Post-holiday hardware business season marketing strategy

Editor's Note: Festival marketing has always been one of the effective means for the service industry to launch market brands and increase sales. For the hardware tool industry, due to the special attributes of hardware products, it is determined that companies do not follow the mid-autumn festivals and national holidays. Promotions. At the same time, the busy season for the development of the hardware tool industry does not follow the festive changes, but changes according to the market demand for various types of products. Therefore, the hardware tool industry is not completely unified and has a fixed off season and high season. After the end of another National Day holiday, all industries have taken stock of holiday promotions. We discussed the hardware tools industry's off-season and peak season marketing strategies.

In the season of high season, sales personnel in hardware companies do their work to increase sales volume, thus ignoring other things besides boosting sales volume and burying hidden dangers. After the end of the sales season, a series of problems have emerged, known as the “aftereffects” of the peak season. To prevent the occurrence of these "sequelae", we must first analyze what are the "sequelae" in the peak season, and then analyze the reasons for its occurrence. Finally, we must remedy the situation and find ways to avoid it. The author analyzes that there are the following situations:

One of the Phenomenon: After the end of the busy season, the pressure of dealer inventory is big

the reason:

1. The consumer's consumption trend has not been accurately grasped, resulting in product sales. For example, the high-end products mentioned in some cases are unsalable, because the salesman did not understand that local consumers rarely purchase such high-end products. In addition, a certain product or model of a product sold well in the past year, this year may not be selling well due to changes in consumer trends, but businesses are not aware of this change and lead to blind delivery, which will also lead to inventory backlog.

2. The merchants are attracted by the factory, such as rebate, channel promotion, etc., and they are taking delivery of goods without planning. At present, most of the hardware manufacturers to Yahuo as the most important, businesses in order to take more manufacturers picking incentives on the delivery of more goods, eventually resulting in the product can not be sold during the busy season and there is a lot of inventory.

3. Businesses are afraid that during the high season, logistics is in short supply, and products are in short supply. Therefore, stocking before the peak season is many times more than normal. As a result, due to objective factors such as inclement weather during the peak season, sales of the normal plan cannot be achieved, resulting in an increase in inventories.

Avoid ways:

1. According to the actual consumption capacity of local products, we need to store inventories and classify product inventory management. For example, for low-end products with large consumer demand, we should increase peak season inventory, only take delivery of high-end image products, and display the brand image at the terminal. .

2. The merchants must overcome the “acceptance” mentality, and can not unrealistically take delivery of goods due to channel promotions or delivery rebates of hardware manufacturers.

3. The merchant should have a thorough understanding of the logistics capabilities, vendor supply, and local spending power during the peak season, establish a scientific inventory management method, and conduct daily and weekly analysis of the warehouse's invoicing and inventory development. Reasonable scientific product inventory. At the same time, it is necessary to determine inventory levels for different types of products based on their market performance, sales, and product life cycle in recent years.

Phenomenon 2: After the peak season, dealer warehouses are full of defective products.

the reason:

1. During the busy season, hardware manufacturers’ sales personnel are busy doing terminal sales to maximize sales, while ignoring the statistics and repair work on pre-sales products of distributors and warehouses; dealers are also busy The sales work is beneficial, regardless of the statistical treatment of the following retailer's defective products before sales, but only after the end of the sales season, they are required to return all pre-market defective products, resulting in a large number of pre-market defective products.

2. Dealers do not apply for spare parts in time to repair after-sales defective products, and always wait until the end of the sales season to do joint parts applications. As a result, due to incomplete application of accessories or the large number of defective products after sale, they cannot be repaired in the short term, resulting in a large number of The after-sales defective products accumulate in the dealer's warehouse, and can only be repaired in the next year or when the repair is completed in the current year but the sales season has ended. They have to store one year in the dealer's warehouse to wait for the next year's sales season.

Avoid ways:

The best way to avoid a large number of defective products after the peak season is to perform weekly and monthly dynamic statistics on the defective products of the retail network, and then apply for accessories in time according to the number of defective products in the same period in the past, and then weekly and monthly. The repair of defective products shall be carried out, and the handling of defective products and sales during peak season must be carried out simultaneously.

This work is mainly carried out by the hardware manufacturer's business personnel responsible for follow-up, because businesses are more concerned about sales during the sales season, do not want to rationalize or have no time to deal with these defective products, such as the season after the end of sales with no accessories, poor sales and other reasons Requiring returning goods, causing huge losses to manufacturers.

For example, hardware factory sales personnel can carry out weekly inspections by post-sale personnel or in person, that is, firstly formulate a weekly inspection routine inspection time, and call the dealers on the day before the inspection to inform them about the number of defective products and the damage situation. , After-sales staff according to the promotional staff to inform the situation with the appropriate accessories tools for on-site maintenance. In this way, pre-sales and after-sales miscellaneous machines appearing in terminal stores can be repaired and sold in a timely manner. On the one hand, the number of dealers' defective products is reduced, and the company's returns are reduced. On the other hand, terminal stores can also feel that the company's products are well protected after sales. . Although the post-sales service cost is relatively high, the timely cleaning of defective products has finally solved the problem of residual products piled up after the peak season sales, and has been approved by dealers, sales promotion personnel and related personnel in the stores.

Phenomenon III: Sharp decline in sales after the end of the peak season

the reason:

1. After the price reduction in the peak season and the special event, consumers are hard to adapt.

2. As the hardware manufacturers increased their access to inventory through promotions, presses, etc. in the high season, these sales did not transfer to consumers, causing the merchants to no longer pick up the goods after the end of the busy season to digest the inventory. Falling phenomenon.

3. During the peak season, many new customers were temporarily developed. The terminal distribution made by these customers increased the sales volume. After the peak season, these new customers no longer cooperated with the manufacturers and caused sales to decline.

Avoid ways:

1. Sales during the peak season should focus on increasing sales, but it should be more to increase long-term sales rather than focusing on short-term sales. In order to complete sales tasks during the busy season, business personnel are often keen to increase short-term sales, such as taking price promotions, temporarily developing new customers, and encouraging merchants to press through channel promotions, but these products are not sold to consumers. In order to make more effective investment in the market, it is more appropriate to use the investment in the pulling of terminals for consumers, such as terminal sales promotion, terminal optimization, shopping guide training, etc., in order to achieve more terminal sales, increase actual sales, and reduce Pathway inventory pressure.

2. Hardware manufacturers should use net sales as the criteria for assessing businesses, not gross sales. This can largely prevent businesses from obtaining sales rebate policy from manufacturers by means of pressing goods in order to complete sales.

3. Manufacturers and merchants should work together to do basic work together. They should not only do short-term work for sales. For example, in the sales season, with one or two special machines to do the dumplings, focusing on profitable conventional machines, to prevent sales during the peak season only sales without profit. At the end of the season, when sales are almost over, try not to cut prices without limit. Instead, you should make a limited amount of special promotions so that consumers can gradually accept the transition from strong promotions to regular sales during the sales season and adapt to normal sales.