Case: Okmetic – KEY TO GROWTH AND SKILLS TO GROWTH

STRONG GROWTH IN SALES

“We are on course for a record result this year. Our collaboration with Trainers’ House has contributed to the achievement of this goal. Trainers’ House helped us to focus our day-to-day work on the agreed pipeline and our people are now concentrating on the right things. Okmetic’s global team has spent a record amount of time together to build a new sales-driven culture,” said SVP Anna-Riikka Vuorikari-Antikainen from Okmetic in late 2018.

“The tools and new operating methods from the training programme we implemented with Trainers’ House are prominent aspects of our daily, weekly and monthly activities. Reorganizing our sales has given our salespeople more time to spend on major customers. Our sales coordinators have boldly taken on a more independent role and contacted customers directly, which is something they did not do before,” says Kukka Vilkuna, Senior Manager, Sales Development at Okmetic.

TOWARDS GROWTH TARGETS THROUGH SALES DEVELOPMENT

“We have ambitious growth targets and we were thinking about the elements we could use to grow our operations. We wanted to develop our sales to match our customers’ new needs. There have been many changes in our industry and customer consolidation, for example, has required us to come up with new operating methods,” Vuorikari-Antikainen explains.

”We needed to reorganise our sales, refine our operating models and introduce new tools and a more systematic approach for our team. We chose Trainers’ House as our partner in this effort,” Vilkuna says.

”We are a global player and our team members are based around the world. At first, I wasn’t convinced that a Finnish company could be our partner in change. Nevertheless, Trainers’ House had experience working with international businesses, and we were particularly impressed by their practical plan on how to implement the change,” Vuorikari-Antikainen adds.

CONCRETE AND UNDERSTANDABLE IDEAS

The ”Key to Growth” and “Skills to Growth” training programmes included reshaping Okmetic’s operating models related to saleswork with major customers and customer relationship management. The programmes also involved coaching on sales culture. Roles related to developing deeper customer relationships were also redesigned.

”Trainers’ House has taken a very concrete and systematic approach right from the start. The entire change process and the tools that our salespeople were coached on were all highly practical. The short coaching videos produced on the BEAT change management platform have been useful and I am particularly pleased that we can revisit them at any time,” Vilkuna says.

“The background work Trainers’ House did at the beginning was very comprehensive. I have been very satisfied with the communication during the cooperation as well as the training content and our joint meetings. In major cooperation projects, we want to adjust just about everything along the way. Trainers’ House was very receptive to our style of doing things in this regard, and things moved forward just the way we wanted. Based on our experience, I would recommend Trainers’ House as a partner to others as well,” Vuorikari-Antikainen concludes.