This blog is intended for on-site teams who work for companies that use mystery shops.

We often talk about mystery shops from a corporate level – asking whether they are used for training or for evaluation of our leasing teams.  But I remember the feeling of mystery shops when I was a leasing consultant, and there was a definite sense of fear from the team.  What if I get thrown off and forget to ask for a commitment?  What if I mess up the question when they try to throw a Fair Housing curveball at me?

With any fear, however, the best solution is often to take it head on.  Now, I’m a fairly competitive person by nature, but I think that fire helps in times like this.  Instead of doing the waiting game of wondering when you might get shopped, take another approach – look forward to it!  Getting shopped is actually positive for leasing consultants in a lot of ways.  It is a great way to prove to yourself and to your bosses that you know your stuff and that you can “win” the test put in front of you. 

I often saw my shops like a battle of wits with the shoppers – that they were going to try to get me to say something wrong, make me slip up with a question about security or Fair Housing.  So I saw it as a challenge that I was going to cover everything perfectly, cover my bases, and then add in one final goal:  Somewhere, sometime, a mystery shopper is going to be so impressed that they will actually want to live at that community.  So my secret goal was to be that one person that managed to actually lease to a mystery shopper.

Once I stopped fearing the mystery shop, I found it empowering.  I wanted to take it head on, and see how my skills truly stacked up.  And if I did mess up, this was a great opportunity for self evaluation.  If you truly love your job, then you will want to develop new strategies to get better all the time.  And for me, getting evaluated is a great way to look at the result and say, “what could I have done to do better?”  So in this way, the evaluation itself was never scary, as I saw it as one giant opportunity to hone my skills. 

So if your company mystery shops, I encourage you to view it in a different way, rather than fearing it coming through the door.

And by the way, here is my favorite “battle of wits”.  Enjoy!

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s0UURBihH8 433x300]