---
title: "Practical Guide | Key Actions for City Managers Returning to Work Amid the Epidemic"
description: "As full work resumption begins on February 10, city managers face unfamiliar market conditions. This guide, compiled from meeting notes, daily briefings, and client interviews, outlines three parts: recognizing the severe situation, key actions for resumption, and continuous monitoring and adjustment. It emphasizes safety first, team morale, customer activation, and inventory reduction."
author: "许翔"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-02-07"
categories: "Dealer Operations"
language: "en"
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citation: "许翔. “Practical Guide | Key Actions for City Managers Returning to Work Amid the Epidemic.” New Distribution, 2020-02-07. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/practical-guide-key-actions-for-city-managers-returning-to-work-amid-the-852caccc/"
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---

# Practical Guide | Key Actions for City Managers Returning to Work Amid the Epidemic

> As full work resumption begins on February 10, city managers face unfamiliar market conditions. This guide, compiled from meeting notes, daily briefings, and client interviews, outlines three parts: recognizing the severe situation, key actions for resumption, and continuous monitoring and adjustment. It emphasizes safety first, team morale, customer activation, and inventory reduction.

On February 10, full work resumption begins. We are about to return to a familiar work environment, but face completely unfamiliar market conditions!
The impact and trauma on the market are as overwhelming as the novel coronavirus itself, leaving every sales colleague somewhat unprepared. However, we must clear our minds and actively face the new challenges and opportunities after resumption.
Combining meeting notes from client marketing, daily briefings from sales managers, and phone interviews with client friends, I spent several hours compiling a "Frontline City Manager Resumption Guide" from the perspective of a city manager, hoping to provide reference and guidance to every colleague.
The resumption guide is divided into three main parts:
> **Part 1: Recognize the Severe Situation**
>
> **Part 2: Key Actions for Resumption**
>
> **Part 3: Continuous Monitoring and Adjustment**
**-01-**
**Part 1: Recognize the Severe Situation**
Based on comprehensive information and thinking, I have summarized three major disadvantages, three uncertainties, and three opportunities for our business.
We cannot predict the development of the epidemic, but experts suggest the inflection point will occur around February 20, which is relatively good news for us in FMCG sales. This means we still have a full March.
Through March, we still have the opportunity to make up for the shortage of first-level orders and second-level sell-through in February. However, if the epidemic extends to mid-March or even the end of March, the situation will be more severe.
Recognizing the severe situation is to further focus on solving the identified three disadvantages and seizing the identified three opportunities, using sustained efforts to address the three uncertain future factors.
**-02-**
**Part 2: Key Actions for Resumption**
**Important Reminder:** The 21 key actions for resumption are a guide, not an order! In the face of this natural disaster, all actions must prioritize safety! In a major disaster, be cautious and low-key, refuse aggressive sales. If you or your team are infected after resumption, it is a matter of life and death! Remember! Remember!
The more extraordinary the times, the more direct the guide must be. The key actions for resumption are broken down into the following three aspects:
**Aspect 1: Team Restart, including 7 actions**
**1. Action 1: Personal Restart**
As a city manager, you are the frontline commander in daily battles. The commander's mindset and spirit determine the team's morale. In the face of a once-in-a-decade epidemic, you must first restart yourself after resumption!
Restart has two levels: **before resumption and after resumption.**
On a day before resumption (preferably a non-working day, February 8 or 9), set aside quiet personal time to organize emails and work notes, comprehensively review the gains and losses of the past year, and reconfirm and rethink important matters after the New Year. In fact, many pending items from before the New Year will not change because of the coronavirus!
The distributor openings you didn't complete before the New Year, the new product distribution and shelf placement that didn't meet standards, the key single-item price execution that wasn't achieved...
On the first day after resumption, you can more directly feel the impact of the epidemic on business. Stay calm; the sky won't fall! By objectively analyzing data, actively discussing, and communicating with headquarters categories, fully receive comprehensive market information after the epidemic, then combine with the results of deep thinking before resumption to extract and organize key work arrangements after resumption.
**Personal restart is being responsible for yourself and the team, maintaining a more positive mindset and state to face new challenges.**
**2. Action 2: Safety First**
The epidemic is a battlefield. Bullets on the battlefield have no eyes, and the virus in the epidemic also has no eyes! We must respect life, fully implement the company's safety principles, and fully implement the company's epidemic prevention notices. Only by ensuring the safety of yourself and your family first can you further ensure the team.
After resumption, the design and arrangement of promotional plans and execution must fully consider safety factors to ensure team health!
City managers should prepare more masks and disinfection products. On the first day of resumption this year, instead of sending red envelopes, it is recommended to send masks, not only to your team colleagues but also to distributors and client colleagues.
**Ensuring the safety of everyone around you is the top priority in the current severe epidemic environment!** Everyone caring for others and helping others is the greatest kindness and blessing in the face of this natural disaster.
**3. Action 3: Policy Decoding**
Due to the huge impact of the epidemic, the company's headquarters policies have been continuously adjusted during the Spring Festival holiday in response to the epidemic. Therefore, compared to before the New Year, many promotional mechanisms, resource allocations, channel priorities, and new product plans have changed significantly!
**After resumption, as the commander, you must first thoroughly read and understand all updated policies and mechanisms. Only with 100% thorough understanding can you accurately communicate downward.**
Ensure that information is truly understood and mastered by frontline DSRs and merchandisers. This year's resumption requires not only the usual category promotional information but also more important epidemic prevention policies. Remember to master both aspects of policy mechanisms!
**Do not rush into urgent matters after resumption while ignoring changes and adjustments in mechanisms. Incorrect communication and transmission will only make the situation more chaotic. The epidemic is already troubling enough for you and your team; please do not let information communication have ambiguity or errors!**
For any part of the policy you don't understand, contact regional or headquarters colleagues immediately. Do not pretend to understand or selectively ignore; these are lazy, inactive, and disorderly behaviors!
**4. Action 4: Team Morale**
The epidemic is terrible, but for sales managers, **equally terrible as the novel coronavirus is low team morale!** This epidemic has not only emptied retail store traffic but also caused huge impacts on sales operations.
For example, logistics cannot deliver goods, warehouses cannot gather for receiving, promoters cannot work, and many stores do not open after the Lantern Festival. During this special period, the most feared thing is the spread and spread of a "epidemic mentality" within the team, where members compare who is worse off and compete in misery under the pretext of the epidemic.
I believe that after this epidemic ends, there will definitely be a group of capable and driven city managers who can still achieve positive growth, or even high growth, during the epidemic!
After resumption, as the city manager and the team's head, you must objectively help the team analyze the business situation, actively and clearly guide work paths and action breakdowns. On the first day, you must stand at the forefront of resumption, set an example, and lead by example!
In the first few days after resumption, it is best to closely monitor each subordinate's work efficiency to ensure that team members achieve complete dual resumption: physical and psychological.
**5. Action 5: Incentive Mechanism**
In the epidemic environment, to keep team morale high, relying solely on the spiritual level is unsustainable. We must fully consider the value of team colleagues working full attendance while the epidemic still exists. In the coming period, the management style should lean toward positive incentives and reduce negative incentives. With the company and client's consent and confirmation, introduce special incentive mechanisms for the special period.
**6. Action 6: Online Training**
Recently, working from home for a week, compared to the usual office environment and pace, we actually have quite a lot of free time. While most clients and stores are not working, we should try and encourage online learning and online training!
What to learn? Things you usually want to learn but can't calm down to learn, things you know you should learn to fill gaps but lack good ways. We can use this time to fully learn.
In the current epidemic, I believe everyone has realized the importance of home delivery business and ERTM. The biggest beneficiary channels of this epidemic should be O2O home delivery channels and ERTM channels that complete order digitalization.
If the 2015 Double 11 truly announced the complete rise of "2C" e-commerce (Taobao, Tmall, JD, etc.), then the 2020 Spring Festival coronavirus has further catalyzed the rapid development of retail O2O home delivery platforms. If you don't learn now, are you waiting to fall behind?
**7. Action 7: Stabilize Morale**
Every year after the Spring Festival long holiday, there is a wave of resignations. After receiving last year's year-end bonus, many want to change environments and jump ship. This year, after the long holiday caused by the epidemic, I estimate the risk of grassroots resignations will be relatively higher, because being stuck at home for so many days with nothing to do leads to overthinking, and the more you think, the more you feel stuck, leading to "unforced" job changes.
After resumption, city managers need to pay attention to each subordinate, especially those with high turnover risk. In the face of the epidemic, maintaining team stability is very important. Not only must your team be stable, but you must also influence your distributor clients and bosses to care about logistics and business. Only with stable morale can we overcome difficulties together!
**Aspect 2: Customer Activation, including 7 actions**
**1. Action 1: Accurate Inventory Check**
This Spring Festival really didn't sell much! After resumption, comprehensively review and count two inventories—distributor warehouse inventory and store inventory—and conduct a full inventory check for each SKU, with special warnings for heavily overstocked items. To avoid gathering for inventory checks and prevent the epidemic, have preventive measures for inventory checks!
For distributors already operating, use single-person counting and review to reduce personnel crossover;
For downstream shelf inventory and store warehouse inventory, collect data via phone and WeChat.
Just after the New Year and resumption, thank and greet distributor colleagues and client partners who help collect inventory data!
**2. Action 2: Secondary Analysis**
Although January this year, especially the last week of January, had slower secondary sell-through than previous years, we must still face it objectively and carefully. Facing the problem is the first step to solving it!
Try to use store-provided POS data as the basis, rank categories, brands, and items, identify SKUs with relatively fast sell-through in the overall downturn, and place timely replenishment orders. At the same time, pay more attention to high-performing stores with relatively high sell-through, because this is the premise for the next step of full inventory clearance. We must complete the largest amount of inventory digestion in the most important stores, because stores that can sell goods despite the epidemic are definitely worth repeated promotion!
**3. Action 3: Accounts Receivable and Payable**
The epidemic has slowed store sell-through, which will inevitably further affect store receivables. In previous years, CNY payments were already delayed for a long time. This time, stores will likely use the epidemic as a reason to delay further. **We must strengthen reconciliation after resumption, at least ensuring clear accounts with no disputes.**
Of course, the key to store receivables is still sell-through. Therefore, in Part 3, I have summarized seven actions for inventory reduction, because I always believe—**the lifeline of FMCG is sell-through! Everything except sell-through is a process.**
**4. Action 4: Adjust Expectations**
After this Spring Festival, city managers responsible for distributors must pay attention to this action! You must communicate very frankly and objectively with distributor bosses, clarifying a reality—this novel coronavirus epidemic is unprecedented in 17 years. 2020 is destined to be different from previous years. In an abnormal year, you cannot expect or hope for normal return on investment!
This year, we must be prepared to earn less, or even not earn, because the environment and situation this year are unpredictable and uncontrollable for manufacturers and clients. For this epidemic, local distributors as manufacturer representatives must prioritize brand development and cooperate with manufacturers to overcome difficulties together!
For February's high inventory, it must be quickly cleared, but as a **distributor, you cannot wait, rely, or demand!** You must actively cooperate with the manufacturer's business team to quickly clear and reduce inventory. Sacrificing gross profit and contributing gross profit to strive for a healthy growth niche is the top priority. Therefore, distributors must lower profit expectations, cooperate with us to reduce inventory, and minimize sales losses!
After saying good things, we must also say bad things: "This year, our regional distributors will implement a provincial last-place elimination system. I believe it won't be you. You must work hard!"
**5. Action 5: Discuss Countermeasures Together**
After straightening out thoughts and having realistic and reasonable business expectations, we must sit down with distributors to discuss details and countermeasures! Confirm how many resources and profits to allocate for purchasing gifts, how much additional promotional discounts and channel rewards to share, how many temporary promoters to increase to drive downstream store secondary sell-through...
**6. Action 6: Customer Care**
Every year after the Spring Festival and resumption, we must visit clients as soon as possible. This year, while ensuring epidemic prevention safety, even if using phone visits, we must deliver the first blessing to our distributor partners.
At the same time, after resumption, city managers should also coordinate with distributor bosses or operations managers to timely send New Year greetings to downstream key retailers and wholesalers. KC sales managers should express New Year wishes to procurement and supervisors as soon as possible, and empathetically help downstream retail clients solve practical problems. For example, if they are most concerned about O2O home delivery business, you should bring our policies and ideas for home delivery platforms. Helping clients is helping yourself. The more the epidemic, the more we must care for clients.
**7. Action 7: Assessment Adjustment**
In the face of the epidemic, the assessment mechanisms and targets for distributor staff at all levels should also be adjusted upward accordingly, letting distributors understand that this is a critical period for stabilizing morale. Only a stable and positive team can execute and implement efficiently. For extraordinary times, city managers should influence and persuade distributors to increase incentives for their own teams, because business requires close cooperation between both teams day after day, and neither is dispensable!
**Aspect 3: Full Inventory Reduction, including 7 actions**
**1. Action 1: Focus on Top Stores**
The most critical inventory reduction work must focus on top stores. However, due to the epidemic, how to achieve "contactless sell-through" and "low-contact sell-through," that is, how to achieve natural secondary sell-through without promoter promotion, is a long-standing unsolved problem in FMCG sales.
If the epidemic is largely controlled by the end of February and a clear inflection point appears, then it can be predicted that in early or mid-March, top stores will see explosive consumption, which can even be defined as "revenge consumption" after being cooped up at home for a long time. If we are lucky enough to see this scene, then what follows is super fierce, even brutal, competition among manufacturers at the terminal. I won't expand further... Still, safety first!
Remember! In a major disaster, we must minimize contact between personnel at all levels and consumers while meeting consumer needs!
**2. Action 2: Foot Traffic Positioning**
This Spring Festival, the supermarkets around me, except for national KCs still operating, many small supermarkets closed. Even open KC hypermarkets had sparse foot traffic. Under the huge deterrent of the epidemic, people are still unwilling to risk shopping.
However, my family goes to the vegetable market every day to buy food. I learned that the vegetable market currently has the largest consumer foot traffic, because vegetables and fresh produce cannot be stored for long, and consumers need to go out to buy food every day. Even if the epidemic is severe, the demand for fresh vegetables cannot be suppressed. This is where foot traffic gathers!
After resumption, every city manager can analyze local foot traffic trends, conduct precise foot traffic positioning, and thus achieve further inventory reduction. We have also done many early morning roadshows in vegetable markets. In vegetable markets, it is easy to sell laundry products like Omo, because the target shoppers are exactly the same.
City managers can extend this idea. After all, some foot traffic gathering places are suitable for our inventory reduction sales, and the cost is not high. Of course, as always—safety first!
**3. Action 3: Emerging Channels**
The most notable are O2O home delivery platforms! Not only national platforms like JD Daojia, but also regional retail platforms like Bubugao's Better购, and local O2O platforms (like Pupu in Fujian). More and more home delivery platforms have seen geometric growth during this epidemic!
ERTM has been less prominent than O2O recently because many small stores are not open. As small store owners gradually return to work, ERTM orders will return to normal before hypermarkets, because small stores have less foot traffic and are less likely to be strictly regulated by the government, and shoppers are relatively loyal and frequent.
This novel coronavirus epidemic will also give more impetus to government and enterprise group buying. In the future, the group buying channel will grow larger. In the past, we had limited involvement with national platforms like Deli. In the future, not only national platforms but also local government procurement will increase. I hope city managers arrange manpower to strengthen staffing, using a "special forces" approach: normal work during regular times, and on weekends and part-time, act as "group buying vanguards," rewarding promptly and encouraging excellence.
At the same time, community group buying is becoming more mature in various places. Personnel in each region must refine a standardized operating system to cultivate the growth of each small platform.
After resumption, the epidemic may still be rampant. We should try to cooperate more with governments, factories, mines, enterprises, institutions (including military and prisons), and community property management. Many community property management companies have started home delivery services. Opportunities are everywhere; the key is your intention and action.
**4. Action 4: Small Store Packages**
Obviously, retail access platforms like Lingshoutong and Xinsitong cannot fully cover all small stores! Even in normal times without the epidemic, small store distribution remains a profit source that every distributor must rely on. After resumption, strengthen the selling of small store packages to help small store owners quickly resume target category operations. A round of small store package promotions after resumption will be a powerful tool for inventory digestion and should not be underestimated.
**5. Action 5: Use Up All Gifts**
Inventory value has reached an all-time high. I believe distributors and you are equally anxious. At this time, use up every gift in the warehouse. Shoot all the bullets. If not now, when?
In the past, the efficiency and effectiveness of gift usage varied. The root problem is still lack of responsibility and supervision. After resumption, work with distributor bosses to mobilize all available resources such as gifts, promotional materials, and small shelves, and invest them in the terminal after the epidemic improves, contributing more bullets for every bloody terminal battle in the future!
**6. Action 6: Special Handling**
After resumption, if you find that even shooting every bullet is a drop in the bucket, and the available gifts and POSM resources are truly limited, then immediately seek firepower support from your distributor!
Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. The special inventory clearance battle under the special epidemic requires special support from distributors. Even sacrificing gross profit, ensure secondary sell-through and healthy inventory.
In fact, we have always required distributors to lower their Q1 gross profit expectations, because every Q1 must quickly turn over to seize the "good start" opportunity. This year's Q1 encounters the novel coronavirus epidemic unseen in 17 years. At this time, distributor partners must be united with us to overcome difficulties.
**7. Action 7: Daily Tracking of Sell-Out**
The key to the success of an FMCG sales team lies in whether there are redundant actions in the entire execution process?
If there are none or few, the entire execution is infinitely close to success.
For the entire inventory reduction chain, the most critical is the final sell-out at the store terminal. All previous operations, preparations, and executions are for that final sell-out action.
After detailing the previous 20 key actions, this 21st action is actually the simplest: daily tracking! When an assessment indicator is subject to daily tracking, its importance in the sales team becomes crucial. These are the 21 resumption rules I expect from every frontline manager in the Southern Region under the novel coronavirus epidemic. I hope we all take them seriously, unite in purpose, and overcome difficulties together!
**-03-**
**Part 3: Continuous Monitoring and Adjustment**
The epidemic is still ongoing, and no one can accurately predict when it will end. Therefore, we must continue to monitor, closely follow the development of the epidemic and the evolution of market competition, and adjust countermeasures in a timely manner, striving to achieve the best results in the most difficult environment.
Imagine: once the epidemic nears its end or ends, "revenge" consumption explosion is highly likely. By then, have we prepared our goods in advance? Are our distributor field staff and logistics on duty? Are our promotional gifts sufficient to cope with the surging crowds? Can our promoters handle the multiplied workload? ... Everything is about early preparation for early gains, early action for early output, early layout for early advantage! These three things may involve company confidential information, so I won't expand here. But I always believe that the control of this epidemic will definitely improve, and it won't take long. We will be able to make up for the already incurred performance losses through our efforts.
Moreover, I firmly believe that a major epidemic will definitely give birth to many great opportunities!
These opportunities are right beside us—
That is a downstream store with poor customer relations in the past, but because you were the first manufacturer to help solve its inventory problem after resumption, customer relations have completely improved, and you have gained the store owner's greatest support;
That is a difficult county-level market that never achieved growth, because after the New Year, you helped a local wholesaler cooperate with Lingshoutong on enterprise bidding, and since then, the county's performance growth has been fully released;
That is a subcategory that never beat competitors in this RKA, because in March, with the full support of distributors, we held several large internal purchase events, and our share achieved a curve overtaking...


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 许翔
- Published: 2020-02-07
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/practical-guide-key-actions-for-city-managers-returning-to-work-amid-the-852caccc/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0BVRwRQamUYjDmA3kaN0Cw

## Copyright and AI use

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