Re-Envisioning CRM: Introducing Elements

Like any other software developer, we have always numbered each new release. After eight years of programming, we have had more than 28,000 builds and 7 major releases, numbered 1 to 7. Today’s major announcement, though, breaks from the numbers to a name — Elements.

We thought it was time to identify the driving forces behind Pipeliner CRM. With this release, we are re-envisioning CRM—and want to tell you about the elements that shape our vision of modern CRM, and how they matter to your business.

Here they are:

Attention Getter. Attention Better.

Today we launch a new corporate identity and logo — a dynamic design that reflects our growth and momentum and demonstrates the bright, clean focus throughout our product and our brand. The designs are bold, energizing and capture both the heritage and future of the Pipeliner brand in graphic form.

Functional Facelift: The Sales Pipeline

This design focus has also advanced the software UI/UX. Pipeliner CRM is refreshed and polished throughout. We think the new, flat design synthesizes information at a far faster rate. As always, you benefit, daily, with the ability to always see what’s important in your sales process.

Why should you care about good design? Because good design mirrors good engineering. Look, you’re busy and you’re picky (as you should be!). Those discriminating tastes mean you want a worktool that you enjoy using and which is visually interactive. In a (CRM) world filled with dreary databases that frustrate your ambitions to use them daily for real sales performance, emerges Pipeliner CRM.

The Wow! Feature: Our 1-of-a-Kind Buying Center

We’ve re-envisioned The Buying Center (read more about this slick tool tomorrow!) — a 1-of-a-kind visual Feature that completely maps the companies you sell into.

• Here’s the reality: Today’s B2B sale never starts or ends with just one person involved in the buying decision. And that’s why one of Pipeliner CRM’s most useful features is what we call The Buying Center, because you can now map and see the organization you are selling into!

• The previously hidden hierarchy is suddenly revealed for you to act on — Who are the Gatekeepers? Who are the Influencers? What lines of influence do you need to draw? What about Budget responsibility or P&L? Is there an Exec Sponsor? All these questions (and more) get answered, visually.

• Now you can drag and drop an elegant visual map into your workflow — an org chart — of your prospect’s organization. In one place, you’ll identify the key players, their roles and interconnections. The Buying Center represents the real-life way sales happen with multiple stakeholders involved in a deal. You’re empowered with an “instant-read,” visual, always up-to-date reference and the now-intuitive actions to take.

Education Everywhere (In the Product)

Continuing to execute on our commitment to educating sales professionals, sales managers, and executive management who use Pipeliner CRM (and those who don’t!), we have added ways to access sales training and guidance about the sales process — right in the product! From the Help menu, we inform and advise you, so the best advice will always be available for quick reference — and instantly actionable.

Deep Background: Our Foundation

Pipeliner CRM is built on basic, powerful, and pervasive principles. We’re the first and only CRM solution rooted in proven and longstanding economic principles. Far more than just a CRM solution, we are focused on enabling business success. At the end of this post, we hope you will read more about the business theory and great minds that have shaped our product.

Most companies embrace core values, but putting concepts into practical use is something else entirely. Principles are the rules—the science—behind core values. Pipeliner is based on very sound and proven economic principles, and it is what truly sets us apart from other CRM solutions.

Pipeliner CRM, unlike most other CRM software, embraces an adaptable economic theory that goes back some 150 years. The management principles of economists and management scientists from the Austrian School of Economic Thought form the backbone of our sales management tenets.

Why should you care about these principles in 2014? Although the Austrian School is not a household name today, the ideas they espoused have proven to be effective throughout all the twists and turns of business history. You can read more about them in our CEO’s ebook, but our product is based on their wisdom:

• We believe that salespeople — the entrepreneurs within the enterprise — should be allowed the freedom, latitude and support to sell as only they know how. If there is a word that sums up business in the 21st Century, that word is entrepreneur. We build our product to support the traits of salespeople — we call them “salespreneurs” — because they are the entrepreneurs in any enterprise.

• We support sales management.  It takes management’s understanding, coaching and mentoring of salespeople, both individually and on a team level, to support the entrepreneurial sales force.  As a tool, Pipeliner CRM permits managers access to insights that help their teams visualize and realize the sales goals they’re pursuing. At the same time, it frees managers from unnecessary busy work (unproductive tasks) so that they can coach and train.

• We’re focused on strengths, not weaknesses. While the traditional approach has been to pick out weaknesses and attempt to rectify them, we believe that the better approach is to focus on the strengths of various team members and place them in positions in which those strengths can be fully exploited.

• We’re speaking in a universal language. That language is Visual. When the world greeted a new Pope in St. Peter’s Square, they weren’t waving their hands. They were holding their smartphones aloft. Every human being understands a picture. Pictures tell stories. Our brains are wired that way. Pipeliner is built so that all the stakeholders can see the same data, take what they need from it, and understand the ramifications of what they see.

• We’re committed to education and training.  The real way to strengthen skills is to educate. We educate in our product, in an extensive Sales Reference Library, through ebooks, and our blog.

• We’re building Pipeliner CRM to enable salespeople to focus on results. In any enterprise or activity, the most crucial principle is to focus on results. Pipeliner makes this possible by allowing users to rate opportunities, so that the result is always in view. This focus on results provides another benefit very key to sales and the overall operation of any business: the minimizing of risk.

Pipeliner CRM is the first and only CRM solution rooted in proven and longstanding economic principles. Far more than just a CRM solution, we are focused on enabling success.

As always, we appreciate your comments and feedback on this release.