If you sell through retailers, dealerships, travel agents or brokers, here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You’re not the one selling your product. Someone else is.
And that “someone else” has far more influence over your sales than most businesses realise.
At Service Integrity, we see it every day. A brilliant product underperforms simply because the person standing in front of the customer recommended something else.
And recommendation matters more than most people think.
In fact, McKinsey found that car buyers who receive a trusted recommendation at the dealership are up to 70 percent more likely to buy the model that was suggested. That’s not a small bump. That’s a tidal wave.
So why do frontline staff recommend one product over another?
That’s where the real story begins.
Sometimes they genuinely think the competitor offers better value.
Sometimes the competing product feels more aligned to the customer they’re serving.
Sometimes your brand positioning signals “cheap” when you didn’t intend it to.
And sometimes, they simply trust the competitor more — because the competitor invested in building that relationship.
This is exactly what we measure at Service Integrity. We send people into stores, travel agencies and dealerships to ask the simplest but most powerful question:
“I’m looking for X. What do you recommend?”
Not in theory. Not in a survey.
In real life, in real conversations, with real stakes.
And the insights are game-changing.
You learn where your product sits in the recommendation pecking order.
You learn why the competitor was suggested over you.
You learn which stores are fighting for your brand — and which ones aren’t.
From there, you get two levers:
1. Fix the corporate-level issues
Maybe your pricing signals the wrong thing.
Maybe your marketing materials don’t tell the story well enough.
Maybe your product education is stuck in 2014.
Small tweaks can completely reshape how frontline staff perceive your brand.
2. Do the hand-to-hand combat
This is where the real magic happens.
You identify the exact stores recommending the competitor, walk in, and address the reason head-on.
Not with vague training.
With precision.
Because if Sarah in Store 14 keeps recommending Brand B due to reliability concerns… you solve that concern.
If John in Store 27 always pushes the competitor because he hasn’t been updated on your latest model… you fix that gap.
It’s not glamorous.
It’s not automated.
But it’s one of the most effective ways to grow sales without spending an extra dollar on marketing.
Across retail, finance, healthcare and tech, the research is clear: trusted recommendations drive behaviour.
And if you’re not selling direct, recommendations are your real battleground.
Make sure you’re winning there.
