Sales Representative

Overview

You sell office furniture and workspace design solutions—desks, demountable walls, acoustic panels, collaborative spaces—to companies doing office redesigns or expansions. You're working deals that range from $50K for a single floor refresh to $500K+ for full office buildouts. Most of your time is spent prospecting into commercial real estate triggers, running site visits, coordinating with your design team on proposals, and navigating multi-stakeholder approval processes.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Private, bootstrapped or early-stage (77 employees)

Size: 77 employees

Growth: Small player in a fragmented market dominated by Herman Miller, Steelcase, Knoll

Market Position: Challenger competing on customization and culture-alignment messaging vs big box furniture suppliers

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Outbound - Cold calling facilities directors, HR VPs, and office managers at companies with recent funding, office expansions, or lease renewals. You're tracking commercial real estate news and growth indicators.
• 20% Referrals - From architects, commercial real estate brokers, and existing clients
• 10% Inbound - Website inquiries (sporadic, usually tire-kickers)

SDR/AE Structure: No dedicated SDRs. You're doing all your own prospecting.

Design Support: Internal design team creates renderings and proposals, but you're coordinating the entire process.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Herman Miller, Steelcase, Knoll, WeWork Workplace (for larger deals), local/regional furniture dealers

How They Differentiate: "Culture-driven" positioning—customization and alignment with company values vs cookie-cutter catalogs. Likely competing on service and flexibility since they can't match big players on price or brand.

Common Objections: "We already work with [Herman Miller/Steelcase]", "Your price is 20% higher than our current vendor", "We need to see more case studies in our industry", "Can you match their lead times?"

Win Themes: Design flexibility, white-glove service, understanding company culture, faster customization than enterprise vendors

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Proposals/Internal (25%)

Key Activities

• Outbound Prospecting: 30-40 calls/emails per day to facilities managers and HR leaders. You're looking for office expansion triggers—new funding rounds, lease renewals, return-to-office mandates, acquisitions. Most ignore you.
• Site Visits: Walking client offices with a tape measure and iPad, taking photos, asking about workflow and collaboration needs. These are 1-2 hour commitments plus travel time.
• Proposal Coordination: Working with your internal design team to create 3D renderings and quotes. Lots of back-and-forth as client requirements change. Each proposal takes 8-15 hours of work.
• Multi-Stakeholder Navigation: Presenting to facilities, HR, finance, and executive teams. Getting budget approval means looping in CFOs and justifying ROI on "culture-driven" furniture vs cheaper alternatives.
• Project Management: Once deals close, you're coordinating delivery, installation, and punch lists. This pulls you away from selling but keeps clients happy for future expansion projects.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Long sales cycles with lots of stalls. Projects get delayed because of budget freezes, office lease uncertainty, or leadership changes. Your Q4 pipeline will slip to Q1 constantly.
• You're fighting uphill against established vendor relationships. Facilities managers have worked with Herman Miller for 10 years—you need to prove you're worth the switching cost.
• Deals are lumpy. You might close $200K in one month and $0 the next three months. Feast or famine.
• You're stuck in the middle of client-design team-installation coordination. When installation goes wrong (and it will), you're the one getting the angry calls.
• Price pressure is constant. You're competing against massive vendors with better purchasing power. Clients want your service at their prices.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 8-12 projects per year in the $50-150K range with 1-2 larger projects ($200K+) annually
• Building a referral engine with commercial real estate brokers and architects who feed you deals
• Getting second and third projects from existing clients as they expand to new floors or locations

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Facilities Directors/Managers (day-to-day contact, care about functionality and timelines)
• HR/People Ops VPs (care about employee experience and culture fit)
• CFOs or Controllers (final budget approval, care about cost per seat and ROI)

What They Care About:

• Lead times: Can you deliver before their lease starts or office opening?
• Total cost: Not just furniture price, but installation, project management, warranty
• Flexibility: Can you adapt designs as their headcount projections change?
• Proven results: Case studies from similar companies (they want to see you've done this before)
• Service: Will you handle installation headaches or disappear after the sale?

Requirements

• 2-4 years in B2B sales, ideally in commercial furniture, office design, construction, or commercial real estate
• Comfort with long, consultative sales cycles and staying organized across 15-25 active opportunities
• Ability to read floor plans and discuss spatial design (you'll learn this, but technical aptitude helps)
• Strong project management skills—you're juggling design timelines, client changes, and installation logistics
• Resilience with rejection and deal slippage—most of your outreach goes nowhere and deals take forever
• Willingness to do site visits and occasional travel to client offices
• Proficiency with CRM (Salesforce/HubSpot) and design tools (you'll use software to show clients renderings)