It’s thanks to my father that I got interested in the electrical industry, and we could even say that we both have dedicated our lives to electricity networks in Sweden. When I was a kid, my father worked in a small electric company and as a young man, I started working in the same company during the school holidays. After the upper secondary school, I went to Vattenfall’s apprenticeship training for two years and learned the theory and installation practice at the same time. Next, I worked for a local utility for several years but as my father moved to another company (Ahlsell today), I followed him.
Sales has always been my thing. I joined Ensto in 2006 and work as the Sales and Marketing Director, responsible for the electricity distribution sales in Sweden and Iceland. My work includes maintaining and developing the customer relations and of course, taking care of my wonderful sales team. The leadership and team building are an essential part of the daily tasks for me as I find a well-functioning team is the basis for success. I’m known for trusting my colleagues and giving them responsibility and freedom to develop in their work. I think it goes without saying that I just love the cooperation with our fantastic customers.
The work itself has taught me the most but I also have a few diplomas in sales and business law. The earlier seven-year experience from my job as the Product and Marketing Manager has been very beneficial and valuable for me as the work covered so many varied responsibilities – like my current work. At Ensto I appreciate the constant change and the fact that I can learn new things all the time. There are new technologies, products, services, and ways of working and I’m trying to develop my skills and knowledge continuously. My inspiration and motivation come from cherishing an entrepreneur-like mindset.
I must say that I am proud of the hard work we have done during the past years especially regarding the cold shrink technology. We have been able to show and convince our customers the benefits of cold shrink when building the electricity network. Ensto was not the first one on the Swedish market with the new, almost unknown technology, but today we are the market leader in cold shrink. It’s all thanks to the greatest team and seamless cooperation with the customers – I’m so proud and happy for us all. We always want to help the customer to succeed and here we have managed to do so! We sell both heat and cold shrink technologies for different needs, but cold shrink is growing very rapidly.
This is the moment I’ve been waiting for: finally (and bit by bit) it has started to seem that the high product quality is getting the attention it deserves. For years we’ve been struggling with the fact that only the price matters in decision making when selecting the products to the electricity grid. Now there is an increasing understanding for the total cost of the line building – how important it is that the products truly last for decades in the grid. And that is something we can offer: long-lasting high-quality products and solutions that contribute to excellent quality of electricity.
Björn Gustafsson
The writer of the blog, Björn Gustafsson, works as Sales and Marketing Director at Ensto DSO in Sweden. He is responsible for overhead line and underground cable networks sales and marketing in Sweden and Iceland.