Merchandising at the point of sale: how to measure execution and stop working blind

A distributor can have the best price, the best product and the best promotion, and lose the sale anyway because on the shelf the product was badly displayed, had no signage, or was simply out of stock. Merchandising is the only part of commercial strategy that gets executed 300 kilometres from the office, and in most operations it is also the only one nobody measures.

In this article we look at what it means to measure execution at the point of sale, which metrics matter, how you capture them without paper route sheets, and what to do with that information once you have it.

1. Why point-of-sale execution is a blind spot

1.1 The gap between the plan and what happens on the shelf

The commercial plan defines displays, materials, prices and replenishment frequency. What actually happens in each store is another matter: the chain's own stocker moved the product, the sign fell down, the promotion was never loaded at the till, a competitor took the space.

That gap between plan and execution is where a significant share of the trade marketing investment gets lost. Not because the plan is wrong, but because nobody verifies whether it was carried out.

1.2 How most operations work today

The pattern is familiar: the merchandiser has a list of stores on paper or in a WhatsApp group, visits the ones they can, takes photos that stay on their phone and reports back by voice note to the supervisor. The supervisor builds a weekly spreadsheet from whatever reached them.

The result is that there is no way to answer three basic questions: how many visits were actually made, what was found on each one, and how much the display improved since the previous visit.

1.3 The cost of not measuring

Without measurement, three things happen predictably. The field team's productivity becomes invisible and gets managed on trust. The investment in point-of-sale materials cannot be justified to leadership or to the supplier funding it. And out-of-stocks on the shelf — the most expensive way to lose a sale, because the customer had already decided to buy — only get discovered when sell-out falls.

2. The metrics that matter

2.1 On-shelf availability (OSA)

On Shelf Availability measures the percentage of visits in which the product was actually available on the shelf. It is different from having stock in the store: the product can be in the back room and, for the shopper, it does not exist.

It is the metric with the biggest direct impact on sales and the easiest to capture: present or absent, by SKU and by store.

2.2 Share of shelf

The space your brand occupies out of the category's total linear shelf, measured in facings or in centimetres. Compared against your market share in that area, it tells you whether you are over- or under-represented. A share of shelf consistently below your sales share is a concrete negotiating opportunity with the store.

2.3 Planogram compliance

The percentage of stores where the display matches what was defined: position, height, number of facings, product sequence. It requires a photo as evidence, because it is the metric that is easiest to misreport.

2.4 Correct price and promotion compliance

Verifying that the displayed price matches the suggested one and that the promotional mechanic is live and communicated. It is surprisingly common to find active promotions that were never loaded in the store, meaning the investment was made and the effect is zero. It pairs with competitor price monitoring captured on the same visit.

2.5 Perfect Store

The indicator that integrates everything above. You define a set of conditions (availability, space, price, POP material, secondary display) and measure the percentage of stores meeting all of them. It is binary and demanding by design, just like OTIF in logistics: it exists so nobody can hide behind the average of their own metric.

2.6 Visit compliance and productivity

Planned visits against actual visits, average time in store, stores per day and per merchandiser. It is the team management metric and the one that lets you size the field headcount correctly.

3. How to capture it without paper route sheets

3.1 A schedule with GPS check-in and check-out

The starting point is that the visit gets logged with location and time, without depending on somebody reporting it. This is not surveillance born of distrust: it is the only way to have a reliable denominator for every other metric. Without knowing how many visits there were, no percentage means anything.

It rests on route planning that sets frequency per store according to its value, not out of habit.

3.2 Structured forms on the phone

Each store type or each campaign has its form: SKU presence, facings, price captured, condition of the material, out-of-stocks detected. The key is that it be structured rather than free text, because free text neither aggregates nor compares across visits.

3.3 Photographic evidence

The photo is the backing for everything declared and the basis for auditing. With a geolocated, dated photo you can review any report and show the supplier exactly what was done with their investment.

It also enables comparison over time: the same shelf across four consecutive visits tells a story no written report conveys.

3.4 Commercial tasks derived from the visit

A visit that only generates information changes nothing. The survey has to trigger actions: replenish an out-of-stock SKU, escalate a space negotiation, correct a price, log an order. The task gets assigned, with an owner and a date, and its completion is measured.

4. From measurement to improvement

4.1 Dashboards that compare stores rather than average them

The average compliance across an entire chain is a useless number. What drives action is the ranking: which stores are systematically below, which merchandiser gets the best results and why, which chain complies with the planogram and which does not.

4.2 Crossing execution with sell-out

The question that justifies the whole investment is whether execution moves sales. Crossing the Perfect Store indicator per store against its sales lets you quantify how much each point of compliance is worth, and with that you decide where to put the team's effort.

4.3 Renegotiating with data

With six months of share of shelf, availability and compliance documented with photos, the conversation with the chain changes in nature. You stop arguing over perceptions and start discussing evidence. The same applies toward the supplier funding the activity.

4.4 Sizing the field team

With data on time in store, distance between visits and compliance by frequency, you can answer precisely how many merchandisers you need and how often to visit each point according to its potential. It is the same reasoning that applies to sales coverage, applied to execution.

Frequently asked questions

Are merchandising and trade marketing the same thing? No. Trade marketing defines the channel strategy, the mechanics and the investment. Merchandising is the execution of that at the point of sale. One plans, the other delivers.

Can you measure execution without an app? You can try with spreadsheets and photos over WhatsApp, but the data is neither aggregable nor auditable and the visit denominator is never reliable. The cost of the app is usually lower than that of a month of decisions made on bad data.

How many stores should a merchandiser visit per day? Between 8 and 15 depending on format, distance and the depth of the survey. What matters is not the theoretical figure but measuring your own and looking at the spread between people.

What about stores where I cannot put people? There, the survey works when the rep themselves does it during their commercial visit, with a shorter form. It is less deep but it gives you coverage.

How nBlock measures point-of-sale execution

nBlock's Merchandising block takes into the field what today sits on paper:

• A visit schedule with GPS check-in and check-out, to get the real denominator.
• Configurable forms with photographic evidence by store and by campaign.
• Commercial tasks that come out of the visit, with an owner and follow-up.
• Compliance and productivity dashboards by merchandiser, chain and area.
• It runs on top of your current operation, without replacing the ERP.

---

Want to see what is really happening at your points of sale? Book a demo with the team.