---
title: "If You Don't Do These Things in the Off-Season, Expecting High Sales in Peak Season Is Wishful Thinking!"
description: "The article emphasizes that off-season market preparation is crucial for peak-season sales. It outlines key factors such as distribution coverage, core terminal development, consumer awareness, and team execution, providing detailed strategies for each to ensure success in the peak season."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2014-07-21"
language: "en"
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# If You Don't Do These Things in the Off-Season, Expecting High Sales in Peak Season Is Wishful Thinking!

> The article emphasizes that off-season market preparation is crucial for peak-season sales. It outlines key factors such as distribution coverage, core terminal development, consumer awareness, and team execution, providing detailed strategies for each to ensure success in the peak season.

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“Do market work in the off-season, do sales in the peak season.” I've heard this phrase too many times. I now deeply realize that those who casually repeat it are probably outsiders, because insiders have no interest in chewing over such a cliché.

Simply put, doing market work in the off-season is to boost sales in the peak season—there should be no doubt about that.

So, what factors affect peak-season sales volume?
1. How many outlets are there?
2. How many core outlets are there?
3. How many outlets are willing to help you sell?
4. How many people are willing to buy?

In industry terms, these translate to distribution coverage, number of core outlets, outlet recommendation rate, and consumer awareness.

Therefore, during the off-season, you need to complete preparations in these areas: improve distribution coverage, build core outlets, cultivate consumers, and simultaneously build team execution capability.

**I. Achieve Distribution Coverage: Cover 70% or More of Main-Selling Outlets for Same-Price Competitors**

1. How to improve distribution coverage?
Divide the existing team into groups and carry out concentrated distribution activities. Focus on three months, divided into three stages, and conduct distribution competitions. The first stage targets urban outlets, the second stage targets surrounding areas and urban-rural fringes, and the third stage focuses on filling gaps and deep development.

At this time, KPI assessment should emphasize distribution, increasing the assessment coefficient for the number of outlets developed. Also set up development awards, with cash rewards for the development champion in each stage. The overall champion receives a higher reward.

Count the number of outlets developed and successful methods daily, summarize results, and learn from each other. For individual difficult cases, provide multi-to-one guidance and on-site drills.

2. Distribution precautions
The distribution method should be small-batch, high-frequency distribution or replenishment. This ensures that store owners don't take too much stock and aren't afraid to accept it. As long as they can sell a little, they'll feel it sells well, and sales personnel should follow up promptly to replenish quickly.

**II. Core Outlet Cultivation: Reach 20% or More of Stocking Outlets**

1. The role of core outlets:
Role 1: Release large volumes in peak season. Core outlets have high throughput; once they feel your product can sell, they'll dare to stock up in large quantities when the peak season arrives.

Role 2: Drive ordinary outlets. Core outlets generally have significant influence over surrounding or well-connected outlets. They watch the product turnover of core outlets; core outlet sales often set an example, driving them to stock up.

Role 3: Set a price benchmark. Core outlets are often the main force in maintaining prices. They focus more on long-term stable returns, so they protect prices well, and their price protection often influences consumer and ordinary outlet perceptions.

Role 4: Enhance market confidence. Core outlets are basically opinion leaders in the market. Products sold in core outlets are trusted by both consumers and ordinary outlets.

2. Conditions for selecting core outlets:
Condition 1: High-volume retailers with a large share of retail sales.
Condition 2: Have influence over surrounding outlets and appeal among similar outlets, i.e., with some wholesale nature.
Condition 3: Highly recognize the company's operating model and have good cooperation willingness.
Condition 4: Good reputation in the industry, so as not to have a negative effect on the product.
Condition 5: The product fills a gap in their product structure or has obvious advantages over best-selling products.

3. Methods for cultivating core outlets: Create a hot-selling atmosphere: continuous outlet merchandising, uninterrupted and varied promotional activities, constant small-batch replenishment, and continuous prize redemption.

Maintain customer relationships: Divide visit routes, conduct periodic visits, ensuring core outlets are visited at least twice a week. Analyze and sort out outlet relationship maintenance points, formulate a monthly outlet relationship improvement plan, and strictly implement it, such as whether the boss or family members have birthdays this month, how many banquets are needed, what small gifts, which customers need assistance in development, whether there are travel arrangements, and any special hobbies of the boss.

**III. Cultivation of Consumer Awareness**

Consumer awareness cultivation mainly involves consumer changes:
1. Tell consumers who is consuming our product, satisfying their vanity.
2. Create outlet atmosphere and city atmosphere, making consumers feel our product is about to become popular or is already hot.
3. Carry out consumer promotional activities to create a hot atmosphere, while using benefits and fun to induce purchases, maintaining good sales momentum.

For group purchase promotions, aim that those who see it will buy, and buyers get benefits; for outlet promotions, those entering the store can see, those who see try to buy, and those who buy get discounts; for restaurant promotions, those entering can taste, those who taste are willing to participate, and participants get purchase discounts.

4. Conduct tasting events to let consumers try and accept the product's quality and taste.
5. Carry out public relations activities, especially interactive activities with core consumers, to bring the brand closer to consumers and increase their identification with the brand. Note that the principle of PR activities is to drive the target consumer group with core groups.

**III. Team Development**

Team development refers to the following three aspects:
1. Standardization establishment.
Standardize terminal actions: standardize terminal visit routes and terminal visit actions. Standardize terminal merchandising: merchandising items, specifications, quantities, standards, and compliance requirements.
Standardize terminal relationships: relationship goals, items, implementation plans, and result checks. Standardize daily management: daily management items, compliance standards, rewards and penalties.

2. Improve sales personnel's individual combat capability.
Method 1: Training and drills. These are two steps. Training instills professional ethics, skills, and habits into sales personnel, and can be divided into internal and external training, with internal training recommended. Drills are more important; they are key to determining whether training becomes mere formality. Be sure to conduct on-site drills, with role assignments for all personnel, and conduct one-on-one and one-to-many drills on training content and personal understanding, forming techniques and methods suitable for oneself, so that they can be used skillfully in actual combat. Drills also enhance sales personnel's confidence and prepare them for various challenges in advance.
Method 2: Experienced staff mentoring new staff one-on-one. I won't elaborate much here, but I'll mention a technique: pair capable and practical experienced staff with promising new staff, pair slow but capable experienced staff with diligent new staff, and pair average experienced staff with average new staff. You can figure out the reasoning yourself.
Method 3: Form good daily norms. I won't elaborate here; good habits and a good atmosphere lead to good performance.

3. Maintain sales personnel's confidence and morale.
Method 1: Healthy personnel rotation. Establish an internal elimination mechanism, eliminating the bottom performers in each stage's activities, and continuously bring in new people. The benefit is maintaining team vitality, and old staff have inexplicable confidence and motivation in front of new staff.
Method 2: Internal competition activities. Focus on the stage's key work and carry out large-scale internal competitions. The scale must be large, but goals should be broken down as small as possible, such as monthly outlet development activities with goals broken down to weekly or even daily development numbers. Such high-profile activities easily mobilize atmosphere, while small and specific goals are conducive to achievement, continuously enhancing sales personnel's confidence.
Method 3: Establish heroes. In each stage's activities, amplify the outstanding performers through bonuses, prizes, honor certificates, honor boards, commendation meetings, sharing reports, etc., to establish business heroes. Note that business heroes are not just sales champions, but also include outlet development champions, merchandising champions, and relationship champions.
Method 4: Refine and strengthen KPI assessment. This aspect is very important. Many companies focus on results and ignore the process, thinking that as long as sales personnel complete tasks, they don't need to care how they did it. This is a very wrong approach, leading to slackness among sales personnel, low team morale, lack of communication and mutual promotion among teams, and unfairness, where sales personnel in good areas can get good sales regardless of effort. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate the core work for each stage, further subdivide the core work of each stage, and include it in the assessment.

**Conclusion**

Overall, creating momentum before the peak season is the core. What is momentum? It is channel confidence, store owner confidence, sales personnel confidence, and consumer confidence. Through the above activities and methods, if you can gather such confidence, it's hard not to achieve high sales in the peak season.

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