As you are aware from our blog posts and our extensive library of ebooks, we at Pipeliner CRM are deeply in-tune with the business of business and the ever evolving needs of the market. In simple terms we are obsessively focused on what our buyers need and want. We are proud and humbly grateful that this focus has been rewarded by our company doubling revenue every year for the past three years and increasingly our customer base massively as a result. After all the greatest vote of confidence is when someone becomes a customer and then goes on to renew time after time, which we have been fortunate to experience and is evidenced by our extremely high renewal and retention rates. The nice thing about success, however, is that it does not allow you to rest on your laurels, rather it drives you to always evolve, innovate and adapt.

One of the biggest by-products of our success has been that we are now attracting potential customers from every market segment. Small businesses are attracted by the ease of use and intuitive nature of the product, mid-market businesses love the unique productivity tools such as Navigator and Insights and Enterprise businesses are discovering our ability to deliver top class services and integrate with their other business-critical systems. As a consequence we decided that the time had come to create multiple versions of our CRM aligned to different market segments and priced appropriately for that segment.

Today we are proud to introduce our new three tiered model for business:

Pipeliner Starter: This version is designed for smaller or less complex businesses and provides them with basic sales management, tracking and collaboration.

Pipeliner Business: This version provides full CRM functionality with advanced reporting features, customization capabilities and all the productivity features unique to Pipeliner CRM.

Pipeliner Enterprise: Designed for the largest and most sophisticated of businesses, this version includes advanced services, customizations and integrations.

For more detailed information click here.

As you can see not only do we have a version that can meet the needs of any business today but our solution can grow and scale along with that business. This is a significant moment in the evolution of Pipeliner CRM and we thank our customers, prospects and partners for continually driving us forward – to state the obvious, we literally couldn’t do this with your support!

Now, of course, we could have stopped here as for most companies this would have been plenty of change at one time but as you have come to know, we are not most companies! No, we are also entrepreneurs (as a look at our bios will show you, especially that of our CEO & Founder Nikolaus Kimla who regularly writes on the subject) and firmly believe that entrepreneurship is foundation of a vibrant, thriving economy and indeed, society. From our experience we know how hard it can be when you start out on your own and there are so many demands on what is often your very limited funds. We also know from experience that if you are not well organized and don’t set your business up with good processes from the start it can be a long, hard road. For any business creating leads and contacts, tracking prospects and turning them into customers is critical to success but for a single person business it can be the difference between building a sustainable business and losing everything.

So as always, we at Pipeliner are here to help. We are now offering a free version of our CRM for a single user that will provide them with basic sales management and tracking functionality plus we are offering an enhanced version for a nominal fee. So now for an entrepreneur, a consultant, contractor, home business operator, indeed student or whoever else needs to bring organization to their daily activities, Pipeliner Personal is available at no cost.

Research has shown that there is an explosion in people leaving traditional employment to branch-out on their own. Remote working is becoming the norm as people locate to places they believe give them a better quality of life and many are choosing to operate as a contractor or consultant for greater flexibility and work/life balance.

At Pipeliner we salute the entrepreneur, the risk taker, those who choose to stand alone and build their own future and with Pipeliner Personal we support them in a very real way.

We would like to thank all of our existing customers as well as those who we have engaged with over the years who may not have become our customers. All of you have helped us arrive at this point where we now have a product for all market segments from the individual entrepreneur to the small business, to the mid-market company all the way to the global enterprise.

And guess what? The journey is only starting!

During a recent visit to an entrepreneurship conference in another city, I happened to eavesdrop on a fascinating conversation in the hotel bar at the end of the evening, between Dr. Abraham, a kind of world-weary experienced entrepreneur and a young, energetic hot venture capitalist named Doug.

The first part of the conversation covered the fact that 80 to 90 percent of startups fail, despite anyone’s best efforts. Following that, the conversation then turned to why.

The new round of drinks arrived, and Dr. Abraham began. “First of all, let’s get one thing straight: being an entrepreneur is not a craft, it’s an art. It’s not something that can be taught or learned—it’s something that comes from a combination of gut instinct and experience.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” Doug demanded.

“An art is something that has an x quality about it, a je ne sais quoi—something that can’t quite be defined. Whereas a craft is something that results from specific, definite steps. For example, medicine was once an art—but today, with everything that is known and taught, it can be precisely learned by anyone with the aptitude for it. The same could be said for architecture, which was once a total art, but today can be learned as a craft.”

“But entrepreneurship is a craft! It’s taught in universities all over the world!”

“Well, something is taught in universities all over the world. But let’s take the word of someone who would know. I take it you’ve heard of Steve Blank?

“Sure–an incredible entrepreneur.”

“That he is. But he’s also a professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford, who also lectures at UC Berkeley, Columbia University and Caltech. But to my point: he recently made the statement that ‘becoming an entrepreneur is not material for a lecture; a founder is not a job because there’s no manual out there for it.’”

“What did he mean?”

“We’d have to ask him. But I can tell you that from my standpoint of experience, it means that a real entrepreneur must have incredible capabilities in several very important areas. I’ll give you some examples:

• He must be like a ship’s captain, capable of mastering the vessel through rough times.
• He must also be like a battle-hardened general, leading his troops to out-maneuver competitors.
• He must be like a chaplain, who counsels wounded soldiers in the heat of battle.
• He must be like an evangelist who travels the world, preaching the benefits of his product or service.
• He must be a kind of doctor, who can fix up parts of his company when they are broken.
• He must also must be like a treasurer who can, at the drop of a hat, create vital liquidity.”

“But even those things can be learned!” Doug insisted.

“Sure—if you have the many years it would take, you could theoretically learn each one of them. But then it takes another run of years to learn which of these hats to wear when—and to conduct your organization by knowing fully which function does what. Those years of experience teach vital lessons—not necessarily through succeeding, but mostly through failure.

Dr. Abraham continued. “Not every human has all of these qualities—in fact, it’s relatively few. Since you deal with entrepreneurs all the time, I’ll go ahead and ask you: How many people do you know who have all of these qualities available and can think and operate with them? And using them, have an entire growing enterprise under control without losing composure?”

“Well…not many, I suppose,” Doug said.

“Correct. Most people that we listen to—in fact, most people speaking at this conference—are expert in one area. We come to events like this to listen to experts. And that brings up another point—you cannot be an entrepreneur and rely on experts. It’s fine to get advice from them—but you must learn these fields of endeavor, these areas of expertise, yourself. Otherwise you’ll never have enough understanding to truly lead an enterprise.

“But…” Doug started to say.

Dr. Abraham raised a hand, interrupting Doug. “I’m not finished. Now let’s talk about another very important quality.

“Today—in fact, right here at this conference—there are a great many who desire one single quality of entrepreneurship: freedom! The freedom to create your own life, be your own boss. But as we learn from Thomas Mann, the other side of freedom is responsibility. It is a two-sided coin. You cannot have one without the other.

“Now I ask you: How many aspiring entrepreneurs came to this conference ready to take total responsibility for their startups? To really assume the risk? Compared with: How many aspiring entrepreneurs came to this conference with great ideas—but seeking someone else who would bear all the financial burden and responsibility, whether or not the business failed or succeeded?”

“Well,” Doug said. “I’m guessing most fall into the second category, based on all the ones I’m meeting with.”

“Of course! It’s why you yourself came here—looking for someone with a great idea into which you could invest your fund. But they must be willing to give up a great deal to obtain that funding—and they are, simply because they don’t want to take that responsibility. They want the freedom, but they sure don’t want the risk, which can be crushing.”

Doug regarded Dr. Abraham. “So just assuming that I take what you’re saying as true—what qualities, then, does an entrepreneur actually need to succeed?”

“Well,” Dr. Abraham replied. “Even if someone were to take the decades it would require to learn each and everyone of the area I have described, including that of taking responsibility—being a real entrepreneur is even more than that.”

“More than that?” Doug exclaimed. “You’re kidding!”

“No I’m not. You see, all of these areas, every single one, are encompassed within a person’s character. They have a precise instinct, utilizing all of these skills and characteristics, of how to do it. This is why so many companies fail—the leader just doesn’t have the considerable character and maturity it takes to lead. Amazingly, you sometimes have young people that have such character and can lead a company to glory. More often, the young don’t’ have it and neither do the old.”

Doug asked, “So does that mean a person shouldn’t even try?”

“No! I never said that. For more often than not, a person will discover he has abilities and skills he never dreamed of until he does try. None of those who have succeeded, would have if they hadn’t tried.”

There was a silence. Then Doug asked, “Is there more?”

Dr. Abraham smiled, raising his empty glass.

Doug chuckled. “It’s going to cost me another drink, isn’t it?”

Join us next week to see where this conversation went next.