The 404 Sales Challenge

The 404 Page. Web users know it as what comes up when a site hasn’t got or can’t find the page you’re looking for.

And Westminster silly season political reporting found that the beleaguered former UK junior coalition government party cracked a fairly decent joke with theirs this week. Mocking the rival Leader Of The Opposition and his latest shambles; traingate. Did he really claim a train was “ram-packed” whilst sitting on the corridor floor, just as cctv possibly showed rows of available seats?

Error 404: Just like Corbyn’s train carriage, this page is empty.

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We’ve all seen page-not-found messages. There’s plenty of creativity programmers like to show around them. Image search on anything like ‘cool 404 pages‘ and you’ll see several fine examples. Arty to humorous and plenty more.

So there’s a potential salesteam idea here. Particularly as many doubtless feel that they’re budding designers or marketeers (or whichever non-sales skill you’d like to name in this regard) to match or even surpass their colleagues in such posts.

Can they come up with a 404 for your site?

There’s a central core to build from. Something not found. Not any more at any rate. Not since buying your wonderful wares. A sense of blissful emptiness that problem-gone brings to paying clients.

You could take inspiration from the good ones already across the web and adapt as you see fit. Or see who can closest align to the stated corporate direction.

I’m tempted to say that this isn’t quite a full-style workshop. Mainly because there’s likely more pressing tasks already on the agenda that could be set, over one that may get lazily dismissed as a bit too crayons, gluepens and glitter.

Perhaps it can be something that you trail between meetings? Then again, I’ve been at countless sales shindigs where prepared work has been asked of salespeople, only to find a grand total of zero having done it.

Still. Depending on the culture you are faced with/wish to imbue, there may well be a winning little different angle here to ably help move your ambitions for the team forward.