The big sale prep timeline every seller should follow

Big marketplace sales like Flipkart’s Big Billion Days, Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, Prime Day and the end-of-season sales can bring in several weeks of normal sales in a few days. They also expose every weak spot in your operations, all at once.

The sellers who do well in sales almost never do anything clever during the sale. They do the boring work weeks before it. Here is the timeline, counted back from the day the sale starts.

60 days before: decide what you will push

• Pick your sale heroes. Choose a small number of products to focus on: ones with good reviews, healthy margins and reliable supply. Don’t spread your budget across everything.
• Run the numbers at sale prices. Put your planned deal price into the profit calculator with your expected ad cost. A deal that loses money on every order only makes sense if you have a clear reason, like gaining reviews for a new product.
• Place stock orders. Suppliers get busy before sales. Order early enough to have stock in your warehouse, or at the marketplace’s warehouse, well before the inbound cut-off.
• Fix weak listings. Better images, clearer titles and answered questions convert better at any time, and much better when traffic spikes.

30 days before: lock in deals and stock

• Submit deals and coupons. Deal submissions often close weeks before the sale. Missing the window means no deal badge.
• Send stock to fulfilment centres. If you use FBA or Flipkart’s fulfilment, inbound slots fill up fast before sales. Book early.
• Check your account health. Late dispatch, cancellations and policy warnings can make you ineligible for deals. Clear anything open now.
• Plan your ad budget by day. Most sales follow a pattern: a spike on day one, a dip in the middle, and a smaller spike at the end. Plan your budget to match.

14 days before: build demand early

• Start ads on your hero products. Ads that run before the sale build ranking and data, so you’re not starting from zero when competition and costs peak.
• Collect reviews. Use the marketplace’s approved review programmes where available. A product with more recent reviews converts better during the sale.
• Prepare your team. If you pack orders yourself, plan staff, packaging material and courier pickup capacity for several times your normal volume.

7 days before: final checks

• Check prices and deals are live and correct. A wrong price during a sale gets copied by thousands of buyers within hours.
• Check stock levels in every warehouse. Make sure nothing on your hero list is at risk of selling out on day one.
• Set up daily tracking. Decide which numbers you will check every morning: orders, ad spend, cost per order, stock left and return requests.
• Stock packaging. Boxes, tape and labels run out faster than you think.

During the sale: watch three numbers

1. Stock. Running out on a hero product during a sale hurts twice: you lose the sales, and you lose ranking that took weeks to build.
2. Ad cost per order. Ad costs rise during sales because everyone bids more. Compare your cost per order with your maximum ad spend per order. Cut bids on anything that has crossed the line.
3. Dispatch speed. Ship on time, every day. Late dispatch during a sale can cost you account health and future deal eligibility.

Change little. The middle of a sale is not the time to rewrite listings or restructure campaigns.

The week after: count the real result

• Wait for returns before celebrating. Return and RTO rates are usually higher after sales. Your real profit is only clear two to three weeks later.
• Calculate profit per product, not revenue. Revenue makes every sale look like a success. Profit after fees, ads and returns tells you which products were worth it.
• Write down what you’d change. Stock you ran out of, stock you over-ordered, ads that wasted money. This list is the most valuable thing you’ll have when the next sale comes around.

A short checklist to save