Merchandisers.co.za uses Best of Industry Benchmarking
We believe that we should benchmark ourselves with the Best of Industry world-wide. Acosta is a leading merchandising company in the USA. Our methods of merchandising are comparable to their best of industry standards. Have a look.
Video narrative:
Merchandising specialist
As a merchandising specialist, every morning when I wake up, I open my rapid response report and identify the stores that have the greatest opportunity for our clients. I look at the lost sales value which is an analysis of yesterday’s pos data, so I know that it represents the most recent in-store conditions. From there I take two to four stores and I’m going to visit that day and those store visits depend on the lost sales value plus the proximity of the stores.
Merchandising reports utilization
The top action report actually shows me two things:
number one: items that aren’t selling to the velocity we expect them to sell, and two, also it shows me inventory levels that are in the back room of the store. It’s up for me to use this top max report kind of as a guide to see in which store, what items aren’t selling and why, along with the inventory, and so making suggestions to the manager to get the product out of the back room and onto the sales floor.
Identiying merchandising opportunities
Along with the top action report really as a rep I’m walking the store looking for incremental merchandising opportunities. So when I go talk to the manager, I’ve got my laundry list of things that I want to present to him and hopefully he gives me the thumbs up on all of them as I’m addressing opportunities with a top action report.
Value added merchandising
I’m also always looking for other opportunities to help grow our clients business. In this case I noticed that there was a display that had sold out. I knew that we had plenty of inventory in our back room, so I spoke to the grocery manager for approval to build the display and recorded everything into Retail Connect. The daily performance report provides more granular detail on our team’s performance more than I’ve ever had in the past. I know exactly how many interventions each sales rep took, how many came from the top action report, how many were their own interventions and how many were golden 5 intervention.
Assist sales reps to step up performance
I can also quickly identify when a sales rep is not focused on sales building actions and coach them on how to change their behavior. I feel that this model has helped me stay focused on the interventions that really drive our client’s business. This also gives me the flexibility during the store call if I uncover some other opportunities to perform activities to help drive our clients business.
