Liu Qiangdong actually only negotiated with Walmart executives on the first day, and the subsequent negotiations were all handled by Liu Xiangjiang.
This was not because Liu Qiangdong did not attach importance to Walmart, but because Liu Qiangdong had more important things to do, which was to secure the delivery team of Oriental Amazon.
A very important reason why Liu Qiangdong chose to cooperate with Walmart was that Oriental Amazon could not deploy its outlets across the entire United States in a short period.
After all, both logistics and stores require a large amount of time to manage and select. It would be impossible to complete such a massive task in less than half a year.
Not to mention anything else, just recruiting truck drivers who could operate across the entire United States was a huge problem.
And now, both of these most important problems have been solved by Walmart.
The transportation and circulation of goods were no longer a concern, as these could rely on Walmart's own supply chain. Oriental Amazon only needed to rent a small building near each Walmart supermarket as a cargo transfer point, and then directly pick up goods from Walmart's warehouse according to orders, which instantly solved the two biggest problems.
However, the third problem, the vast number of couriers, had to be solved by Oriental Amazon itself. Walmart had a total of 3,000 stores across the United States. If, on average, each store required 10 to 20 delivery personnel, then Oriental Amazon would have to recruit nearly 60,000 delivery personnel to meet the full demand.
And this seemed like an impossible task for Oriental Amazon at the moment, as the entire Oriental Amazon only had more than 3,000 employees.
However, this did not stump Liu Qiangdong. After a night of planning, Liu Qiangdong directly began the internal personnel deployment.
First, Liu Qiangdong reviewed the information of all outlets in five major cities in the United States and summoned the managers of the 51 outlets with the highest customer satisfaction ratings to the headquarters for a meeting within two days.
At the beginning of the meeting, Liu Qiangdong excitedly informed them that they had all been promoted to become general managers of Oriental Amazon in 51 states of the United States. They would be fully responsible for all businesses of Oriental Amazon in these 51 administrative districts and officially become middle management of the group.
This news instantly drove everyone wild. After all, the moment before, they were just small outlet managers, managing at most a few nearby communities. Now, they had become important figures in charge of an entire state. It couldn't be more wonderful.
Moreover, Liu Qiangdong immediately announced that as local managers, they would all hold 0.1% of Oriental Amazon's stock options. This meant that after the company became profitable in the future, they would receive 0.1% of the company's net profit annually as bonuses.
Although they did not know how much this 0.1% net profit would be, it should at least be tens of thousands of dollars, which would be equivalent to several months of their salary.
Therefore, after Liu Qiangdong announced these matters, the morale of all the employees present was very high. They all roared, vowing to fight for the company.
It is worth noting that Liu Qiangdong summoned the managers of outlets with the highest customer satisfaction ratings, not those with the best business volume.
Firstly, the business performance of an outlet largely depends on the user base around the outlet, and has little to do with the ability of the outlet manager.
Secondly, good business for an outlet can represent that the outlet manager is smart and capable, but it cannot represent that the outlet manager abides by the rules.
Some people might find it strange: aren't smart and capable people exactly what is needed?
Of course, but not at this moment.
In a situation where one starts from scratch, smart and capable people are the best managers.
However, the situation for Oriental Amazon is different. They have already partnered with Walmart. The daily work of these outlets spread across the United States is to receive orders assigned by the website and deliver them to users on time.
They do not need strategic thinking or management strategies. They only need to follow orders, execute the headquarters' commands without compromise, and be steady managers who ensure the perfect operation of the delivery business.
Therefore, Liu Qiangdong chose those outlets with the highest customer ratings because these outlets definitely executed the company's regulations without compromise and valued customer user experience. In other words, these were outlet managers who rarely delivered late or caused damage during delivery. These are the managers Oriental Amazon needed during its rapid expansion, and they would quickly transmit this trait to the newly established outlets.
After painting a rosy picture for these 51 outlet managers, Liu Qiangdong began to assign them actual tasks.
Liu Qiangdong told them that each of them could select three people from their own outlets to form their core team. The company would then provide funding and additional personnel based on the number of Walmart stores in each state, roughly 100,000 US dollars per Walmart store.
Along with this funding, each state branch would be assigned a financial officer responsible for supervising the company's fund usage. However, Liu Qiangdong also told them that they could use the money as they pleased without needing the permission or approval of the financial officer. The financial officer would only quietly monitor all fund flows and report to the headquarters.
Only when the headquarters discovered problems with the funds would they immediately freeze the funds.
This rule sounded very troublesome and like a waste of effort, but it was necessary. After all, an outlet would be allocated a startup fund of 100,000 US dollars, and a state might involve millions of US dollars in funding. These employees might lose control, so it was essential to have financial officers to supervise the fund flow.
However, the financial officers could not be too strict, because if people were asked to venture into the market with only two or three people, and all fund usage required financial approval, then work would not progress. Half of the time might be spent arguing with the financial officers.
Therefore, the financial officers having only the right to supervise but not to manage was the best approach, ensuring fund security without affecting the company's operations.
In addition to financial officers, the headquarters would also provide half an experienced employee for each Walmart store.
That's right, only half an experienced employee would be assigned to each Walmart store, not even a full experienced employee. This was because there were 3,000 Walmart stores across the United States. If one experienced employee was assigned to each store, then all 3,000 employees of Oriental Express would be used up, and Oriental Express's own original delivery business would collapse.
After providing financial officers and personnel, Liu Qiangdong also provided a detailed arrangement schedule for the subsequent work.
The first step was to select a suitable location for the state branch in the cities and locations chosen by the company within one day. This branch did not need to be elaborately decorated, as long as the space was large enough.
At the same time, the managers of the branch divisions were to dispatch the experienced employees they brought to the cities in each state. Each experienced employee would be assigned two adjacent Walmart stores as their area of responsibility.
The task of these experienced employees was to use the funds provided by the branch, also within one day, to select a suitable house near each Walmart store as the company's transfer point.
While selecting houses, these experienced employees also needed to recruit staff for each transfer point. The number was not a strict requirement, with only three staff members needed for each transfer point: one for picking and packing, and two for delivery.
The recruited picking and packing staff were required to have a high school education or above, with a focus on their mathematical abilities.
The recruited delivery staff were required to be middle-aged men who were married and had children to support. These middle-aged men must own their own vehicles and be locals.
After all of this was completed, the next task for the experienced employees was very important: they needed to lead their recruited six employees to familiarize themselves with all the surrounding streets, the locations of residential communities, landmark buildings, and so on.
In the evening, they were to become familiar with Walmart staff, treating employees of Walmart's warehouse department to meals and drinks every day, and even PC, and giving them small gifts, to build good relationships.
At the same time, they were to give Walmart store managers coupons and other non-cash and non-physical products as gifts.
After that, they just needed to wait for the website to resume operations and start deliveries!
This is only a simplified description of Liu Qiangdong's instructions. In fact, when recruiting employees and holding meetings, Liu Qiangdong directly distributed a detailed, over a dozen-page guiding text to everyone. It contained very detailed instructions for their work in various states, even specifying what tasks to complete each day. As long as a normal person could complete the tasks according to the requirements in the booklet, they could easily and mindlessly carry out their work.
This is where Liu Qiangdong's wisdom is reflected. Many employees are not incapable of doing things, but they do not know how to do them. If you do not provide them with the destination and list out all the necessary actions, they cannot act.
Conversely, if you arrange all the action plans in detail, provide sufficient funding, and paint a grand vision, they will quickly complete the work for you. Although executing according to the plan will inevitably lead to some unexpected flaws, it is generally controllable.
Moreover, this plan also contained many ingenious aspects.
For example, only requiring each experienced employee to recruit six new employees was not because Oriental Amazon was reluctant to spend money, but because it fully considered the execution capabilities of the experienced employees.
This is because it is very difficult to recruit more than a dozen suitable people in a short period of time, and it would also make some dull experienced employees feel intimidated. However, if they only need to recruit six new employees, it would undoubtedly be much easier.