Display Solutions for Successful & Productive Sales Floors

With constant phone calls, chasing leads to close and the endless push to meet targets, the sales floor is one of the most high pressure environments in a business. It’s a charged and potentially chaotic atmosphere.

But a growing number of businesses both big and small are looking to large format displays to provide structure and visibility for team members and their managers. Technology is bringing order to the chaos.

In this article, we explore how to choose the right display screens for your sales floor and how to make the most of your installation. Read on for purchase advice and to find out how the right display solution on the sales floor can drive up both employee satisfaction and help meet those all-important sales targets.

Setting up

Sales floor displays really need to be professional digital signage displays (not consumer TV’s) to stand up to the rigours of constant daily use. These are large format screens specially designed to be used for long periods (often up to 24 hours a day).

The size of screen you go for will depend on the size of your sales team and the distance from which they will be viewing the screen. However, we would advise looking at 65 inches as a minimum here due to the large quantity of detail and figures on display. But remember you also have the option of installing multiple screens, so you’re not obliged to ensure that everyone can see a single screen.

The last thing you want is for the team to break their stride in order to squint at the stats; the right display will let them take a quick glance that reaffirms their confidence and motivation.

As for the screen’s specifications, 4K is advisable if you have the budget. Whether you’re displaying financial data, upcoming deals or words of motivation, having the information on display in glorious 4K means none of the finer details are lost. In addition, working with impressive technology has a ‘feel good’ factor that often transfers to improved performance.

But perhaps even more important than the screen’s resolution is its brightness. Unless your sales team are operating out of a basement, go high with the brightness, 400 cd/m2 or above if possible. You need a bright screen because nearly every large office has a high level of ambient lighting whether it’s from ceiling lights or high windows. Whatever the source of the light, if it can’t be controlled your screens need to be bright enough that they can outshine it.

The right content for the right results

Choosing and installing the right professional display is actually the easy bit here. Things get tricky when it comes to deciding what information to show.

Let’s start with what every organisation wants to achieve: employee motivation.

There is a temptation to think that the only motivator at work is money, but while financial rewards hold sway, there are many other factors at play.

Research from the McKinsey institute revealed that 60% of respondents saw performance-based cash bonuses as ‘extremely effective’ or ‘very effective’. An increase in base pay was cited by just 52% of people as ‘extremely’ or ‘very effective’, while only 35% could say the same of stock or stock options.

Things get interesting when you compare these results to the top three non-financial incentives. Praise and commendation from an immediate manager was cited by a massive 67% of respondents as ‘extremely’ or ‘very effective’, followed by attention from leaders with 63% and opportunities to lead projects or task forces with 62%.

So how can digital signage help provide these motivators?

Praise and commendation is a simple one: give visual recognition to high performing team members by putting their name and their achievements right up where everyone can see. This ticks the box when it comes to ‘attention from leaders’ too.

Remember, it’s not just about money. Positive customer testimonials are evidence of great service from your team members and are well worth making space for on the big screen too.

What about empowering employees to lead projects or specific campaigns? One option to help this objective is to put the company’s business goals for the quarter up on the screen and see what ideas the team can come up with themselves; to encourage and reward initiative.

As for the financial motivators, the software available for digital signage means you can track performance and display it in as much or as little detail as you need. Connect your database or sales software up to the screen and see if a bit of friendly competition doesn’t emerge!

Tell me a story…

How you choose to display the information is up to you and there are many tools out there to choose from. Our advice is to define the story you wish to tell first… then customise the visuals to fit the story.

You can keep it simple with a slide deck that’s manually updated as you go but could be laborious), or gamify things with an automatic leader board pulled from your sales data.

Facilitating the display of all of the above are tools like Geckoboard that can pull in all this information and more into a dashboard style point of reference. You can pick and choose the KPIs you want your team to be aware of and Geckoboard will help you present the data from multiple sources in a highly visible format.

Getting your Story to the Screen

Many digital signage manufacturers provide their own software that is integrated with the screen itself. Not all software is created equal however and some are harder to use than others.

We’re here to help you choose the right screens and digital signage software solution for your specific needs. If the content isn’t easy to update – it won’t get updated. If it’s not relevant and current, it’ll be ignored and we’d hate for you to think your investment didn’t add value.

Most Sony screens, for example, come with integrated media players with an optional TDM software licence that makes it easy to pull together eye-catching presentations. By hosting the content in the cloud and pulling from live RSS and news feeds, it’s easy to manage the content and schedules for playlists for your screen from just about any device.

Sales team, assemble

Anyone tasked with motivating the sales team should count themselves lucky. These are some of the most outspoken, fun and highly driven people in the workplace. Not only will you see results from your extra efforts, but there’s a good chance you’ll hear all about them too.

The trick with sales floor display solutions is, as a salesman himself would put it, to ‘visualise success’. Your teams have so much information to play with on a day-to-day basis that it can become all too easy to lose track of the bigger picture.

Display solutions make it easy to keep targets and developments right where your team can see them. It feels good to see progress in action.

Looking to install digital signage on your sales floor? Get in touch with the Projectorpoint experts for more advice on choosing the right screens for your business.