Academy VESPA paves the way for future success

Following the organizational realignment to regions and a sharper focus on development in the Weather and Environment business area, we started VESPA, the Vaisala Environmental Sales Professionals Academy or sales competence development program, in the spring of 2017.

“The regional organization was established to accelerate our customer focused growth. To achieve this objective, we also have to evolve in the way we work. Naturally, the next step was to start investing in our sales organization and its competence development. With the right actions, we can take drastic steps forward in the way we drive business growth,” says Kenneth Hörhammer, Vice President Weather and Environment Europe, leading sales development initiatives globally.

VESPA is a module-based, global development program, which focuses on sales skills development in the Weather and Environment business area.

In addition to developing the business-critical sales skills of our sales professionals, we invest in developing the sales management and leadership skills of our sales leaders. Understanding that one approach does not fit all, an extra effort is put to adapt the content of the training modules to best meet the needs of different regions, teams, and individuals.

Taking advantage of various learning methods, from face-to-face trainings and workshops to e-learning, inspiring articles and practicing, we want to ensure that the participants find the development program intriguing and professionally valuable.

Learning is always about changing behavior, doing things differently from before. And it is fairly easy to bypass the learnings after a training and go back to the same old routines – unless there’s a clear plan for avoiding this, as we have in VESPA. Our sales team leaders have a crucial role in ensuring implementation of VESPA learnings into daily operations through active coaching and follow up.

“VESPA is a great investment in our sales people and their personal competence development. So, I’m not surprised that the program has been very well received. Our internal and external trainers are giving their best to deliver world class training, and together we develop the VESPA curriculum to best meet our needs now and in the future,” says Tiina Baniba-Atoko, VESPA Program Manager.