THE SALES TEAM

THE EQUIPMENT

WITH 5-years’ experience in door furniture wholesaling under his belt, the Sales Manager is at the top of his game. Commander-in-Chief on a countrywide retail battlefield, he has a crack commando squad of six sales personnel under his direct control. The Sales Manager has earned his stripes over more than a thousand closed deals; he has forgotten more about this business than most of us will ever know, and his people understand and respect that. In turn, he understands that whatever happens - be it an unexpected stock shortage in the warehouse, a disgruntled customer who has been billed twice for the same order, or an urgent consignment of concealed hinges that has been held up in the despatch department due to a missing docket - the team has got his back, come what may.

THERE may be a bit of joshing and banter between the boss and his team, but when push comes to shove and there’s a rush consignment of two dozen Chubb deadbolts to ship out overnight to a Wimpey Homes building site on the other side of the country, they all have to know they can count on each other to do their jobs. When the Sales Manager shouts “shit”, they get the shovel, no questions asked.

This is the sharp end of the business, and those who can only give 99% are simply left behind. The members of the Telesales Team are like coiled springs, ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice if the phone rings and there’s a customer on the other end of the line wanting to buy a pair of interior steel lever handles on a brass backplate. It’s a 9.00 til’ 5.30 job, and it doesn’t matter what they are doing - they could be having a chat with the bloke at the next desk, making a coffee in the office kitchen, or flicking through their Facebook posts while eating a Danish pastry - once the order hotline goes live, it’s battle stations. Like a well-oiled machine, they drop everything and go into Action mode.

Just like a jet pilot landing a Typhoon fighter on an aircraft carrier during a Force Ten gale, every action has to be automatic. A telephone transaction from receiving the order and checking the stock levels on the computer, to processing the payment and emailing the warehouse - takes about 4 minutes. But these people are passionate about their work; if the phone goes at 27 minutes past 5, they’ll still answer it. But probably not at 28 minutes past, though.

EVERY member of the team is equipped with a Desktop Telecommunications Unit. With one of these bad boys on hand, he literally has the whole world at his fingertips. By entering a number into the digital keypad, the sales person is able to instantly communicate with anyone from a prospective purchaser who has enquired about the price of brass effect decorative doorbell escutcheons, to a major business customer who buys literally dozens of pull-latches every week.

TO allow him to perform to this optimum level for lap after lap while pulling 5 or 6 G on every corner, a Formula 1 racing driver sits cocooned in specially made carbon fibre seat that is moulded to exactly fit the contours of his body. A door furniture salesman also has to perform at the peak of his game. When you’re sitting at your desk for up to 8 hours a day, taking anything up to 15 or 16 orders, comfort is a priority, and that’s why each member of the team sits on one of these - an ULVAEUS 360˚swivel bucket seat. Custom designed in Sweden, made from high impact ABS polypropelene mounted on a lightweight, ultra-strong tubular steel exoskeleton, each one of these bad boys costs a cool £24.99. But study after study has shown that uncomfortable sales staff are much more likely to fuck up, so that’s money well spent.

WITH up to 3,500 different door furniture products on the warehouse shelves at any one time, it’s impossible for even the best telesales operative to know what’s in stock off the top of his or her head. Do we have 6 monkey tail French window catches in at the moment? How long are the screws that come with the Touchpoint Rimini doorhandle? Does the Altro circular flush cabinet handle come in a brushed satin finish as well as the polished chrome shown in the catalogue? Do you get a pair of Carlisle brass Victorian scroll handles for £9.99 plus VAT, or is that each? Faced with conundrums like these, the sales professional immediately logs on to his Personal Information Console, through which he can access the relevant data more or less instantaneously. Within seconds, he can tell the customer on the other end of the line that they’re out of stock but they should be getting some more in soon, so to try phoning back in a couple of days.

WHENEVER a frontline door furniture transaction goes through, paperwork is generated... in triplicate.

The sales team operative needs some seriously military grade hardware to knock some holes through this stuff so it can be safely stowed away in a tough lever arch box file. That’s where this baby comes in - a springloaded, pump action 100mm Document Punch. This thing’s capabilities have to be seen to be believed, as it makes short work of pushing small holes through up to 8 sheets of reasonably thick printer paper. Slide your A4 into the magazine, line it up with the central sight, and you’re locked and loaded. Apply slight pressure to the top-mounted trigger mechanism and Bang! It’s like a knife through butter. Those 8 sheets simply didn’t stand a chance.

WHEN taking a payment over the phone, it would be all too easy for the credit card receipt to become separated from the order printout. If this happened, there would be no way to tell if an order had been paid for, or if the payment was still pending, and the consequences of that simply don’t bear thinking about; the order might not get shipped, leading to a mildly exasperated phonecall from a confused customer, or even worse, a mediocre review on the Trustpilot website. To prevent this happening, employees reach for one of these motherfuckers. In the right hands, this 14mm Document Attachment Gun can fire a solid, razortipped U-shaped slug of high-tensile steel through up to 10 sheets of paper, automatically crimping over the ends to anchor itself securely. One click of this formidable piece of kit and the receipt and the order printout are joined for good. They’re going nowhere. Job done, no ifs, no buts. Sorted.