ATTENTION IS DRAWN TO THE NEW SALES PROCESS AT ESBE

Mission to change and accelerate sales

When Jörgen began his assignment, the business was already progressing, and turnover was steadily increasing at a moderate pace. But the management wanted to accelerate development and take a larger market share in the European market. Jörgen was given great responsibility for this venture, but also great trust and free hands to develop the sales and marketing teams.

Jörge’'s 3 P’s – A structure for heart and brain

Jörgen had worked for a long time previously as a sales manager, but now he needed to take his assignment to a new level. He believes that it’s just as important to work with the heart as with the brain when it comes to sales. Three mottos emerged from this:
• Pride – Feeling proud of what we do
• Passion – When there’s fire in the eyes of a salesperson who passes through the door
• Performance – The processes and structure in CRM are how we process the customers
New sales process based on value-based sales
Together with Mindit, we developed a new sales process that’s fundamentally based on value-based sales.
“In Sweden, we let Mindit train all salespeople during the pandemic and we wanted to show that it was an important investment; we played live in a conference room with room for 350 people, even though there were only 17 of us!”
It has since become very useful that we developed a structured and documented sales process. Not least when new salespeople have to be trained. It has become so central that we have translated it into all different languages for our subsidiaries.
 

60% increased sales and Export Hermes

As an effect of a positive market development, many new deals and several different measures, sales have increased by a total of 60% since 2019. In 2020, it received the Export Hermes award (An award for established successful export companies), which is one of several receipts for making things very right. 
Result of working consistently and following up on the investment
All salespeople in Sweden went through three training modules and then we followed up the initiative by implementing it in our foreign sales teams. It has been well received and the results are coming gradually. Some take on different parts of the message in this step by step, but it is always moving forward!
Great confidence has led to a 25% annual increase in total turnover
Between 2017 and 2020, ESBE saw an annual increase of approximately 8% in its total turnover. The last two years have been around 25%.
“It has been a fantastic journey and I am so grateful for the trust and the opportunities I have been given to develop sales at ESBE.”
“Live value-based selling in everything we do”
We incorporate the same structure into our company presentations, product presentations and other market communication. It gives the sellers an extra push to adopt a new methodology.
It worked very well for both wholesalers and OEM sellers.
Choose the projects that we really want and go all in to win
When I started at ESBE, we had a hit rate in OEM deals of 30% from lead to closed deal. Then we chose to focus on 3 customer areas and not run on everything. Together with all other measures it led to an increased hit rate of 70%!
Our own development matched what was happening in the outside world
Our focus on three customer segments increased our market shares within these segments. This, in combination with the energy transition in Europe and a kind of “Putin effect”, has taken the company on a fantastic journey.
 

From unknown to local pride and well-known on the world market

We worked a lot on pride through employer branding – created videos and internal communication, with the aim of increasing pride and passion for ESBE and for what you do every day. I think you have to start there, before you go out and do everything else right.

ESBE has always been well known in the nearby municipality but relatively unknown in the region otherwise. We have developed our marketing communications and we now have over 17,000 followers on social media. This has paid off! From being relatively unknown, we are now a bit of a local celebrity that creates pride; I started to understand it when the local radio in Jönköping got in touch and wanted to do a report on ESBE. The ultimate receipt was when we became 1 of 20 companies that received Deloitte’s and Nasdaq’s award – Sweden’s Best Managed Companies for the third year in a row.
“It felt absolutely incredible to see the ESBEs logo on Nasdaq’s arched screen in Times Square in New York. This trip has been anything but fair! ”

Do you have any tips for other managers in a similar role to yours?
●    You must first understand what needs to be done, and then do it
●    Work with both heart and brain with your employees:
The concrete and theoretical can feel easy, but you have to get the feeling too!
●    As a sales manager, you are more of a businessman than a salesperson – that’s where value-based sales thinking comes in to create higher profitability in your business.