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 Prime, containing the items we were simply browsing for that morning. That entire process is a product of automation—from the visualization on the screen, to the ordering and then the delivery of a perfect product right before you.

Today’s economy, in which goods and services are rapidly delivered throughout the world, would not be possible without automation. Just getting down to everyday activity, when we run low on milk or other grocery items, we can simply click a few boxes on a supermarket website and have them delivered within a few hours.

Another radical change in our daily lives has come about in driving a car. I remember in the old days when I rented a car in a strange city, and had to open up a big paper map to figure out where I was going, and hope I wouldn’t miss an exit and have to backtrack. Today this is no problem at all—your GPS navigation system will tell you exactly which exit to take and when it’s coming up.

There are, of course, many other examples. Will automation replacing us, people?

No, we do not believe that automation—and further along, artificial intelligence and robotics—will replace people. This is another topic we’ll take up at length as we go, but for now suffice it to say that automation is enabling and creating new jobs. Additionally, I believe that automation will empower the human aspect of life, not lesson or remove it. Come with me on this journey to discover how automation is not replacing life, but enhancing it!

The US Apollo space program was an amazing time in history. It had its real beginnings in President John F. Kennedy’s address to Congress on May 25, 1961, in which he famously said:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
The Apollo program proceeded ahead, and as history tells we landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Anyone who was around at the time remembers exactly where they were—I was a child in Vienna, Austria, watching every astronaut step on television as was everyone else. Before the Apollo program was completed in 1972, there were 5 more moon landings.

It is time once again to make big visions, Apollo-sized visions, the fashion once more. Let’s bring the world back to doing great things, instead of app-sized flash-in-the-pan here-today-gone-tomorrow accomplishments.

In this ebook we’ll examine what it really takes to accomplish things of that scope, and why it is more important than ever to do so.

Chapter 1: The Real Commitment

What’s the major problem with a project the size of the Apollo program? It doesn’t come ready made out of a box. There’s not even any books on building one. Nobody knows what it’s supposed to look like.

Chapter 2: Automation is My Co-Pilot

Along with other history-making factors, the Apollo program, thanks to a person almost never mentioned in the news and history of the time, set the stage for the symbiosis between human and machine. It also set the stage for the software industry.

Chapter 3: Cybernetics and the Human-Computer Interaction

In parallel with the Apollo program in the 1960s and into the 1970s, research was occurring at MIT and elsewhere into the blooming science of cybernetics. The originator of the science of cybernetics was American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener. In 1948 he defined cybernetics as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Cybernetic pioneer W. Ross Ashby also referred to cybernetics as the “science of simplification.”

Chapter 4: To Pull Off an Extraordinary Project—It Takes Extraordinary Management

Think for a moment what it must have taken to manage a project the size of Apollo, with 400,000 people. Aside from that sheer number, these people weren’t all located in the same room. Or even the same building. Or even the same city. Or even the same state.

Chapter 5: Building By Perfect Components

Building anything well takes time, perseverance, detailed planning and trials. It doesn’t happen overnight. As we saw with the Apollo program, it was built step-by-step, layer by layer.

Chapter 6: What It Takes to Truly Reach a Goal

Only a month after he walked on the moon, Neil Armstrong said, “I felt a successful lunar landing might inspire men around the world to believe that impossible goals really are possible, that there really is hope for solutions to humanity’s problems.” (LIFE magazine interview, August 8th, 1969).

But reaching any goal requires 4 prime factors: time, energy, resources and money. The bigger the goal, the more of each of these things that you need.

You only live once so why not strive to be the best version of yourself not only in your personal life but in your work life as well? After all, a positive work life often gives way to a better personal life and vice versa. I believe there are five things you can easily do to make sure that when you go on an important sales call or meeting of any kind, you are presenting the best version of you.

I’m basing these tips not just on my own opinions and things I’ve discovered personally. Over the last year or so I have interviewed more than 150 people for SalesPOP! who are sales experts and experts from varying fields from across the globe. Each of them brought interesting insights that have been very influential.

This book examines the sales techniques of the greatest salesperson of all time: Jesus of Nazareth.

I’ll begin with the disclaimer that began every post on which this ebook is based: this doesn’t mean I’m taking a jaded view of Jesus and only characterizing him as a salesperson. Nor does it mean I’m stepping all over religious toes and pushing Christianity. I am simply and only focusing on lessons we can learn from someone whose “product” is still selling incredibly well after an unimaginable two thousand years—and this is two thousand years after he himself is no longer walking the Earth. There certainly must be lessons there to learn, and of course, there are. These lessons can be found in the New Testament of the Bible, and I’ve pointed out the exact chapter and verse for each of them. They’re either account of Jesus providing a living example of certain principles, or stories he told to illustrate lessons, called parables. So come back with me over 2,000 years…and you’ll be very surprised at how relevant these lessons are to today’s sales and business.
Nikolaus Kimla

Much has been written about “how to sell”—the rules, the methods, ways to vastly increase your sales. Nikolaus Kimla has written a number of books himself on the successful methods he´d seen and personally used. But little is said about the things you can do wrong, and for that reason he decided to write about the four most basic blunders he witnessed (and made himself) over the years.

In this e-book you will find Nikolaus insights on:

SOCIAL SELLING

Over the last five years or so, there has been an enormous amount of hype about social selling. It was being proclaimed (mostly by social media consultants) that you had no choice but to dive deep into the social media pool. For Nikolaus it makes no sense to embrace something for sales that today has become so tainted by political bias.

HARD SELLING

In this chapter we talk about hard selling—you know, that pushy, insistent,“wear-‘em-down-till-they-buy” approach from years gone by. Or, rather, we’re not going to talk about it. For in today’s sales world, it doesn’t work at all. Today it’s soft skills that are more important than ever, and becoming increasingly so as time goes by.

OVERTALKING

There are several aspects to this major error:
1. Talking more than your prospect.
2. Asking non-intelligent questions, and not listening.
3. Talking only about the superior features of your product or service.

“SELLING ME, SELLING YOU”

Taking off from the magnificent song by Abba (Knowing Me, Knowing You), our final chapter takes up the most crucial error a salesperson can commit— and also the biggest trap they can fall into. Learning not to commit these blunders will take you a long way into become the sales professional you really want to be.

You may not realize it—or the fact may have snuck up on you while you weren’t looking—but today there are far more smartphones out there than computers. There are currently an estimated 3 billion smartphones in use globally. Just to show the comparison, in 2017, the percentage of smartphone users accessing the internet was 63%, versus 37% by computer. There are parts of the world that don’t even have computers, but yet have mobile. There are endless applications available for smartphones today. It’s not just a phone directory—that functionality is so common that you don’t even hear about it anymore. We’ve long gone beyond personal photos and music, and booking of trips. We have complex apps such as mobile banking, credit card scanning, project collaboration, and many more.

The first generation of smartphones only allowed you to call and to text. Each successive generation has brought increased functionality, such as higher bandwidth and the ability to send more complex data such as sound and video files. We’ve now reached the point of live streaming. You might remember the first smartphones—the “flip phone.” Smartphone screens have gotten bigger and bigger, and today are almost 6.5 inches. The screen is now almost as large as that of the very first Macintosh computer. Of course, that screen was monochrome, and today screens are sharp rich color, and are touchscreens. Smartphone 3D screens have now even become available. We’re currently moving into the 5th generation of smartphones—5G—which incorporates the Internet of Things. We’re not simply communicating anymore with smartphones, but including control of any smart-enabled devices such as home security, automobiles and even appliances. Verizon already has a 5G network up and running in parts of the US, and it’s being tested in Europe. Changes are coming down the line with unbelievable speed.

In this ebook Nikolaus Kimla predicts that 5G is the next major fundamental move, and either you’re in or you’re out. A mobile strategy is crucial for every company, because expectations for the future are what is currently on everyone’s phone. Pipeliner its mobile strategy several years ago and currently has the most advanced mobile CRM in the world today. They are not only dedicated to mobile, but are working hard to remain the forerunners in this technology. It is clear for everyone to see that the future is, indeed, completely mobile. The challenge for businesses and sales is, and will continue to be, for mobile to work seamlessly with the whole system. What further criteria will be needed for a for a business mobile strategy? It is this we will be exploring in this ebook. Let’s get started!

There is a lot of conversation circulating about building your personal brand. If you take a look online, you might see personal branding defined 1 as “the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands,” with terms like “self-packaging” thrown into the mix.

But, the discussion about personal branding is fairly superficial; what people are really talking about is having a digital brand. Digital branding can significantly influence how prospects view you, but it’s not the only thing that’s important when it comes to personal branding. There is a multi-facet process that starts with six impressions. Each impression forms an important piece of the puzzle to truly building a brand of gold.

In this ebook here is what you will learn:

1. Ensure that your digital presence is strong and as credentialing as it can be.
2. Spend time reaching out to people with written communication or over the phone, and make sure your messages are well thought out, respectful, and professional.
3. When you engage with a prospect, make sure that you know something about their business, and can speak about business in general terms.
4. Build trust in the relationship by being consistent, being honest, and following up.
5. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and use empathy to understand their world.
6. And finally, make sure that your deals end with a win-win outcome where both parties are happy. This is what it takes to build a brand of gold.

[icon name=”smile-o” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]And, oh yes, make it enjoyable!

So make sure you have got your brand covered in a holistic fashion and see what difference it makes to your interactions.

In this ebook, Nikolaus Kimla discusses the two pillars of the future are technology, and human beings and how you have to have the perfect technology, and then the perfect human being in application, performance, and presentation. He argues that today and into the future, it’s a 50-50 balance. In the past, it was perhaps 90-10 (90 percent human and 10 percent technology). It moved up to 80-20. Today, though, it’s definitely 50-50, and without technology, you’re lost. Today, technology is an equal partner. For that reason, character—the subject of his ebook—is even more important, for humanity has to be as good as the technology. This is especially true in sales.

Here’s something interesting to think about: how many bugs do you have on your smartphone? How many bugs does your car have (assuming it’s in good running order)? Your computer? You’ll realize they all have relatively few. But when you work with people, there are many! We expect the technology to be perfect, and today we absolutely need it. If we didn’t have that expectation—if we actually expected technology to be faulty—can you imagine what it would feel like to board an aircraft? Or get into your car to drive? With faulty technology, what would be the expectations of people about to go to Mars? If we’re working from home (which many of us are today), what if the technical infrastructure (the internet) only supported us part of the time? Or for Nikolaus’s own company—an SaaS business that operates in the Cloud—what would it be like if our Cloud provider didn’t work 99.99 percent of the time? We even have Service Level Agreements in place to guarantee it. So the expectation for perfect technology is definitely always there.

The same expectations will be applied to humans as regards manners, education, and social intelligence, more and more as time goes by. If we have a 50-50 balance of technology with humanity, and the technology is near-perfect, then the only failing can be humans. If you don’t meet the standard, you’re not considered functional in society. Humans will probably never be perfect—there will always be some problems. But we must work to eliminate the basic errors that cause so many troubles. While exact prediction is impossible, we should have a precise goal that a 9-month trip to Mars with total strangers won’t be a disaster before they even arrive.

How can we raise the perfection of the human being? And more to the point for us, of salespeople? The answer, Nikolaus offers, is character.