Heat-maps are useless if your shelf story ignores missions

Heat-maps sell well in boardrooms because they look decisive. In stores, though, shoppers move in missions—quick top-up, distress medicine, treat-without-guilt—and those missions rarely respect the same colour scale as weekly velocity. When overlays ignore missions, account teams defend charts that store managers already distrust. We layer missions first, then velocity. That means tagging strips with verbs shoppers actually use, then checking whether fast SKUs deserve hero space or simply create congestion. The work is slower than exporting a spreadsheet, but the output survives joint business reviews because it mirrors how people move. Finally, we document what we did not change. Silence on untouched strips is where rumours start. A short “held stable” list calms buyers who worry every reset is a land grab. Credibility, for us, includes showing restraint—not just motion.