Are your customers really as "Perfect" as you want them to be?

Your organization has just finalized creating the first Perfect Store model. The sales force is already trained, excited and in belief it will boost the sales. This will only be true if the customers you cooperate with daily really understand your idea and are eager to follow your definition of being “Perfect”.

So, the first obstacle your sales force will encounter can be a hard nut to crack and will relate to transferring the knowledge about your assumptions of the Perfect Store model to the customers. While your organization starts to breathe the idea, your customers might have a hard time to digest it at first and what is more important follow it. This first step needs to be carefully prepared so that when your sales force first meets the store managers they are fully equipped with tailored and easy to understand materials. Tailoring is something that cannot be skipped – the store manager will only have a limited time to talk with sales representatives so the more dedicated the materials, the easier it will be for the customers to understand. We are living in a digital world – use rich media presentations during the visit to help to pass on the knowledge.

Knowledge and understanding are one thing, but showing the reality in the store versus the Perfect Store model assumption directly to the store manager and sales representative is what really will make the difference.

This is where sales representatives start to do their day in live operations in the visit. This time those operations will also need to include gathering information related to the Perfect Store. The tricky part here will be not overloading the sales representatives with many additional questionnaires related to Perfect Store.

How to incorporate the Perfect Store model to the already existing sales representatives’ tasks? Here are a couple of examples:

1. The work already executed by the sales representative’s distribution validation includes additional information about which of the products are also connected with the Perfect Store model. Sales representatives while gathering information such as if the products are available on the shelf, should see on which products they should focus on how they influence the final Perfect Store score of the customer.
2. While doing merchandising work on the shelf, let the sales representatives fill in couple of simple questions related to visibility standards of how our products should be positioned.
3. Leverage the information gathered about promotional actions to show those related to Perfect Store, as those should have the biggest impact on our sales.

Finally, to close the loop sales representatives at the end of the visit need to get a Perfect Store score summary. This is extremely important for two reasons:

1. For the sales representatives to clearly understand how “Perfect” the customer is and to plan the improvements to get highest possible scores
2. For the customer to fully understand the Perfect Store model and how following it will bring benefits to both his and your organizations

Do not be surprised - the reality can be at the beginning far from “Perfect”. Not to worry as the journey is only starting and the following visits and improvement actions will only get your customers to the “Perfect Store” state.

If you’d like to know more on the Perfect Store and how it can impact your specific business and boost sales, contact me to discuss: [email protected]

Learn more about the Perfect Store by Asseco for global consumer goods leaders!