How Xiaomi regained visibility over its global retail sales chain with a trade marketing program

Xiaomi sells hundreds of products across thousands of retail locations worldwide. But between the brand and the end consumer there are distributors, wholesalers, retailers and — at the end of the chain — a human salesperson who actually recommends and closes the sale. That salesperson is invisible to the brand.

Without visibility over the sales chain, Xiaomi had two problems: it couldn't specifically incentivize whoever recommends its products over the competition, and it couldn't measure the impact of those recommendations on sales outcomes. The brand was relying on the channel for something every brand wants to control directly: the purchase decision at the moment of truth.

The challenge was both operational and one of scale: they needed a program that worked across multiple countries, languages and currencies, and that could identify salespeople in thousands of retail locations without replacing the existing commercial structure.

maslow operates a global trade marketing program for Xiaomi. We identify Xiaomi salespeople at retailers, register them on the platform and reward them with prizes and redeemable points every time they close a sale.

For the retail salesperson, Xiaomi goes from being just another brand in the catalog to being the one that gives back when they recommend it. For the brand, the program acts as a nervous system that connects headquarters to every point of sale and returns data on who sells what, where and when.

The mechanic is simple for the salesperson and powerful for the brand: every validated sale translates into a personal incentive and, simultaneously, into commercial intelligence for Xiaomi.