Secret Service

Entrepreneur, Sept, 2001 by Kim T. Gordon

TACTICS: BOOST YOUR BUSINESS BY DOING A LITTLE SHOPPING-UNDERCOVER, OF COURSE.

THOMAS STEMBERG, THE CEO AND founder of Staples, is addicted to shopping. Despite the fact that he heads an $11 billion store chain, Stemberg continues to shop the competition in person, sometimes even enlisting family members to help--including his mother-in-law, who, he says, "was a regular shopper at Office Depot's delivery business to help me learn how it worked."

Shopping the competition is one method of stimulating growth and innovation for your retail operation. It's easy, do-it-yourself research that can help you find your marketing edge by monitoring service from the customer's perspective.

Getting the most out of competitive store visits means having clearly defined objectives and knowing what matters most to you and your customers. A clothing store owner, for example, might shop her competitors to compare prices, the variety of sizes and styles in stock, store hours, store clerks' friendliness and the way customers are greeted. With a good shopping program, you experience your competitor's store the way customers do, then apply the best of what you learn to your business.

Also shop retailers outside your industry. Laura Livers, president of Shop'n Chek (www.shopnchek.com), a mystery shopping firm in Atlanta, recommends finding a company in a non-competing field that faces similar operational challenges, such as handling phone orders and comparing their tactics and techniques so you can develop ways to improve yours.

Stemberg suggests small retailers study the tactics used by leaders outside their industries--"such as the Wal-Mart greeter," he says--and learn to emulate them.

The other side of shopping-based research takes place in your own store. Mystery shopping is an early warning system for any business that relies on extensive public contact. Because poor service is most often cited as the reason for loss of sales, consider hiring a mystery shopper to evaluate the experience your store offers. Professional mystery shoppers go to businesses posing as ordinary customers and then provide evaluations of their experiences using written questionnaires and reports.

"A successful mystery shopping program can evaluate and measure the product knowledge and skills of salespeople," says Livers, whose company has nearly 30 years' experience and 90,000 shoppers throughout the United States. She says a visit from a mystery shopper is a "snapshot of time, and the more often you shop, the more you fill your photo album and start to identify strengths and weaknesses."

Before starting a mystery shopping program, understand what your customers want. Suppose you own a store that sells energy-efficient windows and doors. Mystery shoppers can't help you build sales over the long term if the product quality is poor, and they can't tell you what your target market wants from your business or products. Bit they can help ensure that people who come in to shop for windows are waited on promptly and courteously and that the sales information is presented consistently. "Identify what the consumer wants and build a training program around meeting their expectations," says Livers.

For help putting your own mystery shopping program together, go to www.quirks.com, where you can search more than 250 mystery shopping service providers. You'll also find an extensive searchable database at the Mystery Shopping Providers Association Web site (www.mysteryshop.org).