"It's already autumn, and 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 slow?" Indeed, as the weather turns cooler, some fast-moving consumer goods, 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 that the off-season is not slow and achieve results?
In reality, many manufacturers and marketing personnel typically adopt a "wait-and-see" strategy during the sales off-season, minimizing business trips to save costs. At the end of each month, sales personnel may push inventory to close customers by securing marketing policies, but market operations largely rely on natural sales, resulting in a semi-dormant state.
However, if manufacturers and sales personnel adopt reverse thinking, break conventions, actively adjust and optimize, and take proactive measures, there is still much to be done in the market even during the off-season. Generally, the following aspects should be addressed during the sales 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 amount of effort will change that. They prefer to take a break and relax, preparing for the peak season.
Therefore, during the off-season, more marketing personnel choose to wait for the long peak season, rely on the company's heavy-handed "big moves" to bring sunshine to 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, making it impossible to keep the off-season from being slow or the peak season even stronger.
Thus, for marketing personnel in FMCG companies, the first step to successfully navigate the off-season is to change their off-season mindset.
Only off-season thinking, not off-season markets: Slow or not is relative. Even when overall market sales decline, with effort and sacrifice, you can still increase your market share by squeezing competitors. The key is whether you want it and are willing to do it.
"When everyone is drunk, I alone am sober; when everyone is impure, I alone am pure": During the off-season, competitors may be complacent, making it easier to catch them off guard. This allows you to rise suddenly, quietly "encircle" competitors, and occupy the market high ground, laying a solid foundation for a full-scale attack in the peak season.
Challenge and surpass yourself: The biggest enemy is oneself. What you sow is what you reap. If you sow positivity in the off-season, you will harvest abundance; if you sow negativity, you will harvest poverty. Challenging and surpassing yourself is key for sales personnel to achieve off-season breakthroughs.
Integrate and Promote Products
The sales off-season is the best time for marketing personnel to sort out 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: During the off-season, many small manufacturers often halt production. Promoting new products at this time can be easier to penetrate and create momentum because there are fewer competitors, especially "troublemakers." New products give salespeople and distributors a fresh feeling and motivation, ultimately bringing new growth points and increasing overall sales.
Eliminate old products: Some unprofitable and aging "dog" products are like "chicken ribs"—"tasteless to eat, but a pity to discard." They occupy a certain market share, and during the peak season, it's risky to discontinue them. However, the off-season, with new product launches, is the perfect time to "kill" them. By promoting new products to replace old ones, there can be a smooth transition and connection.
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 the channel, and get the market moving.
Expand and Broaden Channels
After launching new products, actively expanding and broadening channels is essential for good market performance in the off-season. During the off-season, due to reduced competition or complacency, some channels are often "idle" or even abandoned. This is precisely an excellent opportunity for marketing personnel to develop channels, expand networks, and squeeze competitors.
Expanding and broadening channels mainly includes the following:
Eliminate blank outlets: Sweep every township and street to cover all blank outlets with a "street-sweeping" distribution. During the peak season, due to supply shortages, blank outlets, especially small or remote ones, are often neglected. But "many ants are also meat." Implementing carpet-style, comprehensive development and coverage of these outlets, integrating channel resources, can sometimes yield unexpected incremental effects. By the peak season, it can even produce a "nuclear fusion" effect.
Seize competitor networks: Taking advantage of competitors' complacency during the off-season to seize and occupy their sales outlets, expanding your own sales network, is an effective means to keep the off-season from being slow. During the off-season, you can attract competitor customers to join by offering special preferential policies with new product launches, thus "building a plank road in the open and crossing Chencang in secret," laying the foundation for market growth.
Open a second battlefield: Use the off-season to vigorously develop special channels or pathways, 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 consumer groups, thereby increasing sales.
Go against the market and recruit distributors: During the off-season, sales managers can use recruitment to reverse thinking, doing what others don't. By recruiting during the off-season, you can expand selection, strengthen communication, and choose more suitable customers. This allows you to sharpen your skills and continuously expand market sales and share. Expanding and broadening channels is a breakthrough for sales personnel to seek market growth in the off-season.
Strengthen and Deepen Customer Relationships
During the sales off-season, sales personnel have relatively more time. Therefore, using this period to strengthen and deepen customer relationships is an excellent opportunity to improve relations and gain trust and favor from channel partners at all levels. It's also a tactic to win hearts and minds.
Strengthening customer relationships in the off-season includes the following:
- Enhance service: Strengthening service to customers during the off-season is the most effective way for sales personnel to gain customer favor and preference. But any service must be what customers care about and need.
For example, beer companies' bottle return service, terminal merchandising service, etc. Doing these well can improve the company and brand image. You can also provide consultative sales, helping customers with deep distribution and deep collaboration, solving thorny and practical problems in market operations, and establishing professionalism and authority.
Standardize service: The off-season is a good time to standardize service. Through the off-season, sales personnel can strengthen service standards and processes, making work systematic and rule-based. For example, clarify visit steps, operating standards, and processes. High-standard service can differentiate from competitors, enhance brand image, and make customers remember you more deeply.
Deepen customer relationships: 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 important and commemorative occasions such as customer weddings, births, birthdays, and children's schooling—"strike when the iron is hot"—can build good personal relationships, making customers more loyal to the company, selling more vigorously, and increasing their loyalty to the company and brand. Strengthening and deepening customer relationships in the off-season is the most direct way for sales personnel to make their products stand out quickly and achieve maximum sales.
Developing the market and deepening customer relationships will change the image of the product in the minds of channel partners at all levels, making them feel the company is trustworthy and always active, thereby achieving the goals of creating momentum, accumulating momentum, and integrating momentum.
Systematic Training and Improvement
Manufacturers and sales managers using the off-season for training is also an effective means to subtly boost market sales. During the peak season, customers and their salespeople are often busy with product delivery and payment collection, but in the off-season, they have plenty of time.
Therefore, during 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 that 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 take the lead as speakers and be good at using meetings for training. Sharpening the axe does not delay cutting wood. Through training and improving the quality of the marketing team, you can enhance operational skills and promote overall market sales growth.
Training for distributors: "When manufacturers and distributors are of one mind, they can break gold." "Those with the same desire win." Through off-season training for distributors, you can help them understand the manufacturer's strategic intentions, master market management, personnel management, inventory management, and capital 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 manufacturers and distributors.
Training for distributors' salespeople: Distributors' salespeople are crucial in off-season sales because they execute the manufacturer's strategies and tactics, and product sales depend on them. Therefore, training distributors' salespeople is a strategic investment in the off-season market. For example, train them on practical skills and methods such as how to distribute, merchandise, recommend new products, and sell more profitable products. By improving the operational skills of distributors' sales personnel, you can enable them to confidently promote the market even in the off-season and do the daily work well.
Strict Market Assessment
During the sales off-season, there is another crucial and core task that needs to be done well and solidly. It is the prerequisite for keeping off-season sales from declining or even growing. This task is the sales assessment of the off-season market.
During the off-season, the laziness of salespeople is 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 slow market even worse. Therefore, companies and sales managers must do one thing during the off-season: strictly manage and assess salespeople.
What to assess?
Attendance management: Link basic salary to attendance, implement daily reporting, use local fixed-line phones for reporting, have internal staff record calls, and conduct irregular spot checks. Ensure that people are in the market.
Distribution rate: In the off-season, as long as the market and channels have a high distribution rate, it will give the target audience a certain impact from both momentum and sensory perspectives. Especially, terminal display should be well done. Through terminal activation and vividness, you can increase product visibility and frequency of contact with consumers, thereby increasing sales opportunities.
Product structure: Off-season product sales volume may decline, but if the product structure is adjusted well, sales revenue can remain stable. To achieve this, it is necessary to assess salespeople's product structure indicators. By reasonably planning the proportion of high, medium, and low-end products, the goal of reduced volume but stable revenue and profit can be achieved.
Strict implementation: The quality of the market depends on management. Management depends on assessment, and assessment depends on implementation. To make market assessment effective, it is crucial to be serious. Sales managers must break "good-old-boyism" and not be too sentimental. Through strict management and rewarding good performance while punishing poor performance, the market can increase efficiency.
By strictly enforcing market assessment and implementing dynamic market management, you can basically ensure that salespeople are present and productive. This is a very critical and important part of off-season marketing strategy. Assessment guides salespeople's actions, and through assessment, off-season marketing goals will be well implemented and often easier to achieve.
To successfully navigate the off-season, manufacturers and sales managers also need to work on promotional innovation and price stability. By maintaining firm prices, you can leave stable and sufficient profit margins for channel partners. By making promotions distinctive, you can pull channel partners and consumers in reverse, forming a virtuous cycle of marketing activities...
In fact, during the sales off-season, as long as you use your brain, break the original rules, and achieve "off-season not slow," or even sales growth, it is very possible. The key is to be good at reverse thinking and dare to try.
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