The Return

Similar to many young people, during his early post-college years, Lai Yi was constantly exploring his personal career path. He once worked as a key account sales manager in the food industry and was also briefly engaged in learning how to make desserts.

Around 2011, the automotive market was rapidly taking off and in urgent need of highly skilled talent. At that time, it seemed that as long as you had the courage to take the first step, you could reach success in this industry. "I have been fond of cars since I was a kid, and I majored in this field, so I wanted to give it a try," said Lai Yi. Soon after he sent in his application, Lai Yi joined Ford’s dealer team in Nanjing and officially became a car sales.

"I remember Ford Focus being our cool star product. At that time, I stayed beside it every day, diligently wiped the Focus very clean and sold it to clients. It was my main source of revenue, too."

Despite pressure around sales performance, he recalls feeling more delighted than anxious about his job.

Lai Yi was also around during the golden age, when Ford China’s "1515 Strategy” was taking off and developing rapidly thanks to the popularity of several mainstream family cars such as Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo, as well as the arrival of imported and segmented performance cars such as Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus RS and Mustang.

Tear up the rulebook; opportunity favors the prepared

In the beginning, the sales team mainly focused on selling domestic family cars because of the universality of those models, high customer conversion rate and steady income that they yielded.

However, Lai Yi noticed a different side to the story. "At the time, if we sold 500 cars, imported cars would only count for less than 10 of that. Even so, I cared about this niche group of customers, because they pursued different things. I was curious about them. What kind of people would buy an imported car at 500,000 yuan? Although the conversion rate was not as high as that of selling domestic cars, I wanted to chat with them to better understand them and their preferences. So, I began to dive deep into these cars myself.”

After that, Lai Yi shifted his focus to Ford’s import cars in China.

The breakthrough point of his career came soon after, when a Ford Focus ST test drive vehicle arrived at his store in Jiangsu.

The manual turbocharged model sparked a lot of excitement in Lai Yi. He drove it to events and to participate in local drag races. In this way, he not only completed many sales of the vehicle, but also made many like-minded friends. Gradually, Lai Yi became the sales champion of Ford’s import cars in Jiangsu.

Even so, car sales in the past were often one-off deals, with the connection between the customer and the sales team typically ending the moment that the car was picked up.

That is until one day, when a customer told Lai Yi that he had seen a Focus ST exactly like his own while driving out on the roads. It was a very exciting moment for him, and he wanted to greet the fellow car owner, but the other owner had ignored him. So he asked Lai Yi, "Since you are familiar with so many customers, couldn’t you find a way to gather us together to communicate more with each other?"

This casual chat has turned out to have a profound impact on Lai Yi’s life, even now.

It happened around the time when WeChat was becoming popular, and Lai Yi immediately took advantage of the opportunity. "Great! How about we become WeChat friends, since we are both Ford car owners, let’s connect and talk more!" As time passed and he gathered contacts, he then organized a WeChat group that brought all the car owners together. Not only could they now communicate with each other, but Lai Yi could also coordinate with all these potential customers with convenience.

The WeChat group initially started with just five people, then grew to 10 – afterwards, it got bigger and bigger, and Lai Yi gradually began to organize a more formal version of the owners club. "This method of community building was mentioned at internal meetings for market development for Mustang, Raptor, and other specific models, but no one was doing it nationwide. I thought it was the right direction, so I did it," said Lai Yi proudly.

Some of his friends also joked that they often saw him sell the same car several times over and over again, which shows the trust that customers have in him. So, in Lai Yi’s view, if you want more resources, first you need to earn customers’ appreciation.

"There is a lot of value in these car owner communities. Because I like cars myself, car owners trust in my opinions. Many people will contact me when they want to change to a new car, and introduce other customers to join us so that we can explore cars together. So, my referral rate is particularly high."

Of course, Lai Yi is a big fan of Ford performance vehicles himself.

I was tired and I chose to leave

However, year after year, Lai Yi was feeling weary from the same work, daily routine and goal. Especially after his daughter was born, he wanted to spend more time at home.

The new F-150 Raptor was in the testing phase before its launch in China, and Lai Yi and his friends were very impressed by the new model. “I sold Raptor before, but when I drove it to Tibet, it was so thrilling.”

So, a year after his initial departure, when Ford contacted Lai Yi to talk about promoting pickup culture through an owners club, he was attracted back once again.

"They asked me if I knew someone suitable for the job, and as soon as I saw the job description, I laughed. I was the one! " In his years at Ford, he had accumulated rich experience in sales management and community operation, and in the days after he left, he drove the Raptor to explore the depopulated zone in depth. "I was kind of the first associate manager interviewed by Ford," Lai Yi emphasized with confidence.

More importantly, the new direct-sales model also allows Ford to focus more on serving customers and improving the customer experience, rather than competing with others in price – a shift from sales orientation to delivery orientation.

He was motivated and couldn't wait to expand his driving playground from cities to mountains and desert terrain, as restrictions on pickup trucks have become more relaxed, in the meantime.