Perfect store execution in the Philippines: sari-sari to supermarket

What is perfect store execution?

Think of one shampoo brand in three places: an aircon supermarket in Quezon City, a drugstore branch in Cebu and a sari-sari store on a Mindanao highway. Each should show a different version of the brand, and a perfect store programme writes down what that version is. After that, every call is a comparison of the real shelf with the written one, and the gap becomes a score. It names the products that must be there and where they sit. It also gives the peso price, the promo that should be running and the displays that should be up.

Your salesmen and promodisers already do this kind of work when they take orders, restock and put up material. For the basics, start with our guide to in-store execution. The perfect store adds a written standard and a score on top. With both, a regional manager can say whether Cebu stores are in better shape than Davao stores, and whether last month's promo ever reached a shelf.

Think of it as the shelf end of your retail execution strategy. The strategy chooses which stores matter, and the perfect store shows, call by call, where the shelf falls short.

Shelves drift quickly. Another brand's sachet strips get hung in front of yours. A rival's promodiser rearranges the supermarket bay after your call. The stockist is short before payday. A standee goes up on Monday and sits behind the door by Friday. With a standard and a score you see these gaps while they are cheap to fix.

What a perfect store standard covers

Most standards rest on six elements, often called the six Ps: product, placement, price, promotion, POSM and presence. In practice, product is the must-stock range and presence is availability. Each element should be a check that a salesman can finish quickly.

Set the list on a real beat. A salesman covering a barangay of sari-sari stores often gets only a few minutes at the counter. The owner is busy serving customers, so the checks must fit that window. Pick the ones that cost you most when they fail, and leave the rest for a deeper audit.

Write one standard for each outlet type

A single list for every store fails in the Philippines. Hold a sari-sari store to a supermarket planogram and it fails every time, so the score tells you nothing. A typical split has four or five classes:

• Modern trade (supermarkets and hypermarkets) can carry a full planogram, a brand block, secondary displays and in-store promos. This is the longest standard, and agency promodisers often help keep it.
• Convenience stores and mini-groceries have little space. Stick to the core range, eye-level placement and one display.
• Sari-sari stores run from behind a counter, and many sales are by sachet and by piece (tingi). Check the small packs first, then the price and one visible display. Skip the planogram.
• Chain drugstores are judged mostly on range and on whether the pharmacy assistant recommends your product.
• Wholesalers and stockists are judged on holding the full range at the right price, because the sari-sari stores nearby restock from them.

Most brands stop at that point, since a salesman can keep four or five standards in his head and not much more. Within a class you can raise the bar for your best stores, for example by asking for a second display.

How a perfect store score works: a sari-sari store example

A score turns the standard into one number per store, which lets you rank stores, salesmen and areas. Weigh each element by the sales you lose when it fails. Range and availability normally weigh most.

Here is a sari-sari store in a Batangas barangay. There is no planogram weight, because the store has no shelf to plan, and availability is counted by sachet strip and tingi pack. Each weight is the most points that element can earn. They are an example only: set yours from where your own sales leak.

An 81 looks healthy on a dashboard, but the breakdown shows where the points went: one small pack is missing, and that is where these stores really lose sales. The salesman's talk with the owner today is about that one product, not about the whole store. A total only says that something is off, so always show the score by element.

To set weights from evidence, take a few months of audits. Inside one outlet class, compare orders from stores that passed an element with those that failed it. A bigger gap means a heavier weight. Revisit the weights yearly or after a big range change.

Two rules keep a score honest. First, score only what the rep or the owner can change. Say a line is out because the stockist ran short before payday, or because island shipments were held up by weather. Count that in a separate supply measure. Otherwise reps will argue with the score instead of acting on it. Second, keep the weights fixed for at least a quarter, so a change in the score means a change in the store.

How to build a perfect store programme in six steps

1. Group your outlets into classes. Sort by store size, how shoppers buy there and how much of your range it can sell. A barangay sari-sari store and a mall bay land in different classes. Tag every outlet with its class in the app.
2. Write a short standard for each class. Name the must-stock products, shelf position, peso price, live promo and displays. Add a reference photo from a good store in your own area.
3. Weight the elements and agree the score. Sales, trade marketing and the field team agree the weights together. Salesmen who think the score is unfair will ignore it.
4. Measure on every call, with proof. A short audit in the app plus a shelf photo. The photo settles disputes, and a manager in Manila can review a Visayas store without travelling there.
5. Fix the gap during the call. Win back the facings, take the order for the missing pack, build the display. Pass up only what the salesman cannot fix himself.
6. Coach, reward and review. Open each coaching talk with the breakdown, and link part of the incentive to the score trend and not only to volume. Every quarter, ask whether high scorers really sell more. Where they do not, rewrite the standard.

Pilot first. Take one area such as Cebu or Davao, two or three outlet classes and a handful of salesmen. After a couple of months, compare them with similar stores outside the pilot. The pilot shows which checks get skipped, which weights feel unfair, and how long an audit really takes at a sari-sari counter with customers waiting.

Retail execution strategies that improve in-store execution

Most perfect store programmes stall in the field, not in the plan. These habits keep yours moving.

• Bring the stockist in. Plenty of empty slots start in the stockist's warehouse. Show them the score and check their stock of the must-stock lines, so the fix happens at the source.
• Tie the check call to delivery day. Visit right after the stockist delivers, and plan around kinsenas payday, when sari-sari owners restock and shelves change fastest. The salesman sees whether the stock reached the shelf while there is still time to fix it.
• Spot-check the audits. The area sales supervisor revisits a few stores a month and compares them with the salesman's audit. For promodisers in modern trade, the agency coordinator does the same. People who know they may be checked take better photos.
• Plan the beat around the score. Put valuable stores with a falling score first on the salesman's route.
• Give the owner a reason. In a sari-sari store, eye level is partly a favour. The salesman who helps the owner sell more, keeps the strips stocked and brings offers on time gets that space back sooner.
• Line up displays with the promo calendar. Material that arrives after the offer starts wastes the trade spend behind it. Book the delivery and the check call together.
• Do not chase a perfect score. A store that scores full marks on every call usually has a soft standard or an audit filled in from memory. Aim for steady gains in the elements that drive sales.

Training field teams on in-store execution

People in the store must know the standard before it can work. A short session on a real shelf teaches a salesman more than a day in a hotel function room.

• Teach from photos. Pair a good shelf with a poor one for each outlet class, from your own areas, and ask the salesman to spot the gaps.
• Ride along. An area sales supervisor who joins a few calls a month sees what no dashboard shows, and the salesman hears how to talk to a busy owner.
• Send short refreshers when something changes. Post a brief note in the app or the team's Viber group before the first call on any new product, promo or display.
• Coach one element at a time. Find each person's weakest element in the breakdown and work on that one.
• Include promodisers and store staff. They are in the store every day, so a short brief on the offer and display keeps the shelf right between your calls.

A score also gives you something to reward. Leaderboards and small prizes linked to the score trend keep the standard in view. Our guide to gamification in field sales covers how to set this up.

Perfect store KPIs to track

Track each element of the standard on its own, then the score that combines them. These are the measures most brands use:

• Must-stock range compliance: stores that carry the full must-stock list, as a share of all stores audited.
• On-shelf availability: must-stock products actually on the shelf when the salesman arrives.
• Share of shelf: your facings against all facings of the category in that store.
• Planogram compliance: how closely a supermarket bay follows the planned layout. Use it for modern trade only.
• Price compliance: products whose price tag or counter price is right.
• Promotion and POSM compliance: stores where the live offer runs and the agreed displays stand.
• Perfect store score: the weighted total, tracked by store, salesman, outlet class and area.
• Gap close rate: flagged gaps closed by the next call. If it stays low, the audits are not changing anything.
• Audit coverage: stores audited in the period. Without it, a high average may only mean the easy stores were visited.

Last, test the link to sales. Pick one outlet class and compare orders from high-scoring and low-scoring stores. No difference means the standard checks the wrong things.

Common mistakes

• Audit with no action. The gap is logged, the report travels to head office and nothing on the shelf moves. Every flagged gap needs a name and a due date.
• Ticks without photos. A tick is just a claim. With no photo behind it, scores creep up over time.
• Changing the standard in the middle of a promotion. Salesmen lose track of what counts, and the scores before and after cannot be compared.
• Measuring only the stores that are easy to reach. Averages look fine while island and far-province stores never get a visit. Watch audit coverage.
• Leaving the stockist out. If the distributor is not carrying the range, even a strong call cannot fill the shelf.
• Never reviewing the standard. Range, promos and stores keep changing, so the standard needs a yearly rewrite at least.

How software helps run a perfect store programme

A small pilot can run on paper, Excel and shelf photos sent over Viber. Once you cover a few hundred stores, the photos get buried in chat threads and nobody scores them. Then you need a tool that gives each salesman the right standard, scores the photos and shows managers where to step in. Retail audit software does this in several ways:

• Standards by outlet class. The salesman sees the checklist and reference photo for the exact outlet he is in.
• Photo audits and image recognition. The app reads range, facings and displays from the photo, so nobody counts by hand or reviews photos one by one.
• Score during the call. The salesman sees the gaps before he leaves the store, when they can still be fixed.
• Visit planning by score. High-value stores with falling scores move to the front of the beat plan.
• Dashboards by element. Managers see which element slips in which area, and who needs coaching.

What image recognition checks, and where it needs help

Image recognition takes a shelf photo and finds your products. It counts facings, works out share of shelf and spots displays and price tags. Every store is read the same way, which hand audits seldom manage.

It has limits. A blurred or cut-off photo gives a wrong reading, so the app should ask for a retake there and then. Goods behind a sari-sari counter or inside a closed cooler are hard to see. A new pack must be loaded before launch, or the tool will miss it. Treat the result as a first pass, and let a person decide disputed scores. In the provinces signal drops, so the audit must work offline and sync later.

BeatRoute puts the perfect store audit, order taking and visit planning in a single field app. Its VM Audit AI Agent, part of BeatRoute's visual merchandising software, reads shelf photos for share of shelf, placement and POSM. With it, a shelf audit costs 80% less than a manual one. The Scheduling AI Agent plans each rep's day around open gaps and targets; with it, productive visits rose from 45% to 78%. When a must-stock product is missing, the Order AI Agent suggests the order during the same call.

Two Philippine teams show what changes once targets sit in the field app. Nurturemed Pharma saw a 20% increase in PMR productivity (see the Nurturemed case study). A leading paints brand in the Philippines saw 30% higher sales productivity (see the leading paints brand case study).

BeatRoute suits brands with salesmen or promodisers calling on many stores. It puts audits, orders and the stockist's stock in one place, with distributor management on the same platform. If an agency does your occasional shelf audits, a standalone audit tool may be enough. Whichever you pick, pilot it in one area with a score your own salesmen helped design. You can request a demo to see a perfect store audit run on your own outlet types.

Frequently asked questions