Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, we sit down with Thomas Neergaard Hansen, President at Amplitude, to delve into the critical role of face-to-face interactions in today's customer-centric world.
Creators & Guests
What is The Revenue Formula?
This podcast is about scaling tech startups.
Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.
With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.
If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.
===
[00:00:00]
Introduction
---
Toni: Hey everyone, this is Toni Holbein, you are listening to The Revenue Formula. In today's episode, we're talking with Thomas Hansen. He's the president of GoToMarket at Amplitude, and we're talking about why shaking hands and face to face meetings aren't just old school, they're essential in today's customer centric world.
Toni: Enjoy!
Toni: So, Mr. Mr. Introduction Master, what are we going to talk about? Have you been, have you ever been windsurfing actually? I actually have.
Mikkel: Yes. I have been windsurfing and I stood up for about five seconds and then
Toni: smashed my face into the water. Was it down here in Ammer basically?
Mikkel: Yeah. The popular spot.
Mikkel: Exactly. So Andrew on the team, he used
Toni: to spend a lot of time But he's a, he's a kite surfer. That's, that's a little different. Oh, oh, that's what I
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Ah, no, that's no good.
Mikkel: Okay.
Toni: Oh, see, there you go. windsurfing kit surfing. What is it actually for you? Is it, is it, is it wave, wave surfing or is it windsurfing for you?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I [00:01:00] mean, it's, it, it's all different disciplines of windsurfing, but my absolute favorite is what I would call, well, I'm older now, so I guess medium sized waves for me. I used to love going to Cliff Miller in Northern, uh, Jolin, but I think these days I should probably stay right clear in rather go to One Bank or or some of the spots in, in northern parts of, uh, Sheddon north of Co Copenhagen.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: If I go to Denmark.
Meet Thomas Hansen
---
Toni: For everyone who hasn't guessed it already, we have a guest here today. It's, , Thomas Hansen, , currently working as president at Amplitude and previously done a couple of other things. I think spent like 14 years at Microsoft. Basically building up the business. then you spend a couple of years at Dropbox also might, you know, some people might've heard about this already.
Toni: You were the CRO of UiPath and now, I mean, it's called President at Amplitude, but it's basically kind of similar to a CRO role, right? So just, just so we're getting this right.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: it's a little bit different, so Uh, I am all up responsible for the top [00:02:00] line and the P& L of the business. I do have a CRO working for me who is incredible, Nate Crook. He's been in the company for just over half a year, nine months actually, as well as a COO, a CMO, and a head of customer success. So, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a great role.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: It's super fun. I've done a number of roles post Microsoft. This is company number four post Microsoft, and it's all been in the go to market, realm, I would say, both as president, I've been COO, I've been CRO a couple of times, but at the end of the day, you gotta own the top line. You gotta own the customer relationships and you gotta own a responsible P&L.
Toni: No, absolutely. And I think the, um, what we like kind of doing a little research and obviously when someone goes on your LinkedIn profile, there's a lot of board member investor advisor slots as well. I think, um, we found Dixa there as well, who was a customer of ours. And obviously kind of, you know, I think you kind of probably, [00:03:00] you know, mess pretty well and, and, and that team.
Toni: Um, but what really stood out for us was, um, your past as, um, was it wind surfer and as bartender, right? Because it's really, I think it's really important for everyone listening and thinking, wow, that guy. Uh, but you know, uh, as we in German say, uh, you know, everyone is still only cooking with water. And that's the same thing here, I guess.
Toni: Right. So do you have like one or two stories from your bartender windsurfer time to kind of, you know, ground you a little bit and make you a little bit more accessible for the audience?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: You right on. So listen, I am, my passion besides my family is windsurfing. I started as a winds surfer when I was 14 years old on Ro Fre, which is, um, uh, just north of Copenhagen, where my grandparents, uh, built a small, very humble beach cabin, actually a hundred years ago. And it's still in the family now.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um. I worked for a couple of summers in a local windsurfing store in Fredriksberg, a small town [00:04:00] 40 minutes north of Copenhagen, and I had the pleasure of teaching folks to windsurf. You mentioned earlier on that you had a go at it. And I had the pleasure of helping a 72 year old man learn to windsurf, and he was remarkably good.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I helped an 8 year old boy. He was also amazing. So it was a very accessible sport. Lots of fun. Um, and I've got very fond memories of it, of it. I also had the pleasure setting in competitions for, for three seasons. Also super fun, more fun than winning. I, I was not great. Uh, my greatest achievement was once ending up as a, the run up number two in a, in a, in a competition in southern.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: in Southern Denmark. So yeah, I've had a lot of fun with it. And as for my days as a bartender, you know, there's an expression, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. So I'm not able to comment. I can't deny or confirm anything and nothing ever happened.
Toni: So, so we know exactly what happened then. Wonderful. Nice. Really, really cool. Really [00:05:00] cool stuff actually. Um, and you know, when did you make the jump from, from, you know, good old Denmark to, um, to the U S was it specifically then for Microsoft or was it through, I think Dynamics was kind of head of, uh, Denmark first.
Toni: So how did, how did you, how did you do it?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: no, you know, I, um, I, as I was doing my undergrad degree, um, at the Copenhagen Business School, I also started working full time for a hardware company back in 92. So 31 years ago. Um, And when I finished my undergrad degree, I decided to take a year or two off, um, uh, before doing my math, my master's. Um, and I initially planned to take a year or two off and literally be a, literally be a beach bum and go windsurfing on Maui.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And I had a really good manager's manager at Olivetti. Um, and he said to me, Thomas, don't be a fool, get a job with Olivetti somewhere international and, and pick a place that's fun and get an adventure and earn a little bit of money. And I followed his great [00:06:00] advice and I ended up being offered in late 93 to go to South Africa six months before the, before, uh, the first, um, democratic elections.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And, you know, I ended up spending on and off more than 12 years living in South Africa in four different stints. That's also where I met my wife, Ingrid. Uh, we met in 95. Um, we have three kids that are all born in South Africa, but they are Uh, they all have quadruple citizenships, Danish, Dutch, South African, and now American US.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um, in between the various things in South Africa, uh, we spent some time two years in Turkey, in Istanbul, which was an amazing experience as well. We spent a year in Bangkok, Thailand, also incredible experience. And then 15 years ago. Um, I was already working for Microsoft first in South Africa, then in Turkey, and then back in Africa.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And then an opportunity presented itself in 2009 to go to Seattle, to the Microsoft headquarters. And we made a family decision that the U. S. would be, would [00:07:00] be a fantastic home for us longer term. It would save great educational opportunities, great opportunities, um, for us as a family to, to thrive. And, uh, you know, I, my wife and I, we only look back on that.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: On that with fondness, so, um, I worked at Microsoft in Seattle for six years. My last gig there, I ran the global SMB, Small Media Business Sales Marketing Operations for that. It was a, when I left almost a 10 billion US dollar business, 2000 people. So real scale, like at extreme levels, but nine years ago, nine and a half years ago.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I had one of these amazing, lucky, career and life change, change moments. I got introduced to the then CEO of Sequoia Capital, one of the leading venture capitalist firms in the world. Um, his name is Doc Leone. He's one of the, one of the most remarkable, uh, tech leaders. Um, and, um, [00:08:00] long story short, that's how I got introduced to Drew and the gang Dennis at, um, at Dropbox.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And I ended up spending a couple of years there. Subsequently, I spent some time at Carbon Black, a cybersecurity company that we successfully IPO'd at Nasdaq and eventually got acquired in a great outcome for our customers, for our investors, for our employees. We VMware. Then I had a stint at UiPath, which was an amazing, wonderful experience working for The kindest, most genuine, humble, amazing human being I've ever met, Daniel Dines.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um, we had lots of fun together. I still consider him a very close friend. Um, we did an amazing scaling exercise during COVID. We grew the company. Two years from 300 million U. S. to a billion dollars, um, and did one of the largest IPOs on NYSE in, [00:09:00] gosh, it was in May 2001, right during COVID, which was incredible.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Now, um, Then again, an opportunity to present itself again, the connected tissue is Sequoia Capital in all these startups and Dropbox, Carbon Black, UiPath, and then Amplitude. Uh, folks, a couple of friends at Sequoia called me and said to me, Hey, Thomas, you should go and meet this guy. Um, I think we think you'll enjoy him.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So I got introduced to Spencer Skates, who's the co founder and, um, And CEO of Amplitude. Um, and we spent quite a bit of time together. Um, you know, both Spencer and I believe in the power of face to face. So we met, uh, as we were dating, if you'd like. We met four times face to face. We spent 14 hours together face to face.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Including he actually flew down and visited me at my home here in Montecito. And, um, our dating turned into a handshake [00:10:00] and, uh, I joined Amplitude in the summer of, uh, July, 2022. So a year and a half ago. And look, I believe that the most important thing in any company, in any work you take on is the people.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And for me, one of the core reasons why I joined. Was and still to this day is Spencer. Um, he is a little bit younger than me, you know, 20 odd years younger than me. Uh, he is one of the most remarkable. Product and engineering leaders in the world. Um, his insight, his brilliance, um, is out of the, out of the scale.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And I'm so happy I get the opportunity to work with him, to learn from him, to partner with him and drive the go to markets out of the house. And he focused more on the company leadership, the investors, the analysts, and of course, product technology and engineering. So a real wonderful [00:11:00] partnership, but face to face.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: That. It was really important in shaping that relationship and that's how we got there, we got going.
People have forgotten about face-to-face
---
Mikkel: And I mean, so it's funny, you talked a lot about how you've been basically hopping around the globe, uh, to different gigs. And we're going to talk a bit about, you know, hopping around in the context of, um, you know, staying in the same job, but actually meeting folks. And I think we, so Toni and I obviously talked a bit beforehand, um, and we kind of said, well, I wonder how many of our listeners actually spent the time, hop on a jet, go and meet a customer, go and meet a prospect and go and meet a partner.
Mikkel: And we said, probably it's not going to be that many actually.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: you know what? It's on there. I gotta interject and say something. I think something really negative, well actually on a number of fronts, have happened on in during the time of COVID. But specifically relating to this here, I think a lot of people have forgotten about the value of face to face. I think a lot of people are sitting on calls [00:12:00] like this, ironically, we're sitting on a call.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um, but I think a lot of people have forgotten the value of getting in their car, jumping onto the subway, they'll go to the airport and go and spend time, go and spend time with your colleagues. Go and spend time with people that you are contemplating hiring and meeting them face to face. Go and meet prospects, customers, partners, face to face.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: The value you get there, it's, it's, the read you get on this situation, the connected tissue you get, invaluable in my opinion.
Toni: I think this is what we want to spend some time on digging into, right? So we have a couple of RevOps folks here, all those people that, you know, probably, you know, very numbers driven. So you'll probably explore that side of, of that equation just a little bit, but it's, it's not the full equation, obviously, right?
Toni: Kind of, especially when you start talking connected tissue and the relationship, it's hard to quantify these things and it's silly to even try, but really kind of, um, really thinking about this, right, when you have this. And I think you're right, I think you're right. It, it [00:13:00] certainly started with COVID, suddenly, Hey, this works.
Toni: I see it with myself. I'm like, after the whole COVID period, um, way less likely to jump on jets and be just away for like two, three days, maybe me having two small kids since then also plays a role in this, but there's a little bit more of like, Hey, you know, it's actually kind of cozy to sleep in my own bed.
Toni: Um, and, uh, and, and the thing is, right. How do you, um, You know, first of all, you have been doing this for your whole career, right? I mean, this was, this was kind of a pretty key part, I'm sure. And, you know, helped you now to also land those fantastic jobs and those fantastic companies, um, tell us a little bit, you know, from, from your perspective, you know, if you had to give.
Toni: Like a, you know, a couple of arguments for people to reconsider and they're like, Hey, stop those zoom calls, jump on a jet instead. You know, what, what would you tell them? What would you tell folks that are doubters and like, ah, you know, I really like my own bed a lot. [00:14:00] Yeah.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: equation. Known as the art and science of sales. And over time, the equation has changed. The mix has changed. We're moving more and more and more towards the science of sales. We have data, we have incredible tools from companies like, of course, Salesforce, um, but also companies like Highspot, Clary, Outreach, Gong, and the list goes on, that we can all use in various ways.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And what it really provides us with is ultimately customer insights. But also ability to run propensity analysis to understand most likely next customer or most likely next customer to expand. So all those insights allows us to be far more precise in what we do. But I still think that part of the equation is the art, the art of selling.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And the art of selling, I'm not talking about going and playing golf with a customer or [00:15:00] eating a big steak with them. But there is magic. There's magic getting into a plane and on row 32D and have some cold chicken, but getting in front of the customer and spending time with them across various levels, a technical level, an economic buyer level.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And everything up and down and in between, and really deeply dig into and understand what are the issues. But then there's also the human touch. There's the human touch where you actually meet someone and you connect at a human level, and once you've done that once or twice with a prospect or customer or partner, it allows you to leverage what we're doing right now, sitting on a Zoom call, sitting on a video call.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And leveraging that connection you've established to be able to make progress so much faster. So what I've found personally is, um, once you've created that first human [00:16:00] interaction face to face, thereafter working with that prospect, working with that customer online, or mostly online, becomes so much easier because that emotional connection has been established.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: How to quantify that, how to put that into a math equation, how to do an ROI on it. I really can't tell you, but what I can tell you is, look, I reflect on myself. I am, I was sitting earlier this morning and, and, and making some notes for a, a video I'm about to drop on LinkedIn tomorrow. And I've been traveling in the last four months.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I've been to Europe. I went to Amsterdam, Paris, London. I've been in the U. S. across many places, including New York and San Francisco. Just come back from a two week trip to Korea, Singapore, and Sydney. I spent time with, of course, with, with my teammates all over the world, got to interviews with people, uh, hopefully future employees of Amplitude, but I got to meet 50 customers and prospects and [00:17:00] partners.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And that set of learnings I have from the meetings is now translating into a product roadmap. The learnings I got from the meeting is now translating into our training and enablement strategy internally for all of our colleagues, because I realized that I had some perceptions. I thought it was, I thought it was truth around where we were as a company in terms of how we sell, how we position things, and it was just not true.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So some training and enablement I, I, I required there, but it also gave me an opportunity just to create those human relationships where it is now so much easier to follow up on a email, on a Slack, on a video call and move things forward, as opposed to folks that you have met face to face.
Toni: I absolutely agree. Indeed. So when. When you build out, you know, let's get, let's get a little bit into the integrity, by the way, because I think our audience might, might really appreciate that.
The customer-centric market motions
---
Toni: Um, so I'm [00:18:00] thinking of amplitude and now I'm thinking, you know, you probably have a, um, like a mid market segment, a corporate segment, maybe an enterprise segment, something like that.
Toni: Right. Um, and I would assume. that the amount of travel varies between those segments simply because, Hey, some of those motions, you can maybe not afford that. Right. Or is that wrong? Is that, is that not how you run it? Right. And, and follow up question on this one, you know, as you then, you know, maybe answer this.
Toni: It's almost like, um, is it, do you, do you recommend, uh, doing this as, as early as possible in the process, in the sales process, in the customer life journey, or do you recommend, Oh, you know, once you've moved us to this stage and, you know, have certain, you know, uh, uh, probability around this maybe closing, kind of tell us a little bit, you know, how people should be thinking about it and how should, how should they be building this into their go to market motions?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: right. So obviously go to market motions. Vary from company to company, from category to category. Also are you in B2C, are you in B2B, [00:19:00] etc. But here's what I firmly believe in. Go and serve the customers where they want to be served. So embrace a multi channel go to market strategy. What do I mean with that?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Well, there are at least three, if not four different levers in terms of how you can sell. At the very low end, serving SMB and all consumers and all small teams in larger companies, I highly recommend anyone out there, if it's at all feasible, to explore a PLG, a sell, serve, find, try, buy, sales motion. We launched that after running tests for nine months at Amplitude.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: We launched in October and whilst I can't discuss numbers, given that Amplitude is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ, what I can say is even I haven't done this before, I'm surprised. At the progress we're making, at how many customers we've gained in the [00:20:00] last nine weeks. So, number one, self serve, fine try by, product led growth.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Golden. What is so incredible about it is It's one of those nonlinear businesses where for every million dollars you don't have to throw another four sellers at it. It's a technology and marketing driven business that requires a very she shrewd being so once you get it to scale like Companies like Dropbox have done a world class job.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: You run an incredibly profitable machine. So that's number one. Number two Consider leveraging partners, transactional channel partners, system integrators, Y label relationships, or EM type relationships, what have you. That can give you reach into customers that you otherwise wouldn't be able to serve and find, or they wouldn't want to work with you directly.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: It gives you the ability to go and serve customers in countries where Economically, it's not viable to go and serve the [00:21:00] customers. Um, by the way, in case folks don't know, mathematically speaking, roundabout 80 percent of most software vendors in the B2B space, software vendors, top line revenue comes from 18 countries.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So you really want to be thoughtful around where you invest. People on the ground. So PLG, Sales Refined Drive By, number two, Embrace Channel, number three, I would say, Inside Sales Engine. We call it Velocity. And really I think of it partially as a PLS, a Product Led Sales Engine, where you're leveraging a lot of the top of the funnel you get from your PLG motion, including some of the paying customers that actually has opportunities to be up sold into higher volumes and cross sold into Or the blades in your platform, what have you.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: That is a segment where you seldomly would have sellers traveling. However, occasionally you come across customers in this segment that you grow [00:22:00] with and you mature and over time you actually go and see them. We have a wonderful customer. This is a small startup in France, in Paris, um, run by an amazing leader called Alexi, um, and we've had the opportunity to first serve them for free, then they became a smaller customer, then a medium customer.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Now they are what I would call a very large, important customer force. That I've been to the offices, gosh, I think three times in Paris. Um, by the way, the company is, uh, the number one downloaded app on the Android and iOS marketplace called BeReal. It's the coolest, one of the coolest things in social networking.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: In case you're not on it, you should be on. Um, so number three, um, inside sales, very little travel. And then number four, enterprise sales. And this is where you have the enterprise sellers. They go out and travel, they engage with customers face to face, uh, but also do a lot of work online, you know, in [00:23:00] this new world of working.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I will say this is, this is where I think we have to be a little bit critical of what the pandemic has done to us and get, get our sellers and our SEs and our custom success managers out again with the customers more face to face. I think that's where we. You'd have gone a little bit wrong and you know, I, I, I'm working on correcting that in Amplitude and I think we've made a lot of progress.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I'm proud of our team in Amplitude. Uh, but here's the thing. If you only deploy an enterprise sales model and or kubelet with an inside sales engine, the challenge with that is it's not really economically scalable. The challenge with it is for every million dollars you want, you need to add one, two, three more sellers.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So when you look at the shape of your P& L, it's very boring and linear. So you gotta find something in your go to market strategy. That allows you to scale in a nonlinear fashion. You've got to find that tipping point. [00:24:00] To me, a couple of the tipping points I've spoken about already is one, embrace PLT, product led growth, sell, sell, find, try, buy, as well as also embracing one or multiple channel notions of work with transactional partners to get reaching to other countries, other segments, and.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Work with system integrators, OEMs, white label, telcos, you name it. Those are ways that you can, you can get your business to scale in a nonlinear fashion and really get to, to the rule of 40 and, and profitability and positive, positive cash flow, which of course matters specifically in this economic environment.
Toni: We had Kolk from Winning by Design also on the show. And he was actually also talking about face to face, which is kind of one of the reasons was like, Hey, that could be super interesting to discuss with you. One of his like theories is basically like, Oh, you know, you have this whole tooling space and you mentioned some of those vendors, um, that are, uh, very aggressive and, you know, enabling all teams to send out more stuff.
Toni: Um, you have this whole. AI, generative [00:25:00] AI space that helps make it even easier. And one of his points was basically, Hey, what we will probably start seeing is a bit of a return to, and this was him, you know, 20 years ago, uh, basically traveling salesman, right? Uh, more face to face. Some of that stuff simply can't be automated away by technology.
Toni: Some of that stuff is connecting to that prospect, to that buyer in a different way. Um, to you. You know, uh, do you, do you, do you see almost, you know, the, the world in a similar way, or even, even more, you know, fundamental in the approach, like has actually nothing to do with all of that additional technology stuff that happened, that thing has been true for the last probably 500 years of sales.
Toni: And that's certainly been true for the last 30 years of sales. And it's going to be true for the next 100 years of sales as well. Kind of, how do you, um, how do you, how do you see that? And, you know, how do you see kind of the newest impact? Um, you know, maybe shaping this face to face piece, which I would [00:26:00] say, you know, during COVID, uh, a lot of people were like, Oh, it's, it's now it's proven we don't need it.
Toni: Right. Which is, which is kind of the wrong direction.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Gosh, there was a lot in that question and, and, and that statement. Let's unpack it. Um, Hey. I believe face to face continues to matter a great deal, as I mentioned earlier. However, let's add that intelligence layer to it through propensity analysis. So we have all this wonderful technology from some of the vendors I mentioned earlier and many others.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And if you deploy that in an intelligent fashion, it really allows you to do far smarter targeting and optimize the time of your sellers. As they go travel and as they are online, as they are on phone calls, I'll tell you a quick story to give you a little bit of a sense of, at its simplest format, how it could work.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Some years ago, I worked for another company and a couple of [00:27:00] really smart folks developed a propensity analysis tool that basically sucked in the information from their paid for and free user base. And allow them to create a tool we named StarCatcher. So it was really a way of looking across 100, 000 plus free and paying customers, deploy propensity analysis, and go in and look at all the data you had, and understand, okay, is there some reasons to engage?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Now, I remember one story where we, um, we were keen to engage a customer, a large company in the Pacific Northwest. And we went into this tool into StarCatcher. And there weren't a paying customer at an enterprise level, but we found that there were a number of, uh, small sub teams, small teams in this large enterprise that actually were paying for, you know, teams of 10, 20 people.[00:28:00]
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And one of them was the CMO, the chief marketing officer of that company. So I literally picked up the phone and I called this guy and said, buddy, it's your best friend from technology vendor ABC. I see you're using the tool. Tell me how you're using it. And the guy went on to talk for 20 minutes with passion, with pride, with enthusiasm around the value of it.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So what do you do? You jump onto it and say, my friend, I happen to be in your neighbor next week. Can I invite you out for a cup of coffee? So I went there together with our seller on it, got the seller introduced. The chief marketing officer was super kind to introduce us to the chief information officer of that company.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Long story short, that company, three months later, although they were paying for competing technology from another very large software company based in Redmond, Washington, and they [00:29:00] signed a million dollar plus deal with us at an enterprise level. And. Going there, using data, meeting face to face, making that warm connection, getting introduced to another person, and then working face to face and really understanding how we could help them, that made the difference.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So, I, I, I'm, again, it brings me back to the notion of the art and science of sales. That intelligent connection, I think there's, there's some beauty in that, real beauty.
Mikkel: I'm kind of happy you made that example because I was going to say, We had, uh, an insurance broker who wanted to visit us personally at home. And I said, I don't want to visit, have a visit physically from an insurance broker that he can send us an email. We can hop on a call. Do you, because my question was going to be, do you see actually on the other side of the coin that those people you want to meet with, they're more reluctant to say, well, actually.
Mikkel: What, why meet? We can just, let's hop on a call. It's more convenient. You know, when we meet physically, it's going to take up more of our time. And have you seen that [00:30:00] kind of side of the coin as well?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I think everybody is trying to find ways to become more efficient. I think what COVID has taught all of us is a little bit more respect for boundaries. Between work and life, I don't believe in the concept of work life balance. I believe in the work, the concept of work life harmony. So I think what it has taught us is finding a better way to keep the working hours in a shape that still allows us to have a higher quality of life.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And that I see happening, not just in the US, but around the world. I actually think that's a healthy outcome. Or what the pandemic has taught us. So to answer your question, I think a lot of folks are reverting to trying to be more efficient and leverage video calls, leverage Zoom and Teams and what have you, as well as just phone calls.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um, you know, I, I, I do go a little bit old school. So frankly, um, when it comes to larger transactions where I am the customer or potential [00:31:00] customer, whether it's privately or in my working life. I do actually encourage face to face, um, that allows you to whiteboard, ideate, be more creative together in a room.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Um, I find value in that and, you know, the companies I work with as partners, as vendors certainly have, uh, have arisen to, to, to that and have done a good job. Um, so I think, I think it depends a little bit, um, frankly, look, there's also just some customers out there now live in very, very distributed environments where the notion of they have a headquarter, they have an office you go to doesn't exist anymore.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So that's a, that's a very different challenge. So that brings me into the notion of. I, um, I see a reemergence of industry conferences in a massive way. Um, uh, I, uh, I'm not particularly proud of this, but I've been to Vegas, Las Vegas, four times this year to four different conferences [00:32:00] and, uh, In this case, I'll break the rule of what happens if Vegas stays in Vegas and just share with you.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I was talking to one of my friends who's on the board of directors of MGM, which is one of the larger chains of casinos and hotels in Las Vegas. And he was telling me that they literally booked out, fully booked out for the next year, half or two years, I think he said. Which is remarkable. So there's a, there certainly is a resurgence of folks want to come back, to come, come, come together with their partner, with their vendor, but moreover, other customers like minded and learn, and in the process, probably also have a little bit of fun together.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So that's, that's another thing that I've seen happening post, uh, post COVID, which, you know, when you think about it, it's a very productive way, uh, both for the vendor, but also for the prospective customers or customers to go. To a location and learn and, and have some fun and, and take that back home and, and run a bit of more product, productive business.
Build the process for face-to-face
---
Mikkel: So, [00:33:00] um, I, I think at this point, probably, hopefully, We have convinced a few people that they should actually go and meet folks, but I can also foresee the next problem that there's a wonderful listener out there going, yeah, we, we should go and meet folks. We're not doing it today. How do we, how do we start building up this culture?
Mikkel: What should the process for us be as a business? Because ultimately you also want to tie it to outcomes that are important to the business. So how do we get started?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Well, so first of all, um, I don't believe in telling, I believe in leading by example. So as I mentioned, uh, I've traveled extensively. As a matter of fact, I was checking my, my hotel app from my preferred hotel chain the other day. And just from that hotel chain this calendar year, 2023. I've spent 118 nights in their hotels. So I believe not in telling, but leading by example and showing the [00:34:00] value. know, I was in, uh, I was in New York, um, um, gosh, four weeks ago or something like that. And, uh, I, uh, I was only there for two and a half days. I did 14 customer and prospect meetings face to face in two and a half days. And one of this, one of our amazing sellers, his name is Brian, um, he, um, he and I have done quite a few, um, uh, customer meetings together.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: We actually, I go to New York every, every three months and he's very good at normally setting up, you know, five ish meetings. He sat down and said, Thomas, I just want to give you a scorecard, a report back on your last trip. On your last trip, we met four prospects and I'm proud to tell you four out of them.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Out of the four, two of them have become customers. So that was his way of giving me feedback and scoring me as his colleague in partnering with him. I thought that was super neat. Really? You
Toni: I think kind of the, [00:35:00] you know, a little bit of a distilled piece here is actually, well, yes. You spend two, two days, two and a half days in New York, but that doesn't mean you spend two days to meet one prospect or one customer. Kind of the trick is you want to, you know, add as many as you can, right?
Toni: Because, because really the, the, the big pushback I think people in the head will have, it's like, well, um, sorry, I just can't afford it. Maybe, maybe they put it on the ACV and say like, ah, we're selling mid market deals, commercial deals, you know, we can't jump on a jet all the time. It doesn't work. Um, but ultimately it's going to be about like, well, that's, it's just, it just doesn't, you know, sorry, we need to be more efficient.
Toni: Everyone is pushing us. Um, and basically kind of use that as the reason, right. But alternatively, or kind of, um, you know, almost from an opposite perspective, it's like, well. If you get 14, 14 sessions into those two days, and I, and I think no one is disbelieving that you build more trust, you probably build more of a bond, you [00:36:00] know, you kind of get the champion to be a champion and, you know, all of that stuff.
Toni: And also if someone says, Hey, this is the timeline. It's a different commitment to give to someone when you have met face to face before, right? So I think that's pretty clear. The trick really is, well, you know, how do you get it done in a smart way? And a smart way is not to kind of fly to one town, have one meeting and return.
Toni: It's to, you know, push as much. You know, face to face time with customers. And that could be meetings. It could be a coffee. It could be a dinner. Jaco mentioned it could be a run. It could be, it could be, you know, New York on the, on the docks. You could play golf if you wanted to, but like, uh, that's, that's kind of the, the little bit, the hidden trick here, right?
Toni: You just need to get a little bit smart around setting the stuff
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: totally. You gotta be planful. So, um, I normally plan my time on a rolling three, four months basis. So, look, I have to balance, uh, one, doing my full time job as president of [00:37:00] Amplitude, uh, which is pretty time demanding, but also to mix in that I sit on two boards. Um, so I have recurring board meetings there and occasional outside of board meetings discussions.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I'm an advisor to a red hot startup, um, in the AI space. Uh, I'm also an investor, uh, through a small VC fund that also takes a little bit of time. So I have to figure out how do I do all this, uh, in and outside of reasonable working hours. And still get to enjoy my weekend at home with my wife. Um, so I, um, I plan out three months.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I know right now, end of February, I'm going to be in Europe in four countries. I know in March, I'm going to be in New York. I know in April, I'm going to be in Tokyo. Um, and that allows me to be thoughtful, planful of how I schedule the trips, so I optimize my time and don't impact too many weekends, which I don't want to, um, [00:38:00] but also provides my colleagues opportunities to guard and actually spend time well in advance, so it's not a last minute panic.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Trying to get a good array of meetings set up with prospects, with partners, with customers, perhaps with press, perhaps with analysts. So planfulness does help. However, however, look, let's not underestimate the notion of luck and randomness. And sometimes stuff happens and you just gotta jump on a plane and go to one place and do one meeting because it matters.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And I did that back in December last year. I literally. Jumped on a plane and went and had dinner in Tokyo with a very, very important telco company in Japan. And the return on that is. X, X, X, 1000%. Um, so, so sometimes you just got to say I drop everything else and this one prospect, this one customer matters.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And that's, that [00:39:00] was in the case with this one specific Telco customer in, in Japan.
Toni: So you, you jump on a plane, you're kind of have this meeting.
Toni: And the quality of the meeting itself is much better than over Zoom, right? Kind of period, I think that's pretty straightforward. But then there's so much magic before and after the meeting, right? It's, it's not just this one hour, the two hours you kind of carve out and have the conversation. There's actually lots of stuff happening around that, that, uh, that simply, this just doesn't exist anymore.
Toni: And, you know, in the Zoom era, right? Kind of, do you have like a story or two where like, Hey, this This 10 minute pre meeting was actually the whole meeting. And, uh, and then in the rest of the two hours, you know, we kind of got the other things done or kind of, how did this, uh, you know, do you have like a story there that kind of connects to this?
Bill Gates and the most embarrassing moment of my career
---
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Let me share with you one of the, one of the more embarrassing moments in my career. So this goes back to, uh, let me just think, this goes back to August, 2006. I was a [00:40:00] general manager or CEO for Microsoft in Sub Saharan Africa. I was month, week number five in role, and we had a Government Leaders Forum Conference organized by Microsoft in Cape Town in South Africa.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: We had four country, uh, presidents of countries coming in. We had 20 ministers of IT. And the keynote speakers was, um, the famous, uh, Dr. Sheikh Diara, um, as well as Bill and Bill. So Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. So, uh, as the GM or CEO for Microsoft's business in Sub Saharan Africa, I was the host for Bill and Bill.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And, uh, on day one, after Bill Gates arrived, I had to go in and brief him on all the meetings he's going to have with the presidents, uh, head of states, as well as a few, uh, IT ministers. I walk in there. My head of public sector had prepared, you know, the 10 briefing notes for, for Bill. I'd read them. But I was green.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I was, yeah, as I [00:41:00] mentioned, a month, five weeks into the job, I walk into the briefing meeting with Bill, together with my head of public sector. And Bill, as always, was super well prepared. And as you probably can imagine, he is wicked smart. So he straightaway goes into questions on each meeting. And I think in the hour we spent with him, he probably asked 15 or 20 questions.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And as much as I had prepared and read it. I had never met any of them. I didn't have a connection. I didn't know more background than what was in the meeting briefs. And Bill was asking outside of the meeting briefs. And I had no clue, I could not answer a single question and that was obviously pretty embarrassing for me, but thank goodness my head of public sector was in the, um, in the meeting and did a fabulous job in answering all questions.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Then I went on to, you know, um, joining Bill for all the meetings with the heads of states and, uh, with the presidents and, and with, with some ministers on IT and, uh, it was so inspirational to [00:42:00] see how Bill. Was able to face to face connect with them in the most humble, genuine, caring way and at the same time drive the Microsoft agenda.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And, you know, what I took away from that is you got to know your swear word, you got to know your stuff, you really got to know your stuff. And it taught me a lesson in terms of my own preparedness to go into meetings with, with more senior colleagues. But it also taught me a lesson in terms of what I should set as expectations to my team members.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: In terms of how they should brief me, but also taught me a lesson in humility, seeing how Bill Gates was so humble in his engagement, both with me and my public sector lead, never had a choice word to me, although I knew nothing, and his humility in engaging with customers and genuine care, I've taken that as a lesson with me in terms of how I work with my [00:43:00] teams.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: And also how I work with customers, with prospects, um, you've got to be, you've got to be thirsty for learning. You've got to be really, really genuinely interested in understanding and getting to the point of what really matters for the prospect and customer and go and try to add value on that. But you also got to have a little bit of empathy for your colleagues, uh, in terms of where they're at and what they know and what the context is for.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: For them and, and, and, and what's happening in their lives at the point in time to make sure that you're not driving too hard, because there's a fine balance when you are living in this world of being a chief revenue officer or COO or president or a frontline sales manager, how hard do you push your team?
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: I mean, think about it this way. Um, as we recording this, I think today I'm just checking it's December 19th and you know, many tech companies in B2B. Follow, follow the calendar year as their fiscal year. And so right now we all [00:44:00] have, what do we have? Uh, six, seven working days effectively left to go and close the year.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: So of course you want to go and drive your teams and engage with the customers and apply the appropriate level of pressure to get things across the line. But you also got to apply a little bit of empathy. It's, you know, it's holiday season. Many folks are celebrating, uh, Christmas and other holidays. And you got to make sure that you engage in a way where you have a little bit of empathy for.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: You know, what might be going on in their private lives. They're out shopping for their kids for Christmas. And that's it. So there's always a fine balance here.
Toni: Thomas. Thank you so much. Thank you for the Bill and Bill story. Thank you for all the other stories. I think a bunch of stuff to take away, , from here, not only face to face. I mean, this was almost the vehicle that we use in order to kind of explore a couple of cool stories that you had to share. So thank you so much for that.
Toni: And, uh, yeah, again, thank you for sharing so much wisdom with the rest of the, of the listeners here. Thanks so much, , Thomas.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: [00:45:00] My absolute pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. This was fun.
Toni: Wonderful. Have a good one. Bye bye. Bye.
Thomas Neergaard Hansen: Take care.