Sales POP - Purveyors of Propserity
Change and Adapt
Blog / Leadership / Apr 21, 2020 / Posted by Nikolaus Kimla / 2873

Change and Adapt

0 comments

The Only Way Out of the Lockdown

In the aftermath of this crisis, there will be millions of words written, quoting statistics, attempting to analyze exactly how it all came about, and what could have been done differently. Did we take the right strategy? Was it correct or incorrect? There will be tremendous debates over it, and over how much of our freedom was sacrificed.

Super Organizations

One prediction I can make is that yet another super-organization will be established. Throughout history, following a world-wide or even national disaster, such organizations have always come about. Following World War II, the United Nations was established in an effort to prevent future wars. Following 9/11, the United States Department of Homeland Security was established with the mission of providing public security in the U.S. and preventing another similar event.

If we’re really honest, such organizations are not especially helpful, because there is so much inefficiency. The larger organizations get, the less productive they become. A very pertinent question, for example, is, has the United Nations really avoided wars? The concept of giant organizations should be re-thought because the world has changed; technology has changed, and communication channels have changed.

Similarly, global supply chains will be re-thought. Countries will be examining what types of manufacturing and development should be localized, especially when it comes to medicine. Nations don’t want to have to depend on other nations for help in times of crisis.

Global Movement

At the same time, the global approach has had to be taken, because for the first time we can orchestrate help throughout the world. If we’d had the same capabilities in 1918, when the Spanish Flu epidemic occurred, it certainly would not have been as devastating as it was.

This is the first time in history that the whole world has been so affected. This very morning I was on a call with partners in several different nations: India, Australia, and two different African countries. They’re all locked in—and for us, it’s a mutual corporate experience throughout the globe! It’s something that has never happened, is beyond anything we’ve ever previously imagined.

The Community

As I discussed in my last article, we have now learned that we have to take care of people in our immediate vicinity—within our own communities. Interestingly, there was a trend in big cities a few decades back to make them more like communities with the creation of car-free zones. Cities had been growing and full to bursting, and the car-free zone trend started in Europe. These were areas in which people could walk freely, and there were outdoor cafes, restaurants, and stores, and people could interact and mingle. Today these can be found in Vienna, Barcelona, Madrid and Oslo, among many others.

The feeling of community is the feeling of connecting. We’re realized we can only connect in communities, because the bigger the “community” gets—when they turn into cities—the more impersonal they become. The individual becomes a number.

One thing we’re learning today is that every human counts. Otherwise, why would we take such care of each and every one? I think a couple of hundred years ago in such a crisis as we’re experiencing now, the attitude might have been, “The strongest survive, let the rest go.” But today our consciousness has become stronger, and we have a new spirit.

This growing community consciousness could very well lead to new community structures and communication methods.

The New Working Environment

Along with this new viewpoint, people are learning how to work from home. As people have been forced to work from home because of the quarantine, they’ve realized, “Hey, this isn’t so bad!” I can only speak for America, but previously we had thousands and thousands of people having to sit in cars for hours every day. They were frustrated and stressed. It was a total waste of time—not good for the planet, not good for them, not good for the family, not good for the business, and not good for anyone.

This new working environment is made possible by technology. Interestingly, this technology has been there for many years, but companies have been lax in implementing it, for whatever reason. Now they’re being forced to make it happen.

The question is, are we willing to engage in this learning curve, and embrace what it means? At the end of the quarantine, we don’t have to remain at the total extreme and continue working at home. We can create hybrid models, where some work at home and some come into an office. This will greatly cut down on the number of people daily flocking into inner cities.

No Real Change

But I predict there won’t be a massive change. Once we have the “all clear” and there is a vaccine and perhaps even a cure for the coronavirus, people will mostly revert right back to their old ways. How do I know that? Look back to the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic occurred, and the LGBT community was locked in fear. Today, that community is as active as ever, since there is a treatment for HIV.

We will go back to travel, too—but there will be changes. After 9/11 we had several major changes in air travel that have remained with us since. One of them is that the cockpit door, once a plane has taken off, remains closed no matter what. This is so drastically different from my first trip to the U.S. in the 1980s—because I was friends with the head stewardess in First Class, I was allowed to sit in the cockpit behind the captain as we landed at LAX. I saw spread out before me in every direction the lights of Los Angeles—that was my welcome to the United States! That is, of course, impossible today.

We also have tightened security at airports and must go through being scanned and sometimes searched before we reach our gate. I predict there will be added to this system ways to scan for health and disease detection. Just as the previous changes didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for travel, I don’t expect added measures will, either.

Responsive to Change

Finally, we’ve learned once again that we must be responsive to change. We can turn back to lessons learned from Charles Darwin: it’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the individual or group who is most responsive and adaptable to change. That’s what we need today, and this is true for you as an individual, as a member of a family, as part of a company and as a nation.

If we take a good look, the most adaptive of the workforce has always been salespeople. Why? Because sales must constantly change as the business landscape changes. In the end, I truly believe that salespeople should be as highly valued as we’re currently valuing healthcare workers. Health professionals are doing an incredible and valuable job—but when we begin returning to normal, it will be salespeople who lead the way.

In a nutshell: Welcome to the world of constant instant dynamic change, to which we must all adapt on a daily basis.

About Author

CEO and partner of pipelinersales.com and the uptime ITechnologies, which I founded in 1994 and has since played a significant role in the development of the IT-environment. pipeliner is the most innovative sales CRM management solution on the market. Pipeliner was designed by sales professionals for sales professionals and helps close the gap between the requirements of C-level executives for transparency and the day-to-day operational needs of field and inside sales. I am also the founder and Initiator of the independent economic platform GO-AHEAD!, which orientates itself on the principles of a free marketplace in terms of liberal and social responsibility. Connecting people, the trust of business leadership in terms of values such as freedom, self-responsibility, and entrepreneurial spirit, and strengthening their awareness in order to create a dynamic boost within the economy triggered through spontaneity, all stand for the initial ideas surrounding GO-AHEAD! I studied in Los Angeles and Vienna and received my Masters's Degree in 1994. I am married and have 3 children My Specialties are in: Sales Management, Sales CRM Software, CRM Cloud Solutions, SAAS, Business Strategy, Software Development, "Pipeline Management", Social responsibility, outbound sales, b2b sales, inside sales, sales strategy, lead generation, sales process, entrepreneurship, coaching, mentoring, speaker, opportunity management, lead management, Austrian School of Economics

Author's Publications on Amazon

This is a practical manual covering the vital subject of Sales Management. I firmly believe that sales are the most important profession for dealing with today’s turbulent world and Econo my, for salespeople create wealth and produce peace. But salespeople need a competent, stable leader—and…
Buy on Amazon
Inside this eBook, you’ll discover a series of chapters dedicated to some of the most important areas facing sales today. From the sales process definition to measurement, lead generation, and proven sales techniques, this comprehensive eBook will provide you with the information you need to…
Buy on Amazon
A common term in sales today is EQ, which stands for “emotional I.Q.” It means the skill a salesperson has in reading emotions and utilizing them in sales. It means empathy and a number of other abilities. The short version is, it’s an I.Q. when…
Buy on Amazon
People are smart to question the future of automation, for it has become part of everything we do. With the quantity of applications and technology around us, we yet still crave more. We become convinced of its power when our package is delivered from Amazon…
Buy on Amazon
Sales management isn’t a simple subject by any means. But at the same time, it does have some basic and somewhat simple fundamentals—and that is what we are bringing to you with this book. First come pain points of sales management, and how to overcome…
Buy on Amazon
Today the Internet has transformed a seller's market into a buyer's market and author Nikolaus Kimla states that the role of sales has never been more crucial. It is now time to give salespeople the role they factually can play: entrepreneurs within the enterprise. They…
Buy on Amazon
This is our public declaration of the intentions behind Pipeliner, and our objectives and motives for the product and for our company. Behind the development of that CRM application and, in fact, behind everything we do, we have a real cause. The story begins with…
Buy on Amazon
For the future, there must be a perfect balance of humans and technology. You have to have the perfect technology, andthen the perfect human being in application, performance and presentation. Today and into the future, it’s a 50-50 balance. In the past it was perhaps…
Buy on Amazon
The salespreneur is based on the concept of the entrepreneur. Before we can explain the salespreneur, you have to have some understanding of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur plays a crucial role in any economic system. The entrepreneur seeks out information that can be utilized for…
Buy on Amazon
A seasoned captain would never leave port without a competent navigator. In a similar way, a sales manager might be a total ace at "commanding the ship" – at inspiring and coaching sales reps, pointing out and getting agreement on making quotas, and keeping everyone's…
Buy on Amazon
Comments

..
..
..
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. For information on cookies and how you can disable them, visit our privacy and cookie policy.