How to Monitor Sales Execution Across Stores, Daily, From Head Office

What monitoring is for

Monitoring exists to shorten the time between something going wrong on a floor and someone competent knowing about it. Today that lag is a month: the MIS shows conversion falling, the regional manager visits, the store manager explains, a trainer is scheduled. By then the launch is over.

The signals worth monitoring daily are the ones that change fast and cost the most: whether the new scheme is being stated correctly, whether a rival's price cut has started appearing in conversations, whether a store's advisors have stopped recording. Everything else can wait for the weekly read.

Daily, weekly, monthly

The weekly read is where coaching decisions are made. The daily read is a smoke alarm. The monthly read is where structural decisions get made: pricing, range, roster, who to promote.

Exception rules that name the five stores

Two hundred stores produce two hundred rows. Exception rules reduce them to the five worth a call today. A workable starting set:

• Coverage fell below half of last week's for two days. Something happened on that floor: a phone, a manager, a rumour about the programme.
• Offer accuracy under 60 percent on the live scheme, three days after launch. The store has not been briefed or the brief was wrong.
• A rival named in more than a fifth of conversations in one city this week, up from under a tenth. A local price move or a competitor launch.
• One objection unanswered in more than half the conversations where it was raised. The floor does not have the line; write it centrally.
• Number-taken rate under 15 percent in a store with conversion under the network median. The store is losing twice: the sale and the follow-up.
• Adherence on the coached step did not move for two weeks after coaching. The problem is not skill.

The ten-minute morning routine

1. Open the exception list, not the dashboard. If there are more than eight exceptions, the thresholds are too tight.
2. For each store on the list, read one transcript line that triggered it. The line tells you whether to call the store manager or the regional manager.
3. Make the calls or send the notes. A store on the list gets a specific question, not 'numbers are down'.
4. Note which exceptions repeat. A store on the list three days running is a visit, not a call.
5. Check the launch offer accuracy number if a scheme went live this week. That one number is the launch.

One view for several teams

Regional managers read stores. Trainers read steps. Category managers read objections and unmet demand. Compliance reads disclosures. The mistake is to build four reports; the fix is one scorecard with four ways to sort it, so a rising objection in the category view is the same row as a skipped step in the training view.

Borentis produces that view from consented conversations captured on advisors' phones: the same conversation scored on the playbook feeds the store scorecard, the objection ranking, the rival mention count and the disclosure rate, with the transcript line under each. Where an operations checklist tool already exists, its store audit results sit beside the conversation scores rather than in a different system.

Mistakes head offices make

• Reading averages. A network adherence of 58 percent hides the ten stores at 30 and the ten at 85. Read distributions and exceptions.
• Monitoring without a reply. If a store on the exception list never hears from anyone, the list is a report, and reports are ignored within a month.
• Letting coverage slide. Once coverage drops, every other number becomes a story the store tells. Coverage is the first exception rule for a reason.
• Skipping the store manager. Monitoring that goes from head office to the advisor makes the store manager an obstacle. Every note goes through them.