Selling has become significantly more difficult in a market where products are commoditised, and an agile, responsive sales person is often the most significant competitive edge that a company has.
This challenging environment demands a differentiation in experience, rather than a product differentiation, and having the right space and the correct tools make or break the complex sales processes of today. A workplace that achieves synchronicity between selling and experience at every touch point is more important than ever.
Research shows that every worker’s physiology and psychology is altered by the neurotransmissions their headspace produces – shaping each owner’s thoughts, heart and hands as they shift. With so many variables in the broader environment, we should focus on what we have full control over – workplace design.
However, workplaces for sales people are often disabling rather than enabling, leading to disinterest and disengagement.
Gallup’s State of The Global Workplace Report (2013) revealed that across all job titles in Sub-Saharan Africa, sales people are the least engaged or motivated in the workplace (i.e. just 5% of sales people are engaged compared to mineworkers at 12%). By investigating the neuroscience behind human behaviour it’s easy to understand why.
Related: How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation
Create functional work spaces
According to Tower Bridge neuroscience consultant Ian Rheeder: “Our prefrontal cortex (PFC) – the thinking and problem- solving part of our brain – cannot function when bombarded by too much stimuli through our senses. Even the slightest irritation drains blood from the PFC to the survival parts of our brain, causing the PFC to shut down.”
Maintaining blood flow in your PFC is not easy when you’re stressed. Under these conditions, sales people lose the very tools that they need the most – their ability listen to customers, build trust, handle objections with empathy, and problem solve.
Workplace design can respond to two specific types of sales behaviour: relationship-oriented (heart), and task-oriented (hand); and functional workplace design assists both. Businesses that adapt workplace design to meet the needs of internal and external sales staff create the right environment for them to become more productive and satisfied.
Workspaces that recognise the unique work done by sales people and enable their work by providing the right space drive up sales because when the correct cluster of drugs or hormones – serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin – is combined, it’s a powerful concoction that drives better resonance, engagement, communication and social skills, which are all essential traits of a successful sales person.
The global zipper giant YKK discovered the power of workplace design when it brought its sales consultants and internal sales coordinators together from an office layout that was exhausting employees because it was too open plan.
Privacy fosters collaboration
The new YKK workplace design gave the sales team the private space they needed and the collaborative space they required. Employee engagement increased and along with it came double digit sales growth. This supports the Tower Bridge discovery that privacy does not hurt collaboration, but fosters it. In the case of YKK, a less transparent, more private work environment saw a 15% growth in productivity, easily justifying the small investment cost of workplace design.
Workplaces that integrate all the critical influences that affect the human psyche get results – and those that don’t, fail. By combining an enabling physical space and work environment with an engaging leadership style and organisational culture, the right mix of the neurotransmitters can be achieved and maintained – delivering big paybacks.
Because human neurotransmitters impact human behaviour so significantly, modern workplace designers need to not only understand what causes the transmitters to fire, but also how to holistically integrate workplace elements to get the advantages they release.
Related: The Top 3 Characteristics of Successful Competitive Sales Professionals
Positive, engaging environments
Neuroscience research shows that there is a clear correlation between workspace design, workplace culture, and the attitudes and energy of general staff and sales teams – and that these energies and attitudes present the face of your brand in unexpected ways.
They are apparent in face-to-face meetings, on the showroom floor and in presentations – but they also make their way to customers via emails, telephone calls, and Skype calls, with passive or active emotions stimulated by the workplace becoming unintentionally obvious.
Now… think of your most recent encounter with a sales person. Did they sound happy, like they derived meaning and purpose from their job of interacting with you? Did they offer you creative and innovative solutions in response to your need? And did you feel like you connected with them, and that you were part of their team in reaching a positive conclusion?
Chances are, if the answers to these questions were positive, the sales person you engaged with was part of a workplace that adopted a neuroscientific approach to creating a positive, engaging environment that stimulated all the right kinds of human response in their worker, and in their client – closing the deal to make business and client happy.
Six work modes to make it work
There are six modes of work that every intelligent workplace design needs to cater for:
- Space to concentrate on tasks without being disturbed by people or events around them. For cognitive work like proposals.
- Space to communicate over the phone privately is essential for sales people to sound professional without background office noises. They need a space to focus on delivering content to the receiver without being self-conscious or having to worry about keeping their own voice volume down to avoid distracting others in the office.
- Space to sporadically interact without disturbing others. Enabling sporadic interaction is crucial for agility and being able to process the serving of customers in a responsive way.
- Space to collaborate with colleagues and peers within required structures and with necessary tools, giving sales people the space to brainstorm new strategies and to share experiences without worrying about disturbing their colleagues.
- Space to transfer or receive information to present to clients that portrays the right image to visiting clients.
- Space to work informally or socialise allows colleagues to get to know one another and understand one another on a personal level, giving rise to relationships of trust in the workplace, or the ability to work with clients in a more collaborative way.