DKO Consulting introduces practical guide to smarter store visits

DKO Consulting has launched a new digital eBook designed to help sales and commercial professionals turn routine store visits into actionable business intelligence.

Titled Know Your Store: A Practical Guide to Better Store Visits, the publication is the first in the firm’s new DKO Commercial Pocket Guides series.

The guide was developed by Dolapo Otegbayi, Founder and Principal Consultant of DKO Consulting, drawing on more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and commercial leadership.

According to Otegbayi, the value of a store visit goes beyond simply being physically present at a retail outlet. Instead, the exercise can provide commercial teams with insights into customer behaviour, product visibility, competitor activity and potential business opportunities.

The guide focuses on helping professionals identify what to observe during store visits, the questions to ask and how to interpret information gathered from the retail environment.

READ ALSO: Anietie Udoh wins Creative Marketing Professional of the Year

It also addresses a broader challenge faced by commercial organisations: converting market observations and field information into decisions that can improve business performance.

Rather than treating store visits solely as monitoring exercises, Know Your Store presents them as structured opportunities for learning, diagnosis and commercial decision-making.

At the centre of the guide is the DKO Store Visit Roadmap, built around five stages: PREPARE, OBSERVE, ENGAGE, DIAGNOSE and ACT.

The framework is intended to help sales representatives, entrepreneurs, business owners and commercial teams approach store visits with greater purpose and consistency.

The launch also marks an expansion of DKO Consulting’s activities beyond traditional advisory services, with the firm seeking to package its commercial experience into practical resources that professionals can readily apply in their businesses.

Know Your Store is designated Guide No. 01 in the DKO Commercial Pocket Guides series, with the publication expected to form part of a broader collection of resources focused on making commercial knowledge more accessible and actionable.

The initiative reflects DKO Consulting’s guiding philosophy of “Strategy. Execution. Impact.”, with particular emphasis on moving from gathering information to taking informed commercial action.