Brad Huisken

Mystery Shopping

We have talked time and again about the importance of taking advantage of every tool and every edge that you can find in the sales business.  We discussed the importance of being prepared and preparing for everyday and we have talked about how effective it can be to use daily events to increase your customer base.  The common thread through all of this is the importance of leaving no stone unturned and to be able to access and use every tool at your disposal.

There is one tool out there that is not used nearly enough, mystery shopping, and salespeople are missing out on this valuable asset.  Mystery shopping is a technique, when mastered, can be the difference between the average salesperson and the salesperson that spends their vacations in exotic destinations.  Mystery shopping, in its simplest form, is the practice of learning what your competitors are doing and how you compare to them.  Think about it for a minute, football teams spend hours-watching film on their opponents.  Why do they do this?  The answer is very simple; they are looking for every edge they can find.

There are a few basics to mystery shopping and it should be noted that it is not difficult to do it just takes time.  The purest from of mystery shopping is simply going into the stores of your competitors and shopping.  Think about all of the things you can learn just by walking around the store of your competition: prices, level of customer service, product placement and the number of people in the store.  Now all of this information by itself means very little but when you compare your findings to those same variables in your store, you begin to learn a great deal.  Are your prices higher or lower?  How does your level of customer service compare?  If the outcomes are favorable, great you know you are on a good track.  If the results are less favorable, then you can start to make the necessary adjustments.

Coaches in the NFL copy from each other all the time and it is not cheating, it is smart.  If a team is winning with a certain type of offense, you can safely bet that other teams will begin to incorporate some of that offense into their offense.  Next time, we will talk about what to do with the information that we obtain from mystery shopping.
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Posted by Brad Huisken on November 6, 2009 | Comments (1)