"Now that autumn has arrived, beverages are about to enter the off-season. So, what should we do during the off-season? Are there any tricks or techniques to keep the off-season from being dull?" Indeed, as the weather turns cooler, some fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as beer, ice cream, and beverages will soon enter the off-season.
So, how should sales personnel view the off-season? How can they use strategies to ensure the off-season is not dull and achieve results?
In reality, many manufacturers and marketing personnel typically adopt a "wait-and-see" strategy during the off-season, minimizing business trips to save costs. At the end of each month, sales personnel may push inventory to loyal customers by securing marketing policies, leaving market operations largely to natural sales, resulting in a semi-stagnant "dormant" state.
However, in the off-season, if manufacturers and sales personnel can think counter-cyclically, break conventions, actively adjust and optimize, and take proactive measures, there is still much to be done in the market. Generally, the following aspects should be addressed during the off-season:
Shift Off-Season Mindset
Many marketing personnel are idle during the off-season due to deep-rooted beliefs that off-season means low sales, and no effort will change that. They prefer to take a break and prepare for the peak season.
Therefore, in the off-season, more marketing personnel choose to wait for the long-awaited peak season; rely on the company's heavy-handed "big moves" to brighten the market; and demand policies, rebates, and promotions to easily push inventory. This is typical negative off-season thinking.
Under such thinking, the market, already in the off-season, cannot proactively generate ideas or solutions, preventing the off-season from being lively and the peak season from being even better.
Thus, for FMCG marketing personnel, the first step to smoothly navigate the off-season is to change their off-season mindset.
Only off-season thinking, not off-season markets Off-season or not is relative. Even when overall market sales decline, with effort and dedication, you can still increase your market share by squeezing competitors. The key is whether you want it and are willing to do it.
"When all are drunk, I alone am sober; when all are muddy, I alone am clear" In the off-season, competitors may be complacent, making it easier to catch them off guard. This allows you to rise abruptly, quietly "encircle" competitors, and occupy the market's high ground, laying a solid foundation for a full-scale attack in the peak season.
Challenge and surpass yourself Your greatest enemy is yourself. You reap what you sow. In the off-season, if you sow positivity, you will harvest abundance; if you sow negativity, you will harvest barrenness. Therefore, challenging and surpassing yourself is key for sales personnel to leap across the off-season.
Integrate and Promote Products
Sales off-season is the best time for marketing personnel to sort and integrate products within their region. Since off-season sales are relatively stable and slow, adjusting product layout and structure moderately will not significantly impact market sales. Off-season product integration and promotion include the following:
Promote new products, especially profitable ones In the off-season, many small manufacturers often halt production, providing an opportunity to launch new products with fewer competitors, especially fewer "troublemakers," making it easier to enter and build momentum. New products bring fresh feelings and motivation to salespeople and distributors, ultimately creating new growth points and boosting overall sales.
Eliminate old products Some unprofitable and aging "dog" products are like "chicken ribs"—tasteless to eat but a pity to discard. They hold a certain market share, so during the peak season, it's risky to phase them out. However, in the off-season, with new product launches, it's timely to "kill" them by replacing old products with new ones, ensuring a smooth transition.
Integrating and promoting products focuses on promotion. Through new product launches and aggressive promotion, you can alleviate "sales visual fatigue" during the off-season, invigorate channel vitality, and get the market moving.
Expand and Broaden Channels
After launching new products, actively expanding and broadening channels is essential for good off-season market performance. In the off-season, due to reduced or complacent competitors, some channels are often "idle" or even abandoned. For marketing personnel, this is an excellent opportunity to develop channels, expand networks, and squeeze competitors.
Expanding and broadening channels mainly includes the following:
Eliminate blank outlets Cover all blank outlets in townships and streets, implementing street-by-street distribution. During the peak season, due to high demand, there's no time to attend to blank outlets, especially small or remote ones. But "many ants add up to meat." Developing and covering these outlets comprehensively, integrating channel resources, can sometimes yield unexpected incremental effects. In the peak season, it can even produce a "nuclear fusion" effect.
Seize competitor networks Taking advantage of competitors' complacency in the off-season to compete for and seize their sales outlets, expanding your own network, is an effective way to keep the off-season lively. In the off-season, you can attract competitors' customers by offering special policies for new products, "building a plank road in the open while marching in secret," laying the foundation for market growth.
Open a second battlefield Use the off-season to aggressively develop special channels such as group buying, schools, internet cafes, and bath centers. By broadening channels, products enter more sales channels, increasing exposure to consumers and subtly entering the minds of target consumers, thereby increasing sales.
Counter-cyclical recruitment In the off-season, sales managers can recruit distributors, thinking differently and doing what others don't. Off-season recruitment expands options, strengthens communication, and selects more suitable customers, allowing you to prepare and continuously increase market sales and share.
Expanding and broadening channels is the breakthrough for sales personnel to seek market growth in the off-season.
Strengthen and Deepen Customer Relations
In the off-season, sales personnel have more time. Therefore, using this time to strengthen and deepen customer relations is an excellent opportunity to improve relationships and gain trust and goodwill from channel partners. It's also a tactic to win hearts and minds.
Strengthening customer relations in the off-season includes the following:
Enhance service In the off-season, strengthening customer service is the most effective way to gain customer favor and preference. However, any service must be what customers care about and need. For example, beer companies' bottle return service and terminal merchandising service, if done well, can improve the manufacturer's and brand's image. You can also provide consultative selling, helping customers with deep distribution and deep collaboration, solving practical problems in market operations, and establishing professionalism and authority.
Standardize service The off-season is a good time to standardize services. Sales personnel can strengthen service standards and processes, making work systematic and compliant. For example, clarify visit steps, operational standards, and processes. High-standard service differentiates you from competitors, enhances brand image, and makes customers remember you more.
Deepen customer relations With ample time in the off-season, using the "three diligences" (diligent feet, hands, and mouth) can enhance customers' enthusiasm and confidence in distribution. Also, seizing significant occasions like customer weddings, births, birthdays, or children's schooling, "act when it's time to act," can build good personal relationships, increasing customer loyalty to the company and brand, making them sell more diligently. Strengthening and deepening customer relations in the off-season is the most direct way for sales personnel to make their products stand out and maximize sales.
Developing the market and deepening customer relations will change the image of products in the minds of channel partners, making them feel the company is trustworthy and active, thereby achieving the goals of building momentum, storing energy, and integrating forces.
Systematic Training and Improvement
Using the off-season for training is an effective way to subtly boost market sales. During the peak season, customers and their salespeople are busy with distribution and collections, but in the off-season, they have plenty of time.
Therefore, in the off-season, you can organize a series of targeted training activities to "recharge" distributors, salespeople, and even distributors' salespeople. Training is the best welfare manufacturers can provide to distributors and salespeople.
Off-season training can include:
Training for salespeople and promoters Use the off-season to apply for company training for regional salespeople and promoters on marketing skills, management techniques, and mindset adjustment. Sales managers should also lead sessions, using meetings as training. "Sharpening the axe won't delay the wood cutting." Through training and improving the marketing team's quality, you can enhance operational skills and boost overall market sales.
Training for distributors "When manufacturer and distributor are of one mind, they can break gold." "Those with the same desire win." By training distributors in the off-season, you can help them understand the manufacturer's strategic intentions, master market management, personnel management, inventory management, and fund management skills, especially improving their accounting and profitability capabilities. Inspire distributors to find growth points and highlights in off-season sales, promoting coordinated development between manufacturer and distributor.
Training for distributors' salespeople In off-season sales, distributors' salespeople are crucial because they execute the manufacturer's strategies and tactics, and product sales depend on them. Therefore, training distributors' salespeople is a strategic investment for the manufacturer and sales managers. For example, train them on how to distribute, merchandise, recommend new products, and sell more profitable products. By improving their operational skills, you can enable them to confidently promote the market and do daily work well even in the off-season.
Strict Market Assessment
In the off-season, there is another crucial and core task that must be done well and solidly: it is the prerequisite for maintaining or increasing off-season sales. This task is the sales assessment of the off-season market.
In the off-season, salespeople's laziness can be fully exposed. For example, some salespeople, especially "old hands," like to "stay in hotels" behind their supervisors' backs or play "cat and mouse" games, making the already off-season market even worse. Therefore, companies and sales managers must do one thing in the off-season: strictly manage and assess salespeople.
What to assess?
Attendance management Link salespeople's basic salary to attendance. Implement daily check-ins using local fixed-line phones. Internal staff should record calls and conduct random checks. Ensure people are present in the market.
Distribution rate In the off-season, as long as the market and channels have a high distribution rate, it will impact the target audience visually and sensorially. Especially, terminal displays should be well done. Through terminal activation and vividness, you can increase product visibility and frequency of consumer contact, thereby increasing sales opportunities.
Product structure Off-season sales volume may decline, but with good product structure adjustment, sales revenue can remain stable. To achieve this, you must assess salespeople's product structure indicators. By reasonably planning the proportion of high, medium, and low-end products, you can achieve reduced volume but maintained revenue and profit.
Strict implementation Market performance depends on management. Management depends on assessment, and assessment depends on implementation. To ensure market assessment is effective, you must be serious. Sales managers must break "good guy-ism" and not be too sentimental. Through strict management and rewarding good performance while punishing poor performance, you can increase market efficiency.
By strictly assessing the market and implementing dynamic management, you can basically ensure salespeople work and put in effort. This is a crucial and important part of off-season marketing strategy. Assessment guides salespeople's actions, and through assessment, off-season marketing goals are more likely to be achieved.
To smoothly navigate the off-season, manufacturers and sales managers also need to work on promotional innovation and price stability. By keeping prices firm, you leave stable and ample profit margins for channel partners. Through unique promotions, you can pull channel partners and consumers, forming a virtuous cycle in marketing activities...
In fact, in the off-season, as long as you use your brain, break the old rules, and achieve "off-season not dull," even sales growth is possible. The key is to think counter-cyclically and dare to try.
2017 (3rd) FMCG + Internet Conference will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecology," inviting 1000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions to explore a new chapter of cross-industry integration!
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