Outdated Sales Processes Are Holding Retailers Back —
Shore Appliance Shows What Happens When You Modernize
Across the retail industry, many stores are still relying on the same sales processes they’ve used for years — handwritten notes, memory-based follow-ups, verbal rotation systems, and clipboards that try to keep everything in order. These methods may have worked when teams were smaller or foot traffic was slower. But today, they’re breaking down.
At HomeSource, we’ve seen how these outdated systems create blind spots for owners and managers. There’s no reliable way to track how many customers came through the door. Sales leads get lost in someone’s pocket. Managers spend hours piecing together what happened the day before instead of acting in the moment.
We built Gatekeeper + Leads to fix this problem. Not to micromanage salespeople, but to bring structure, consistency, and visibility to the sales process. Especially for multi-location teams who need to know what’s happening across all their stores without chasing it down.
Many retailers don’t even realize a system like this exists. That’s what makes the story of Shore Appliance Connection so important. They’re not just using Gatekeeper + Leads — they’re showing how the system benefits their business in the long run.
President Ryan Larmore runs 4 Shore Appliance locations with a 22 person sales team. When he first signed on with Gatekeeper + Leads, his team was still tracking activity with pen and paper, rotation boards, and memory. “We’d have to sit down and literally watch the camera footage at night just to see how many customers came through the door,” he said. “Then we’d compare it to the written rotation sheet. It took forever, and we still ended up missing stuff.”
The same went for lead tracking. Salespeople would jot down notes on scraps of paper, or worse — try to keep everything in their heads. Some even pulled price tags off products to remind themselves what they’d shown customers. “They’d come back with a whole laundry basket full of price tags,” Ryan said. “Meanwhile, I’m on the floor trying to help someone, and there’s no tag on the unit.”
For a business with busy stores, it was clear: manual processes were slowing things down, and essential information was falling through the cracks.
With Gatekeeper + Leads, that changed. The system now tracks every customer that walks through each store’s front door. Leads are created digitally, and managers can see sales activity in real time — across every store, without needing to call around or wait for end-of-day summaries.
But what sets Shore Appliance apart is how thoughtfully they introduced the system. Instead of forcing salespeople to adopt it overnight, Ryan focused on making it easy. “We scaled it way back,” he said. “We told them, just start with a name. That’s it. You don’t need a full profile. It’s not a formal quote — it’s just a note. Use it like a digital notepad.”
That low-barrier approach helped the team ease into the system. Over time, usage grew — not because it was mandated, but because it made their jobs easier. And for management, it meant finally having visibility without micromanaging.
“You’re not waiting two or three days to figure out what happened,” Ryan said. “You can see it live. If someone had three or four ups today and only one lead in the system, that’s something we can talk about. Now the store manager can actually help instead of just guess.”
Gatekeeper + Leads also helped Shore Appliance improve team coordination across locations. In the past, if a customer walked into one store looking for a product that was only displayed at another, the process of handing off that lead was clunky — or didn’t happen at all. “Now, we can transfer the lead between stores,” Ryan said. “And the rep at the other store has all the info. When the customer walks in, they already know what they’re looking for.”
Even the small process updates have made a big difference. Ryan used to struggle with figuring out when to schedule breaks — especially on busy weekends. “You want to give people time for lunch, but not during peak traffic,” he explained. “Now, I can pull up the door swing data and see when customers are actually coming in. Turns out, 40% of our ups happen between 12 and 1. That’s not break time anymore.”
And perhaps most important: Ryan knows the system works for everyone on his team — whether they’re brand new or have been selling appliances for years. “It helps the new hires get their fair share of ups,” he said. “And it keeps the seasoned people on track. Everyone knows where they stand.”
For Shore Appliance, Gatekeeper + Leads is about replacing guesswork with real data, creating consistent sales processes, and giving their managers the insights needed to increase revenue. “You’re going to spend money either way,” Ryan said. “You can keep spending to get more people in the door, or you can focus on making sure the people already in the store are handled the right way. Gatekeeper + Leads helps us do that.”
If you’ve been relying on the same sales tracking tools for years, you’re not alone — but you might be missing out on a better way. Shore Appliance is proof that modernizing your process doesn’t mean changing everything — it just means doing what you already do but with more clarity and control.
Want to see how it could work in your stores? Learn more about Gatekeeper + Leads here
