Sales café offered the opportunity to become better at sales

2017-03-28

The traditional sales café that aims to improve sales skills, was one of Energy Week’s events on Wednesday. 

Petri Parvinen, professor of strategic marketing and business management from the University of Helsinki, and professor of marketing from Aalto University, held a one hour action packed lecture as an introduction to the day’s topics. He emphasized that it is important to be personal and to sell through multiple channels. It is not easy to use digital channels in a personal way, but there are a lot of possibilities, and according to him, the importance of videos are increasing even more.

After Parvinen’s presentation, it was time for round table discussions on the theme of sales. The participants took part in the two table discussions in the afternoon and discussed intensively until the panel discussion started. Panellists Jörgen Westerling from eCraft, Henrik Wilhelms from Wärtsilä, and Petri Parvinen discussed the usefulness of customer analyses, if we are prepared to do as Parvinen previously suggested, to sell the data we have on our customers, which is the best method of maintaining and developing networks. In addition, the panel analysed the CRM tools and criticized that they did not provide such customer signals as needed for sales, but rather store the administrative data. The panel’s response to the questions of a salesman’s best qualities was that they should preferably be women, who have proven higher social intelligence. And it gives better results in today’s sales work, which more than before, is also a service.

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