THE SALES MANAGER
Helen Rowberry has been the National Sales Manager for Carpenter Underlay for the last five years, after climbing a career ladder that took her from finance to marketing to telecommunications to sales along the way. She describes herself as confident and driven, and her viewpoint on discrimination against women is simple: “If you know your product, perform well and always act professionally then there should be no problem.”
It’s a positive outlook, from a woman who has worked hard, and in many different sectors, to get where she is now.
“I had a year out after sixth form doing the ski season and travelling before going back to college to study for a Higher National Diploma in Business and Finance, where I achieved a distinction.” Helen explains. “I started my working life in a marketing role before moving to AT&T Telecommunications and Wissenbach Financial Planning before my career in flooring began.
“When I was 25, I started working as a rep for Prado Carpets (part of Associated Weavers). This amalgamated into AW, so I essentially became rep for both companies, spending a total of five years working there. I left the industry briefly for career progression but always missed the people and the products, and was drawn back into it when I was offered an area sales position with Balta Industries.”
She moved to her current role in 2009, and is now well and truly settled into her managerial role. “My day can be extremely diverse. From being on the road visiting customers and potential clients, to overseeing key accounts and working on product development, my day (and evening) can be extremely busy!” She ensures that her management technique is fair no matter the gender of her staff: “For me it is more about trying to get the best out of individual’s personalities rather than treating members of the team differently depending on gender.”
On the topic of management, I mention Sarah Davis’ opinion that that every woman should have leadership
Tomorrow's Flooring: Women in Flooring 06
coaching paid for by her employee (see page 8 for Sarah’s opinion piece.) Helen’s ideal is that “People should be trained according to need, not gender. Any training is valuable to a business. All training that I’ve undertaken has been greatly appreciated.”
As a decision-maker, she takes her role seriously: “From a professional point- of-view, I would always sleep on any decisions and make sure I take time to consider it; I never shoot from the hip in business because it might end up coming back to bite me.” As a result of this, Helen says that their team have had minimal failures, “because we think extremely carefully about what we’re doing before we do it.”
All in all, Helen represents the women in the industry who refuse to be marginalised by their gender, no matter any potential hurdles: “I have worked in a male-dominated industry for 15 years now so it doesn’t really faze me. There are so many characters which make every day completely different to the other. There are different challenges to take on too which keeps the industry fast-paced and interesting.”
Regarding the use of bikini-clad women to promote products at The Flooring Show, Helen has one final suggestion for me. Upon broaching the topic on utilising womens’ bodies as promotional tools: “They’re grown women at the end of the day and they have a choice. All I would say is it would be great to see some muscley men parading around at some point!”
I have worked in a male- dominated industry for 15 years now so it doesn’t really faze me.
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