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Anders Jakobsson

Photo of Anders Jakobsson - CEO of Beijer Byggmaterial

Anders Jakobsson was recruited by Beijer Byggmaterial five years ago to take the CEO position after his extensive work in sales, marketing, and business and people development for Philips and Elektroskandia. He has always had a passion for people, both inside and outside the business, and brings that same dedication and drive to his role at the helm of Beijer.

“Our business is all about people. We have very motivated staff and they enjoy serving demanding professional customers,” Anders explains. “And they’re very good at doing that and proud to do so. Many of our staff have been working with us for a very long time. I don’t know the exact figures, but we have a lot of gold watches. I think it’s a good fundamental that people can really develop and see Beijer as a good company.”

Coming into the role, Anders needed to grow and develop the business, both in terms of organic growth and acquisitions. “However, we were coming from a period of cost cutting and trying to make the organisation more cost effective, so now we’ve changed because they’d done a great job. From that period into growth is another story and it also demands another kind of competence. So we have been really focused on the leadership development during this year and training to make that shift from cost cutting to working with customers and sales in order to achieve growth.

“That also means we’ve organised the whole branch network into seven regions, and that was to ensure local development, because this is really about local businesses; you must be number one in your local city. Even if you are a national company, you can’t attract customers in the northern part just because you’re really good in a city in the south. You must have a strong local focus. But that’s easier said than done. It turns out that all branch managers and people were not really prepared to go from working with a cost structure to creating growth in the local market. So it was about changing, training, and helping people to adjust to this new mindset. We organised the branch network and we put a lot of money, investment, and focus on training and leadership training.”

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