Sanoma Media Finland is using AI to transform its sales organisation, and during this week’s INMA Advertising Initiative Webinar, the company’s chief commercial officer walked attendees through that transformation.

Tuomas Airisto offered an overview of how Finland’s leading multimedia company improved sales process efficiency with AI, sharing the strategy used to free up time for the sales team whilst increasing customer interaction time.

The company enjoys an enviable reach: 97% of Finns engage with the brand weekly across its portfolio. Digital news media alone reach roughly 80%-85% each week, and its broad portfolio is monetised by a combination of B2C subscriptions — which account for more than 50% of net sales — and B2B.

Whilst Sanoma has some large national advertisers, the market is driven primarily by SMEs: “In Finland, there’s tens or hundreds of thousands of SMEs, whereas there are not that many large advertisers compared to many other markets,” Airisto explained. “So SME is a very important segment for the Finnish publishers and media companies as a whole.”

Things get tricky, he said, when trying to serve such a vast number of SMEs. Serving them efficiently offered both a challenge and a major growth opportunity — and Airisto said they turned to AI to help unlock it.

A practical strategy

Sanoma intentionally delayed its AI journey relative to some peers, completing other projects and letting AI advance before jumping in.

“We wanted to be a fast follower rather than first runner in this,” he explained, adding that the company prioritised productivity gains over experimental innovation.

The guiding principle came from a 13th‑century quote Airisto often shares with his team: Start with what is necessary, then what is possible, and soon you’ll achieve what seemed impossible.

One goal quickly emerged and became the company’s North Star: increasing the time salespeople spend with customers. Consultants had long predicted that sales and marketing would see some of the largest productivity gains from AI — up to 50% or more.

Sanoma initially set less ambitious targets,but quickly found progress was faster than expected. Within months, the company raised its goals.

The logic was straightforward: If AI can automate administrative tasks, salespeople can spend more time with customers, leading to higher revenue, especially in the SME segment, where untapped potential is high.

The result was “really freeing salespeople’s working time to be allocated to serve new potential customers, as simple as that,” Airisto explained.

Three layers of progress

Airisto also noted that although this sales process efficiency is just one of six AI initiatives within the company, “it’s so concrete that we are pushing that very fast forward now.”

And although it is common to view this as a technology effort, he said it’s really about change management: “Early on [we] nominated change enablers that are also the tech department, the data department, helping [with] the solutions,” he said.

Last fall, they set targets, and now they “are going toward a very interesting moment where the role of the salesperson” becomes more supervisory as AI agents take over work processes and tasks.

Sanoma’s transformation rests on three layers, he said:

1. Data products. The company began by turning fragmented research, insights, and industry studies into structured “data products.” Airisto explained that generative AI allowed them to work with “less fragmented data … that is not that manageable,” enabling new forms of customer insight and reporting designed for AI agents rather than humans.
2. Scalable technology architecture. Sanoma built an agentic infrastructure that allows rapid testing, iteration, and scaling of AI agents across the sales process. Airisto emphasised the importance of building a foundation that supports fast experimentation.
3. Process architecture supporting automation. Crucially, Sanoma already had well‑defined sales processes for each customer segment. This clarity made it easier to identify pain points, map tasks, and determine where AI could have the biggest impact.

Sanoma created a cross‑functional structure of AI coaches, product managers, data teams, and — most importantly — sales team leaders who championed the change and identified the needed tools.

“My philosophy is … if we want to change a process, we need to change it somewhere 100% and scale it from there.”  

This allowed one team to implement a process completely before rolling it out to other departments, ensuring that processes were truly transformed, not partially adopted.

Introducing the AI Game Buddies

To support sales reps, Sanoma developed AI Game Buddies — a team of AI agents designed to guide sales reps throughout the sales process. These agents take on roles such as scouts, coaches, managers, and quarterbacks, each responsible for specific tasks that previously consumed significant time for salespeople.

Those tasks include such things as preparing for a meeting, recording the meeting notes, creating opportunities in Salesforce, and sending material information such as the proper format and pixel sizes for advertising products.

AI Game Buddies can also help onboard new customers. With the agents taking over these roles, the way sales reps work has changed: “Not only is time saved, but also the behaviour and the work changes,” Airisto said.

Now, the salesperson spends time evaluating what the agent has prepared for a meeting and seeing if there are ways to improve it.

“And of course, the agents will improve as we go forward also,” Airisto said. “We believe the quality and the competence of the salespeople will start to go up very fast as we [move] forward.”

The impact on daily work is already notable. Tasks that once required manual effort are now automated or semi‑automated, and sales reps spend more time meeting customers, following up on leads, reviewing AI‑generated insights, and improving the quality of customer interactions.

Sanoma is already seeing the shift from “doer” to “supervisor” — a future where salespeople oversee AI‑driven workflows rather than executing every step themselves.

Measuring productivity

Sanoma is tracking several metrics to ensure that productivity is increasing: “Showing that we are on the track to get the productivity is important,” he said, adding it was important to make money from the productivity.

“So it’s not just like time saved was spent walking the dog; it’s time saved and increased value for the business.”  

The early results are promising:

• The AI Value Index, which measures salespeople’s subjective experience, jumped from 17 to 40-45 in just a few months.
• Weekly time savings are already substantial.
• Customer time is increasing compared to last year.
• More customers are being served weekly.
• Revenue uplift is visible even in early data.

Most strikingly, Sanoma now expects to add a full extra customer day per week for traditional sales reps — equivalent to several additional meetings with higher-quality preparation.

Next, Sanoma will look at creating “hyper-personalised customer journeys” without manual work and implementing AI as a “second hemisphere of the brain” within the sales organisation. Sanoma’s long‑term vision is clear: building a sales organisation where AI handles the majority of repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus on creativity, strategy, and customer relationships.

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