Kitchen Sales Designer
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
Join Howdens where our trade depots are recruiting Kitchen Sales Designers who thrive in a fast-paced sales environment. We’re looking for commercially minded individuals who can build strong relationships, influence buying decisions and exceed sales targets.
We can offer you a successful career as a Kitchen Sales Designer, and you don’t need previous design experience. We’ll provide you with comprehensive design and sales training to create exceptional kitchens for our trade customers and their clients.
What we can offer you:
- Competitive salary, brilliant bonuses and outstanding depot incentives
- Full CAD, product and sales training via our Ready to Trade Programme
- Competitive Pension Plan up to 12% company contribution
- Up to 32 days annual leave per year including bank holidays, rising with service
- Generous staff discount on Howdens products
- Buy-as-you-earn share scheme
- 40 hour working week working every other Saturday morning.
- No Sunday or Bank Holiday working
- Career progression opportunities into sales management roles
- Virtual GP access and wellbeing support for you and your family
What we are looking for:
- Results driven with experience of reaching sales targets and KPI
- Ability to build trusted relationships with our trade customers and their client
- Excellent communication skills, able to convey your ideas clearly and effectively
- Full UK Driving license with access to your own vehicle for home visits
- Strong attention to detail and an eye for design
- CAD skills are preferred, but not essential as you will receive training
What you will be doing:
- Driving sales performance and profit by achieving your depot targets
- Building strong customer relationships through professional design support
- Delivering exceptional customer service throughout the project
- Conducting home visits to measure, assess and understand your client’s needs
- Negotiating prices confidently while protecting margin and design integrity
- Planning and creating inspirational and practical designs utilising your strong product knowledge to advise customers and resolve queries throughout the process
About Us:
Howdens Joinery is the UK’s number one trade kitchen supplier providing thousands of products across kitchens, joinery, and hardware. We have over 950 depots throughout the UK and Europe, making us the first choice for more than 460,000 loyal trade professionals. With an ambitious and credible growth plan, we continue to build on our £2.4 billion turnover.
How to apply:
If Howdens sounds like the kind of place where you can build and develop your career as a Kitchen Sales Designer, then we are keen to hear from you.
Howdens is founded on the principle of being Worthwhile for ALL concerned. We’re working hard to ensure we provide an inclusive environment where everyone feels welcome. We will do everything we can to support you during your application. If you need us to make any adjustments to our recruitment process, please email with the job title and location, and we will be happy to help you.
#LI-LO1 #CVL INDKSD #Reed
Key skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Highlight any sales target achievement prominently at the top of your CV — the advert explicitly requires experience of reaching sales targets and KPIs, so lead with a specific figure (e.g. '118% of annual sales target').
📊 Quantify your sales results: e.g. 'Consistently achieved 110% of monthly KPI across 12-month period, generating £320k in kitchen sales revenue'.
🎯 Mention any CAD software experience (even basic) in your skills section — the advert lists CAD as preferred, so naming tools like Compusoft Winner or similar gives you an edge over candidates who omit it.
🤝 Demonstrate trade or B2B relationship-building experience explicitly — the advert stresses building trusted relationships with trade customers, so cite a specific customer base size or retention metric.
🚗 Confirm your full UK driving licence and vehicle access clearly in your personal profile — the advert lists this as a firm requirement for conducting home visits.
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Achieved 115% of annual B2B sales target across a 200-strong trade customer base, generating £280k in product revenue within a 12-month period.
- •Conducted 40+ home visits per month to measure, assess and design bespoke kitchen layouts, converting 68% of visits into confirmed orders.
- •Negotiated pricing on 150+ kitchen projects, maintaining an average gross margin of 34% while retaining 95% of repeat trade accounts.
Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.
Your cover letter is ready
We've drafted a cover letter for Howdens Joinery. Preview the opening, then unlock the full personalised version.
Letter preview — tailored to Howdens Joinery
Dear Hiring Manager,
Howdens Joinery's reputation as the UK's number one trade kitchen supplier — backed by a £2.4 billion turnover and 950+ depots — makes the Kitchen Sales Designer role in Chatham a compelling next step. My background in trade sales and customer relationship management, combined with a consistent record of KPI achievement, aligns directly with what your Chatham depot needs to drive sales performance and margin.
My background in B2B sales has seen me manage a portfolio of trade professionals, conducting site visits, presenting tailored product solutions and negotiating pricing confidently. I have developed a strong eye for design and practical spatial awareness through client-facing project work, and I am eager to build on this through Howdens' Ready to Trade Programme and CAD training.
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Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›How would you use CAD software to present a kitchen design to a trade customer who has specific spatial constraints?
- ›Walk me through how you would conduct a home visit — what measurements and information would you gather and why?
- ›How do you balance design integrity with protecting margin when a customer pushes back on price?
- ›Describe your process for building a kitchen design brief from an initial client conversation through to final specification.
- ›How would you use Howdens' product range knowledge to upsell or resolve a customer query mid-project?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you exceeded a sales target — what approach did you take and what was the outcome?
- ›Describe a situation where you had to manage a difficult trade customer relationship — how did you handle it?
- ›Give an example of when you had to negotiate on price while protecting your company's margin — what was the result?
- ›Tell me about a time you managed multiple customer projects simultaneously — how did you prioritise and stay organised?
- ›Describe a situation where your attention to detail prevented a costly mistake on a customer order or design.
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you exceeded a sales target — what approach did you take and what was the outcome?
Describe a situation where you had to manage a difficult trade customer relationship — how did you handle it?