01. Copperberg Podcast
Episode 07
Aftermarket and Service in Focus: 2024 Review & 2025 Forecast
Running a smart and agile manufacturing operation
In this special year-end episode, we reflect on the trends, challenges, and innovations that defined aftermarket services in 2024 and look ahead to 2025, exploring growth drivers and potential disruptors in the industry.
02. CONTENT
Our guest, Lisa Hellqvist, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Copperberg, shares her expert perspective, drawing from years of tracking the aftermarket sector’s evolution and countless conversations with industry leaders.
Key Topics Covered in This Episode
- 2024 Trends and Challenges in Aftermarket Services
Discover the key themes that emerged this year, including the critical role of resilience in overcoming disruptions and adaptability in managing rapid change. Lisa shares a compelling example of how a mid-sized manufacturer turned supply chain delays into an opportunity by adopting 3D printing and reimagining their service strategy. - Workforce Challenges: Balancing Upskilling and Digital Transformation
How companies are addressing the talent gap while navigating digital transformation. From blended workforce strategies to creative approaches like VR-driven gamification and “returnships,” Lisa shares surprising strategies that are helping companies upskill their teams and build a digitally competent workforce. - Evolving B2B Customers: The Rise of the Informed Buyer
An exploration of how B2B customers are becoming more demanding, informed, and focused on long-term value and sustainability. Lisa paints a vivid picture of today’s customer expectations and assesses how well the industry has adapted, identifying where companies excel and where there’s room for improvement. - 2025 Outlook: Growth Drivers, AI Assistance, and Circular Economy
A look ahead at the biggest growth opportunities for aftermarket services in 2025, including predictive maintenance, circular economy models, and AI-powered service assistants. Lisa shares a bold prediction for how AI will transform service delivery while emphasizing the importance of aligning value-driven strategies with customer needs.
03. Speakers
Copperberg Conversations on Manufacturing Matters is your go-to podcast for candid discussions with the industry’s top thinkers and innovators.
04. Listen now
Aftermarket and Service in Focus: 2024 Review & 2025 Forecast
Throughout the episode, Lisa provides actionable insights, real-world examples, and thoughtful analysis, offering listeners a roadmap for tackling challenges and seizing opportunities in 2025.
05. Transcript
Nina Roper Yearwood (00:31)
Hello there and welcome to Copperberg Conversations on Manufacturing Matters. I’m your host, Nina Roper Yearwood from Copperberg, saying “Guten Tag!” from Germany. Wherever you’re tuning in from, I hope you’re having a good day.
As we wrap up 2024, we thought it would be a good idea to, you know, sit back a little bit and reflect on the year that was for aftermarket services and kind of also take a look ahead at what’s in store for 2025.
And who better to walk us through this than somebody who knows the aftermarket industry inside and out. That is of course, Copperberg’s Managing Director, Lisa Hellqvist. So hi Lisa! She’s been following the evolution of this space since 2009 and brings a wealth of insight from her many years of experience.
So before we actually really start, let me just give you a quick introduction of who Lisa is. After earning her MBA in Business Administration, Economics and Marketing from Stockholm University, Lisa worked in the construction industry before transitioning into the events world.
Fast forward a few years and she co-founded Copperberg in 2012 where she’s been leading the charge ever since. Hello, Lisa! Welcome back to the show!
Lisa Hellqvist (02:02)
Hi Nina!
Nina Roper Yearwood (02:03)
It’s so good to see you again! Yeah, I’m so happy to see you again. And you know, just get the chance to pick your brain and learn from you.
Lisa Hellqvist (02:09)
Yeah, I start feeling like a regular on this. It’s good to be back as always and you know, I’m looking forward to this episode and where we’re going to look a little bit in the rear view mirror and of course, hopefully also, you know, looking ahead and what we have, you know, the trends we picked up on and things we are actually looking forward to in 2025.
Nina Roper Yearwood (02:33)
Yeah, exactly. So Lisa, you’ve had countless conversations with industry leaders and practitioners throughout the year. So from your point of view, what trend or what recurring theme really stood out for aftermarket services?
Lisa Hellqvist (02:52)
It’s a really good question. I would say it’s mainly, it’s two words that comes to mind. One is resilience, which is something that I think we understood the importance of that during the pandemic. And it’s not just, you know, in our supply chains and building resilience supply chains and so forth, even though that is obviously, you know, origin of this word to a large extent is obviously to build supply chains and be resilient when the macroeconomic environment is rapidly shifting.
And I mean, it started a little bit with, or I think it maybe got to a high level during the pandemic where we couldn’t source raw materials, we couldn’t get the parts we were looking for. But then we’ve had other disruptions around the world from vessels getting stuck to the Russia-Ukraine war, you name it, right?
There has been quite a rapidly changing environment and businesses had to get used to this. So I think the second word that comes to mind because it goes hand in hand is adaptability. And that goes both within it’s inside out and outside in, right? So you both have to be able to react and change on the, you know, the rapidly evolving macro environment as I just touched upon, but you also have to build adaptability from within your own organization’s agility and your own organization’s ability to change.
Because we don’t necessarily know and can predict the future in our surroundings, but we know that at points we need to be able to change. So we need to kind of have a ducks in a row, if that makes sense. So adaptability is really, you know, something that comes into mind very quickly.
And I see it, everything from IT infrastructure to, you know, remote resources, the way they structure their teams, how the customer centricity all of a sudden has risen in importance. So there’s definitely resilience, adaptability.
Nina Roper Yearwood (04:56)
Wow, fantastic. So in connection to that, can you share with us a moment or a specific little case study that you can cite that really captures the two main themes that you talked about?
Lisa Hellqvist (05:07)
I think some of the main things that comes to mind is a little bit when an organization rapidly responds to a sudden change, right? So I had this, I can’t mention names because they don’t know I’m talking about them in this podcast, but one example that do come to mind is mid-size kind of… I would say mid-size at least, industrial equipment manufacturer that we have had at many of our events. And I also spoke with the gentleman there a couple of days ago and they have been facing major delays in getting their parts from overseas. And this is something that is not just unique to the pandemic, which we saw firsthand for many of us, right?
But this was obviously something that was clearly impacting their ability to service their customers and their customers then equipment or installed base. So instead of just, you know, let’s say giving up and just, you know, send sorry, dear customers, I regret to inform you that, you know, we can’t do this scheduled service job.
They totally reinvented or reimagined their service model and they started investing in 3D printing technology to print some of the most common parts that they had. So not the most sophisticated rare items in their spare parts catalog, but some of those that are actually the foundation of most changes and most of the spare parts transactions, right?
So they started doing those and 3D printing those and they partnered with local suppliers. So they built an ecosystem around this and then started offering remote diagnostics and troubleshooting on top of that to reduce downtime. And I mean, they have just hockey stick evolution in terms of uptake in the market from their customers. And obviously they’re coming out of this winning. And that is a good indication of how things can really turn into an opportunity.
Crisis are always a good opportunity for change. This is a testament to that, I would say. So it’s one of those things where they didn’t redo their whole parts catalog. They didn’t 3D print everything, but they, you know, could 3D print some of the most common parts and just that saved them a lot of customers I would say in the end because they could do the service jobs that was backlogged with the parts being sent to them overseas.
Nina Roper Yearwood (08:04)
It’s almost like a well-established truth, right? That every crisis will always jolt everyone, businesses, people, us as humans to really take a deep look inside and just see what works and what doesn’t and beyond that journey to transformation.
And Lisa, one thing I picked up on, on the many, many events that we’ve had, is that alongside this, you know, transformation, there’s, it always comes with challenges. There’s always a delicate balance. So you come from a challenge and then you transform, and then within that transformation, there’s also that challenge. And one thing that I always keep on hearing about is this upskilling the workforce, alongside harmonizing that essentially with digital transformation. So from your perspective, how are companies dealing with that?
Lisa Hellqvist (09:02)
Wow, that’s kind of the million dollar question. But it is really, I would say it’s a tough one in that sense because it is, you know, you have the digital ambition and willingness to change, but then also there is a human aspect to change, right? And there is this, you know, age gap in the workforce also that for many is, you know, quite prominent. But I mean, in, let’s just face it, companies realize they need to, embrace technologies like AI, IoT or connected services in order to, you know, run with predictive analytics to stay competitive, right?
And even if it’s maybe not the holy grail in the service and maintenance for everybody, I think everyone, you know, agrees on that if we predict the problem before it occurs at our customer sites or with our installed base, we can limit the costs around the service delivery. So that’s like the bare minimum today that customers are also expecting this. I mean, predictions can be made in Excel, but it is obviously based on historical data.
But it is, of course, you know, way better if we can rely on efficient technologies, right? So we also need then skilled workers to be able to program, implement, manage these systems. And that is another type of skillset than maybe the ones we’ve seen traditionally from, you know, the engineering side, the technicians, et cetera, that are out on the field or in the field.
But what I’m seeing is a shift towards more blended approach to this, you know, companies are investing in training programs to upscale their existing workforce. But they’re also looking into new hires with different digital expertise. But I would say it’s not just about the digital expertise. It’s also about, you know, building some kind of culture where, and I think we discussed that in another, you know, episode where the information sharing is really something that you encourage and that you build the structure around your employees where they can and learn from each other and sort of transfer knowledge between both departmental boundaries and borders, as well as, you know, in systems, et cetera, right?
But we also need to look at soft skills when we hire people that fit our company culture. And it could be anything from, you know, what kind of problem solving do we want? What kind of communication style do we want? And any type of critical thinking.
I think that is becoming more and more important in this kind of hybrid environment between physical and digital components that we rely on when we do, you know, build our strategies and go with our decision making. So I think it’s really something to keep in mind that a blended approach is probably something that will be necessary.
And the more also the upskilling of the workforce is obviously something, but I also think that we sometimes miss the point on what efficiency can actually bring to the table for the existing workforce. And this is not about forcing them to do more admin. And if it has been presented that way and it is a tedious task then we haven’t as leaders been able to actually showcase what this does for them.
So I think it’s very important to let them be a part of the overall objective and goal. And it might be some nagging, you know, of course, but I think it’s important to think about your onboarding strategies as well, like internally, how do you build ambassadors to actually get this transformation in place? So I think that’s something that, you know, will have to be more invested in terms of the amount of digital transformation we’re seeing and how much, you know, the digital agenda and technology as such is on the forefront of everybody’s agenda. So it has to happen.
Nina Roper Yearwood (13:32)
So we’ve talked about, you know, best practices, right? And how this can be done. But of course, when you’re out there, sometimes, you know, how to execute it can also be different. Any innovative strategies that you thought that probably wouldn’t work, it surprised you actually, when they have proven this strategy quite effective.
Lisa Hellqvist (13:58)
I would say there’s two that I thought was slightly silly, because I think it’s a little bit a worn out word. It’s everywhere, but it’s the word of gamification. That’s actually something I’ve seen. I had a discussion, I think it was before summer, where I had a head of maintenance and field service speaking to me about how they have built a gamification program.
It is a little bit more advanced than just, you know, an app where you score points, but it is actually almost like a virtual reality environment. And this is something that is not far-fetched in the field service technicians, you know, daily life. So that’s something they’re quite acquainted to with, you know, VR kind of remote technology, you know, all of these type of assistance are there and they are there already, you know, these kinds of technologies, right?
So they had built in simulations basically where the technicians get to practice more advanced jobs in this virtual reality without of course not risking to damage anything. And that was also something that they used in the mentor program with the older technicians actually also simulating some of the customer sites, you know, they could transfer knowledge that way. But when I first heard the concept of gamification, I thought it was some kind of, scoring, you know, a little bit like, you know, how they promote, you have kids, you know, how they promote that some apps on the iPad is, they’re so good for your child because it has gamification aspects that increases learning, et cetera.
So I didn’t think much of it until he explains it in this way to me. And then also actually, taking these gamification courses and et cetera also came with different benefits and like a scoring, like a career plan. So it was also tied into, you know, one of the other main issues is that we tend to invest a lot of money into training the field service technicians, but they also often jump between jobs. I think the average length for a new technician is to stay like two years.
So it becomes a very hefty investment if they’re going to, you know, change to someone else. So this is a way of also, you know, if this ties into the career path, then this is obviously a way of incentivizing them to stay as well. Then another one that I’ve heard of that I haven’t really, you know, seen much of yet in practicality, but I think it is something that’s coming more and more is actually you bring back people that are either they’re out of the work market for some reason, it could be that they stayed at home with children, quite common with the female group.
But then of course it could be more senior members that retired early for some reason, or it could be other things, could be longer sick leaves, for example. And I think they are referred to like return ships or similar, but where you actually bring qualified personnel and adapt their, let’s say their job description based on their capacity, of course. But it’s a way of getting very senior and qualified staff back in a more, I would say it’s almost like a gig economy set up then. But these individuals may otherwise be overlooked, but they actually have the capacity and are highly qualified.
Nina Roper Yearwood (17:38)
So all these efforts all can be tied back to, of course, the goal of being able to better serve customers. That’s always the end goal, right? And so with that in mind, let’s turn our attention to that, Lisa. I’m actually very excited about this topic because I wanted to ask you how B2B customers have evolved this year what the priorities are and if you can describe them as a character or characters, who would they be?
Lisa Hellqvist (18:16)
That’s an interesting question. I mean, I’m not sure who they would be. But I mean, maybe that, you know, picky British aunt in some kind of, you know, romance movie that, you know, wants to test every cake before the wedding before she has decided what the bride should like.
Something like that, but joking aside, it’s really more and more that, you know, B2B customers are definitely becoming more demanding. I think the way we do business and the way we look for who to do business with is way more sophisticated than it was just, you know, a couple of years ago.
And the reason for being that is that we have way more transparency so we can compare things easier. We are, you know, not just looking for quick fixes, we’re looking for more proactive services, of personalized solutions. I would even go as far as saying the new generation would also look for some kind of almost seamless digital experience, right? And they are really then what I would describe as an informed customer. They’ve done their research, they know what they want and or at least what they want to accomplish most often and they’re not afraid to shop around anymore for what is the best value and the best value proposition for us.
I also think they’re more increasingly at least focused on sustainability and social responsibility. So companies that also can demonstrate that they have this as a commitment, they obviously have values that are of an advantage when they go head-to-head with someone else in a tender or for example if the customer has to choose between multiple.
I also think that you know being a B2B customer we have to think about the nature in that is number one you’re not spending your own money, you’re spending someone else’s money and that might actually, you know, lead to you being reckless with the money but that’s not the case because I think in these larger contracts, what you have to do is you have to represent the whole unit when you go in and shop for the organization, which means it has to tick more boxes than maybe you as an individual, you know, would have needed, right? So you do your due diligence on who to, you know, enter into contracts with.
And it’s not only price anymore. Definitely not. It’s way more long-term, way more service oriented and kind of what’s in it for me mentality. So of course, depending on the industry, but in the industry where we are mainly operating, where we have OEMs, industrial equipment, things with a longer lifespan that actually has a service lifecycle as well, and are just not something consumables almost that, you know, you throw them away when you’re done with them, then you might chop on price, right? That’s a different thing. But here, it’s definitely the whole life cycle that counts.
Nina Roper Yearwood (21:42)
Lisa, being that this is the year-end episode, if you were to grade how well the industry has responded to this, has adapted to these needs, how do you grade us, the aftermarket services industry? Which parts did the industry excel at, and what areas require improvement?
Lisa Hellqvist (22:07)
I would say that’s the good news. I think everything is becoming more of a service economy, right? So the good news is that within aftermarket and service, everything we do breeds service. That’s always been our whole, you know, slogan. That’s what, you know, that’s where we thrive. It’s in the service domain, right? To add, you know, services to an existing product.
That’s the good news. So we know that that’s our bread and butter already. And I think the digital tools and platforms that we have improve customer communication, they improve service delivery, also offer way more flexible agreements and customized solutions to meet the rising customer needs and demands, right?
Then, however, there’s still a tendency, even though we know that we might be slightly more reactive than proactive. And I think this is where we need to be better at anticipating the customer needs and providing solutions before they even arise. And that’s also, it’s a need for, you know, greater transparency and communication throughout that whole lifecycle.
But I mean, it’s easy to say that we need to provide these solutions before the problems arise. Here is the toughest challenge is that we have to understand what the customer defines as value before we can present with a solution for them, right? And this is where I think the organizations lack the most is their ability to go into a kind of solution selling mode.
This is a skill set that if you’re going to do the textbook example of it, if you take solution selling, for example, which is more value-based selling, it’s not something that many of these organizations excel at. There are some better than others, but it’s often a glitch between the strategies around the aftermarket and the service and the way we actually present it to our customers, either through marketing or sales.
And I think this is something that needs to be improved. We need to be able to explain to our customers all this value that we have actually put together in our offices for them and thought about and been able to, you know, actually being this predictive or proactive in our service models also needs to come across to the customer.
Nina Roper Yearwood (24:49)
Fantastic! So, just to take this a step further, Lisa, what do you see are the biggest growth opportunities for the aftermarket sector?
Lisa Hellqvist (25:00)
Yeah. Okay, I think, you know, slightly boring answer, but it is, you know, we’re in the middle of this, I would say, transformation transition, call it whatever, but it’s one of the biggest ones that have actually, it’s been spoken about for a long time, but it’s finally here and happening, I would say, it is the predictive maintenance, remote service and servitization. That kind of all goes hand in hand.
And I think, you know, the increasing complexity of equipment with both the physical and the digital components and also the growing demand from the customer base to pay for uptime is really driving manufacturers to present proactive service solutions, right? Where they almost say, okay, this is the outcome, the output you buy from the equipment.
We’re also seeing that companies are leveraging this data analytics to optimize their service operations, which I was talking about earlier, which is also way of identifying new revenue streams, of course. Data gives us knowledge and with knowledge, we can also look at our service portfolio and see where we can sort of be better in terms of maybe having more customer meetings or et cetera, right? So we can have more service intervals basically.
Circular economy is one of them. I mean, we often, it’s interesting, we say sustainability quite a lot in this organization, as you know. Circular economy is a huge aspect of that. And especially within aftermarket, I would say, because it really makes sense within the spare parts domain to reduce waste and extend the lifetime of your products.
So I’m pretty sure we see an even growing focus on repair, remanufacturing, refurbishment and these kinds of services. The missing link, which I think will rise to the agenda is the one I touched upon in the earlier answer is the kind of sophistication of the go-to-market services, where we’re aligning the commercial value proposition with all these out uptime outcome circular economy, you know, what’s the value of a more sustainable aftermarket and service delivery?
And we will actually be better or I hope that this is good, but I see the tendencies in mind, you know, that this is where actually people pinpoint that they’re lacking strength is in this go-to-market strategy. So we have to equip our sales teams or service sales teams with the ability to sell on value. We need to price accordingly. We need to make sure we have a strong marketing operation on the services. We need to look at all sales channels online, in person, and we need to make sure that the customer is the center of our attention so we know that the value proposition hits right. And I think that is going to be more and more an evolving factor as every product becomes more and more of a service. It just has to be something that follows in the evolution of this.
Nina Roper Yearwood (28:27)
Hmm, very, very curious because I see that more and more as we talk about growth opportunities, value comes up quite a lot here. Is this something that is in your view that is going to be a big trend coming into the new year?
Lisa Hellqvist (28:49)
I speak about value because I think it is the right term for it. I see buzzwords, value is also a buzzword nowadays, to be honest. We always say, yeah, we’ve added value, added services, but we haven’t really defined if the customer is willing to prepare for it. And also, we have a whole event on pricing. So I also know that willingness to pay in value is not at all the same thing.
But that’s another podcast in itself. I mean, value to me is something where, and I come from sales and marketing background where we’ve always built our communication style, our whole sales methodology around solution selling and value based selling and what we call value led matching, which is actually you need to identify the customer need. And you need to present the benefit, the feature and the advantage of what you’re selling in a way where the customer understands this, right? And it’s not necessarily always so that your assumption of what the customer need is the same as what the customer need. You have to talk to them. And this is something we see that we have to, or my opinion is that we have to evolve this. We have to be better.
If we’re going to add services to our installed base, we are going to do all these fantastic things with the technology that we have enabled, then we also need to be able to commercially explain this, otherwise it loses its, you know, actual standpoint in the market, right? So we need to be better at this.
I think, you know, service organizations really should look at how they incentivize the service sales teams and is services sold by a specific team or is it under your product sales or equipment sales team, then we probably need to look at how that is embedded as well. But there is definitely going to be a folk layer around the commercial structure, because the lines between all these divisions, as we now produce actual physical products with the possibility of selling services and the kind of digital and label meant on top of it, that is uptime and et cetera.
The lines are blurred within what’s the products, what’s the service, right? It’s embedded from the start. So we need to really be able to do a different kind of sales approach. And it might not be the same team. We might have to change the structure, but I think it’s worth looking at.
Nina Roper Yearwood (31:21)
Mm-hmm. Wow, that is, those are really big topics that will come up this 2025. Like you mentioned earlier, as we become more sophisticated, technology is more sophisticated, being able to collect more data. So that’s a lot of things that we’ve covered today, Lisa. So as we begin to wrap up, could you just, my question is gonna be a little bit out there, but I will throw it anyway.
Can you just make one bold prediction for 2025 in the realm of aftermarket services?
Lisa Hellqvist (32:00)
One thing that I think really is on our doorstep, but we haven’t really seen the true effects of yet, but I know they’re in pilot projects, they are sort of coming out, it’s almost there. I’ve seen a few demonstrations of different kind of versions of this is the sort of AI-powered assistance, you know, services systems.
And there are many, you know, systems they all call themselves have a co-pilot, is a common name for example. And I mean, these AI-driven solutions really can read a lot of information and they are trained now with a totally different or a purpose built structure that actually allows them to, depending on, of course, the individual and et cetera, but in the examples I’ve seen, the co-pilot here can go in and read through SLAs, it can read through everything, right? Which means it becomes a very intelligent team member that can even, you know, not only give actual solutions in the chat as it’s happening to the infill technician or even the customer if it’s a self-service type of job, right? But where it can be, you know, it can give exact parts, it could give exact, you know, recommendations step by step. But it’s also smart enough now to combine that kind of service ticket data, if you may, with, for example, the SLAs that are lying behind. Obviously, you have to make sure it has access to these.
But it could also say like, this specific job isn’t included in your current service level agreement. Should I add this to your bill? So there’s an intelligent upselling function to this as well, where in my opinion, this is a no brainer. We’re quite used to this from the consumer side of things, right?
So as long as someone asks if they can charge me and I approve it, then there’s nothing, you know, there’s nothing weird. And the more sophisticated AI solutions like we see today, they actually behave human almost, right? So it’s not like this robot that you have to speak to at the airline that can’t help you with anything.
I mean, that would be the death of the AI-powered service assistant, right? So that is not good enough. This needs to be someone who can actually simulate a service technician to the extent that it’s perceived as an actual person, right? I’m not saying we should say it’s a person if it’s not, but the experience needs to be on the same up to par with speaking to an individual.
So it needs to be able to look for information. It needs to be able to give you actionable results. And that is coming. So that’s something that I’m really looking forward to. I mean, that’s one of the things that I really think will shape this industry quite a lot. And with these technologies, the AI and IoT and all of this, the one thing that it does, which I think is an interesting shift that we will see, I mean, maybe 50 years from now, we look back at this is that in order to have all these data and be able to do all these recommendations, we have to digitize everything. So even historical data. So in one sense, we are also harmonizing data points and entries and deciding on kind of a framework for how to collect and store data because we need these technologies to tap into that data lake.
And that is something that I think we for a long, long time will be forever grateful for because you do that job once in one sense and set the minimum viable components that your datasets need to have and you kind of decide on this framework for your organization and then you kind of start building from there.
Nina Roper Yearwood (36:25)
Almost like, I can already imagine how much work that takes like archiving almost, right, like being in a library.
Lisa Hellqvist (36:35)
I wouldn’t like to do it, that’s for sure!
Nina Roper Yearwood (36:37)
So Lisa, we are now at the end of this episode and we touched upon a lot of really interesting topics here and for our listeners out there who want to keep their eye out on the aftermarket sector, who should they follow, what should they be reading to really get the pulse of all of these?
Lisa Hellqvist (37:04)
That is a great question. I mean, obviously Copperberg, myself, my colleague at Field Service News, of course, is, I mean, we have a platform that actually, you know, I engage with people, it’s not always my own original content, but I have the luxury of being, you know, supported by many in the community. And we have the platform to actually redistribute this knowledge.
So I would say that Copperberg is a great place to start. But if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably found us already. But I mean, one thing that I think people should consider is there are plenty of good, you know, service networks and smaller events out there in Europe. And I think they’re worth looking into for any service professional.
And I mean, I think, if anyone has any questions on who to look for, just contact us and we can guide you as well. Not only our own events. After this long in the industry, you also know who is really good at what they do, right? So there is quite a few that you can pick and choose from.
My recommendation in this would be that opt for a, if you’re going to events, because that is of course a brilliant way of getting the mind share is that go to events that has, in my opinion, a smaller format. And I happen to know there’s quite a few of those in Europe and they’re good. I think that gives more value to the kind of at least senior members of the service departments that we are normally engaging with. That mind share between more senior people is something that is really enabled by the format. So I would say that’s something I recommend.
I would also then recommend that maybe look at experts that are experts within the topical, you know, areas where you find an interest. For example, I mentioned value. We’ve had at Copperberg a whole lineup of people that are value experts, for example. We also have collaborations with people that focus on value-based selling. We have, you know, people focused on AI and the sort of business opportunities around that. Could be anything from academia to more individual experts, I would say.
And I think it’s more matter of what is the keywords that I need to focus on and then start looking at the experts in that area. It’s quite eye-opening to study some of these topics because they really grow quite large on you, but you realize the impact of some of these mindset changes. For example, around value, I think that’s an important one for people to look into.
And try to stay ahead of the game by actually consuming use. I think it’s important. Maybe we can add a link afterwards in the podcast and with some of the authors and books and other events that we recommend.
Nina Roper Yearwood (40:33)
Definitely, yeah, that would be a nice little list too, you know, once we get time to, you know, some headspace as well to reflect. So yeah.
Lisa Hellqvist (40:41)
Yeah, yeah, of course. But I mean, otherwise, as I said, go to Copperberg’s website or our LinkedIn profile. We collaborate so much that we have direct links to anybody there. So, but I mean, of course, the academia here is quite strong and they are also focusing quite a lot on building, you know, different kinds of hubs and networks for this. I would definitely recommend the audience to look there.
And then of course, don’t ignore your solution providers and their ability to actually do workshops and these things. We have been asked to host a few at times. And I must say that it’s always impressive also in these smaller room settings. So again, smaller is good.
So that would be my main recommendation and you know, otherwise online consume whatever you have time to consume would also be my recommendation. Look for your industry peers if you’re going to sign up for a webinar. Then you know, you might learn something. So those will be my best advice.
Nina Roper Yearwood (41:57)
Okay, thank you, Lisa, for another insightful conversation with you.
Lisa Hellqvist (42:00)
Thank you!
Nina Roper Yearwood (42:02)
I really enjoy having these sessions with you. I feel like I get, I don’t know, 10 IQ points more whenever I talk to you.
Lisa Hellqvist (42:12)
I hope I don’t lose mine! I’m just kidding.
Nina Roper Yearwood (42:14)
No, of course not! So, to our listeners out there, I hope you had as many takeaways as I had from this conversation. And thank you for joining us for this year-end episode. We hope you have a lovely end to the year 2024 and an even greater start to the new year 2025.
Lisa Hellqvist (42:37)
Yes, see you all in the new year!
Nina Roper Yearwood (42:38)
See you all!
