Perspective
A skilled salesperson knows how to interpret the customer’s needs to production and knows which products best support the client’s business, says Ville Valio , Area Sales Director, Europe, for Metsä Fibre.
The art of forecasting
VILLE VALIO, Photo: Elmeri Elo
When you are selling sawn timber, you are the link between the customer and production. You succeed by understand- ing the customer’s requirements and the rules of business, as well as the ins and outs of sawn timber production. It is not enough to know all about what you are selling. A good salesperson recognises the effects of business con- ditions on their own company and the customer. They also make sure that production knows what the customer needs and wants, and that deliveries take place as agreed. This calls for a broad range of skills – and perhaps also the right kind of personality. You could argue that sawn timber is one of the most complex industrial products to sell. There is hardly any mass production. In one way or another, the products are precisely customised. The underlying material is natural so it is impossible to control every part of the production process. There are lots of interdependencies. I often say that everything in sawn timber production and sales is based on forecasts: about raw material, about production, and about the predictions that determine what the customer wants to buy.
This means a skilled salesperson must also be something of a fortune-teller. Fortunately, modern technology helps us a lot. In recent years, we have worked hard at Metsä Fibre to improve our own forecasting and to help our customers make better predictions. We have done some of this work with Metsä Group’s Wood Supply, to improve forecasting and control in wood procurement. I reckon we are now the best in the world at this. On the production side, we are one of the first to have introduced X-ray log grading and various camera sorting systems throughout production. We are now compiling process data into a package that will help develop our own process and offer our customers more detailed information about our products. We are also going to offer personal technical customer service and new digital services to our customers. The on- line Timber Marketplace for sawn timber and the Track & Trace service are already in use. With the Rauma sawmill coming online in the autumn 2022, all of these features are rising to a level that no other sawmill has reached. •
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