A warm welcome!

We want to welcome Sondre Moland to our team, as a new Hubspot Admin and inbound marketer. He has worked at another New Normal company, Mevo, where he found his love for Hubspot, revops, and how aligning sales, marketing, and support to a single vision can do wonderful things both for a product and company culture. He came from a background in restaurant management, through another software company, and is now ready to take on growing Cemit and getting it in front of more people’s eyes.

So, it’s a long way between restaurant management and AI for railways, isn’t it?

Yes and no. Restaurants are fast-paced environments where you have to solve things on the fly, be quick on your feet, and work together to delight guests. So I see a lot of similarities here. Technology and machine learning are moving at an amazing speed, and you have to be quick to adapt to new things and learn every single day. Also, I always loved the challenge of unifying goals. Often a chef just wants to make good food, a dishwasher just wants to get the job done and a waiter just wants everything to go smoothly. If you can align them all under the goal of “delight guests” the result will always almost be better. That’s what revops is all about, aligning all the steps in the journey to delight.

What is revops really?

Revops is Revenue Operations. It’s a way of designing systems to align all departments in an organization to the same goal, instead of just focusing on their own deliveries. It’s one thing for marketing to deliver a lead to sales. It’s something very different for marketing to find the right leads, that they think will be a great match and really love the product. It’s one thing for sales to sign a contract, but something else to find a great match that will be a long-term customer who loves the product.

When Did You First Get Involved In Cemit?

I used to work for a company called Mevo, where I got to really delve into Hubspot and how to utilize that to align sales and marketing and work with some really cool new technology. It was also a part of New Normal Group, so Aleksander Farstad introduced me to Cemit.

What About The Cemit Product Are You The Most Enthusiastic About?

I love trains as a method of transportation. It’s green, connects cities, and is a low-shoulder method of traveling. Personally, airports stress me out and long-distance busses are a nightmare (and don’t allow my dog!). But trains you just step into, you can sit down and work, sleep, or look out the window at nature, small cities you’ve never seen. The same goes for other light rail, and the subway is maybe what I miss most about Oslo. So future-proofing the rail industry is something I’m pretty enthusiastic about!

What Do You Think Is The Most Important For The Railway Industry Going Forward?

Reliability and comfort. We have a good railway system in Norway, but fewer busses for train during lengthy maintenance is important to keep trains a reliable choice for more people. New tracks like the one between my hometown Skien and Larvik have both shaved time and discomfort going to Vestfold and Oslo. People notice these things.

And Lastly, But Most Important, What Is Your Favorite Snack?

The more sour the better!