Secret Shopping Raises The Bar To Stay Afloat

Sales industries, while seeing some growth over the last quarter, are uneasy about the tight pocketbooks of most consumers. Consumer spending is being cut because families do not have extra money to go out to eat, buy new clothes, make those renovations to the house or go on vacation. Their extra money is going into the gas tank and maybe paying loans with raised interest.

It has become more important than ever for a sales based business to capture every opportunity. But does a business manager or owner have to just blindly trust that all his associates are doing their part to make every customer count? No, he can use secret shopping services to give him a true, unbiased opinion of what sales opportunities are being lost.

Keep in mind that the most effective secret shopping services go beyond reporting if the associate said hello within 10 seconds or if they had their name tag on. All those practices can be controlled without needing an outside expert to tell you so.

Secret shopping services should be sales focused and this is where the quality control and shopping industry must go if they want to stay in business with businesses who are pressured to cut spending. Shopping services have to report on habits and techniques that are working to the advantage of a sale and also critique those which are not. That is what makes successful secret shopping services .

Consider this. You are the manager of an Ultimate Buy Electronic store. There may be 5 to 10 associates on the sales floor at any given time. You cannot possibly listen to all of them, all of the time. You have not been meeting your budget goals and you see customers walking out of the store without a purchase in hand.

The latest shopping service report showed that Jane had her shirt tucked in and greeted the customer within just a few seconds of being in the home theater department. The shopper report shows a check mark in the field indicating that Jane asked if the customer needed any help. The report also shows that the shopper asked about the comparison of two TVs and Jane told her the difference.

What are missing from that report are the sales details. Did Jane genuinely offer to help the customer or did it seem she only asked out of obligation for her job. Did Jane offer to demonstrate the two TVs to the customer and find out what brought them in to look at TVs. Did Jane use any closing questions or also recommend accessory products or the extended warranty? Did Jane connect with the customer and close the sale?

We sales managers have been conditioned to look at reports from our secret shopping services for a few quick seconds and then hand them over to our associates. Do we realize that we are missing pieces of the puzzle? We have the framework, but we can not see the whole picture without knowing the sales specific details of our customers experiences.

The quality control and shopping industry does have a few providers who offer these top notch sales shops. Will they become the last man standing as other businesses realize they are paying for less than quality shops or will we sales managers continue to look at ineffective reports and be none the wiser?

Source : Secret Shopping Blog

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