Mystery Shopping B2B - Expert Research for Auditing B2B Sales Processes

What does B2B Mystery Shopping refer to?

Mystery shopping is a research method used by companies to objectively evaluate their products, services or staff.

As defined by ESOMAR World Research Codes & Guidelines (PDF),

The purpose of the mystery shopping is to direct attention towards improving services and products, providing information on operations and quality of services offered.

The term describes a field research technique, which uses external auditors, who present themselves as real clients. With this method, mysterious clients (in this case, legal entities) gather information about the quality of the products and services offered by the client company or its competitors.

Using this research technique, a company can determine if it offers positive experiences in interacting with business customers, identifying those elements that can be improved. For example, a quick response time may be relevant to a potential sales opportunity.

The mystery shopping process usually starts with a set of objectives, such as tracking the sales process, promptness and how sales agents interact with business customers, follow-up, answering objections, closing the sale. The results can help you refine business processes for increasing sales force conversion rates.

Context

You want to grow your business, but you need to understand why the sales process is difficult, and what are the main pain points. Or you would like to find out how to better position the company towards your B2B customers, surpassing your competitors.

A mystery shopping B2B study can investigate information about the sales process, customer support services or how to structure a bid, helping you find the best answers to the following questions:

• How can sales processes in your company be optimized?
• How do you apply sales techniques within your company or competitors? What are the ways of approaching customers?
• How promptly does your company respond to requests from business customers?
• How many interaction points are there in the sales process of the company?
• How does your company respond to customer needs? Are custom solutions used to complete a transaction?
• How do competition employees interact with customers?
• How are the competition offers structured?

Our approach

In each B2B mystery shopping study we carry out, we employ mysterious clients, respectively companies with specific profiles, adapted to each project. Through the requests submitted and the interactions taken to obtain the offers, we objectively evaluate the sales processes of the analyzed companies (the client-company and / or the market competitors).

In the end, we make a report with all the information on how the sales process is carried out. The report also contains comparative analysis between the observed approaches, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each process, so that it is easy for you to make an informed decision.

If you want an overview of how a B2B mystery shopping studio is running at MKOR, you can read the case study for the project done together with OTP Leasing, where you will see how we applied this methodology in a real project.

Results of a B2B Mystery Shopping research

After conducting such a study, our clients understand how to approach their customers better, how to offer better services and what arguments to use, based on what they do, how their competitors are handling business processes and what they can improve.

Here are some of the results you’ll get from running a B2B mystery shopping research:

• Competitive advantage. By benchmarking between yourself and your competitors, you have the opportunity to make comparisons of approaches and find new ways to differentiate.
• Increased performance. By reviewing the processes and procedures in your company, you improve sales results by increasing your conversion rates.
• Sales strategy. You can find essential information about how the sales team in your company or competitors operate.
• Employee evaluation. We measure the employees involvement, the performance of the business procedures and the customers satisfaction related to their interaction.
• Company image. By identifying the elements that can be improved in the sales process, the company’s reputation will be strengthened.
• Optimization of services and products. You will be able to identify the differences between the particularities of the company and those of its competitors, evaluating what can be improved.

Test the Business Intelligence Dashboard for Mystery Shopping

For this type of research, we developed MKOR Business Intelligence, a customizable dashboard, where you can view the statistics of your mystery shopping research in real time. The dashboard is custom coded, satisfying individual requests of each project, no two dashboards are alike.

By working with us, you can get live information about the visits made, their status and the results obtained in the field!

To see a dashboard model, get instant and free access to a sample mystery shopping B.I. Dashboard.

What can you do next?

We recommend that you continue to explore other ways you can grow through research:

If you want to know more about your competitors, you can request a competitive analysis research. You will find out more information about what other players in the market are doing, how they position themselves and how you can differentiate your business.

If you want to get a good perspective on the labor force in the market where your business is active, you can request a study on the labor market (workforce analysis).

Thus, you will get important information about the factors that influence the development of the labor force in the market in which you operate.