Your Mystery Shopping Business - Growing Your Company and The Competition

As a mystery shopping business owner, I have grown our company from serving only local clients, to serving national chains. The following are some questions I have been asked and answers given about this process. This article covers; how a company can succeed and flourish despite all the large companies that exist, staying a home based operation, and when is there a need for travel.

How can anyone succeed competing with all the large mystery shopping companies that exist today?

Going toe to toe with large mystery shopping companies and trying to go after large chain retail/hospitality clients might not be the way to go, at least to start. The good news is that large mystery shopping companies won't be looking in your backyard for clients. Therefore, I suggest starting a business on the local level going after local businesses. One way to proceed would be to give local talks on related subjects that might be of interest to your potential clientele, such as "improve your customer service" and then name mystery shopping as one option in your talk.

You can also expand locally via a mail promotion. However, this can be costly. You can lower this cost by sending out postcards that point potential clients to your website.

If you plan on expanding out of the local market, will that entail a lot of traveling or will having a web site replace traveling?

I believe traveling is not a necessity to expand, but some travel would be helpful. By building your own web site, you can reach your target market right from your own office. Web site building (and hosting that web site) can easily be accomplished for under $100/year.

The down side of depending only on your web site to expand, is that it directly pits you against your competition. While traveling is not necessary, it can be helpful in overcoming this obstacle. We do suggest getting involved with retail/hospitality associations and that might include some travel.

Sometimes associations have lunches or events that are in your area that you can participate in. Example; I joined a state association. The association related to our particular niche (we specialize in mystery shopping for one specific industry.) It had regional groups. My local region sponsored a lunch and I was the guest speaker. This is a great way to go! In fact, one lunch where I was the guest speaker got me one client I had for 14 years, and another client that used our service for 6 years. One lunch made us a lot of money.

Would you be able to compete with the Big Boys - large shopping companies - and still stay a home based operation?

At a certain point, you may decide it's time to go for national accounts (companies who have chain stores or franchisors with many locations). At that point you can still work out of your home if you wish. Your store front would then be your web site.

Obviously there is a lot more to growing your company than can be discussed in one short article, but hopefully this has given you some information to think about.

About this Author

For more strategies on how to grow and expand your mystery shopping company, please visit mystery-shopper-business.com

The author, Shari Joseph, has been in the business since 1985, as a mystery shopping company owner, then author, consultant, and workshop leader. She has helped people all over the world to start and run their own mystery shopping company, and helped introduce the industry to several countries.

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