Is Hybrid Working the Future of Sales? In conversation with our new CRO, Christian Stadlmann
For our latest Anyliner profile, we sat down with our new Chief Revenue Officer Christian Stadlmann! Read on to hear his insights on building a career in tech, traveling the world and his goals for taking Anyline to the new heights, while keeping true to its DNA.
How it all started
A native Styrian, Christian got his start in all things tech at the Technical University of Graz where he studied telematics, a degree which combined informatics and telecommunication. After graduation, he started working with Hyperwave, a cloud and intranet provider. But though he started off as a programmer, it only took him 3 months to convince his managers that his communicative and open-minded personality was better suited for working with customers.
What followed was a transition from development and engineering to pre-sales and then sales. After Hyperwave, Christian rose through the ranks at update software AG until its acquisition by Austin-based Aurea Software, where he became General Manager EMEA & SVP Global Sales before joining Anyline in June 2021.
Interestingly enough, even though Christian worked for a US company, he has actually never lived in Texas. But what he did do a lot was travel – he has been to the US for several weeks every year since! As a result, Christian has been an expert in remote working for almost a decade, as well as an experienced work-travel enthusiast.
“I can’t wait to travel again. I like to combine business with seeing new countries and meeting new cultures. It’s a huge part of sales. Even in those days when I did 300 flights a year, I never saw it as an effort or a burden.”
Focusing on the 'Big 5'
Although he hasn’t been at Anyline for long, Christian has already led the revenue team through a transition phase to create a team structure that can scale at speed, and which focuses on the company’s key industries.
Moving forward, his team will center their efforts on building new business in Retail, Logistics, Mobile Policing & Enforcement, the Automotive Aftermarket and the Utility & Energy industries.
“We have chosen those five industries, because we know that we are the experts in those areas, that our product is a great fit and that the market sees us as market leading. We have the needed insight in these industries, know the pain points they have and how our solution can help.”
With this being said, he acknowledges that though Anyline’s man resources will be focused on these five industries for now, they are always open for other opportunities in new markets. In addition, Christian believe’s Anyline’s transition from a product to a customer orientation is equally important:
“From the customer side, it’s the overall solution and the existing of different modules and capabilities and that is important. The product behind it is only secondary.”
What spark ignited Christian’s love for tech?
Just like our CTO, Christian’s first fascination with tech started with his first computer, but has continued to grow over the years, keeping pace with the rapid developments of technology over the past two decades.
He points to OCR as a great example of this. When he started working in IT more than 20 years ago, OCR was exclusively for scanning documents via a static, dedicated scanner. Today, its possible with any smartphone! As our need for data continues to grow exponentially, so too will our need for the right tech to process it, and put it to work efficiently:
“I think technology is something that helps you have a better life by eliminating unnecessary effort. And this is what I think we are doing at Anyline.”
Why Hybrid Work is the Future of Sales
Given his experience in multinational business, it’s perhaps no surprise that Christian is a strong proponent of hybrid working. In fact, he finds that this approach generally improves productivity and is better than working solely at the office or at home.
But to make it work, teams need to have the right tools in place, and in particular, virtual spaces where information that would be natural in the office environment can be shared easily-
“If you as a company want to take a hybrid approach, you have to invest. It’s simply not enough to hand your employees a phone and a computer. You also have to guide them through these collaborative structures that you wish to elaborate and succeed in.”
Of course, one key advantage of offering hybrid working is the ability to attract top talent from a far wider network!
Building New Business While Staying True to the DNA of Anyline
As CRO, one of Christian’s key challenges is to create the structures that set up our sales team for success. This is a careful balance to strike, as Anyline has already found success in multiple industries. But for exponential growth, Christian’s team needs to focus on the areas which can scale the most successfully.
He believes that the most important thing when switching to multiplying and scaling business cases is to introduce procedures and defining roles of responsibility. Simply put therefore, the challenge is the change itself.
“It’s a big change for us internally but also for the customer understanding how we work and how we do it differently now, even though we are still the same company for the customer. It’s an ongoing change and Anyline is in a phase where change is very fast and dynamic.”
All this Christian views as achievable, while staying true to Anyline’s core DNA. Ultimately, this important time is about finding the best in what we do, and bringing it from hundreds of core customers to thousands. Change may never be easy, but it’s the right move for taking Anyline to the next level and writing the next chapter in mobile data capture.
