Dressing Your Sales Room With Wolves
My first ever sales office was overwhelmingly what today might dismissively be called greige.
Big bulky plastic wooden single seater desks on industrial dirty blue carpet tiles surrounded by off-white pre-fab walls.
Yet even that was an advance upon the very first such room I saw.
A layout like a scruffy school classroom with a single whiteboard on one wall facing the regimented two-by-two desk configuration surrounded by gunmetal grey tall filing cabinets.
Ew and double-ew.
I remember the relief when one day in the mid-90s, a revamp occurred. Only to soon realise the flaws in quartet desk pods separated by mini divider screens of dulled burgundy.
Pretty much every time I’m invited into a new selling environment I shed a silent tear for how unconducive it is to the activity it is meant to stimulate.
I blog on this every now and then. (Through inspiration ranging from cattle breeders to authors to meezers.)
A sales-supportive office tends not to be one where walls are adorned with corporate or HR ‘successorise’ style sloganeering, the latest marketing flyer posters nor a generic orders scoreboard.
This post grows from how a football club renovated its changing room.
The club concerned are not my team. Yet they do hold a degree of affection within me. They gave me my very first big ticket deal.
This season they’re back in the big time. Promotion to the EPL. Which heralded the facelift.
But so much more than simply a paint job.
As the club’s own 60-second timelapse video shows, a lick of paint alone is never enough.
Yes, there are hashtag ready call-to-arms (#onepack), team colour explosions (their classic old gold emphasised with traditionally accompanying black) and a permanent reminder of where it matters (the field-of-play floor).
Each worthy in their own right, yet it’s the small details that also catch my room design glint.
The triangular eyes of their mascot wolf. The personalisation of each player’s spot. The very placement of the mottos, on each section and above the door in constant eyeline.
Elements of this are not difficult to replicate in your work-space.
Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of effort.
Then you too can be premier league.
