also recommended by her seniors. Before her, a number of colleagues had joined Li Auto as sales positions. Because of her high income and proximity to home, Chen Qianli also joined.

However, the sales pressure of Li Auto was high, and Chen Qianli also had a period of discomfort at the beginning of her employment, and thought about leaving several times. Chen Qianli said, "After that period of time, everything will be relatively smooth, as long as you try your best to sell the car, the assessment indicators will not be completed occasionally and you will not have to leave." ”

According to Chen Qianli, the surrounding colleagues also have luxury cabinet sisters, first-line luxury car brand sales, real estate sales, teachers, self-media, etc., as long as the image is good and the affinity is high, Li Auto will not focus on industry experience, after all, the liquidity of the sales industry is also high.

Of course, it is the ideal to look at the sales performance of these salespeople through their own external resources or network resources. Ideally, the main luxury car of more than 300,000 yuan is in this range, and many travel scenes are associated with families, which are called "daddy cars" by the outside world, and the owners generally have elite identity positioning. And the sales from flight attendants are also more in line with the ideal demand.

In fact, there is no such thing as a two-way rush, only value exchange.

A Mercedes-Benz car owner told "Leopard Change" that he bought an ideal L7 under sales persuasion after he jumped to the ideal because of the sales of selling cars. At the same time, this is also the first new energy vehicle he purchased.

2. Ideal ideal, can the flight attendant catch up?

Since the beginning of this year, the ideal has been thrown out of the king bomb. In addition to the beautiful flight attendants, Ideal also poached Song Ziwei, the product manager of vivo.

Song Ziwei used to be the product manager of vivo's iQOO mobile phone, and she was also the keynote speaker of the press conference.

On December 10, Song Ziwei, as the keynote speaker of the Li Auto intelligent software conference, ushered in her debut in the automotive industry.

Some industry insiders said that Song Ziwei's participation has made Li Auto gain a lot of popularity. From a marketing point of view, the "beauty" strategy adopted by Ideal is very out of the circle, allowing Ideal to gain attention while winning the goodwill of some potential car owners.

In the first 11 months of this year, Ideal delivered a total of 326,000 vehicles, completing the annual sales target of 300,000 vehicles ahead of schedule, becoming the fastest among the three new forces Wei Xiaoli.

With this year's performance exceeding expectations, Li Auto has raised its delivery target for next year.

According to The Paper, Li Auto's 2024 sales forecast for supply chain companies is 800,000 units, nearly three times the sales target for this year. The relevant person in charge of Li Auto responded that the specific target figures for 2024, including production capacity, have not yet been disclosed, and in general, Ideal hopes to challenge the first place in luxury brands in 2024.

In order to boost sales, Ideal continues to increase the coverage of cities and channels, and will expand the network layout of third- and fourth-tier cities from the beginning of 2023. At the first quarter of 2023 financial results meeting, Li Xiang, the founder of Ideal, said that it will cover almost all fourth-tier cities in the future.

Auto recently reported that Li Auto plans to continue to expand its sales network in the fourth quarter, with the number of retail centers expected to increase from 372 at the end of October to more than 400, and the number of cities covered from 133 to 140.

The opening of more retail centers requires more sales filling, so as to support the ideal sales system.

In the past year, Li Auto has been recruiting non-stop, and a number of delivery expert positions (sales) have been released on Wuhan Boss Zhipin alone. After talking with it, "Leopard Change" found that the invisible requirements for applying for product experts are to have a good image and affinity, and whether there is experience in selling cars is not the key, but whether there are high-end network resources that can be transformed.

Chen Qianli said that in the direct store of Shanghai Ideal Auto, many foreign car owners from surrounding cities came to Shanghai to pick up their cars, and after the official announcement of Xiaohongshu and Moments, some foreign customers also came to consult and buy cars. Li Auto's stores are mainly opened in first- and second-tier cities, and there are not many in sinking cities, and there are restrictions on local licensing in Shanghai, so foreign car owners are also customers they pay attention to, and the Internet is an important channel for them to obtain customers.

According to the data, the proportion of new car sales in second-tier cities increased from 27.0% in the first quarter to 31.7%. Among them, there may also be a contribution to the "beauty sales" strategy.

3. Car companies have "36 plans"

Of course, the "beauty tactic" has always had a tradition in the car circle, and even the new car-making forces can't get around this path.

Since the beginning of this year, many car companies have opened the mode of live streaming of beauties to sell cars, selling people wearing black silk, high heels, and tights, shouting hard in front of the camera.

Behind this is a year of extreme involution for car companies, with price wars escalating and people leaving the table. At the end of the year, the car companies represented by BYD have started a new round of price wars, and the car companies that have not reached the sales target are also sprinting KPIs in various ways.

Judging from the three new power stars "Wei Xiaoli", Weilai's sales target for 2023 is 245,000 units, and a total of 142,000 new cars will be delivered from January to November, which is nearly 100,000 units short of the annual sales target of 240,000 units. Xpeng's sales target is 200,000 units, and the cumulative delivery volume in the first 11 months will reach 121,000 units, which is a certain distance from the target.

In order to sell cars, both NIO and XPeng have started reforms.

In mid-June, NIO changed its previous attitude of "never reducing prices", and after the high-level "until 3 a.m. was still repeatedly scrutinizing", the starting price of all its models was lowered by 30,000 yuan. This helped NIO deliver more than 20,000 vehicles in July.

In the second-quarter earnings call, Li Bin said that NIO's sales staff lagged behind its competitors in terms of ability and number, and could not meet the demand for selling 7 to 8 cars at the same time. In the second quarter of this year, NIO also began to recruit sales in the traditional automotive industry, and while actively poaching from traditional luxury car brands, NIO also began to recruit beautiful women such as flight attendants for sales. On Xiaohongshu, there are not a few flight attendants who have officially announced that they have joined NIO.

According to LatePost, in order to achieve sales targets, NIO's legal department has also joined the car sales army. In February this year, Gao Gang, vice president and global general counsel of NIO, proposed internally that the lawyer group is in line with NIO's user positioning, and lawyers from law firms across the country can exchange cutting-edge legal issues in the fields of intelligent driving and compliance while test-driving and experiencing NIO's products and services. Six months after the program was implemented, more than 100 lawyers bought NIO. ”

In order to achieve the sales target, Xpeng has also experienced the pain of reform. In September this year, Xpeng Motors held a channel business meeting and announced a channel reform plan called the "Jupiter Plan". The 24 sales areas nationwide will be reduced to 12, the inefficient Xiaopeng direct stores will be phased out, and the store scale of agents and dealers will be expanded to reduce operating costs and improve market coverage.

After the reform, Xpeng Motors' sales continued to pick up, with a total of 20,000 new vehicles delivered in November, a year-on-year increase of 245%, and deliveries exceeded 20,000 units for two consecutive months.

2024 will still be a year for car companies to roll to the extreme. Regardless of the menacing strength of Huawei's car-making corps, even the Xiaomi car that has not yet been listed has completed the layout of next year's sales market.

According to people familiar with the matter, Xiaomi Auto will basically copy the sales model of Xiaomi mobile phones - direct sales in first-tier cities, and there will be a sales model of direct sales plus 4S stores in new first-tier cities, and second, third and fourth-tier cities will open up agency rights to dealers. In the future, the Xiaomi mobile phone direct store with a large space will also be fully utilized as a showroom for Xiaomi cars.

Under the huge pressure of car companies, under the cruel market competition, the "beauty plan" certainly has a role, but it can only affect the temporary situation, and it is difficult to determine the final victory.

(At the request of the interviewee, all names have been changed)