Closing the Associate Behaviors Gap (ABG)

Retail leaders know how they want their store associates to interact with their customers. They invest considerable time and effort in teaching, training, observing and coaching their store associates to follow those sales processes.

But how frequently do store associates actually practice those behaviors? How big is the gap between desired and actual associate behaviors? 10%? 20%? 50%?

We call that gap the Associate Behaviors Gap (ABG).

Surveys of store leaders show that if store associates apply retailers’ best practice sales process more consistently, sales would rise 5% - 15%!

We call the process of getting store associates to follow a retailer’s best practice sales processes more consistently “closing the Associate Behaviors Gap.”

Case Study: Closing the Associate Behaviors Gap

At Becco, we conducted a project with a well-known cosmetics retailer. We measured whether store associates exhibited six brand specific sales behaviors <see chart>. After 4 months, the percent of associates exhibiting the recommended sales behaviors rose from 41% to 53% - closing the Associate Behavior Gap by 12% <note red dotted line on chart>.

What gets measured, gets managed

Reviewing the behavior measurements with associates provided the opportunity for store leaders to have substantive conversations with store associates about how to improve their performance.

How to close the Associate Behaviors Gap at your stores

The key to closing the Associate Behaviors Gap is being able to measure the behaviors of store associates at volume on an ongoing basis. And then reviewing the metrics with store leaders and store associates to identify where the opportunities for improvement lie.

The team at Becco have developed all new processes and applications to support this process. To find out more about how closing the Associate Behaviors Gap would work in your stores, send me a note at info@becco.io and we'll schedule a time to talk.