“My best tip for salespeople new to the job is to establish long-term relationships with clients. Let them know you will go the extra mile and show them a passion for your product and services and do not stop explaining how it is relevant to their business”, says Kirsti Karlsson.
Since the start of the GEO EXPRO magazine twenty years ago, Kirsti has been the sales manager. She is the face of the magazine at the many conferences she attends, and lots of marketing people will know Kirsti through her emails and phone calls as well.
“I am a teacher by background and have no formal education in sales or marketing”, Kirsti says. “However, I do believe that my teaching education and experience have been very valuable in my sales and marketing role, as it is all about communication and understanding people!”
…it has been a great journey with lots of fun. What I thought was going to be a part-time job ended up being three times more but I have never regretted it.
GEO EXPRO continues to appear in print; is it harder these days to find advertisers for printed media? “I have seen a decline in print advertising, but surprisingly not as much as I thought it was going to be a few years back when many companies started focusing more on online campaigns. I see that some are back to also doing print advertising, probably because people also realise that print magazines still play an important role in this industry.”
Kirsti visited many, many conferences over the past decades. “The conferences are following the cycles of the industry. There is still a focus on oil and gas but renewables are becoming more and more important. After a decline in the number of booths on the exhibition floor after Covid, stands are now coming back and I’ve also seen new companies exhibiting. However, I have not seen many of the huge two stories booths as in the hay days”, she laughs.
Norwegian with a foreign touch
Kirsti is Norwegian and grew up there as well. She studied English and French, followed by completing a teaching degree. Having been an expat for almost 30 years, she lived in different countries around the world. However, she always got involved with community projects, ranging from sitting in school boards to running the SLB Spouse Association and teaching Norwegian to expat wives in Stavanger and Norwegian children while living in the USA.
After decades of hard work, often literally around the clock, Kirsti is now approaching a well-deserved retirement. “I have recently moved from London to a small coastal town in Sweden, so I need to explore more the opportunities this country offers, but my main goal is to spend more time with family in Norway and Germany and allocate more time to my friends. Our house in the Provence in France has been a “havre de paix” for almost thirty years, so I hope to stay there for several months a year and maybe grow back my kitchen garden.”
“It is twenty years since we started preparing the magazine and it has been a great journey with lots of fun. What I thought was going to be a part-time job ended up being three times more but I have never regretted it. I want to thank all the great people I have worked with and all the people I have gotten to know as clients, readers, partners and suppliers!”
This is the fourth article in a series about the people behind the magazine and its 20-year history.
See also:
“I felt like in a knowledge vacuum” – Halfdan Carstens
What a meeting at a conference can do – Tore Karlsson
An industry insider for more than 40 years – Jane Whaley
