It can certainly be said that we’re living in critical times. Businesses are constantly watching costs, paying careful attention to their markets, buyer interest and activity.
In such times, companies often strip down to essential operations. If they are utilizing services they may not need, they will dispense with them. If they are subscribing to systems they could do without, they will do without them.
The difference between such systems and services and Pipeliner CRM is that a company cannot run without Pipeliner. In times of crisis, Pipeliner is vital.
Maintaining Existing Accounts
One reason Pipeliner is so essential is that it’s the only platform in the CRM world that has both the “farmer” and the “hunter” combined in a holistic approach—the “farmer” being the maintenance of existing accounts, and the “hunter” obtaining new leads.
When it comes to maintaining existing accounts, Pipeliner CRM is the only system with embedded key account management features, whereas others (such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics) have account management functionality only as an add-on, or don’t include key account management.
The reason for our concentration on key account management is that without its existing customers, a company has no business.
The Healthy Structure
Another way that Pipeliner is vital is that it is part of a strong company structure and environment.
It is leadership’s ultimate activity and goal to create a structure and environment in which the company, along with its salespeople and employees, can flourish. When a leadership team is missing knowledge or education, and does not accomplish these objectives, the company structure is not healthy.
People will try to fix company problems using technology. But technology is an enabler, not a problem solver, and it’s the structure itself, along with its staff, that comprise the correct issue to be addressed.
Pipeliner CRM is an essential part of that correct structure, being vital support and empowerment for a sales force.
Pipeliner Layers
How does that support come about? Through multiple theoretical layers on which Pipeliner is founded.
The first of these is that we have not taken a mechanical approach to sales as others have, but a human-centric approach, as we have recently covered in-depth. Modern sales technology is targeted at making a salesperson better at selling, under the mistaken belief that technology, all by itself, can make a salesperson into a better performer. Pipeliner therefore doesn’t claim to mechanically cause growth rates as some of our competitors do, as technology alone cannot do this. Pipeliner takes the opposite approach, assisting salespeople, as humans, to achieve their own objectives.
The second layer is that we have a different approach to artificial intelligence or algorithms in pipeline management, forecasting, and attempting to predict outcomes. Pipeliner takes the heuristic approach to sales. The word “heuristic” is defined thusly: “obtained by exploration of possibilities rather than by following set rules.” An example would relate to the game of chess. A set of algorithms could be used to delineate the rules of the game and the restrictions on how each piece—pawn, bishop, knight, queen, etc.—can move. But playing the game and employing strategy takes a heuristic approach. A player makes a move, and then waits for their opponent to make a move in response. When the opponent makes their move, the first player then calculates what their next move should be. This is heuristic methodology, as every step, taken in response to the other player’s move, is designed to strengthen the first player’s position.
World leadership would do well to follow the heuristic approach, simply because of leaders like Putin who make destructive moves such as invading Ukraine. Only a heuristic approach takes into account that rules change or can be violated.
It is the same in business, especially when it comes to B2B sales. Algorithms are based in fixed rules—but we know that the “rules” in B2B sales are constantly in flux. When you have three, four or more decision-makers in the buying process, the salesperson doesn’t know what the rules are. The sale could go in any direction, and only a heuristic approach, like that taken by Pipeliner, will truly work.
The above layers culminate in the third layer, the Instant Dynamic Visualization found in Pipeliner, which makes it an invaluable toolset. Pipleiner is the only CRM system that utilizes a real visual framework throughout the entire application, which can be customized as needed by users through the Power Panel.
Empowering and Equipping
Pipeliner CRM’s functionality—through its human-centric, heuristic, and visualization approaches—empowers and equips salespeople. This empowering and equipping leads to an overall behavioral change in sales. It’s only through behavioral changes that anything improves. Technology, all by itself, won’t result in any change whatsoever.
In a much broader example, I feel that it is absolutely necessary that a behavioral change must occur worldwide. This, again, comes about from empowering and equipping people. Just as technology won’t change conditions in sales, weapons won’t change conditions on a global scale—only people will.
An example of a vitally needed behavioral change that didn’t come about soon enough was Europe before and after World War II. After the war in Europe was over, everyone saw the terrible results of the Holocaust. Before the war, though, and while it was happening, there were people astute enough to realize where that war would lead, and spoke up. But too few listened, and sadly there was no behavioral change at the time to change direction until it was too late.
One such person who spoke up was Austro-Hungarian author Odon von Horvath who, in 1938, published a novel entitled Youth Without God. The plot of this novel exactly laid out what was going to happen in Germany. At the point of the novel’s publication, Hitler had been in power for five years, but the war had not yet begun. If the German people had taken heed of von Horvath’s words, they could have made a crucial behavioral change and averted a horrid catastrophe.
Unfortunately, Odon von Horvath never got to see how important his novel became. He was struck and killed by a falling tree branch during a thunderstorm in Paris, shortly after Youth Without God was published. The Nazis, having banned the book, asserted that his death was punishment for his having written this novel. The irony is that after the Nazis were defeated, Youth Without God became the most-read book in Germany.
Our Contribution as a Company
Bringing it back to a corporate level, Pipeliner CRM consistently works to empower and equip companies, resulting in positive behavioral changes in the business world. This occurs not only through the implementation of Pipeliner CRM by companies, but through our online multimedia platform, SalesPOP. SalesPOP has over 1,000 experts regularly contributing powerful content in podcasts, articles, books, and video, providing a first step to behavioral change.
You can see, then, that Pipeliner CRM is a vital component of your company, especially in times of crisis.
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