Dr. Paul Viio, Founder & Managing partner | Paul has considerable experience in sales and business development for SMEs across Europe. With a background in sales and key account management, strategic business consulting, and business research combined with an in-depth understanding of customer buying behaviour and buying processes he has the skill-set required for successfully managing every step of the sales process as well as market entry process for companies who seek to enter new markets.
Prior to founding ibd, with the aim to help companies within the ICT industry to enter new markets, he was the Assistant Trade Commissioner for the Finnish Consulate in Germany. His responsibilities included advising Finnish companies with regards to their internationalisation. Prior to this he was responsible for developing sales for a large European company in the automotive industry. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director EMEA Sales and Marketing at a privately held company in the ICT industry. He was responsible for setting up the sales operations, for building and managing the European sales teams.
Paul earned his PhD degree from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki where his research focus was on topics related to Selling and Sales Management, Purchasing and (Buyer-Seller) Relationship Management. He also holds a Masters degree from the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration at Åbo Akademi in Turku. Additionally, he has studied telecommunications at the Helsinki School of Economics and holds a Diploma for International Business (VMK2/29) from FINTRA in Helsinki. Paul is a member of and affiliated with the Center for Relationship Marketing and Service Management (CERS) and the Finnish Center for Service and Relationship Management (FCSRM).
Klaus Helf, Partner | Klaus has 20 years of experience from the ICT industry, from both the enterprise and telecommunications sectors.
He has strong experience in the field of wireless and wired technology, network security and technology, operations support systems and telecommunications software. Due to his background in technology as well as his vast industry experience, it is easy for him to quickly learn and understand new technologies and to pinpoint the potential customers whom we should target for our client companies.
Klaus has successfully launched the European sales operations for several client companies and closed sales and distribution agreements for them with network operators and sales channel partners.
Before joining ibd, Klaus founded sellbin technologies in 2004, a company that focuses on building direct and indirect sales channels for its client companies within Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Within sellbin he launched the Central European sales operations for a number of client companies, including the pioneer of High Performance Switching and Routing and a company that focuses on Network Security.
Prior to this, Klaus was Technical Director at Telefonica Germany. Furthermore he has been an active board member of a European DSL-provider company (investment by Apax) and has been Senior Engineer at E.ON energy Plc, where he also held various Executive functions.
Klaus has studied electrical engineering at the Applied Sciences University in Munich.