Is there a store trial happening for your category? Is it happening on the back of a recommendation you made to improve performance?
A retailer doing a trial is a big deal because they have chosen to dedicate what could be limited time and resource to changing a category in a limited number of stores. Time of the merchandisers to make unique plans, time of the staff to rearrange the fixtures, and time of supply chain to ensure the products get to the stores.
As a Category Manager the next step should be to maximise the outputs of this trail and I would suggest the following:
Measurement and Analysis
Your retail partner maybe monitoring the trial but it's likely someone is doing this in addition to their usual role. Can you offer to monitor the sales and therefore add more resource to this? Agree on some control stores to measure performance against. Control stores would be equivalent stores without the trial going on. You need to measure performance against these to account for any external factors that might impact sales.
Next you need to agree what success looks like and the metrics you are trying to drive with the trial. New shoppers? Current shoppers spending more? More cross shopping from another category? If fresh products are involved, having a tight rein on monitoring waste initially will be important. Consider the links you have with the supply teams to ensure you're aligned; they will also be a key stakeholder to gain more insight for the trial.
Visiting and speaking to staff
Can you or a colleague closer go to the store? Staff in the store will have really beneficial feedback about the trial as they speak to customers all day and are likely to know what works best in their stores and the different categories. They may also have feedback about things you haven’t thought about with the initial recommendations
Does it make sense to shoppers?
Does the new display make sense in the flesh? Sometimes great ideas can appear confusing in real life. Shop the fixture, take the journey your shopper would take. Take photos, think about what you might want to change or what additional signage you might need.
What next?
Once the trial is complete arrange to have a separate conversation with your retail partner about the trial. Present your instore findings, sales data and feedback from the staff. Even if the trial isn’t deemed a success and rolled out the retailer will see you have invested as much time and effort in this trial as they have. This will put you in good grace for the future if you recommend more trials.
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