The ninth workshop in the Creatives programme was held on 27 September together with Christian Malmsten from Säljlabbet. The focus of this meeting was sales and sustainable business.

The companies had to start by identifying challenges in their own sales work and some of the companies expressed that the first contact can be difficult.

All sales involve not only a number of transactions but also a certain number of encounters with negative feedback from which we can learn a lot. The more customers we meet, the more we learn about what questions to ask and how to package our offer. Be aware that it may take many meetings before you get the number of closures you are aiming for and remember that for every meeting you do, you will only get better and better," says Christian.

In addition to looking at the specific challenges faced by companies, Christian reviewed the 'customer process', i.e. what is the customer's perspective. The customer journey or customer process can be divided into different phases as shown below:

• Needs phase - what do I (the customer) need?
• Options - what are the options (for me as a customer)?
• Comparison phase
• Decision phase
• The execution/delivery/implementation/mission phase - where customer benefits (time, money and/or quality) are delivered.
• Change over time

After the "customer process", it was time for a review of the "sales process", which is also divided into different phases and can be summarised as follows:

• Identifying the target group
• Contact
• First meeting
• Second meeting
• Implementation

Participants received practical tips on how to conduct the process in a professional manner. Until the follow-up to the workshop in December, participants have been tasked with testing the new skills in their own organisations.