Sales and customer service is something that Paul Viio thinks highly of. Early on he realized that you can create your own limitless success through sales.
Achieving success in complex B2B sales requires that you have the ability to put yourself in the situation of the customer, understand the market, that you continuously develop your knowledge and competences, and that you are resilient. In addition, you need a strong will to succeed.
Career Shift – Or Rather, Career Lift
After having worked and held various positions in sales for over 15 years across Europe, in the fall of 2007 he decided to pursue a doctoral degree, which he earned only four years later (while concurrently working half-time in sales), in 2011 in selling and sales management. His way of combining practical experience from sales with the latest theories in the area makes Paul rather unique, and results in real sales competence.
Paul earned his doctoral degree in marketing from the prestigious business school Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland. The topic of his thesis was relationship orientation of the sales process in a business-to-business context and his study contributes to the relationship marketing and sales management research in particular.
Professorships in Selling & Sales Management
Previously, Paul has held two professorships concurrently in selling and sales management in two top-ranked business schools: Professor of Practice in Selling and Sales Management at Aalto University School of Business (2013-2018) and Evli Assistant Professor of Selling and Sales Management at Hanken School of Economics (2015-2020) in Helsinki, Finland.
Additionally, Paul was the first to hold the distinguished position Evli Professor of Practice in Selling and Sales Management at Hanken School of Economics (2021-2023) in Helsinki, Finland.
He has also held positions such as Director of sales research at Hanken School of Economics, Senior researcher at Aalto University, Research fellow at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden. Furthermore, he has held positions such as Visiting professor, Visiting lecturer, and Guest researcher at universities in various countries, including Austria, Finland, Monaco, Norway, Sweden and the USA.
In the academic community he has been active as a researcher, managed scientific sales research projects and taught and supervised students (levels: Ph.D., eMBA, MBA, M.Sc. and B.Sc.) in selling and sales management, including value-based selling and sales management, personal selling, seller-buyer relationship management, value pricing management and value-based pricing at universities and business schools internationally. He is still active as author of academic and managerial articles on selling & sales management and seller-buyer relationship management.
Publications in Scientific Journals
Paul's sales research has been published in highly respected scientific journals such as Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business to Business Marketing. He acts as reviewer for the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management and Industrial Marketing Management. His list of publications and research profile can be found on ResearchGate.net.
Focusing on Helping Companies
After having dividing his time between academia and helping companies for over 10 years, Paul decided in the beginning of 2021 to again focus his time and efforts primarily on working with businesses to help them improve their sales performance.
He focuses on training executives and organizations in customer focused B2B value sales, facilitate workshops and give keynote speeches on B2B value sales and customer management and acts as consultant and advisor to businesses.
The key themes and topics are customer centricity, customer value, customer experience, customer value-co creation and the future of sales in the age of AI – artificial intelligence.
Paul is fluent in four languages: Swedish (mother tongue), Finnish, English and German. He gives keynote speeches, trains executives, facilitates workshops and acts as advisor in all four languages.
Private Life
In addition to being a leading authority and expert in B2B value selling and sales management, Paul is also a husband and father of two. He is physically active (street workout, gym, running, swimming, roller-skiing, cross-country skiing, surfing, etc.), enjoys traveling and spending time with his family.
