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A launch is where head office’s plan meets the store. A new product or promotion succeeds only when the right stores have it on shelf, displayed and priced, early in the window. This playbook walks managers and admins through a launch from brief to review, so reps know exactly what to do and head office can check progress daily.

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Why It Matters

Shoppers decide in the store. The 2012 Shopper Engagement Study by Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI) found that 76% of purchase decisions were made in store.1 A launch product that isn’t on the shelf misses those decisions entirely. Availability is a problem even for established products: NielsenIQ estimated that items not on the shelf cost United States (US) consumer goods sales about $82 billion in 2021, around 7.4% of sales, with average on-shelf availability of 92.6%.2 Launches and promotions often aren’t executed as planned. POPAI UK and Ireland, its United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland arm, reported that full compliance for in-store campaigns can be as low as 29%, and named the main causes: vague instructions, displays that are hard to install, and no compliance check after installation. It also warns that campaigns need sustained support after launch, or they never reach their return.3 The fix is to put the launch inside the visit, not beside it. Salesforce’s consumer goods model treats each in-store check as a task in the visit’s task list, with captured results compared against store targets.4 When the launch is a task on the visit, it gets done and measured with everything else.

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Best Practice

1

Brief the Launch

Write one page that answers the questions a rep will ask in the store:
  • What: the products, pack sizes, and price.
  • Where: the shelf location, display, and point-of-sale (POS) material, with a photo of what good looks like.
  • When: the start date, the end date, and the deadline for having stock on shelf.
  • How it’s measured: the questions reps answer and the photos they take.
Design the questions for the report you want at the end. If you want a compliance percentage by store, ask yes or no questions with a required photo. Vague instructions are the top reason in-store campaigns fail.3
2

Select the Stores

Choose the stores that will carry the launch, based on the retailer’s ranging decision and your store segments. Check two things before you go further:
  • Every store has a rep assigned, so it gets a visit.
  • Every rep involved can receive visits on the launch dates.
Save the list so you can reuse it for the follow-up visits and the review.
3

Create the Work

Turn the brief into tasks on visits. Build the survey, attach it to a task, and plan the task onto visits in the launch window for every selected store. Where a store already has a visit planned in the window, add the launch task to that visit rather than creating a second one.Test the survey with one rep on one phone before you roll it out.
4

Notify Reps

Tell reps what’s coming, why it matters, and when it starts. Share the brief and the photo of what good looks like. Ask reps to sync so the new visits and tasks reach their phones before day one. POPAI also advises getting store manager buy-in, so ask reps to agree the display location with each store manager on the first visit.3
5

Track Progress Daily

For the first two weeks, check progress every day:
  • Execution: what share of planned visits and launch tasks are complete.
  • Compliance: in how many stores the product, display, and price are in place.
  • Reasons: why tasks couldn’t be done, such as stock not delivered or no display space.
Act on what you see. Send reps back to stores that failed, escalate supply problems, and move visits to another rep when someone is away so stores aren’t missed.
6

Close and Learn

At the end of the window, review the results with the team and with head office:
  • Which stores executed fully, and which didn’t, and why.
  • Which reasons came up most often, and who needs to fix them.
  • What to change in the brief, the questions, or the store list next time.

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How FieldKo Helps

Before you create the campaign, make sure every rep has call cycles that cover the campaign dates, and every store has an owner or account team members. Reps without a call cycle and stores without a matching user don’t get visits. See Before You Begin.
Deleting a field campaign also removes its visits and tasks, and they drop out of your reports. Export the results before you delete a finished campaign.

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Common Pitfalls

  • Launching by email. A brief sent outside the visit gets read once and forgotten. Put the work on the visit.
  • Measuring visits, not shelves. Percentage of Visits Completed shows the work was done, not that the product is on shelf. Report on both.
  • Launch and leave. One check on the first visit misses stores that sell out or move the display.
  • Changing the survey mid-launch. Don’t delete or restructure questions after reps start answering. Create a new version instead.

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See Also

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Sources

  1. Supermarket News, “POPAI: 76% of Decisions Made In-Store,” 2012. Read the article
  2. NielsenIQ, “Empty Shelves in America: U.S. Retailers Lost Over $82 Billion in 2021,” 2022. Read the analysis
  3. POPAI UK and Ireland, “In-Store Insights, Issue 24: Compliance Report,” 2015. Read the report
  4. Salesforce Trailhead, “Set Up Store Visits and Capture Data,” Consumer Goods Cloud Data Model module. Read the module
Last modified on October 26, 2026