Competitive Surveys
This is an excellent exercise that all stores should conduct at least on a monthly basis. Assign staff to shop and evaluate your competition. If you understand your competition's strengths and weaknesses, you can develop your competitive edge.
Conducting competitive surveys is best done using a pre-designed form in a structured manner, so that each survey follows the same criteria and framework. After your team has developed your competitive survey form, staff should go and visit the competition every month on a rotating basis.
Custom design the form to fit your particular business. Here are a few elements to have staff look for when on their competitive survey expeditions:
Has there been any recent renovations or facelifts to the competitor's store?
Is the competition running a sale or promotion?
How many associates are on the sales floor? Are staff levels inadequate or are they overstaffed?
How many customers out of ten, are actually making a purchase? What do you estimate is their conversion ratio?
What is the store's overall stock level compared to your store?
Are there any merchandise presentations that really stand out and caught your eye?
What is the overall value statement of the store? Do they appear better priced than you or offer less value?
Is their store more convenient to shop than yours or worse? Is their layout more easy to navigate and understand by customers?
What is their level of selection compared to your store?
What is the overall ambiance of the store?
These are a few general elements your staff can evaluate on their survey visits. You can also add specific questions pertaining to elements like product lines that you carry versus your competition or issues like perceived staff turnover.
Keep the form limited to about two pages at the most. Develop general questions like the ones listed here and add some specific issues for your store and retail type. You may discover that your competition is offering a product or service that customers value, that you do not offer. For example, some building supply houses now offer tool rentals that help consumers with their do-it-yourself projects and places them way ahead of their competition.
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Get your team together and develop your custom competitive survey form. Create general questions to investigate as well as urgent issues specific to your business.
Assign staff to conduct competitive surveys monthly on a rotating basis.
Ask staff to review their findings at your team meetings and collectively develop action plans to surpass the competition in areas of weakness.
