Sales Tools & Advice - Mystery Shopping


Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Solid selling skills, explanations steer customer to dream workout area
Jun 7, 2010
It was a Tuesday afternoon in Beaverton, Ore., when our mystery shopper decided to drop in on the Fitness Shop, a four-store chain based in the Pacific Northwest. With some extra money burning a hole in her pocket, Meg’s plan was to see how the salesperson would help her equip a workout room in her home.
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Product knowledge, hands-on demos go long way in making sale
Apr 28, 2010
On the corner of Broadway and 7th in Portland, Ore., our Mystery Shopper spied The Mountain Shop in an older historic-looking building. With the weather warming up, our shopper wanted to track down some gift ideas for her backpacking boyfriend. Was the store up to the challenge?
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Thin product selection, lack of fitting tools doom footwear sale
Mar 12, 2010
Our Mystery Shoppers get frustrated when they encounter an outdoor specialty store that essentially carries one brand of boots, while its well-meaning salesperson struggles due to a lack of fitting expertise and tools.
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Easy-going salesperson listens, nails customer needs in fitness gear
Dec 14, 2009
It was a chilly, fall day in Chicago. Dark skies indicated rain was coming. The wind was blowing. And that made it a great time to follow-up on the need for some indoor training equipment for expanding a home workout regimen. Our mystery shopper hit Chicago Home Fitness to test the sales staff's skills at selling home gyms.
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Trying to find a light in Chicago harder than imagined
Nov 9, 2009
Runners from around the globe could still be seen all over the Chicago area even days after the annual October marathon in a city that has a runner-friendly reputation and a large runner population. Since Daylight Savings Time was around the corner, we decided it was time to send our operative into a store to look for illumination ideas that would enable one to see during pre-dawn and after-work runs, as well, of course, to be seen for safety.
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Article Thumbnail The SNEWS View: Halloween shopping experience is frighteningly good
Oct 26, 2009
Although Halloween is a time of horror, ghosts and trick-or-treat, one retail store turned a shopping expedition into a real eye-opening treat.
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Article Thumbnail Business 101: Re-evaluate, re-create, re-visit to keep your retail biz humming
Oct 5, 2009
Does your store need to re-evaluate, re-create, re-emphasize, and re-visit? In late summer, a SNEWS shopper went into Sacramento Exercise Equipment in California -- but something was a bit off, not quite right. There's something to be said for intuition, and in the end, we -- and the store involved -- learned a whole lot more from this shopping experience...and we are sure you will too.
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Uneducated salesperson fumbles binocular sale
Jul 24, 2009
While our Mystery Shoppers are usually applying their powers of observation to retail sales, this spring, two of our agents -- code named Cindy and Jake -- set their sights on a different pursuit -- birding. Of course, birding requires more than a keen eye; you also need a good pair of binoculars. One day this summer, our Mystery Shopping duo decided to visit Nat's Outdoor Sports in Bowling Green, Ky., to browse the store's binocular offerings and see how well the shop was serving the local nature-observation crowd.
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Article Thumbnail SNEWS takes a look at Dick's presentation of Life Fitness, Sport Chalet's of Precor
Apr 13, 2009
With the first quarter of the New Year behind us -- and plenty of time for Life Fitness to settle in at Dick's and Precor at Sport Chalet -- SNEWS® dispatched its shopping team into a number of each chain's stores on both coasts to see how it was going in the fitness department for the high-end equipment suppliers. Not officially going through an entire SNEWS Mystery Shopping experience, we nevertheless had our team members take a peek in the stores, get a feel at the layout, size up the presentation, talk to staff and, generally, find out how the recent experiments at sporting goods was treating the two largest North American specialty fitness equipment manufacturers.
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Article Thumbnail Mystery Shopper: Salesman exercises good judgment in selling fitness equipment
Apr 3, 2009
At the end of March, which is pretty early spring in New England, the thoughts of our mystery shopper, Jane, turned to shedding a few layers of both clothing and excess flesh. Toward that end, she decided to pay a visit to Precor Home Fitness in Newton, Mass.
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