We live and trade in an increasingly competitive and global business world. In many areas, customers are becoming better informed and have an increasing number of choices and alternatives. As a result, firms are using mystery shopping more often and more readily. The demands on getting value for the dollars spent on shops have increased and will continue to do so.
No doubt, your stakeholders will be looking for hard numbers from your mystery shop study to roll into their business plan.
Invariably, a key deliverable, from your shop findings, is to quantify how revenues are being impacted by your reps’ sales delivery (or lack thereof).
MYSTERY SHOP DELIVERABLES EXAMPLE
An insurance retailer needs to assess how effectively their branch reps promote car insurance to walk-in customers.
In a shop of 110 branches, 36 sales reps, or one third, made little, if any effort to promote life insurance to your shoppers.
Thus, they either failed to bring up life insurance on their own, cite advantages, or ask for the shopper’s business.
What does this mean in lost sales?
Let’s assume that:
- 300 potential customers, on average, walk into each outlet per year.
- Based on your shop results, 33% (or 100 customers) are not being informed about life insurance products
- 25% of the 100 customers would have bought life insurance if they had been made aware of this product offering
- New life insurance clients typically spend $750 per year and the average policy runs for 40 years
This translates into lost revenue of $27 MM
(25 customers x 36 branches x $750 spending per year x 40 years)
Lost revenue could be over $35 million dollars! First, if you factor in these lost customers who would have referred your company to friends/family. In addition, consider the likelihood of others increasing their annual spending as they get older.
Something to think about!!