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Are you a Mystery Shopper?

By on Jul 16, 2007 in Other Voices

TFE welcomes back guest author Linda Talley, professional speaker and executive coach from Houston, TX…

Are you a mystery shopper? Why not? Just because they don’t pay you to mystery shop, does that mean you can’t or shouldn’t do it? Absolutely not! Regardless of what business you are in, you should be out mystery shopping your competition! In fact, you might want to set aside time each month to mystery shop, in person, and also e-shop if that’s available.

When you do this, you get a feel of what’s happening with your competition. How do you know they aren’t mystery shopping you? If they are, they could have the competitive advantage over you.

You know you have been “mystery shopped” when:

1. a staff person goes to work for the company down the street

2. your advertising campaign is being duplicated

3. your web site is being duplicated

4. you are losing business to the competitors

5. the competition’s vision is bigger than yours

6. your competition seems to be going some where with a lot of action steps—in other words, they have a strategy and are taking action steps to achieve it

Is mystery shopping just for retailers? Absolutely not!

If you don’t feel comfortable mystery shopping yourself, hire someone or get one of your family members to do it for you. If this won’t work, network with people to get a pulse of what’s happening at the competition. Information is knowledge, how you use it creates wisdom but you’ll never get to wisdom if you don’t get the knowledge first!

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About Linda Talley
Linda Talley, a change and growth expert and business coach, is the recognized authority on how to use words and language to create the results you want in your business and personal life. Author of The Daily Win, Business Finesse: Dealing With Sticky Situations in the Workplace for Managers and Business Finesse: How to Say the Right Thing at the Right Time, Linda is a creative thinker in the areas of customer service, culture change, team relationships and communication.

Contact:  Linda Talley
713.668.9659
linda@lindatalley.com

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3 Comment(s)

  1. mystery-shopping | Jan 12, 2009 | Reply

    nice site very interesting post keep it up

  2. Janice | Mar 2, 2009 | Reply

    Great article. It is very important for retailers to “mystery shop” their competitors. It just makes sense to know what our competition is doing.

  3. mystery shopping company | Mar 6, 2009 | Reply

    Always nice to be able to know what your competitors are doing. There is no better way to understand this than to see your competition first hand.

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