Should I secret shop my own stores?

What Jason Delves says

Delves is president and CEO of F9 Brands, the parent of Cabinets To Go, Gracious Home, Southland Building Products and Thomas Baker Outdoor Furniture.

We started a secret shop program in all of our stores. It was myself, the owner of the company, Tom Sullivan, and our director of merchandising, Alex Hughes, were the only three people in the entire company that knew it was going on.

Three people. That is what makes the result worth anything.

Unfortunately, we were shocked we sell as much as we do based on some of the feedback on the secret shops.

Read that twice. A CEO looking at good numbers found out his floors were producing them in spite of how they sold, not because of it.

As other retailers are out there, if they're not doing secret shops, they really should.

They trained across 106 stores, where 99% of associates reported improvement. In his own words afterward: sales have continued to grow, and employee retention has increased significantly.

Why it has to be unannounced

A shop your crew knows about measures theater. Everyone greets, everyone smiles, everyone walks the customer to the fitting room, and the report tells you what your floor can do on its best behavior.

You already know what they can do. The question is what they do on a Tuesday when nobody is looking.

That is also why the unit is the store and never the individual. A different associate on each visit is the design, not a defect. Individuals get coached privately. The store score is what gets published.

What it actually scores

Our shop runs over 900 points. Connection and personalization carries 440 of them, nearly half, and it is where most floors start at zero.

It scores whether the associate said good morning, used a window of contact to open a conversation, shared a personal story, gave the store tour, explained features against benefits, and painted a picture of an add-on. Specific behaviors, not an impression.

Across our shops, first evaluations average 30%, and shoppers were ignored outright at 7 of 12 stores. That is the starting line for most retailers, including the ones with good sales.

Who sees the report, and in what order

Leadership first. Then a private meeting with the people who were on the floor, going through who did what and when, good and bad, coached with Oreo mentoring.

Only then does it go to everybody, ideally in a store meeting, with identifying details removed.

Never email a score to the whole team before the people responsible have been coached. That is how a shop turns into a morale problem instead of a tool.

Should I secret shop my own stores?

Yes, unannounced, and before you buy any training. A baseline shop tells you what your floor does when nobody is watching, which is the only number worth improving. Jason Delves ran one across four brands with three people in the company knowing, and called it the thing other retailers should be doing.

Who should know a mystery shop is running?

As few people as possible. At F9 Brands it was three: the CEO, the owner and the director of merchandising. The moment the floor knows, you are measuring behavior on its best day rather than the behavior your customers actually get.

What does a retail mystery shop measure?

Behaviors, scored against a framework. Ours runs over 900 points, with 440 of them on connection and personalization. Items that do not apply to a visit are removed from the total, so a result is always a percentage of the points that actually applied.

What changes it

A shop tells you where you stand. It does not move anything by itself. SalesRX+ online retail sales training teaches the behaviors, practices them against an AI customer before anyone faces a real one, then shops the store again at six months so the change shows up in writing instead of in an opinion.

More on the subject: retail sales training.

Full transcript

We have some people that sell more than some of our stores do collectively, and even those guys know how to sell, learned. This is just making me even better.

I'm Jason Delves. I'm the president and CEO of F9 Brands, which is a holding company with Cabinets To Go, which is a national retail chain, Gracious Home, which is a retail chain, Southland Building Products, and Thomas Baker Outdoor Furniture as companies under F9 Brands.

We started a secret shop program in all of our stores. It was myself, the owner of the company, Tom Sullivan, and our director of merchandising, Alex Hughes, were the only three people in the entire company that knew it was going on. We got true information about our sales force and what customers were potentially experiencing going into our stores.

Unfortunately, we were shocked we sell as much as we do based on some of the feedback on the secret shops, and really realized that we needed to do a better job of investing in our people, training our people to be better salespeople, and just do a better job on the overall customer experience.

We had all of our regional managers and even myself go through the program of SalesRX, and it was amazing even for me, of really all the things it taught you. They're great for sales but they're also, a lot of the things are just good in general interaction with people.

Our sales have continued to grow. In addition to sales growing, our employee retention has increased significantly. Like anything, you make someone a better salesperson, they're happier with their job, but more importantly, what drives most people at the end of the day is they're all making more money because they're selling more.

We have a commission-based system that the SalesRX program has proven to be extremely effective in allowing these people to sell more and make more.

No matter how good a salesperson you've got, it can teach them something, and in general, as other retailers are out there, if they're not doing secret shops, they really should, because I think what it'll do is open your eyes as far as how much you can get and how much better you can be with a program like this.

We've been thrilled with the results. I'd highly recommend it from the overall effectiveness as well as the ease of use.