I. You Have the Profile — Now What?
Lesson 1, Work Out Which Factories to Sell To, solved the question of "who to call" — you now have a single filterable Ideal Customer Profile: for example, "injection molding factories in the Yangtze River Delta with annual output of 30 million to 200 million yuan, active export orders, and currently in production."
After filtering, the system might return a list of 400 factories. It might return 800.
At this point, most salespeople start calling from number 1 on the list.
This is the first cost black hole.
II. Calling 600 Factories Without Prioritization — What Does It Cost?
Let's run the numbers.
An industrial salesperson has roughly 4 productive hours of calling time per day. At an average of 4 minutes per call (including wait time, hang-ups, and brief exchanges), that's about 60 calls a day. 600 factories, one pass each, takes 10 working days.
10 working days is 2 working weeks. Translated into sales cost:
- Salesperson monthly salary (including social insurance): 12,000 yuan; 2 weeks ≈ 6,000 yuan
- Prorated management overhead, phone fees, tool subscriptions: approximately 1,500 yuan
- Total approximately 7,500 yuan — and that is only the first-pass calling cost
But that is not the full picture. The real cost is in the follow-up:
- After the first contact, sales inertia leads reps to keep following up with anyone who "seemed receptive," consuming an average of 3–5 additional touchpoints per followed-up lead
- Without prioritization, salespeople tend to invest roughly equal effort in "lukewarm" contacts and "genuinely interested" ones
- Over a full month, pushing 600 factories in an undifferentiated sequence burns approximately 1.5 person-months of sales time, at a cost of roughly 18,000 yuan
- Add the opportunity cost: those 1.5 months could have been spent in deep cultivation of 80–100 high-quality customers — the lost potential contract value is often even higher
We have seen a typical situation at a company selling industrial lubricants: 3-person sales team, roughly 580 factories on the list, starting from number 1 with no prioritization. Two months later, they looked back at their closed deals — 9 of the 11 factories they had closed had already shown clear purchasing signals before the first call — and those 9 were scattered randomly throughout the list, never prioritized.
Those 9, had the list been tiered, would have entered the priority follow-up sequence in the first week.
The math is clear: the problem with undifferentiated outreach is not a lack of hustle — it's distributing limited sales time equally across customers who are not equally valuable.
III. The Scoring Sheet: 5 Dimensions to Determine S/A/B/C
The tool for tiering is a scoring sheet. Before any factory enters active outreach, score it on this sheet first, then decide how much effort to invest.
The scoring sheet has 5 dimensions, for a maximum of 100 points.
Dimension 1: Scale Fit (Weight: 30 points)
Your product has an optimal customer scale range. It is not that bigger is always better — it is that the most "painful" fit is best.
Scoring criteria:
| Situation | Score |
|---|---|
| Factory's annual output falls within your target range | 30 |
| Slightly below target range (0.5–0.8×), with growth signals | 20 |
| Slightly above target range (1.2–2×), likely with a more complex procurement process | 15 |
| Clearly too small or too large — more than 2× deviation | 5 |
How to get the data: Tianxia Gongchang aggregates 4.8 million China-based physical manufacturing enterprises across annual output, headcount, and floor area into structured scale tiers. Salespeople read this tier directly — no need to manually estimate each factory's size.
Dimension 2: Demand-Signal Strength (Weight: 25 points)
Whether the factory has an observable purchasing-intention window right now.
Scoring criteria:
| Situation | Score |
|---|---|
| Direct signal: hiring for roles related to your product, recent capacity expansion or new workshop announcement, just won a major bid | 25 |
| Indirect signal: growing export orders, partnership announcements indicating customer-base upgrade | 15 |
| No observable signal, but profile matches | 8 |
| No signal and profile match is also uncertain | 0 |
How to get the data: Tianxia Gongchang integrates hiring records, capacity expansion announcements, and customs data into signal tags, annotated directly on each factory's profile — no need for salespeople to check job platforms one by one.
Dimension 3: Reachability (Weight: 20 points)
Whether a contact can be found and whether the communication path is direct.
Scoring criteria:
| Situation | Score |
|---|---|
| Direct contact (mobile or direct line), and the contact is at or near decision-making level | 20 |
| Have contact details, but it is a receptionist or junior role requiring a transfer | 12 |
| Only the main switchboard or email — high cold-contact cost | 5 |
| No valid contact information | 0 |
This dimension is a practical constraint. A top-priority customer you cannot reach is worth zero.
Dimension 4: Decision-Chain Complexity (Weight: 15 points)
Note: this dimension is reverse-scored — the more complex the chain, the lower the score.
Scoring criteria:
| Situation | Score |
|---|---|
| Small factory (under 50 employees), owner decides directly, one or two people to get through | 15 |
| Mid-size factory, technical or production lead has recommendation authority, owner signs off | 10 |
| Large factory, procurement committee + technical review + owner — multi-thread outreach required | 5 |
| Very large scale or state-owned enterprise background, complex process, extremely long cycle | 0 |
Small and mid-size factories typically have short decision chains, well suited for small sales teams with limited resources to close quickly. Large factories offer larger deals, but also consume more resources — their priority should be assessed in context.
Dimension 5: Export / Premium Manufacturing Bonus (Weight: 10 points)
Optional dimension — include or exclude based on your product characteristics.
Scoring criteria:
| Situation | Score |
|---|---|
| Clear export record (customs data, English-language website, partnership announcements showing overseas clients) | 10 |
| Premium manufacturing tag (precision machining, medical devices, automotive components, or other quality-sensitive categories) | 8 |
| Primarily domestic sales, standard manufacturing category | 0 |
Factories with export orders generally hold suppliers to higher standards of quality and service reliability, and are relatively less price-sensitive — salespeople selling premium industrial goods or services should prioritize these.
S/A/B/C Tier Thresholds
| Tier | Total Score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| S tier | 80 and above | Immediate priority follow-up — first contact within this week |
| A tier | 60–79 | Priority follow-up — complete first contact within this month |
| B tier | 40–59 | Standard queue — scheduled outreach, one pass every 2–3 weeks |
| C tier | Below 40 | Hold for now — stay in the pool and reactivate when signals change |
IV. After Tiering: How to Allocate Time
Once scores are in and tiers are assigned, the next step is to allocate each week's time budget by tier.
A salesperson has roughly 7 productive working hours per day. After internal meetings, proposal writing, and order-management communication, roughly 3.5 hours are actually available for new-customer outreach — 17.5 hours per week.
Suggested allocation by tier:
| Tier | Weekly time share | Corresponding hours |
|---|---|---|
| S tier | 50% | ~8.5 hours |
| A tier | 30% | ~5.5 hours |
| B tier | 15% | ~2.5 hours |
| C tier | 5% | ~1 hour (monitoring for signal changes, no active outreach) |
S-tier contacts require thorough preparation for each touchpoint — do not run them as volume; A-tier contacts should be advanced steadily, with one contact every 1–2 weeks; B-tier: maintain presence; C-tier: keep in view, and the moment a new signal appears (such as suddenly hiring for a relevant role), immediately elevate the tier.
The core logic of this allocation: do not let S-tier customers go cold because sales resources are being diluted by C-tier.
V. Mini Case Study: A List of ~600 Factories After Scoring
A company selling industrial automation control equipment. Target customers: mid-size manufacturing factories in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. The sales team filtered roughly 620 factories from Tianxia Gongchang and ran them through an initial profile pass from Lesson 1 — profile fit was already reasonably strong.
But they decided to run the full scoring sheet before making a single call.
Results:
- S tier (80+ points): approximately 52 factories, ~8%
- A tier (60–79 points): approximately 60 factories, ~10%
- S+A combined: approximately 112 factories, ~18%
- B tier (40–59 points): approximately 198 factories, ~32%
- C tier (below 40 points): approximately 250 factories, ~40%
The result surprised the sales manager: even in a list already filtered through a profile pass, 40% of the factories were not worth actively pursuing at this time.
What happened next was more telling: the team went into deep follow-up with the 112 S+A-tier factories. Eight weeks later, those 112 had produced 9 closed-deal intentions. Had the team worked the full 620 in undifferentiated order, over the same 8 weeks they would have reached roughly factory 120 — only a random fraction of the S+A-tier factories would have been contacted at all, and closed intentions would likely have been only 3–4.
The cost calculation:
- Undifferentiated outreach across 620 factories: in 8 weeks, processing roughly 300 factories, actual sales consumption ~1.8 person-months, cost approximately 22,000 yuan — producing 3–4 intentions
- Tiered approach, prioritizing S+A 112 factories: in 8 weeks, sales consumption ~0.8 person-months, cost approximately 10,000 yuan — producing 9 intentions
Over the same 8 weeks, the tiered approach produced more than 4× the intentions-per-cost of undifferentiated outreach.
VI. What Tianxia Gongchang Does at This Step
Filling in this scoring sheet by hand, the most time-consuming items are Dimension 1 (scale) and Dimension 2 (demand signal) — they require the salesperson to individually look up annual output estimates and recent activity for each factory. 620 factories at 5 minutes each adds up to more than 50 hours — approximately 1.5 working weeks.
Tianxia Gongchang converts these two items from "manually researched by the salesperson" into "read directly from tags":
- Scale tier: 4.8 million factories are aggregated by annual output, headcount, and floor area into structured scale bands, each factory carrying a structured scale range that maps directly to Dimension 1 of the scoring sheet
- Signal tags: hiring records, capacity expansion announcements, export orders, and customs data are integrated into filterable tags that map directly to Dimension 2 and Dimension 5
In other words, Dimension 1 + Dimension 2 + Dimension 5 — combined worth 65 scoring points — can be read directly from a factory's Tianxia Gongchang profile and entered into the sheet without any manual verification.
The remaining Dimension 3 (reachability) and Dimension 4 (decision-chain complexity) require the salesperson to judge based on the contact information at hand — but the effort for those two items is far smaller than validating scale and signals.
Scoring an entire list of 620 factories takes approximately 3–4 hours in practice, not 50 hours.
VII. A Scoring Sheet Template to Take Straight to Work
The following is a scoring sheet ready to copy and use. Fill in one row per factory; once the total score is entered, assign the S/A/B/C tier by threshold.
Factory Customer Tiering Scoring Sheet
| Factory Name | Scale Fit (/30) | Demand Signal (/25) | Reachability (/20) | Decision Chain (/15) | Export Bonus (/10) | Total (/100) | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Factory A) | |||||||
| (Factory B) | |||||||
| (Factory C) |
Quick-Reference Scoring Guide
Dimension 1: Scale Fit (/30)
- Falls within target range → 30
- Slightly below but with growth signals → 20
- Slightly above (1.2–2× deviation) → 15
- Clearly too small or too large → 5
Dimension 2: Demand-Signal Strength (/25)
- Direct signal (hiring for related roles, capacity expansion announcement, major bid won) → 25
- Indirect signal (growing export orders, customer-base upgrade announcement) → 15
- No signal but profile matches → 8
- No signal and profile match uncertain → 0
Dimension 3: Reachability (/20)
- Direct mobile or line to decision maker → 20
- Have contact but requires transfer → 12
- Main switchboard or email only → 5
- No valid contact → 0
Dimension 4: Decision-Chain Complexity (/15) (reverse-scored — more complex = lower score)
- Under 50 employees, owner decides directly → 15
- Mid-size, technical/production lead recommends + owner signs → 10
- Large factory, multi-department review → 5
- Very large / state-owned, process extremely long → 0
Dimension 5: Export / Premium Manufacturing Bonus (/10)
- Clear export record → 10
- Premium manufacturing category (precision / medical / automotive components) → 8
- Primarily domestic, standard manufacturing → 0
Tier Thresholds
- S tier: 80+ → First contact within this week
- A tier: 60–79 → First contact within this month
- B tier: 40–59 → Standard schedule, one pass every 2–3 weeks
- C tier: Below 40 → Hold; monitor for signal changes
Usage Notes
- Re-score B and C tiers once per quarter — factory signals change
- If the combined S+A count exceeds your reachable capacity for the month (a good rule of thumb is S+A combined should not exceed 25–30% of the total list), the profile can be narrowed further, or the tiering thresholds should be raised
- After each won deal, look back at that factory's initial score; if it was not in S or A tier at the time, find out why — this is your opportunity to calibrate the scoring model
VIII. One Trap Worth Flagging
After tiering, some salespeople fall into another error: abandoning C tier entirely.
C tier is not a dead list. It is a list with insufficient signals for now.
A factory's purchasing window is dynamic. A factory scoring 35 points and sitting in C tier today might have a capacity expansion announcement next month, or start hiring for a relevant technical role — at which point its Dimension 2 score could jump straight to 25, and its total could rise into A tier.
The right way to handle C tier: re-check signals every 4–6 weeks — not active outreach every week, but don't discard these factories entirely.
Tianxia Gongchang's signal tags are continuously updated. A factory with no expansion signal today may show an unusual hiring spike three months from now — and the signal will have changed. Salespeople do not need to manually monitor all 250 of those factories: re-run the filter, and the updated C-tier scores will reflect the new information automatically.
IX. How This Lesson Differs from Lesson 8
This lesson is about "scoring and ranking the list before first contact" — tiering happens before the first call, based on externally observable signals.
Lesson 8, Learn to Say "No" Early — Lead Qualification for Industrial Sales, is about "cutting losses based on conversation content after contact" — lead qualification happens after several touchpoints, based on information gathered during conversations.
The two lessons form a progression: first use the scoring sheet to concentrate resources on the right factories; then, once in conversation, use lead qualification to decide whether to continue investing. The two tools operate at different stages — the list stage and the follow-up stage — and neither replaces the other.
With the list ranked, the next step is actually building it. Lesson 3, How to Build a Factory Call List You Should Work Today, picks up from Lesson 1's profile and walks through how to combine Tianxia Gongchang's multi-dimension filters into an actionable same-day call list — profile, tiering, list-building: the three steps strung together form the complete opening move.