The data you provided earlier consists of four chapters from an ebook focused on identifying and analyzing mega-threats in the sales industry. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of mega-threats and the motivation behind exploring potential dangers specific to the industry. Chapter 2 discusses the first mega-threat, which involves changes in the role of salespeople due to technological advancements. Chapter 3 explores the mishandling of data as the second mega-threat, emphasizing the potential harm caused by mismanagement or inaccuracies. Finally, Chapter 4 addresses the third mega-threat, which is the absence of proper processes and the use of inappropriate technology, highlighting the importance of efficient and coordinated processes within the sales industry.

Chapter #1
General Mega-Threats

Nouriel Roubini has a fascinating bestselling book called MegaThreats: Dangerous Trends that Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them. In this book, Roubini lays out 10 trends that seriously threaten our survival. This book got me thinking: are there mega-threats for our industry coming our way? Thus began creation of an ebook on mega-threats to our particular area of endeavor.

Chapter #2
The First Mega – Threat to the Sales Industry

Let’s look at the first sales mega-threat, which deals with the salespeople
themselves.

Mega-Changes

While researching this ebook, I turned back to an excellent book that was popular when I first brought my business to the U.S. from Austria a little less than 11 years ago. The book was by Daniel Pink and was entitled ” To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others”. Going back through Pink’s book, I was startled by how much has changed since it was published. Many factors addressed in the book are no longer relevant, mainly due to the incredible advance of technology.

Chapter #3
The Second Mega-Threat to the Sales Industry: Mishandling of Data

The next mega-threat we’ll take up is the mishandling of data. This is a threat to any enterprise—or, for that matter, any organization or even a government. Data could be generally defined as “facts or information.” It is used for evaluating situations, creating understanding, and many other functions. Data, in many forms, is what humans communicate to each other.

There are two basic ways data can be harmful: if it is mismanaged or if it is inaccurate.

Chapter #4
Mega-Threat Number 3 to the Sales Industry—Missing Processes and Wrong Technology

Let’s take up the final mega-threat to the sales industry—missing processes and wrong technology.

Processes

Every activity a company undertakes is a process, and these processes must be as efficient as possible. Processes must also be in very tight coordination—otherwise, another process (or individual or group of people) is left waiting up the line.

In this white paper, Nikolaus Kimla explores the Myths Debunked: Data Security & Risk Assessment surrounding AI in Sales forecasting.

Myths Debunked

Data Security & Risk Assessment

It’s true that Artificial intelligence can be of great assistance in sales forecasting.

Pipeliner CRM’s AI, called Voyager, continually navigates and explores customer and prospect data captured in CRM. It then presents key indicators of actions to be taken, areas that need attention, and acts as an early warning system of the health of opportunities in the pipeline.

Myth #1 › “I need to engage special staff for using AI in my business.”

AI is built right into Pipeliner CRM and requires no additional or specialized personnel.

Myth #2 › “AI predicts customer and prospect actions for our sales team.”

Despite what some say about AI, it does not make predictions like some high-tech crystal ball.

Myth #3 › “The path that AI uses to arrive at conclusions cannot be understood.”

There are AI models out there that draw conclusions, and users cannot understand how AI got there.

Myth #4 › “AI is useless with uncertainty.”

On the contrary, AI was developed to deal with and untangle uncertainty. When used correctly, it performs this function outstandingly.

Myth #5 › “In performing analyses, AI invades privacy.”

AI is only as invasive as it is programmed to be.

No Hype — Just Sales AI That Actually Helps You!

Unlike the artificial intelligence (AI) being promoted/hyped by several other CRM applications, the AI utilized in Pipeliner is of a supportive nature.

Nikolaus Kimla’s ebook covers restoring purpose to sales in today’s world.  Once in a great while, you observe people in a particular profession who truly represent that profession with honesty and integrity. One standout example is a profession whose people act as one would expect, from how they dress to how they execute their jobs. If they don’t behave this way, it can become life-threatening.

Part 1 – Finding Meaning

Chapter 1: Restoring Sales Purposes

In this light, let’s take a look at salespeople. What was the original purpose of sales? What kind of mindset do we need to reestablish so that they align with their own original goals like a firefighter does with theirs?

Chapter 2: Salespeople — Bring Back the Positive Meaning

In the last chapter, we took up the example of a firefighter and the fact that a firefighter is almost always a positive example of their profession. In the same way, a firefighter has a positive reputation in society.

Chapter 3: Finding that Meaning

FINDING MEANING DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HUGE – Some people seem to think that finding meaning in life means that someone has to want to change the world, or become super-famous.

Chapter 4: Slapping Back at Negative Attitudes on Sales

THE MENTAL MODEL – There is something called a mental model, through which a person sees the world. This mental model influences a person’s decisions, actions, and feelings about life in general.

Chapter 5: Can a Salesperson Find Meaning in Life?

Just based on what you generally hear, and the incredibly negative views shown in popular culture, it would seem that the only meaning a salesperson could find in life would come from high-pressuring prospects to buy things against their will, lusting after money and, in the end, total misery.

Chapter 6: The Aim of Pipeliner With Sales

In this ebook, we’ve been discussing the finding of meaning within sales. Why is this so important?

Part 2 – Building a Character for Sales

Chapter 7: Developing Sales Character

In this ebook, we’ve been talking about bringing honorable purpose back to being a salesperson. When aiming for their true goals, we’ve seen that salespeople create wealth and bring peace.

Chapter 8: Why Character?

The two pillars of the future are technology and human beings. You have to have the perfect technology, and then the perfect human being in application, performance and presentation.

Chapter 9: For Sales, It’s All About Character

In this high-tech mechanized age, many things can be replaced. But the one thing you cannot replace is a human—you can’t replace a human being with whom you share trust. You can’t replace a relationship. And central to trust and relationships is character.

Chapter 10: Watch Your Thoughts, for They Become Words

There is an excellent book available today, one which we promote, called ”Consistency Selling” by Weldon Long. In his book, Long presents this proverb differently: Thoughts control emotions, which leads to controlling actions; when you control actions you control your results, and results control your thoughts. I tend more to the proverb as stated in the beginning here: “Watch your thoughts, for they become words.”

Chapter 11: Watch Your Words, for they Become Actions

THE POWER OF WORDS Humans are the only species capable of articulation of thoughts, through words. Those words have meaning, and are actually extremely powerful.

Chapter 12: Watch Your Actions, for They Become Habits

HABITS LEARNED EARLY – We know one thing about habits, both good and bad: they are learned very early on. A prime example is eating—when parents are careless, and children end up being raised on a diet of sugar and junk food, children grow up with these habits into obesity, diabetes and other health issues. It’s also something that creates a great deal of dissatisfaction with life, as demonstrated by the billion-dollar weight loss industry (diets, gym chains, exercise equipment and even drugs).

Chapter 13: Watch Your Habits, for They Become Character

Character, in my opinion, can be a complicated issue. When you’re talking about character, you’re describing a whole person.

Chapter 14: Watch Your Character, for It Becomes Your Destiny

Many people do not have a clear idea of “destiny.” They don’t conceive a destiny for themselves, or truly understand the concept. What is their destiny? Why are they here? For many it’s just too complex—or they simply don’t wish to confront the issue for themselves. Very few say with certainty, “This is my destiny.” Another way of saying it, of course, is “This
is my goal in life.”

The understanding of Pipeliner CRM features must go well beyond simple, functional explanations. Just understanding mechanical functionality doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll really grasp the product and all that it means, which is why I’m now writing this ebook on the concepts behind Pipeliner CRM functionality.

To begin with, there are three distinctly different types of Pipeliner users, who all require different approaches. Let’s first clearly define these different types.

Chapter 1 › Understanding Company Structure

As described in the introduction, we have two different administrator roles—one being the regular administrator and one being the architect administrator. One person might fulfill both roles or, in a larger company, two separate people might be required.

The first thing this architect-administrator has to work out is the company structure. How is it constructed? It could be based geographically—for instance, the company has divisions in Europe, America and Asia.

Chapter 2 › Multiple Pipelines

Within a CRM, a pipeline represents a sales or other type of process. Pipeliner CRM was the first CRM to enable multiple pipelines within CRM.

In this ebook, we’ve been discussing the functions of a different type of CRM administrator, called the architect administrator. This is the person who helps create processes and adapts them to pipelines. Note that, with Pipeliner, this function still requires minimal training and, in fact, can learn the technical aspects in a few hours.

Chapter 3 › Product and Price Lists

Pipeliner is the only CRM offering that allows you to create an extremely flexible product list—one in which you can attach products to different pipelines and product lines.

Chapter 4 › Common Lists

The Pipeliner CRM Common Lists are another first for Pipeliner CRM, and no other vendor has anything like them. They are directly correlated to putting the “R” back in CRM.

The Common Lists include elements relating to account hierarchy, sales roles, contact relations and account relations. As you’ll readily see, these easy-to-utilize elements have incredible usefulness to sales and account management.

Chapter 5 › Fields and Forms

Another straightforward approach for Pipeliner administration is fields and forms. As with much of our other functionality, we’ve made fields and forms far easier than other CRMs. No programming is required, and this function, along with other administration, can be learned in a few hours by anyone who is computer-literate. Everything is done by drag and drop for creating a form.

Chapter 6 › Benefits of Artificial Intelligence to CRM

Any company in the market for a CRM solution today should beware of wild claims being made in the name of artificial intelligence being used in CRM. Clearly, there are functions AI can perform today, and functions that it clearly cannot.

The most prominent AI CRM product being sold at the moment is sold on the presumption that AI will affect how decisions are being made within organizations, and will actually change how selling is done. AI will provide greater insight into customers, leveraging big data to identify when they will purchase. AI will forecast purchasing trends and inform promotional activities, and even allow prediction of marketing events.

Chapter 7 › Best-of-Breed Connectivity

A primary philosophical tenet at Pipeliner is “best of breed.” Along with Pipeliner, we want you to be able to integrate and connect with the very best applications out there for all your other tasks and duties. Pipeliner connects with all the systems you use, automates your sales force processes, and easily imports or migrates all your data.

Chapter 8 › Summary and Final Thoughts

As differentiated from the day-to-day CRM administrator, the architect administrator is the one who operates on a conceptual level of the organization’s business processes, and continually finds ways to create those processes within Pipeliner. These functions are not only designed for sales—they could very well be for anywhere else in the company. The architect administrator, in my opinion, is the new norm for the future.

CRM Necessary for the Digital Transformation

You might find the statement “CRM has failed in the past” to be a bit strong and sweeping. But at the time I brought my company into the CRM space, the predominant phrase heard about the subject from salespeople was this: “CRM sucks!” Additionally, there wasn’t at the time (nor is there still) a clear market leader in the CRM space—even though according to g2.com, there are over 600 CRM solutions, and 10 targeted at bigger companies. These facts put together clearly demonstrate that CRM certainly has not succeeded in the past.

Much has been written about CRM—it’s importance, what it should consist of, why a company should use it, and so on. So what have I done differently with this ebook? Quite simply, I have taken a very objective look at the exploding state of technology, what that means to a business, how CRM must encompass it, and where we must go.

Whether you’re in the market for a CRM solution, or already have one but are curious about where today’s digital business world is heading, I think you’ll find this information very helpful. Drop me a line and let me know what you think!

Chapter 1: CRM Has Failed in the Past. Will It Now Succeed?

Yes, it’s true. Going back roughly 25 years ago to the original development of CRM and coming forward fairly recently, it could certainly be said that the first iteration of CRM applications has been a failure. They’ve been costly, incredibly difficult and expensive to implement, and additionally expensive to administrate. These factors comprised the first part of the failure.

Chapter 2: What Should a CRM Really Be Today?

A prime reason for CRM user complaints has been the amount of data entry required from users, especially salespeople—without any actual assistance and help back to them from the CRM solution. Sometime back a cry began to be raised by users for CRM to be simplified and made easier when it came to data entry.

Chapter 3: Here’s What We’re Doing About It

Interestingly, we brought Pipeliner into the marketplace at a time when the market was actually overrun with CRM applications. One could certainly ask, with some justification, why we did this.

Chapter 4: How Is CRM Helping Today?

Now let’s take a look at how and why Pipeliner factually and practically empowers salespeople. If you utilize CRM anywhere at any time, this could be very valuable information for you.

Chapter 5: Where Must CRM Be in the Future?

Now, where should CRM be as we move out into the future? And how should CRM relate to the ongoing digital revolution?

Chapter 6: If You Don’t Have CRM Today, You’re Sunk

For our final chapter, let’s talk about why CRM is so vital today—and why it is that, if you don’t have it, you’re not going to make it.

Sales Transformation

For some years I’ve been saying that, as a society, we’re in the midst of a transformation. Given what’s happened in the last couple of years, there’s no one left who is disagreeing with me! It’s become very obvious.

One very noticeable aspect of this transformation is the image change that has occurred with salespeople. If you look at the bestselling sales books currently available, you’ll see salespeople being characterized as significant agents of positive change for companies and even for society. This is a drastic difference from salespeople portrayals as pushy, ugly, brutal, manipulative, difficult, slimy, annoying, dishonest—all the negative traits seen in such films as Death of a Salesman, Tin Men and Glengarry Glen Ross. Authors such as Jeb Blount and Daniel Pink are leading this charge.

Today we’re seeing that modern salespeople should be thought leaders. They should be empathic listeners. They should be intelligent, connect with people, solve problems, build trust, and emotionally create a positive buying experience. They should be competent and authentic. In short, a complete pendulum-swing from the way they were previously portrayed.

Sales Fraud Throughout History

The association of dishonesty with sales goes back hundreds of years, to the merchants in the medieval days of Marco Polo who were regularly cheating buyers. They did this, often, by using incorrect weights that favoured the seller. Such methods of fraud go back even further, and can even be found in the Biblical book of Leviticus: “You must not commit injustice in judging, in measuring, in weighing or in measuring liquids.”

We can remove the religious aspect and just notice that cheating in sales existed and was condemned back that far. Unfortunately, it was not a networked society, and word of sales treachery did not spread in real-time as it would today. Once a merchant cheated a buyer, the buyer never knew if they’d ever see the merchant again. We can see that today avoiding such sales fraud is not only wrong from an ethical standpoint, but from a logical one as well: word of a single instance of deceit in sales can spread throughout the world in an instant.

Effects in The Community

The effects of sales fraud are even more profound, however: they destroy the community. When winning together does not occur in sales—meaning that both sides of a deal, the seller and the buyer, win—a community cannot be built.

What happens in a community when sales fraud is occurring? Let’s say, for example, a contractor building homes in a neighborhood is a bit dishonest. Do you think for a moment that people in that community will not be talking about it? You bet. This contractor, in effect, is actually harming themselves by harming the community.

This demonstrates another reason for “win together” to occur: it strengthens the community.

Roots in Altruism

The concept of “win together” actually has its roots in altruism, which I believe is a natural trait in humans. You will innately treat someone as you want to be treated. This trait is even demonstrated in nature, with monkeys. So we can certainly listen to our inner selves and behave that way, too—and I believe that altruism is the genesis of sales.

I’m not talking about the higher calling of compassion. It’s more like a basic understanding that we’re all in the same shoes. We’re all buyers in some form, aren’t we? None of us wants to be cheated or defrauded. We want to have a “win-to-win.” So why do some salespeople do something to others that they don’t want to do to themselves?

Building Relationships

Going back to the title of this chapter, why is it so essential to winning together? Because without it, a relationship can never be built. When only one side is winning, the result is a dysfunctional relationship, which of course is no relationship at all. The elements of such a “relationship” are isolation, disconnection, mistrust, guilt, demotivation, depression, negative mindset, seeing only obstacles, problems leading to frustration, fear, self-loathing, the constant feeling that something must be fixed, and the ever-present expectation to lose.

But what do you gain when both sides win? First of all, respect yourself. Then, respect for the other person, because it’s a good deal. You have open communication, mutually beneficial for both sides. You’re willing to recommend each other. You create self-confidence and hope, and a positive attitude. You have high expectations, and you see more opportunities than obstacles and problems. You can even turn a problem into an opportunity. You build trust in yourself and trust in your customer.

All of this is why we’re putting the “R” back into Customer Relationships. Many CRM vendors believe that customer relationships come about through the use of Artificial Intelligence—something we see as a completely incorrect assertion and assumption. Machines can never replace human beings and can never perform human interaction.

Through relationships, sales can actually restore society, as people start to win together.

For any company involved with sales, account management and key account management is crucial and requires a vastly different skillset and toolset than winning new sales.

What is (Key) Account Management?

The core concept of account management is that winning a new account is more costly and difficult than maintaining and upselling an existing account. Yet account management still requires planning, resources, time and energy. Account management maintains customers beyond the basic SaaS approach, which only pays it “lip service” through a single Customer Success Manager. Account management also needs to be embedded in CRM—and we have now greatly expanded Pipeliner’s account management capabilities. We are the first CRM vendor worldwide to include account management in the core system.

Account management has to do with the size of the account, planning how much revenue you expect from the account, plans for enlarging the account, and strategies for cross-selling and upselling. Of course, research must occur before planning, so that you understand which account even makes sense to plan for. Some accounts have high potential, and others low potential. You must look over your accounts, and decide which are strategically important.

The Right People

This planning must include the account rep who will be consistently managing and selling into accounts—as I said in the beginning, account management has its own skillset above and beyond just that of selling. Additionally, an account manager must be positively supported by technology so that they can immediately see all the potential, possibilities and issues of any particular account.

Nature of Accounts

Many times accounts should be strategically managed due to the size of the account. Working with a large enterprise is very different from working with a young, dynamic company striving to move forward. Where there is a parent company and subsidiaries, there are issues specific to selling and account-managing them. One issue can be that despite a company being a subsidiary of a parent company, it can have relative autonomy to make its own business decisions.

In such a situation, it is obviously best to win the parent company’s business before that of the subsidiaries. But in reality, unless your company is a substantial enterprise in itself, you’ll often be dealing with subsidiary companies or even departments of subsidiary or parent companies. It’s more like a grassroots movement, because you’re working from the bottom up instead of the top down. How you proceed should be part of your overall planning—you might start with one department and spread out to 20.

Politics

One risk you take when you’re selling to different subsidiaries or different departments is that you may be dealing with a lot of internal politics that you’re unaware of. One subsidiary might be favoring one solution of your type, and another might be favoring a different one. Because you’re an outside vendor, you won’t have a real insight into the company. Even if you have a “spy”—someone within your customer company to provide you with “inside skinny”—you may still not have the full picture. Therefore you need to proceed with caution.

Importance

Why is account management so crucial? Because managing accounts done well provides your company with a steady flow of revenue. Efficient account management builds strong relationships, and by doing so provides predictability. You’re able to say with some degree of confidence that a particular account will bring you a certain amount of revenue in the coming year.

I find it amusing that we all know that winning a new customer is much more difficult than selling to an existing customer—yet we’re the first CRM system that has ever embedded a real approach to account management.

In this ebook we’ll go into considerable detail about account management. Let’s get started!

This ebook is designed to show you how Pipeliner CRM, with its constantly innovated and evolving new features, assists salespeople, sales managers and other roles in the company as they make their way into the future. As we move forward, it becomes increasingly important how users spend their time, because their time becomes ever more valuable.

It should be noted that our innovation of new and more powerful features is an ongoing and evolving process. There will always be changes and improvements going forward. We believe that data analytics is crucial for future business decisions, and it requires consistently evolved angles from which to view the data.

Pipeliner is like no other CRM tool in the world. At the center of it is the Automatizer functionality, which makes it possible to automate not only routine tasks, but even some functionality in other applications. This doesn’t mean that everything should be automated, though—there is so much more a company can do today.

A salesperson’s job is broken down into specific tasks which, within Pipeliner, we refer to as activities. An activity could be a call, a visit, a reception of feedback, or an email. With the Automatizer, some activities can be automated. Activity metrics are important, but there is a slight difference between measuring activities conducted by the salesperson and those that are automated.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

To fully grasp the importance of a tool like Pipeliner, you must understand the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Far too often these two terms are simply interchanged and thrown around like buzzwords, and are used incorrectly. When “experts” say that sales metrics have to be “both efficient and effective,” it’s obvious that the speaker considers the two terms mean the same thing. This isn’t the case.

Peter Drucker, the great Austrian management consultant, educator and author, stated this difference very precisely: “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

When it comes to sales, I’ve always used the analogy of a hammer and a nail. If you are hanging a picture on a wall, you need a hammer. While something like a brick might do the job, it won’t work very well. And you not only need a hammer, but the right kind of hammer. A sledgehammer will drive the nail right through the wall, and will probably put a big hole in the wall. You need a smaller hammer that you can use to put the slender nail in place on which you’ll be able to hang the picture.

Another analogy would be using a bicycle to go from Los Angeles to San Diego (a distance of 120 miles). You’d have to plan roughly 12 hours for the trip, and because you’d arrive there sweaty and tired, you’d need to rest, shower, and have a change of clothes ready. Obviously, a bicycle would not be an effective mode of transport in this circumstance.

If you don’t have the right tool, you can never be effective.

In Sales

Once again, effectiveness is doing the right thing. To do the right thing, you need the right tool. If a salesperson is not using a tool that has meaning for them as a salesperson, or if they absolutely dislike the tool, they’re not engaged with it. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t sync with their mindset, and doesn’t speak their language as a salesperson.

We have to take into account the fact that salespeople are visual people, driven by different approaches. Because Pipeliner is completely visual, it is the only truly effective tool for sales. The primary principle for Pipeliner development is Instant Dynamic Visualization. Any tool that isn’t so formulated will never be effective.

Now moving onto efficiency, it is only with the right tool that a salesperson can become efficient. As an example, a salesperson should be very efficient in calling people. But if they don’t have a tool that enables them to make multiple calls—such as today’s dialers and call robots—they won’t at all be efficient in cold-calling. If their company tells this salesperson that they have no calling software, that they must use their own smartphone, they’re going to have a great deal of trouble making a quota of 100 calls a day. They might somehow be able to achieve this for a couple of days, but by day 3 they’ll be so exhausted and frustrated they’ll probably throw the smartphone out the window and quit.

Salespeople—just like everyone else—only have so many hours in a day. They only have certain times of day they can reach prospects. They can work outside of these hours, but it is only those hours they’ll be able to connect to prospects. It is therefore critical that a salesperson be very efficient in their activities. Otherwise they won’t get everything done, and make quotas, the way they need to.

Automating Tasks

While a salesperson needs to constantly improve in the things they do, they don’t need to improve in repetitive tasks. Such tasks should instead be automated, offloaded to Pipeliner’s Automatizer, or a workflow engine.

Outside of sales, history has shown us many such innovations, for which we’re eternally grateful. We all used to have to manually wash dishes after every meal—an extremely repetitive and mundane task. Today we just load up the dishwasher and press a button. Similarly, we once had to wash clothes by hand, and dry them on a line outside, at least when the weather was good. Today we have efficient washers and dryers to take care of those tasks for us.

Interconnection

Today these kinds of appliances are becoming even more efficient by being smart, able to share knowledge with each other. This is the Internet of Things (IoT).

In a similar way, the tools we use in sales must interconnect, too, and we must be able to connect with them. When we examine data, it must be made meaningful to us—not just to show us discrepancies, failures, or shortcomings, but mainly to improve the process. That is actually the goal of data—to remove problems, reduce risk, and to leverage opportunities. When we can rapidly and fully understand indicators and metrics, and deeply view actual issues, we can be proactive instead of reactive. At that point business gets interesting, because at that moment we are faster than our competitors.

Data within the sales process has different meanings for different roles in sales. A sales development rep (SDR) would interpret things differently than a sales hunter or farmer. The way data is interpreted brings real efficiency.

Efficiency Brings Productivity

What, in turn, does efficiency provide to a company? Efficiency leads to productivity. When we’re more efficient, we become more productive as a natural result.

Improved productivity means that you are getting better at all your activities, getting more out of the system, reducing costs and levering opportunities. Of course that’s a major goal for any company, now and into the future: reduction of risk, reduction of costs, and optimizing profit.

Part of becoming more productive and more efficient is coordination and working together. For example, when a salesperson works well with an SDR, their sales productivity increases exponentially. The time frame for accomplishing activities is reduced. This all means more wins for sales.

Come with me now and see how Pipeliner can bring ever-increased effectiveness, and therefore efficiency—and therefore profitability—to your organization.