---
title: "Five-Step Method for Distributors to Build a Base Market"
description: "Survival first, development second. This is a market strategy aimed at using limited space to create local advantages, win a larger market share, effectively resist competitors' attacks, and preserve and strengthen oneself, making it a sharp tool for distributors to win in competition. Before developing a regional market, distributors must first plan and coordinate comprehensively, systematically planning the regional market. However, in actual surveys, we found that most distributors, when developing markets, have not yet established a base market for survival, i.e., a clear and stable regional market, before expanding the overall market."
author: "师顺宽"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-11-09"
language: "en"
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---

# Five-Step Method for Distributors to Build a Base Market

> Survival first, development second. This is a market strategy aimed at using limited space to create local advantages, win a larger market share, effectively resist competitors' attacks, and preserve and strengthen oneself, making it a sharp tool for distributors to win in competition. Before developing a regional market, distributors must first plan and coordinate comprehensively, systematically planning the regional market. However, in actual surveys, we found that most distributors, when developing markets, have not yet established a base market for survival, i.e., a clear and stable regional market, before expanding the overall market.

> Survival first, development second. This is a market strategy aimed at using limited space to create local advantages, win a larger market share, effectively resist competitors' attacks, and preserve and strengthen oneself, making it a sharp tool for distributors to win in competition. Before developing a regional market, distributors must first plan and coordinate comprehensively, systematically planning the regional market.
However, in actual surveys, we found that most distributors, when developing markets, have not yet established a base market for survival, i.e., a clear and stable regional market, before expanding the overall market. Their market expansion lacks clear thinking and strategy, and lacks specific feasible measures and methods, showing strong randomness and blindness, which is reflected in product sales in two tendencies:
First, the "dragonfly skimming the water" style of "guerrilla warfare"—selling wherever possible, selling as much as possible;
Second, the "peppering" style of "comprehensive attack"—casting a wide net, sowing everywhere, striving for "wide sowing with thin harvest."
The above practices may achieve a certain level of sales to some extent, but their drawbacks are obvious: first, without clear regional market goals, it is like a ship at sea without a clear course, making it difficult to achieve the distributor's various business indicators; second, without a stable market base, lacking strong market support, it is difficult to form competitive advantages, ultimately leading to a "Li Zicheng-style" ending. This is a short-sighted or overly ambitious irrational marketing behavior, extremely harmful to the overall development of distributors.
****What is a Distributor's Base Market****
The so-called base market refers to the market where distributors can gain competitive advantages and utilize them. The base market is defined entirely from the perspective of competitive differences, and the essence of thinking is to determine profit optimization based on the degree of competition. Different from the ordinary "model market," the base market is a market where distributors build their own competitive advantages through professional market research and analysis. This market is the core support for the growth and strengthening of distributors, providing a continuous supply of blood for distributors to fight in markets outside the base.
For distributors, base markets can be divided into two types: one is the regional base market: it refers to the market where the distributor ranks first in market share, influence, and profit in a certain region; the other is the channel base market: it refers to the distributor having absolute influence and share in a certain channel. Regardless of the type of base, they all share a common feature: within a certain period, they are the channels where distributors have the highest profit, largest market share, and greatest influence in that field.
********The Role of the Base Market for Distributors****
1. The base is a fulcrum: it is the support point for material supply to other markets and the oxygen supply for strong spiritual motivation;
2. The base is a talent pool: it is a training ground, a marketing training academy, and a talent export base;
3. The base is a test field: a place for practicing new methods and explorations, and the birthplace of successful operating models;
4. The base is a banner: it not only solves survival problems but also creates huge influence; attracts and integrates more advantageous resources; attracts more sales personnel to join.
************Five Strategies for Building a Base Market****
For building a base market, the following five strategies can be referenced.
01
**Targeted Strategy**
No matter how difficult the market, there is always room for action. In simple terms, it is "find opportunity markets within market opportunities, find opportunity channels within channel opportunities, find opportunity consumers within consumer opportunities."
For most distributors, due to limited human, material, and financial resources, they must combine with the company's actual situation when establishing a base market. If they do not have the conditions to fully expand the local market, it is recommended to segment the market, determine narrower target areas, channels, and consumers, and establish a base market in a targeted manner. This not only saves resources but also achieves twice the result with half the effort, and can create local competitive advantages, accumulating resources and confidence to establish a comprehensive base market.
For example, a certain trading company, with limited personnel, funds, and other conditions, was unable to expand the market across the entire county. After detailed market research, they finally selected several townships to establish their base market (appropriate products distributed to appropriate terminals; appropriate policies given to appropriate terminals; appropriate promotional materials posted at appropriate terminals); different visit cycles and service standards were formulated for different stores. After one year of operation, the prototype of the base market in these townships began to emerge, with sales in each township reaching over 600,000 yuan.
02
******Focused Strategy**
For distributors with limited resources, only by focusing limited human, material, and financial resources on local markets, channels, and products can they achieve the desired results.
**1. Market Focus.** Market focus means that distributors shrink their market scope as much as possible according to their actual situation until they can form an absolute advantage. It is best to use townships as the market unit; if strength is insufficient to form an advantage in townships, villages can also be the target.
**2. Channel Focus.** Channel focus means that if distributors cannot cover all channels such as hotels, group buying, and supermarkets, they can choose a suitable channel to operate until this channel becomes their base. Then use the product's absolute advantage in this channel to radiate to other channels.
**3. Product Focus.** Product focus means that distributors should "break through with a single product," using one product to create an image and become the distributor's "fist" product in the market, then use the absolute advantage of the single product to radiate to other channels, achieving channel resonance. "Single product breakthrough" does not mean selling only one product, but concentrating resources to promote one leading product. If too many products are launched at once, it may disperse limited resources and result in all products being unable to break through.
**4. Resource Focus.** Resource focus means that distributors concentrate their resources on a certain region, channel, and product according to their resource size, "exchanging resources for time" and "exchanging resources for market" to form market explosive power. The most taboo in base market construction is the "oil-adding tactic" and "sprinkling sesame salt tactic," which cannot form market explosive power due to unfocused and insufficient policies. If 100 store signs are scattered across thousands of terminal outlets in a county, there will not be much influence; if 100 store signs are concentrated in 2 townships, market explosive power can be formed in the short term.
**5. Personnel Focus.** Personnel focus means that distributors concentrate limited sales personnel on a certain region, channel, or product, fighting a human-wave battle and an annihilation battle. For example, during the new product distribution stage, if personnel are dispersed, each salesperson can only visit their terminal stores once every ten days; if sales personnel are gathered together and divided into several groups to carry out concentrated human-wave development in a small area, the results will be significantly improved.
**6. Consumer Focus.** Consumer focus means that distributors concentrate financial resources and energy to find consumer leaders in each urban area and township, let them recognize, approve, and recommend their products, and through the consumption of consumer leader groups, establish the word-of-mouth of their products and create consumption trends.
For example, when a distributor's wedding wine was launched in the county, they gathered the heads of red and white council in each township market and each village to hold a tasting session. The company also paid these heads a certain amount of public relations wine. For every wedding or funeral event they connected using this wine, the company gave a certain commission. As a result, the wedding wine quickly became popular in the market after launch, enhancing brand awareness and influence, and also driving the sales of other company products.
03
********Speed Leadership Strategy****
After determining the segmented market, based on the targeted and focused principles, it is necessary to win by speed. Development strategies, promotion strategies, and sell-through strategies must be quickly formulated, because speed leadership can make opponents unable to react before you have already taken the lead; it can form an atmosphere among terminals and consumers that they must catch up with the new round of opportunities; it can instantly awaken the memory of terminals and consumers; it can quickly occupy the minds of terminals and consumers.
04
**********Terminal Sell-Through Strategy******
The terminal sell-through principle is to solve the problem of terminals "only stocking but not selling," which means strengthening deep maintenance, enhancing customer relationships, and making promotional materials vivid, and working with terminals to study how to sell goods quickly and form a sales atmosphere. In base market construction, the most feared thing is only doing distribution and promotion without solving terminal sell-through. In that case, the day the product is put on the shelf is the day the product becomes unsalable. It is normal for products to not sell after distribution; solving sell-through is to make this normal phenomenon abnormal. The purpose of solving sell-through is to enhance terminal confidence, sell products they think cannot be sold and have no brand, and help them sell with confidence. As long as more than three rounds of store restocking are achieved, the market will form a virtuous cycle.
For terminal outlets with slow sell-through, the most capable sales personnel should be assigned to ensure these outlets always maintain the largest display area, the best promotional layout, and the highest quality customer service. Doing so, on the one hand, can reduce competitors' displays; the less conspicuous competitors' displays are, the greater your opportunities; on the other hand, through maximized promotional materials and displays, it serves as advertising to stimulate consumers' impulse purchases. Additionally, free tasting can be conducted outside these stores or during peak sales hours inside the store to help terminal stores sell goods, giving store owners confidence, and then they will actively help promote your products until a virtuous cycle is achieved.
05
************Process Management Strategy********
Base market construction is a process. A good process inevitably produces good results. The finer and more comprehensive the controllable process, the more links that can be controlled, the greater the grasp on results, and the greater the chance of success in base market construction. So, what should be controlled during the construction of a base market? Distributors, terminal networks, prices, promotions, costs, market information, etc. All of the above need to be controlled by sales personnel. Therefore, it is necessary to establish and improve various management systems, assessment systems, and reward and punishment systems, clarify job requirements, work content (specific to actions), and work processes, strengthen the completeness of the four links of "planning, execution, inspection, and feedback," especially establishing an objective and effective inspection system to track implementation in real-time and on-site, ensuring execution is in place.


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