Earlier today, as part of Stockholm Media Week, SSI was selected as Sales Organization of the Year by a unanimous jury from Sveriges Mediebyråer (Sweden’s Media Agencies).
“This is incredibly gratifying,” says Anders Nylander, CEO of SSI, who accepted the award together with a large group of pleased and proud colleagues.
Here are the criteria in the category:
To be nominated in the Stockholm Media Awards category Sales Organization of the Year, a media company’s sales organization needs to have created significant benefit for its advertisers, as well as facilitated and enhanced the work of the media agencies. The sales organization must have carried out their assignments over time, in an innovative, efficient and customer-friendly way.
And this is how the jury explained its choice:
In order to obtain the full potential of solution and offering in which customer and effect are central – in today’s fragmented media world – a media sales organization must assemble its offering across all platforms. An understanding of the customer’s business is required, plus a drive, curiosity and a deeply-grounded willingness to solve the customer’s challenges. Doing this requires innovation, keen awareness and, not least, proactivity. A prerequisite for landing a first place is to also drive the development in the market. This year’s winner has shown that they have succeeded in putting in place a new efficient organization, with new technical solutions and data management! Their understanding of how their customers want to be treated is reflected in how they have organized themselves and laid the groundwork for an efficient, innovative and agile sales organization. They have also shown that they understood the importance of assembling their portfolio to utilize the business value potential to the fullest, which they have succeeded in doing, and this has given rise to both innovation and passion.
SSI is Schibsted Sverige’s internal sales company, and the abbreviation is for Schibsted Sales and Inventory. SSI sells advertisements for Aftonbladet, SvD, Blocket, TV.nu, Klart.se, Lajkat and Omni.
“In January, we were named Sales Organization of the Year at the Schibsted Sales Awards and became the best across Schibsted Media Group. Now we have won in the same category at Stockholm Media Week – and are the best in Sweden. A fantastic year,” says Anders Nylander.
Why do you think you won?
“We conducted a major reorganization again in January last year, in which we genuinely put advertisers and media agencies in focus. All customers have a single dedicated salesperson responsible for selling the entire Schibsted offering, and this is supported by a strong organization with AdOps, product specialists, analysts etc., all moving in the same direction. We talk a lot about the Customer Experience internally, and it seems as though we have managed to find a working method appreciated by both media agencies and advertisers. We generally have more focus on overall business transactions than just strictly selling, and this has yielded results.”
What does the award mean for you?
“Very much, of course, not least because there are a lot of purchasers from the media agencies on the jury who meet our salespeople and employees ‘in action’. For us, it is proof that we are working in the right manner and that, despite being a large organization, we have a personal touch in our customer relations.”
How are you going to celebrate this?
“Raoul (Grünthal) has invited everyone at SSI to an after-work gathering on Monday – which we are looking forward to!”