I go to work feeling extremely inadequate these days and I am not sure if I can last very long there, not because I could potentially get fired for underperforming, but just from the overwhelming sense of me just not doing well at all.
I am not someone who aims to be the best, but I do not want to be the worst, I like to be somewhere in the middle, once in a while maybe crawl to the top a little to show that I am able to do well, but never stay at the top for too long because I do feel like there is a lot of pressure to maintain the No.1 position. Anyways, right now, I am at the bottom and I do not like the way the bottom of the barrel smells. Even though it hasn't really been 2 weeks into the new month yet, the pressure of not being able to close any sales yet is slowly but surely mounting on me
A lot of this pressure really comes from the fact that my fellow newbie colleague has already closed a sales this month and is very likely going to clinch a pretty big one within this week, even though there isn't any competition amongst us, having our performance be compared against each other will be inevitable because we did join the company around the same period.
One thing I have noticed is that the sales team in my current company is a lot more aggressive than the sales team at ID4, or maybe the correct description would be that they have a lot more initiative , they will actively approach the customers much more frequently than I would.
I don't like to approach customers and ask them if they need help because most of the time, they will just tell me they are looking around, so I am very passive and would rather wait for the ones who actually want to buy something to come to me, very much like how customers would come to me in ID4 because they need to talk to an ID, but this passive behavior doesn't really work in retail as it is a lot more fast pace than Interior Design.
When I was in ID4, everyone avoided having to serve new customers because we are all usually busy preparing proposals and quotations, or we are overloaded with current projects and don't have the time to sit down with a new customer for an hour or so to take their requirements, but because at my current company, the only thing we have to do is prepare quotations, my current group of colleagues will never be busy as my ex-interior design colleagues.
As an ID, the job only truly starts after you close a sales, because after that, that is when you have to prepare the full design proposals, schedule visits to the different supplier shops with the customer to choose the different materials, schedule work with the sub-cons, go do multiple site visits, and it's going to be months of close knitted work with the client before you are actually done with the project.
As a Sales Associate (that's my position and I shall get to that later), you close the sales, and your job is done. You don't have to do any site visits, you don't have to be in constant contact with the customer, all you have to do is schedule a delivery date and usually on the day of the delivery, everything will be settled by the delivery team. Closing a sales in my current place doesn't come with a mountain of work and that's why my colleagues are more pro-active at approaching new customers because of it.
I like the work environment and I like the people there, but the nature of the job itself isn't something I signed up for and as the days go by, it is becoming more and more evident that I am probably not the right person for the job.
To be clear, I applied for the role of an Interior Stylist, that was what the job was advertised as and that was what I went to be interviewed for.
Unfortunately, for the past 6 weeks that I have been in the company, I have not done a single styling project for any clients, I have had maybe 2 colleagues come up to me to ask for colour matching advice and that is it, my main role is sales, and that is something that I really did not want to do because I am simply not good at doing sales.
At the start, when my colleagues ask if I am an Interior Stylist or a Sales Associate, my supervisor will tell them I am the latter and not the former, because we already have a Stylist in the office and a second one would essentially be redundant, this was something that he had double checked with my boss at the start, whether I was hired as a Stylist or a Sales associate and sadly, the boss told him I was to focus on sales.
Whenever I get asked if I am an Interior Stylist / Designer and my supervisor goes...
"He is not a designer, we already have a designer, he is here to do sales."
.... it hurts my pride because to be downgraded from an Interior Designer to an Interior Stylist was already bad enough for me, but then to be relegated to just a "Sales Associate" stings.
I wanted to get a more creative role in the company, I want customers to come to me for styling service, to discuss what we can do with their space, I want to brainstorm ideas, but sadly, all I am doing now is approaching customers who do not want to be entertained, asking if they need help when they clearly don't, and when they do let me help, it's very basic questions like...
"Do you have any mirrors?"
"I am looking for a sofa."
"I am looking for a coffee table"
... to which I bring them to those items they are looking for, they look at the price, and usually if they are not scared off by the price, they will be when I tell them the time it takes to get a customized sofa in the colour they want in.
Customers who are looking for single item pieces don't have half a year to wait for the furniture, they are usually there to look for an immediate replacement, and with the amount it cost per item, they are not going to want to settle for a display piece of a piece that is in a color they do not want.
Sigh, I feel like a waste of space in the company and I feels like the company is wasting my experience as an Interior Designer.
When customers ask my senior colleagues about things like color matching and space planning, almost all of them struggle to assist the clients because they have no knowledge beyond the furniture size, price and material. And even if they do attempt to offer advice, it's usually a bit questionable.
I came into this job knowing that my Interior Renovation knowledge will go to waste, but what I did not expect was for my Interior Design and Styling Knowledge to also go to waste and knowing that it is just makes me want to go back to Interior Design again, which is a really bad idea because I know I will not make any money in that industry.
The only thing I am looking forward to right now is for the current designer to actually RESIGN and have that spot be open, because I have spoken to him a few times and he has expressed his interest to go back into Interior Design again, which I believe will probably be early next year if he chooses to follow through with it. I am hoping that once he leaves, I will actually be considered to fill up his position, but should the company decide to look for another person to fill up that spot, then I will probably also just quit as well and find another interior design job, but this time, with a boutique interior design firm than a mass market one like ID4.
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