In this episode of the Nobel Podcast, we sat down with Maaike Molenkamp, Chief Revenue Officer at Leadinfo, who started her career there as an SDR ten years ago. She shared what it really takes to open a new country office from scratch, the cultural mistakes that catch Dutch companies off guard in Germany, and how she built Leadinfo’s RevOps function from nothing.
Watch the video below:
Ten years, one company, a very different role
Maaike joined Leadinfo as an SDR and has since moved through Country Manager for DACH, Head of RevOps and Global Expansion, and now Chief Revenue Officer. Leadinfo itself, a Dutch B2B website-visitor identification platform, was acquired by TeamBlue in 2023/2024. Her advice for anyone offered a stretch role: “it was not the first country I wanted to move to, but I think it was a great challenge, and I had not done it before, so why not.”
Opening a country office with almost no budget
When Leadinfo decided to open a German office, Maaike relocated to Düsseldorf, chosen for its proximity to the Netherlands, available talent, and lower costs than Berlin. With limited hiring budget, she posted vacancies on Indeed and brought on junior hires straight out of school, working from a flexible office in case things didn’t pan out. With almost no inbound traffic at the start, she had to get creative fast about generating pipeline.
Germany is not “the Netherlands, but bigger”
The biggest lesson: don’t assume a neighboring market works the same way. Where Dutch business culture leans flat and direct, Maaike found Germany far more formal, with clear hierarchy and job titles carrying real weight. Trust gets built differently too. Directness earns trust in the Netherlands; formality earns it in Germany. She also had to adjust for GDPR being interpreted more strictly, and for customers expecting formal contracts rather than the invoice-based relationships Leadinfo was used to.
A costly lesson on cold-calling law
Maaike’s outbound strategy initially focused on trying to win competitors’ customers during their trial periods, until she learned the hard way that Germany’s UWG law requires explicit consent before cold-calling. It led to a few trips to court. Still, she says the pipeline it generated made it a worthwhile, if painful, lesson.
The real backbone of German growth: partnerships
What actually scaled sustainably was Leadinfo’s partner program: digital agencies reselling the platform in exchange for 15% lifetime commission and free use of the software. Because those agencies already had trust with their own customers, it gave Leadinfo an easy, scalable way into a market where trust is hard-won.
Building RevOps from zero
After two years in Germany, Maaike returned to fix what she calls “the RevOps mess,” taking on the newly created Head of Revenue Operations and Global Expansion role. She focused on automating handoffs between go-to-market teams without disrupting the customer relationship, and on defining a clear ICP for the first time, an increasingly important move as NRR, expansion, and churn started mattering more than raw new business.
From RevOps to Chief Revenue Officer
Four months into her CRO role, Maaike is focused on lifting NRR above 100%, opening new international offices with a repeatable expansion playbook, and building a leaner, more stable organization. Her approach to improving NRR: analyze the customer base by size and industry to spot where upgrade potential is highest and churn risk is lowest, and give the existing customer base as much attention as new pipeline. Leadinfo now uses HubSpot as its CRM and Gong to capture every customer interaction, feeding account prep, product roadmap decisions, churn analysis, and deal forecasting.
Her advice for new CROs
Maaike’s biggest lesson from her first four months: resist the urge to do everything at once. “Zoom out, focus on the most impactful projects… take three projects and just excel at them.”
