Enterprise Growth Abroad with Chris Moojen at Atlassian Team ’24 Europe

This is Textron tv. Hey everybody. Mitch Ashley here in Barcelona at Atlassian, team 24 Europe.

A great, great topic. We're switching into sales and talking with, uh, Chris Ion from head of, who's head of global sales, enterprise sales for, uh, Atlassian. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Good. Uh, happy to be here, you.

Yeah. And thanks for coming down to our event as well. You bet.

Hope you've enjoyed yourselves this week. We have. We have great, love, love participating in Atlassian events.

I've been coming for a number of years, so, great. It's A lot of fun. So you're familiar here?

Yep. Good. Well, tell us about global Head of Enterprise sales.

Sounds like a big job. You're, uh, Atlassian. I tend to think of, oh, north America or Australia, but they've got a great president presence in emea.

Yeah, we surely do. Uh, so currently my role indeed is global head of enterprise sales. Uh, previously I ran our, uh, EMEA and APEC regions.

So, uh, I have a probably more extensive knowledge around those two markets than the AIM market. 'cause I'm still learning that one. It's been, uh, it's been three months since I'm in this role.

Uh, but yeah, you're right. If we, uh, if we look at it at sort of where the market is for Atlassian, uh, for many, many, many years, it's been a very large in Europe. Uh, I think by now, uh, we have close to 130,000 customers in the Europe region, uh, which represents about 40% of our total customer base.

If we look at, uh, sort of the spread of where we find our revenue, it's, it's quite similar. Um, which is pretty unique for, for software companies to, to have that type of presence. And the, the way we think about it's that, uh, our original flywheel model, the way we we sort of entered into the market, uh, was really based around the strength of our product.

And that strength was recognized by both European companies as well as, uh, APEC based and Amer based companies. So, um, AMIA has always been and will continue to be a very important, uh, geo for, for Atlassian, truly global company, I would say. Yeah.

Well, when you're working with enterprise customers, oftentimes they are global also, so that kinda leads you wherever they are. Yeah. Uh, and I, and, and that is also one of the reasons why we've, uh, quite recently with our renewed focus on those larger organizations, let's call them enterprise customers, um, we've made sure that our, uh, own internal organization is aligned with that, right?

We wanna make sure that we have true specialization in how we have to work with these types of customers. And the majority of them are indeed, well, let's at least say multinational, right? Not all of them are global, but they do span across multi, uh, geos, multiple geos.

Uh, and we felt it was important to make sure that our teams and our leadership is also aligned in that way so we can serve those customers the best way possible. Um, so this is very much aligned with our strategy on where we think the biggest opportunity is for us as a business. And we made sure that our organization is, uh, is fully aligned with that.

Do you see a lot of differences between the markets between North America EMEA or very similar? Um, I, I think when we look at what we do for customers, what we solve for customers, there is a lot of similarities there, right? Um, uh, companies struggle with the same challenges.

Uh, we tend to help them hopefully with the right initiatives. And I, I, I think we, we do a good job at, um, doing that in a, in a sort of standardized fashion between the regions. One of the very, uh, uh, obvious differences obviously is that in Europe, uh, we have all these different countries and, uh, that means companies built themselves, uh, in accordance to, uh, all these different countries.

Meaning you have one central hub, but you have all these different legal entities that often have autonomy in buying or decision making. It means that, uh, we have less of a consolidated, uh, opportunity in, in Europe and in APEC versus AM r where companies tend to be a little bit more centralized. They're a big company in the us right?

Um, and they operate from one central environment. Uh, that is a, that is definitely a difference in what we see in the market. It, it's a challenge and both an opportunity for us.

'cause it also means that, um, we have more opportunities in Europe to influence multiple people that have something to say about what we do and how we can help them. Whereas in the US it's, uh, it's, it's, it's more centered around a couple of individuals. So we have to make sure we, we, we do the right thing for those, for those people.

Uh, A different sales model. It's, it's a, it's a different sales, uh, method. Indeed.

And, um, the other thing that I find interesting, uh, and this has been true for Atlassian, but also other companies that I've worked at, is that decision making, uh, seems to be different. Whereas in, in, in the Americas, the people that make the decision to potentially buy a certain technology, they tend to choose the best technology out there, right? They're always looking for competitive advantage.

You choose the best solution that could make you go fastest. Where in Europe, typically people are like, we need to find the right balance solution, so it shouldn't be too expensive. It should do what we wanna do, but let's not go for the highest tier that we can potentially buy because we might be spending money the wrong way.

So it's a different, uh, val, uh, validation process. I would say. Different philosophy, Different philosophy.

Um, yeah, So AI is the big topic. It's one of the areas of that and data privacy, a lot of regulation, different frameworks, different requirements in, uh, eu, Americas even, you know, the, uh, localization of data where it's stored all big questions for enterprises that they have to deal with. Yeah.

Um, it's very interesting actually, because you, you sort of combine those two topics, right? AI and data privacy. It's, you would, you would think that's, oh, we're gonna start this whole thing all over again.

So far what we've seen is that the hurdle that we had to take to convince customers to move from on-prem, uh, software deployments to, uh, to adopting SaaS technology, right? It was all about that. Um, and it was often was the majority of the engagement would be around security and data residency and all the things that come with that.

Nowadays when we talk about ai, you would, you would think that you would get the same questions, and we do get the questions, but the appetite from customers to just get over that to, because they're so eager to start leveraging the power of AI in their environment. It's a different discussion. They wanna be educated.

We have to do the right things, obviously, but it's not the hard discussion where we have to sort of drag them along. It's more like, give us the right information so we can start leveraging the power of ai. So it's an interesting changing landscape.

Um, I, I do feel that, and this is not Europe specific, but more globally, that the majority of people are still expecting that there will be some sort of a break or hiccup or delay. That at some point people are like, oh, have we, have we gone? And this is not, again, this is not Atlassian specific, but more AI specific.

Have we have, have we stayed within, within the sort of the borders that we set for ourself? Or is AI now going everywhere, right? People wanna, wanna continue to feel that they are somewhat in control.

Uh, I think that's gonna be the next big discussion that we will have with the majority of customers. Uh, you know, in, in the sales organization, the transparency philosophy of Atlassian has to be a big plus. I would think you're very much more a front disclosing with customers what you're doing.

Yes. Um, we've, we've always, you, you've known Atlassian for multiple years, right? I mean, we're always very big on our company values and, uh, they've not changed and they're still the same.

And, and they are guiding principles for us on how we build our business. And I think transparency and just being upfront with certain situations, right? We have a value open company, no b******t.

Um, is also, it, it, it also translates to how we do business and how we share information, how we wanna make sure that our customers understand what we do. Uh, so yeah, we always try to share and disclose as much information as we can to make sure the customers know what they're getting into, um, and, uh, and are not confused about anything. And, and that, that works really well.

'cause especially enterprise customers, they, they might have been burned in the past by adopting technology that, um, eventually when they dug deeper, um, was a little bit different than what they had expected. Let's call it like that. Yeah.

Uh, how has the economies changed and how's that changed how you approach customers and, Um, o obviously, if we take a couple of years, right? There was this incredibly unpredictable situation during pandemic and post pandemic, right? We saw massive growth, and then we saw a lot of challenges, let's call it decline, uh, uh, uncertainty in the market, which, which was also impacting our business.

Um, interestingly enough, the bigger organizations, they have long-term strategies, so they were a little bit more consistent than, uh, than our SMB markets, right? Our SMB markets have a very direct response to the market cooling down, meaning we hire less people, or we maybe layoff people, which has a big influence on how that market behaves. Whereas enterprises, they, they keep, they kept marching forward.

Now, certain industries obviously suffered more than others. So, um, yeah, we had to, we had to work with them, um, to figure out ways of still making progress on, on how, how they optimize the way they work, right? But the, the goal there was not necessarily to sell them the next product, the goal there was to how can we extract more value from the things that we've already purchased to make sure that it contributes to our bottom line as a business, not the Atlassian bottom line, but their bottom line to help them through those phases.

Um, I think we bounce back from that as a market. I think in Europe right now, we see certain markets that are, there is uncertainty again. Um, interestingly enough, one of our biggest markets in Europe, Germany, right there, there, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty in Germany right now.

It's, it's probably the next to Poland. It's the country that is closest to the, to the war, right? From a geo perspective.

So there's, there's that, there is elections in Germany, there's elections in the us right? The, the, the, there's a lot of things that are happening there. And in a big large economy like Germany, that has an effect.

So we're seeing more and more German customers raise their hand saying like, we have to, we have to strategize about how we move forward, uh, because we don't, we don't necessarily know if our budgets will remain the same. Mm-Hmm. That is part of doing business with large organizations.

That's what we're ready for. We will have good conversations and we'll figure out a path for both of us to continue to, to move forward in a partnership. Well, and partnership's, the key word, it's not just selling product to customers, right?

That's how you lay out that strategy or match your strategy to theirs so you can help 'em Yeah. Achieve that. I, if you're in sales, partnership is always a, a word that you sometimes hate and sometimes love, right?

When the chief procurement officer talks to me and wants to do a partnership, I know what he means, right? And when I try to sell some something to somebody, I call it a partnership, but it's like, I wanna sell you something. So partnership is always an interesting word, but I think the way you describe it is, is, is exactly right.

It, it needs to be a situation where, uh, together we find value in the things that we do. If the value's there, right, the value has to go both ways. If the value's there, that's a partnership.

Um, if the value goes one way, it's a partnership in one direction or the other direction. So that's my philosophy. I try to make sure that my people see it the same way.

So we are receptive for certain market conditions. We wanna have a conversation. At the end of the day, we also run a business.

So, right. There's a limit to what we do, but we always look for a, for a high value situation. Great.

Well, it's great to get your perspective on things and, uh, nice to meet you and have you likewise part of the conversation with our audience. So thanks for joining us, Chris. All Right.

Thanks so much. Great. Good luck with the rest of the show and thanks.

And the global enterprise sales role. I'll do my best. You bet.

All Right, thanks. We'll be back with our next guest.