We often talk about compliance mystery shopping here, but did you know that there are other types of mystery shopping? As a retailer or brand, your needs are not the same.
If you're a brand distributed in a network that doesn't belong to you, recommendation mystery shopping is for you. They're the best way to give you all the information you need about the way your distributors' salespeople talk, but that's not all.
Find out more here.
What is a referral mystery shop?
The definition of referral mystery shopping is the evaluation of a brand's referral rate within its network of retailers.
Just like the compliance visit, the recommendation visit is scored, objective and argued. It's a particularly enriching visit, as it also gives you a great deal of information about your visibility.
Evaluating your recommendation to distributors
As a brand, distributed through a network of retailers that doesn't belong to you, you can't have the same control keys as in a proprietary network or franchise. Sellers who are not part of your network must promote all the brands they distribute.
So how do you find out your referral rate under these circumstances?
The recommendation mystery visit will enable you to check the recommendation that salespeople make of your brand. Is it spontaneous or guided? Or is it denigrated, and why?
Mystery shoppers are sent out into the field, guided by our visit scenario, to interview sales staff to check their product knowledge and customer feedback.
Checking the visibility of your products
You invest in POS and merchandising tools to promote your products and stand out from the competition. You provide your distributors with these tools to ensure that your products are well displayed on the shelves, but how can you be sure they're being used correctly?
The recommendation visit also verifies this aspect of the negotiation with your distributors.
Why is the referral visit necessary?
Before a new product goes on sale, there are many stages to go through, whether in R&D, product development or marketing.
All these financial and human investments mean nothing if your product is not supported in its final stages by the recommendation of sales staff. You can see why control of this last stage before the sale is so important. It's natural to want to be sure of its quality. That's what mystery shopping is for.
Our mystery shoppers provide all the information you need, backed up by photos. Their verbatims give you information about the working order of certain installations, or whether your ranges are being promoted correctly. This factual data feeds the scoring report provided by our field experts.
Confronting sales pitches with informed consumers
Our mystery shoppers may not be experts on your products, but they do have one undeniable quality: they're sharp consumers.
In fact, we make this a selection criterion for our recommendation mystery visits. This is why they are able to detect inaccuracies in the salesperson's discourse, and if necessary, judiciously follow up to obtain the desired answers.
Armed with their visit script, they'll be looking for spontaneous or guided recommendations for your products, but they'll also be able to detect gaps in their contacts' product knowledge.
You invest time and money in training salespeople in your product pitches, and you need to ensure that they are mastered and respected. A recommendation mystery visit highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these pitches.
Rebalancing the balance of power in sales negotiations
Armed with the conclusions of our field experts' audits, you'll be able to take stock of your collaboration with the brands visited, and rank them against each other. Whether between different outlets of the same brand or between competing brands, the conclusions of these visits will help you establish a valuable mapping of your distribution network.
Similarly, debriefing the factual results of these visits will help you to implement corrective actions, in collaboration with store managers, and thus identify salespeople's training needs.
The aim of a recommendation mystery visit is first and foremost to enable your distributors' teams to identify any areas for improvement in the recommendation of your products, with a view to a win/win relationship.
As you can see, when you can't control your own distribution, you still can't just be a spectator of what's going on in your distributors' network.
You have a role to play, and referral mystery shopping is an invaluable tool to help you do just that. If you'd like to find out more about the benefits of this type of visit, download our ebook here.
