In the fast-paced global business world, it is more important than ever to have a forward-looking strategy. BabyBjörn took this to heart and started an exciting journey in 2023. They brought together their best sales leaders from around the world to reinforce their expertise in customer planning and smart sales strategies.
With markets stretching across Asia to Europe and North America, they faced a challenge. But they had a clear vision – to equip their leaders with the knowledge needed to successfully navigate today’s complex business climate. Together with Mercuri International, they developed a global sales training focused on Key Account Management and Value Based Selling. The program was based on a hybrid methodology, combining digital modules with virtual and classroom-based training sessions.
The challenge
In 2022, BabyBjörn started an exciting development journey for its top sales managers from EMEA, Japan, Korea, South East Asia, China and North America.
The goal was simple – to strengthen the strategic customer planning skills of sales managers and inspire them to create innovative, value-added business solutions.
These selected leaders would also need to improve their ability to renegotiate agreements in a constantly changing global environment.
“The collaboration with Mercuri International, that started in 2023, has helped us develop and harmonize the way we work as a brand in a global market and has given us the tools and knowledge to deliver stronger value to our partners and consumers internationally.”
Martin Eisele, Global Sales Director, BabyBjörn
The solution implemented by BabyBjörn and Mercuri
Working closely with BabyBjörn’s Global Sales Director, Martin Eisele, Mercuri International implemented a Key Account Management program based on hybrid learning, consisting of digital training mixed with physical and virtual classroom training.
The digital part of the program allowed participants to delve into theories and concepts in advance. This allowed them to focus more on exchanging experiences during classroom training, which also led to stronger teamwork in real work situations. The aim of the training was to achieve a long-term development of the participants’ skills. Therefore, Sales Labs were organized, where participants worked together in small groups on various challenging cases. This ensured a constant growth in knowledge, which in turn led to increased performance. In the meantime, participants used theories and models they learned during the training.
“The content of the training and how it also included our own tools, templates and processes made it very hands-on and quick to implement in our daily operations and we can quickly see improved results in how we work with sales.”
Martin Eisele, Global Sales Director, BabyBjörn
The outcome
Post-collaboration results for BabyBjörn
- Increased knowledge of strategic customer planning in participants’ business areas
- Improved ability to create value-based business solutions
- Increased team spirit and better cooperation in the sales teams
Martin Eisele, Global Sales Director at BabyBjörn says:
This journey with Mercuri International has helped us in so many ways. Not only by improving and expanding our skills and competences as sales people, but also by getting closer to each other, collaborating, sharing experiences and learning from each other and asking for help.
As the training took place after the global pandemic, and we also had the chance to meet as a group, it naturally provided a lot of ‘extra’ value – but even after the actual training sessions, the interaction has continued.
We, like many other companies, face new opportunities and challenges as a result of the rapid evolution of the consumer goods industry, the increasing availability and transparency of information, both for customers and consumers, and the increase in competition. This is also why it is so important for us to invest in our people to ensure that we can add value to our customers and that we can support our brand-driven and profitable growth expectations that we have as a company.
The way the training was organized, physical and virtual classroom training mixed with digital training and Sales Labs workshops, has been very well received by the participants. Also the fact that we work from real cases and customers, and integrate our existing tools and processes from BabyBjörn, made it very compatible in the daily work. One challenge we had was that we did this in our global organization with teams based in Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong. Europe and the US – but the hybrid approach made it possible.
BabyBjörn is a Swedish family-owned company that has been putting family first since 1961, manufacturing safe and well-designed quality products for babies and parents worldwide. For decades, they have listened to and learned from parents and experts how to create parenting must-haves that can be used and loved for a long time. They are passionate about simplifying everyday life, promoting closeness and helping families enjoy all the precious moments of the toddler years.
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