Products have been promoted to the market. But how can we “sell” products well? The key point here is product marketing and personnel training. Mr. Zhangzhoukuang, the manager of Ocean Family’s domestic business department, said: from April this year, on the one hand, the company has been busy developing seafood counters, wholesales stores and franchised boutique in different big cities; on the other hand, we have been busy launching the training programs to customers and service and shopping guide staffs at points of sales. Up to now, Ocean Family has organized 16 different training events including promotion meetings, technology exchange meetings and training workshops. These events have covered more than 100 worked and potential partners. More than 600 people including chefs, shopping guide and waiters participated these training events.

With the launching of domestic market development, Ocean Family has owned more than dozen selling outlets including wholesales stores and franchised boutique. Tunas, especially super-frozen tunas, are still unfamiliar for Chinese customers. Even most domestic catering groups also know little about it. Under this situation, in order to let customers know more and enjoy these green, natural and healthy seafood better, staffs at each point of sales must have the knowledge and skills of the business. Thus, the company has been insisted the strategy: train a store, then enter a store. Even big catering groups like Xinshidai and Huazhongcheng accepted Ocean Family’s professional training.

Super-frozen (-60℃) is the guarantee of the high-quality of Ocean Family’s tunas. Only when fishes are quickly frozen at this temperature, the living cells of fishes can’t be damaged. Therefore, the fish meat can be kept fresh. After tunas are caught from the deep sea, these fishes will be quickly frozen in the super-frozen cabins just after being taken off blood, gills and guts. Also, the whole transportation processes will be finished under this temperature environment. Now, all Ocean Family’s selling outlets and catering terminals are correspondingly equipped with super-frozen freezers.

The issue of super-frozen storage can be solved once you have the relevant facilities. However, thawing and restoring are hard issues of operation. After several tests and repeated comparison, Ocean Family finally adopts the method of “warm salt water thawing”. Under this way of operation, the tuna meat can be restored to the best state.

Moreover, the preservation of tuna is also very important. Normally, tunas must be kept under the super-frozen environment. And thawed tunas can be kept in the common freezer for 1 or 2 days. But, if tunas are kept under improper way, the fish meat will deteriorate and the color of fish meat will become black.

All the knowledge mentioned above, coupled with the knowledge about cutting and eating, are key learning points for shopping guides, chefs and waiters at seafood counters, wholesales stores, hotels and clubs. To increase the learning efficiency and ensure the training effectiveness, the training adopts the approach called “older store leads new store”, which allows trainees to get the training from experience staffs at older stores; for the catering groups which will introduce tunas, Ocean Family will send special trainers to give the onsite training.

“People at each point of sales must go through the training, and it’s a technological job” Mr. Lizhiwei, the former store manager of Westlake Intime store and now the technological coach at Nade store, said. Company’s business is developing so quickly. He has to be in a rush around different stores every day. “I should go to any place where has tunas” he says.

The training is a two-person’s show. One is responsible for explanation of knowledge of tunas, such as type, name, position, taste, nutritional value and etc. The other one is responsible for the presentation of operation, especially the tuna cutting method. The value of tuna is very high and the cutting techniques directly determine the recovery. Lizhiwei says “this work takes a lot of efforts. We must be very careful, because a very little bit of waste will cost thousands of Yuan”.

The improvement of the quality of staffs at point of sales immediately brings the clear effect on the sales revenue. During the just past Mid-Autumn Festival, Ocean Family’s special tuna which has more than 60kgs single weight appeared at every sales outlet. Skilled shopping guides and chefs’ perfect introduction and service not only won people’s acclaim, but also attracted many customers to taste and buy.

On Mid-Autumn Festival, Ocean Family’s one top-level tuna weighting around 155 pounds gained great selling result at Xiaoshan Xinshidai Restaurant. And Lizhiwei was the person to do the operation. His expertise convinced all chefs at the restaurant. “His techniques are wonderful. He at least saves us 10 thousand Yuan by using his cutting skills. It’s a so big fish (155 pounds). We even don’t know where to start the cutting.”, chefs said.

Ten years before, salmon, which is also from the deep sea, was still very unfamiliar for Chinese. But now, it has become one of the most well-known and delicious delicacies. As the latecomer, tuna has much better taste and nutrition. Let’s take a bold imagination: as long as consumers can get comprehensive knowledge and experience, we will definitely have a Chinese era of tuna.

This article is quoted from “Wanxiang News”