Chapter 196: Chapter 180: Dragging Penguin into the Water

After the Investment Attraction Conference ended, Chen Yansen saw off Zhang Jindong, Liu Qiangdong, Xu Pei Xin, and the others before returning to the 11th floor of Building 6.

"Brother Sen!"

"Boss!"

The heads of each department were waiting in the office area. When they saw Chen Yansen step out of the elevator, they quickly stood up to greet him.

"Let’s have a quick meeting. Everyone, give me a brief update on your departments."

After sitting down, Chen Yansen gestured to the group and gave the order in a calm tone.

Everyone exchanged glances, their eyes finally landing on Song Yuncheng. As Pinbei’s employee number one and the Director of the Key Account Investment Attraction Department, everyone was used to her reporting first.

"As of yesterday, Pinbei has a total of 2,194 registered merchants and 1,436 registered brands. That includes 3 S-tier brands, 222 A-tier brands, 419 B-tier brands, and 792 C-tier brands. The top-heavy effect is significant—of the initial six billion in sales, seventy percent was generated by just 91 top stores..."

Seeing everyone looking at her, Song Yuncheng began to speak slowly.

"Yifeng, Yuncheng, speed up merchant acquisition. While the top-tier merchants are important, the combined output of mid-tier and long-tail merchants is not to be underestimated."

Chen Yansen nodded slightly, his gaze falling on Zhang Yifeng and Song Yuncheng.

Thanks to Zhang Yifeng’s outstanding performance, he had been officially promoted from Investment Attraction Team Leader to Director of the Investment Attraction Department, a rank equivalent to Song Yuncheng’s.

"No problem, Brother Sen. Also, I’ve already sent the hiring plan for January to Manager Xiong. The main reason for our slow progress right now is still a lack of manpower."

Zhang Yifeng quickly replied.

Pinbei was developing so fast that one person was doing the work of three. Each of them was managing over 100 merchants.

From signing contracts, collecting security deposits, taking advance payments for the first year’s technical service fees, enabling store permissions, to introducing marketing tools—the investment attraction team had to follow up on the entire process. The workload was anything but light.

"Manager Xiong, you hear that? President Zhang is lodging a complaint with you!"

Chen Yansen turned his head to Xiong Li and said teasingly.

’He had no idea what her parents were thinking. She was a smart, beautiful young woman, yet they’d given her such a masculine name like "Xiong Li."’

"Brother Sen, that’s not what I meant at all," Zhang Yifeng said with a chuckle, shooting Xiong Li an apologetic look.

"Boss, after New Year’s Day, the HR department will begin preparing for next year’s spring campus recruitment. The first stop will be Luzhou, focusing on Jade Lake University City and Ke University. The second stop is Hu City, focusing on Tongji, Jiaoda, Fudan, and East China Normal University. The third stop will be Yanjing, focusing on Qingbei and Yanjing Institute of Technology."

"Furthermore, the first-floor interview rooms are fully booked every workday. We expect to hire another 180 people before the Spring Festival, at which point Pinbei’s total employee count will exceed 500."

Xiong Li gave a faint smile and reported methodically.

After listening to Xiong Li, Zhang Wenbo, Xiang Pengfei, Zhuang Rui, Hu Yun, and the others felt an immense pressure, as if a heavy stone was weighing on their chests.

As Pinbei grew, their diplomas from Xuyuan were becoming completely unremarkable in the tech department.

The fact that candidates for the director or general manager positions in the front-end, back-end, product, and data departments had yet to be finalized also made them understand.

Chen Yansen was giving them a chance to grow. Once the time was up, they would either move up and get promoted to director, or they would be moved down, returning to the position of team leader or a regular engineer.

The new hires from outside the company lacked neither project experience nor programming skills. One could only imagine the psychological pressure this put on them.

Chen Yansen keenly noticed the change in their expressions, but he didn’t say anything. He then turned to Zhuang Rui and asked, "What about the product side?"

"Brother Sen, building on the ’Bargain for Free’ feature, we’ve optimized it into two new game modes: the ’Cash Wheel’ and the ’Money Printer’."

Zhuang Rui took a deep breath and explained with a smile, "The Cash Wheel will set different prize amounts based on each person’s spending data. Users can win the prize money by getting help, which involves inviting new users, registered users who haven’t placed an order, users who haven’t logged in for 30 days, and active users."

"The Money Printer’s gameplay is similar. After a user successfully gets help, the money printer’s speed increases. Besides inviting friends for help, there are also tasks like placing an order, making a repeat purchase, and browsing products, all to increase user stickiness."

After he finished speaking, Zhuang Rui opened his laptop and gave a live demonstration.

Before completing all the tasks, the user is always just "0.01," "0.001," or even "0.0001" away from getting the prize. Under this temptation, it’s difficult for users to abandon their sunk costs, leaving them with no choice but to continuously bring new users to Pinbei.

The method was vicious, but the results were outstanding.

Yang Pinglun from the Market Department and Cai Qiming from the Design Department exchanged a look, then turned to Zhuang Rui with disgust. ’You’d never know it to look at him,’ they thought, ’but this kid is a master of manipulation. Downright devious.’

Zhuang Rui gave a dry laugh and silently pleaded his innocence: ’This was all the boss’s idea! I’m just the one responsible for implementing it.’

"Good. Once the feature goes live, remember to send me the link to the reports," Chen Yansen said with a nod.

This kind of product design, which would be done to death more than a decade later, was an excellent user acquisition method in 2011.

Chen Yansen had a whole bunch of other user acquisition plans in his head, like "Buy for 0 Yuan," "Buy for 1 Yuan," and new customer subsidies.

But users acquired through these methods had low conversion rates, low retention, and low value, which wasn’t a good thing for the platform.

Therefore, Pinbei’s current sources of new customers were mainly the primary access points on QQ and WeChat, external advertising, and internal acquisition methods like "Bargain for Free."

If it weren’t for the lack of R&D staff, Chen Yansen would have also wanted to create a "Pinbei Orchard" to further motivate old users to bring in new ones.

However, after the Spring Festival, once Xiong Li’s campus recruitment was complete, this product design could be scheduled for development.