The development of an enterprise is like sailing against the current. If you don't advance, you will retreat.
This is especially true for various car companies in China.
In the past, both Xiali and Jinbei were relatively awesome people.
But starting this year, their presence has obviously declined.
However, independent brand car companies, led by Chery, Geely, Great Wall, BYD and Changan, have begun to continuously explode their energy in the Chinese auto market.
Especially the rising star Changan Automobile, which has launched two SUVs, CS95 and CS75, as well as a V5 sedan so far this year.
The performance of these three cars has been very impressive since their launch, and sales in September are expected to hit 20,000 units.
This is undoubtedly very challenging data for an independent brand that has just entered the passenger car field.
Changan Automobile attaches great importance to it from top to bottom.
"Mr. Yi, we have teamed up with Autohome to launch the 'Secret Land of Chang'an, Traveling Through Northern Sichuan' campaign, hoping to further attract consumers to buy our CS75 and CS95."
"All the traveling staff of the sales department also travel to 4S stores to provide on-site guidance on speaking skills."
"According to the current situation, the sales volume of CS75 exceeds 10,000, and the sales volume of CS95 and V5 each exceed 5,000. There should be no problem."
"The purchasing department of Nanshan Group has also communicated with them, and there will be no problems with the supply of parts."
Lan Qiaosheng, the sales director of Changan Automobile, was reporting to General Manager Yi Jia on the arrangements for September.
Since September every year, every year since September, various car companies are busy rushing to increase sales.
If you can't achieve good results in these two months, then don't expect any particularly good performance throughout the year.
2007 is the first year of Changan Automobile's passenger car development, and it is a very memorable year.
Lan Qiaosheng naturally hopes that the sales figures for this year will be as high as possible.
By then, when the people from Changan Ford look at Changan Automobile again, they probably won’t dare to look condescending, right?
You know, in the past few years, Changan Ford has performed very well.
It can even be said that Changan Ford is the largest car company in Shuangqing City, and many employees there have their noses raised to the sky.
This made the people at Changan Automobile a little unhappy.
Obviously they are the purest Changan people, but their performance is not as good as that of the joint venture Changan Ford.
This situation is basically similar to various domestic automobile groups.
People from Modu Volkswagen and Modu GM, in their hearts, look down on people from Modu Passenger Cars.
People from Spring City Volkswagen and Spring City Toyota also look down on the people from Spring City Cars.
As for Tedu Benz and Tedu Hyundai, it goes without saying that they completely look down on the people who make Tedu Motors' own brands.
Even if many of the management of these joint venture car companies are employees of the group's own brands, it is inevitable that they will have different thoughts.
Lan Qiaosheng understands this very well.
"Domestically, Spring City Automobile Group and Modu Automobile Group are far ahead in terms of scale, followed by Didu Automobile Group."
"If we, Changan Automobile, don't work hard, we may be overtaken by Yangcheng Automobile Group."
"The sales volume in these two months is very critical. You must keep an eye on it."
Yi Jia is now in high spirits.
It was his decision to invest heavily in passenger cars.
If it fails, he will bear the responsibility.
Now that it was successful, the biggest credit naturally went to him.
So I feel very good.
"I understand that competition in the domestic auto market has become much more intense than in previous years."
"Under such circumstances, if we cannot seize the opportunity of the expanding automobile market, we will be under greater pressure in the future."
"Once a certain independent brand has completely formed a unit advantage, it will be more difficult to catch up in the future."
As latecomers, people from Changan Automobile are more aware of the urgency of time.
If we don't work hard, there will be no place for Changan Automobile among so many domestic car companies.
…
Similar conversations are ongoing within other car companies.
"Mr. Zhang, our situation is somewhat similar to Changan Automobile's."
"Everyone has just entered the passenger car field this year. The three models currently on sale or to be mass-produced are medium-to-large SUVs, medium-sized SUVs and medium-sized sedans."
"Under this situation, if our sales volume cannot match that of Changan Automobile, many media outlets will probably comment on it."
Zeng Guangda has been paying attention to the sales of various domestic car companies during this period.
In terms of sales volume in the first eight months of 2007, Modu GM officially surpassed Modu Volkswagen and Spring City Volkswagen and took the top position.
However, the advantage is not very obvious, although it may be pursued again by the public from the north and the south.
Following closely behind is Teito Hyundai.
However, the performance of rising stars such as Great Wall Motors and BYD Automobiles is also very impressive, and they may hit the top five positions at any time.
As a new player, Zhang Jiaqi has set an annual sales target of 150,000 units for Yangcheng Motors.
After all, several of their new cars have been launched one after another since the first quarter of this year.
So even if the sales volume this month can reach more than 20,000 vehicles, it will still be stressful to eventually reach the full-year target of 150,000 vehicles.
"At present, the advantages of our GS4 are relatively obvious."
"Have you noticed that Xingchen Motors is now putting almost all its marketing resources on Yangwang, striving to build Yangwang into a popular model, which can play a very good role in driving the market."
"I think this method can be learned from."
"We have also put our main marketing resources on GS4, striving to make GS4 the first SUV in China with sales of a single model exceeding 20,000 units."
"Even after more model configurations are launched later, it will impact the monthly sales of 30,000 units of a single model."
"The word-of-mouth effect and publicity effect it will achieve by then will be very high."
As the general manager of Yangcheng Motor, Zhang Jiaqi naturally has good vision.
He keenly saw some clever tricks in Xingchen Automobile's marketing plan.
After hearing what Zhang Jiaqi said, Zeng Guangda immediately realized the benefits.
"I will discuss it with the sales department immediately to see how to formulate a special discount plan for GS4."
"At that time, more consumers will be attracted to buy GS4."
Zeng Guangda is Zhang Jiaqi's successor. There is no particularly big competitive relationship between the two parties, and the cooperation is relatively smooth.
Therefore, Zeng Guangda followed Zhang Jiaqi's instructions to the letter.
"There are more and more players in the mid-size SUV market."
"Whether it is Honda CRV, Toyota's RAV4, BYD's S6, Great Wall's H6, Chery's Tiggo, Changan's CS75, or products from other car companies, consumers have many choices."
"Compared with theirs, our GS4 has more space, the configuration is not worse, and the power is about the same."
"This is actually very advantageous."
"After all, consumers are very interested in buying a bigger car for the same money."
Zhang Jiaqi is obviously aware of Chinese consumers' preference for large cars.
At the beginning, the GS4 listened to Cao Yang's suggestion and made the length, width and height one size larger based on CRV and other similar models.
Now it really shows its advantages.
Sitting in the back row, the foot room and head room are much more than other models.
Don't underestimate this fist.
After taller people sit on it, the feeling is completely different.
"Confirming this, our next marketing will further highlight this advantage."
“What others have, we also have.”
“What others don’t have, we also have.”
"For the price of a medium-sized SUV, you can buy a car that is close to a medium-sized SUV."
Zeng Guangda is also becoming more and more confident in GS4.
"Although we are a brand new brand that entered the market this year, the engines and gearboxes are provided by Nanshan Group. They are exactly the same as BYD's S6, Great Wall H6 and other models. Consumers do not have to worry about the quality of the GS4 at all."
It is often difficult for a new brand to get started at the beginning.
One of the very important reasons is that your car has not been tested by the market, and people will have various worries.
But if you put this worry on GS4, it basically disappears.
After all, its powertrains are very mature and are installed in a large number of models on the market.
There is absolutely no problem in taking this opportunity to indulge in other people's hot spots.
The two chatted for a long time, and then Yangcheng Motors immediately started to take action.
The Golden Nine and Silver Ten in 2007 are obviously different from those in history.
This year, China's auto market is more prosperous than at the same time in history.
The performance of each of the independent brands is also much better than the same period in history.
Not to mention the reputation.
"Mr. Cao, our advertising revenue in the third quarter of this year is expected to increase by 30% quarter-on-quarter and 20% year-on-year compared to the second quarter."
"Every car company is very generous with its efforts. Almost every day, some car companies are engaged in various activities."
“If we weren’t worried about too many pop-up ads, Autohome would probably be occupied by ads.”
“The situation of the car channels of other portal websites is similar to ours.”
Yu Yu came to Cao Yang's office in a good mood and reported to him on the recent situation of Autohome.
Although September has not passed yet, advertising contracts and other matters need to be signed in advance.
Basically, the results for September have been decided.
"China's auto market has been in a state of rapid development in the past few years, with an average annual growth rate of more than 20 percent."
"Under such circumstances, all car companies are naturally making a lot of money."
"Now that I have money in my hands, I will be generous with my money."
"Similarly, if you see more cars sold, you will make more money."
"Everyone is very motivated to sell more cars."
"You can even calculate how much more money you can make by selling 10,000 more cars, and then consider whether it is cost-effective to invest this money in marketing."
"You can even calculate how much more money you can make by selling 10,000 more cars, and then consider whether it is cost-effective to invest this money in marketing."
Cao Yang knew that within the next 10 years, China's auto market would be in a very hot state.
Sales will increase from 2 million vehicles in 2000 to 25 million vehicles.
If you have not experienced it personally, even if you tell everyone this number, no one will believe it, right?
Even if China's auto market can reach more than 8 million this year, there is still a big gap between it and more than 20 million.
"That's true. In recent years, you can often see various car companies placing advertisements on China Channel, not to mention various Internet platforms."
"Even when you go to the center of Yangcheng City, you can see advertisements for car companies such as Zephyr Nissan and Yangcheng Honda in the sports center and other places."
"This situation also attracted more ordinary people to turn their attention to cars."
“Even for our Need for Speed, the number of players is constantly increasing.”
"Today among car-related games, "Need for Speed" is already the undisputed king."
"Second place is an exotic game called KartRider."
It was a rare opportunity to come to Cao Yang's office to report something, so Yu Yu naturally wanted to find more topics to chat with Cao Yang.
"The game business is indeed worth working on."
"Especially for various car-related games, Autohome can easily attract traffic and has obvious advantages over other companies."
Cao Yang does not plan to launch Autohome so quickly, so it is important to find some sources of profit for Autohome.
Although it relies on advertising revenue, it is now profitable.
But compared with the company's expenses, this profit is not very impressive.
In order for Autohome's employee benefits to continue to rise, the best way is to keep their profits rising.
This is also a means for Nanshan Group to cultivate its own programmers.
In the future, with the arrival of the intelligent network era, if there are not enough programmers, how will we engage in autonomous driving and get to L3 and L4?
In later generations, even Xpeng Motors has more than 3,000 people engaged in intelligent network connection business. If Nanshan Group does not have tens of thousands of people, how can it completely become a global automobile giant?
If these people are recruited in a hurry when the time comes, it will definitely not be the best way.
When it comes to accumulating resources, when the time comes to know the basics and know what each person is good at, then let him do what he does.
Only in this way can the best results be achieved.
Besides, when the smartphone era arrives, Nanshan Group will be able to do even more things.
"No problem. Our game division now has more than 500 employees. We will further develop and expand the scale to more than 1,000 employees in the future."
"At the same time, we are also planning to build a special Autohome building to better conduct various car disassembly, comparative analysis and testing."
"Of course, the current office area is already very crowded, which is also an important reason."
Taking this opportunity, Yu Yu tentatively mentioned the idea of building a building to Cao Yang.
When many companies reach a certain stage of development, they will build their own buildings.
This is considered a normal thing.
With Autohome's status in China's Internet, it doesn't seem to be a strange thing to have a building of its own.
However, Cao Yang knew that this year was not the best time to buy land and build a building.
From a short-term perspective, land prices this year are at a cyclical high, otherwise "Snail House" would not be so popular.
That's because "Snail House" is very realistic and reflects the dilemma faced by many urban youths in the face of high housing prices.
After the financial crisis next year, various situations will change dramatically.
Although China relied on 4 trillion, it quickly emerged from this crisis.
But the good time window in the second half of next year is still worth seizing.
“You can have someone start thinking about the location and the design of the building first.”
"We will evaluate it again after we have a concrete plan."
"On the whole, I agree in principle with building a building that belongs to a car home."
"But where to build it, what shape to build it to, and what scale to build it to, these things need to be fully considered."
Cao Yang's answer is actually a procrastination trick.
But it seems to Yu Yu that it is already a very good result.
After all, she just tried it out for the first time today.
Next, they continued to chat about the Chinese auto market.
Basically, for most car companies, now is the best time in the market.
However, there are obviously some models of some car companies that are exceptions.
Yangcheng Toyota's Highlander is obviously a member of the accident industry.
"Minister, although the Highlander incident has slowly subsided, it has left a lot of bad nicknames on the Internet."
"'Brother just can't climb uphill', there are also 'soft-footed shrimp', and even 'rich man's harvester' and the like. Not only did the sales of the 2.7L version fall sharply, but even the 3.5L version, Sales have also dropped simultaneously.”
"Compared with Changan CS95 and Yangcheng Motor's GS8, the price of our Highlander is indeed a bit high."
"From the current point of view, our domestically produced Highlander will not be launched until the end of next year at the earliest."
"If it continues to develop at the current pace, Highlander's popularity will be very low in a year."
"So I think we can also consider lowering the price in advance?"
Ma Hongjian reported the sales of Highlander in the past week to Mulinsen.
Obviously, the data isn't pretty.
“Shouldn’t we return the car when it’s time to return it and compensate it when it’s time to make compensation?”
"Why is it that someone is still haunted?"
Mulinsen was also very annoyed.
In his opinion, Yangcheng Toyota has shown its sincerity to the greatest extent.
And in terms of publicity, it no longer deliberately highlights its strong off-road capabilities.
But sales still haven't picked up.
"I think there may be some competitors behind this matter."
"Domestic independent brands have launched a large number of SUV models in the past two years, including several that are similar in size to our Highlander."
"For them, Highlander is also a competitor to a certain extent."
"So naturally I hope that Highlander's sales will be as bad as possible."
Ma Hongjian has been following Highlander's affairs during this period, and he obviously has his own judgment on some situations.
Obviously, this may have started out as an accident.
But now that it has developed, if there is no driving force behind it, he will never believe it.
"When you say that, it's really possible."
"I always feel that the previous thing fermented a little too fast."
"It seems that in just a day or two, it became the hottest news on the entire Internet, and it went viral immediately."
"The key is that even if it was popular for a day or two, the popularity actually lasted for more than a week."
"It would make sense if someone was adding fuel to the fire here."
"Who do you think is the most likely person?"
After listening to Ma Hongjian's words, Mulinsen felt that it made sense.
Their sales department has never done anything similar.
When the Nanshan Group came up with the Passat collision, he was more active than anyone else in arranging for people to cause trouble.
After all, the Passat and Yangcheng Toyota's flagship model, the Camry, are also very direct competitors.
But what now?
Accord, Camry and Teana are the mid- to high-end sedans of three Japanese car companies, becoming the leaders.
Particularly, Pasa ranks first, and it doesn't even rank among the top five.
After all, Changan Ford's Mondeo and GM's Excelle are not just for free.
Even because of the Passat incident, the sales of Magotan owned by Spring City Volkswagen have been greatly affected.
And in all of this, Mulinsen was considered a participant.
"During that time, we had a bad relationship with Changan Automobile, and the CS95 was a copycat model of the Highlander, so Changan Automobile was most likely to cause trouble."
"But Yangcheng Motor's current GS8 actually has the same positioning as the CS95, and their suspicions are also very high."
"In addition, Great Wall H8 is also about to be launched, and its positioning is similar to Highlander."
"These manufacturers are all suspects."
"Even Nanshan Group, which supplies engines and gearboxes to these manufacturers, is more or less involved in this matter."
"After all, related news is the most noisy on Autohome and Weibo."
"I don't believe it if there are no Nanshan Group factors involved."
Ma Hongjian's thinking is still very clear.
His analysis is basically very close to the facts.
However, no matter how clear the analysis is, it cannot change the status quo.
"The current price of Highlander is indeed a bit high."
"Come up with a marketing plan and see how you can offer profits to further stimulate Highlander's sales."
"We cannot let the popularity of Highlander continue to decline like this, otherwise when the domestic Highlander is launched, a lot more publicity work will be needed."
Mulinsen is still very optimistic about the domestic Highlander.
Even though there are already several 7-seater medium and large SUVs in China, overall, the competition in this Westwind segment is still not that fierce.
By then, domestic prices will definitely drop significantly, and those consumers who were originally hesitant to buy self-branded products may start to change their minds.
Soon, Yangcheng Toyota also began to take action for better performance in the Golden Nine and Silver Ten.
Although the domestic automobile market is not the largest in the world, the number of domestic automobile companies is undoubtedly the first in the world.
This situation has not changed from more than ten years ago to more than ten years later.
During the Golden Ninth and Silver Tenth Year of 2007, China's auto market began to undergo significant changes.
If you look back more than ten years later, you will find that 2007 was a turning point for China's auto market.
(End of chapter)
