With the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day approaching, many FMCG products will enter the off-season afterward, such as grain and oil, and snacks. What should distributors do when the market enters the off-season? The best way to deal with the off-season is to keep moving. I have always believed that there is only an off-season mindset, not an off-season market. In an industry, all distributors face the same situation: if it's off-season for you, it's off-season for others, so the key is the mindset. Distributors need to come up with ideas and plans to get their sales staff moving; only when people move can the market move! -01- Seize Demand, Make Changes The market entering the off-season does not mean distributors have nothing to do. During this blank period, distributors must brainstorm to find new market opportunities and growth points. Dig for demand from all links to find breakthroughs in sales and profit. For example, a distributor in a second-tier city, dealing in rice, flour, and oil, mainly through wholesale channels, has over 300 small second-tier wholesale customers, selling about 36 million yuan a year in a county with a population of 900,000. Although sales are decent, the profit from wholesale channels is too low, so they want to expand into traditional channels during the off-season and go directly to end terminals. Analyzing business needs, the most important thing for traditional channels is personnel. To directly serve terminals, you must have a sales team. The best way is to first recruit salespeople and have them visit one by one to develop outlets. Similarly, as October approaches, many industries begin to enter the off-season. During the off-season, bosses must think of ideas to reform and break through. Find out where your problems are and what your needs are. Once you have needs, make targeted breakthroughs, turn new demand points into growth points. First, start from internal needs: distributors with single channels should plan to open new channels; those with single product lines should adjust product structure; those with few outlets should develop new customers; those with poor customer relationships should increase visit frequency; those with weak brands should take on new brands. Second, look at external opportunities: if the prefecture-level market is doing well, you can set up branch offices in counties or sink channels; if the county-level market is doing well, you can hire more people to expand outlets and do terminals. You can even spend money to send salespeople for training to learn new methods and knowledge. In short, the off-season doesn't mean you have nothing to do. Your warehouse costs, personnel costs, vehicle costs, etc., won't decrease because of the off-season. Distributors must find their own needs and actively make changes during the off-season. -02- Adjust KPI Assessments to Get Sales Staff Moving The entire FMCG industry is in an era of stock. The total market demand for products is fixed. It's like a cake: if you take an extra bite, someone else gets one less. The core of the stock era is to grab: you need to grab competitors' sales, grab competitors' terminal market performance, and grab competitors' market share. Especially during the off-season, it's the perfect time for distributors to grab market share. Everyone is at a bottleneck; whoever is more proactive will see sales rise. Therefore, during the off-season, it's necessary to re-strategize and adjust employees' KPI assessment directions to ensure overall sales don't dip. 1) Distribute by product, use vehicle sales instead of visit sales Most distributor bosses have multiple brand agencies. You can make different distribution plans based on different brands or items. For example, focus on one brand each week for large-scale distribution to grab market sales, and also tell customers that even in the off-season, you'll invest heavily in stores. Secondly, in the off-season, use vehicle sales instead of visit sales to avoid idle vehicles; sales staff follow the vehicles for distribution. At the end of each month, plan the next month's distribution schedule in advance to ensure hard work in the off-season, keeping both vehicles and people moving. 2) Focus on small customer activity Small customers are often overlooked by salespeople and competitors, which is a big opportunity. Large customers have good sales but are few in number, while small customers are numerous. With complete data, distributors must use data to identify small customers who purchase less and give them special attention. Seize the opportunity that competitors ignore small customers, use promotional policies and increased investment to push products to customers, and attack competitors. For example, in the mineral water business, a small customer might sell 10 boxes a month. If you push 30 boxes through policies, that's equivalent to a quarter's sales. During this time, they naturally won't buy from competitors, making it very difficult for them. 3) Focus on expanding product categories, increasing SKU items More items mean more sales. The peak season is too busy to do this work, so the off-season is the time to seize the opportunity and actively expand categories. If you do well in the off-season, the peak season will be harvest time. The key to expanding categories is incentive policies: customer rewards and salesperson rewards. Set a standard and let salespeople follow it to expand categories. For example, for small stores: 6 SKUs for stores under 100 square meters, 8 SKUs for 100-200 square meters, 10 SKUs for 200-300 square meters. If small stores meet this standard, give corresponding rewards; also reward salespeople for completing each small store. 4) Focus on display share, grab positions with special displays Every off-season, some small brands are eliminated. In this situation, distributors have a great opportunity to grab displays. Whether in hypermarkets or small stores, larger display areas mean higher sales. In April, when visiting stores, I saw many water and beverage brands starting to grab displays, grabbing cut-case positions at checkout counters, and grabbing shelf space in refrigerators and freezers. In the north, the weather isn't hot yet, but many brands are already making moves. This is worth learning from: make layouts in advance during the off-season so you won't be flustered during the peak season. So during the off-season, you must have salespeople go to terminals to grab displays. Displays aren't bought with money; they're grabbed and earned through customer relationships. If you can maintain good displays during this period, sales won't be bad. By squeezing competitors' sales, you make up for your own. 5) Off-season assessment: focus on sales volume The off-season is called off-season because sales are poor during this period. Therefore, during the off-season, distributors should not overemphasize profit; they should focus on sales volume. During this period, salesperson assessments should mainly use sales target challenges as the standard. For example, in the off-season, you can set up a cumulative sales assessment to motivate salespeople. For instance, from October to December, give each salesperson a monthly sales task of 500 boxes. Not only set rewards for completing monthly tasks, but also cumulative rewards for October-November, cumulative rewards for October-December, and extra rewards for exceeding by more than 20%. -03- Activate the Market, Make the Off-Season Not Off When the market is sluggish, as a distributor, you can't rely only on small store sales; you must take the initiative to activate the market. 1) Plan off-site promotional activities Distributors shouldn't only focus on stores and e-commerce; off-site activities can also boost sales. Off-site activities bring sales quickly, have lower costs, and manufacturers may even provide expense support. For example, for milk and grain/oil businesses, manufacturers usually provide tent support in the off-season. Tents can be used for off-site activities: one tent with one promoter, especially in townships, doing gift promotions, which works very well. Off-site activities should be planned in advance, including the number of sessions, items, personnel, etc., and set sales targets, focusing on township key accounts. The key point for off-site activities is location selection, mainly in townships, in golden areas with high foot traffic. There must be a customer with a good relationship nearby, because promotions usually last 2-3 days, and equipment and products can be stored at the customer's store. Planning off-site activities well greatly helps sales, especially for terminal inventory reduction, directly helping terminals clear stock. 2) Modern channels and A/B-class stores: focus on ultra-low-price mass-category products The off-season is not the time to look at profit; it's about grabbing sales. Places with high sales are usually hypermarkets and large stores, with high foot traffic and fast turnover. For such large stores, focus on ultra-low-price mass-category products to build volume and lay the foundation for the peak season. For example: if your peak season monthly sales are 2 million yuan, and off-season monthly sales are 1.5 million, but vehicles and costs don't decrease, resulting in a higher expense ratio in the off-season. Promoting mass-category products increases sales and lowers the expense ratio. Although profit decreases, the expense ratio drops, and you also hit competitors. 3) Large-scale online and offline promotional activities Most supermarkets have online platforms. Distributors can use supermarket channel platforms to do large-scale online and offline promotional activities. The number of participants in in-store promotions is limited. Distributors can leverage the scene of large stores and use online brand promotion through live streaming or page ads. For example, Yihai Kerry recently in Dalian used its own large supermarket system to promote both online and offline simultaneously, reaching 13,000 viewers. If you do a promotion in a large store, you might get at most 5,000-6,000 people. The advantage of online promotion is immediately obvious. Final Thoughts: “Do market work in the off-season, achieve sales in the peak season” is not just empty talk. There are many things to do in the off-season; distributors need to truly implement them, down to specific tasks and people, to change the competitive landscape and harvest sales in the peak season.