The Soul of a Salesperson | Nikolaus Kimla at Pipeliner

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Nikolaus Kimla 0:00
When I looked at what sales people are doing, I said, Hey, salespeople are so important for society. Why? Because they are creating something what the great between you and me they create wealth.

Alexander Ferguson 0:18
In part one of our conversation with Nikolaus Kimla, he told us about his intriguing approach to developing CRM systems by focusing on the psychology, the salespeople and the clients they’re selling to. In part two of our conversation, Nikolaus expands those thoughts to include some refreshing insights about the nature of salespeople and their greater role in the world. So, Nikolaus, thanks, again, for joining. I’m excited to understand how do you innovate? How do you go? How do you overcome the challenges that you I’m sure you’ve faced a few over the years? Beginning, when you started this journey? Eight, nine years ago, this particular company, can you think back and find and share? What’s one difficulty that you were were able to overcome and and solve that another entrepreneur or leader be like, how did you do that?

Nikolaus Kimla 1:10
Good question. Fair question. First of all, I strongly believe it’s not one thing. Yeah. Are and this is why I’m coming deeply from our programming backgrounds of methodology like scrum methodology, because you, you have your sprints, you have your you have your iterations that you go are and you have are, basically, or something that you want to improve incrementally. So this incremental improvement is like, an onion, you you just open one layer after another, that the real thing is that you figure out what is the thing that you really want to accomplish? And why you want to accomplish that? What is the motivation behind? are you solving a need a problem that you can fix? Yeah, let’s say you have to take in our case, I solved the problem with sales. I was realizing coming from banking, compliance, but was really my background. I realized I’m a conference and having also salespeople, I realized why the most important job in a company is the most under appreciated. That was for me, unbelievable, because you see, our most sales people as much as we need them. We don’t like them. We, we we even speak bad about them. We said they’re pushy, they’re arrogant, they’re greedy. And they find themselves sometimes have not also got good self esteem. And I have not to go back to Arthur Miller, or the Death of a Salesman. In all the movies, I realized I was going into statistics. And it looked up over the last 100 years of Hollywood. And every time when Hollywood is writing a script of salespeople. It is nice to watch, but the person is not a nice person.

Alexander Ferguson 3:14
So you saw a trend of people not liking salespeople and did this then kind of motivates you in the the framing and building of Pipeliner sales or company to absolutely,

Nikolaus Kimla 3:25
absolutely, absolutely. I felt when when one workforce in the world that is the most important for every company. Can you imagine a company in b2b There’s no revenue, there’s no company. Exactly. Okay, so you have to sell Yeah, but most young people, if they would say, Oh, I’m ending up in sales, come on, or if we really honest, we would say be a lawyer. You get really a good job. Be a doctor, whatever. Yeah. Okay, good. So people are ending up in sales. It’s, it’s a high percentage. And nobody likes you really. And you feel this is the pushy and whatever. I said, What in the world if we changed that? What in the world if we change it, and not only give them tools that they like, I always say, what you like you use it? This is what the what is our lifestyle? Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 4:18
And this this concept of changing the narrative on a typical salesperson is did you have this from the beginning? Or did after you were working? How many years in until you realized, oh, this narrative change?

Nikolaus Kimla 4:29
Or I did many, many, many years ago, I had their platform where we were doing big conferences in Europe or about our the Austrian School of Economics or and or it was more money orientated, coming out of the banking compliance and so but the core team of the Austrian school or maybe some of them are not known to your listeners, but our our one main for all entrepreneurs is probably very evident is Schumpeter And Schumpeter and but the fathers are minger and Mises and Hayek who was a Nobel Prize winner are they were saying that trade, when we trade when we sell something has a peacekeeping component. And I realized, the more and more when I looked at what sales people are doing, I said, Hey, sales people are so important for society. Why? Because they are creating something what the great between you and me, they create wealth, but the byproduct, the side product, and that is his piece, because if I punch you, you would not buy so very simple. It’s it is it’s so I created the term that salespeople are wealth creator and peace producer. And I gave them a name. And I say to salespeople, they are sales printer, because many live like not fully as an entrepreneur, and I call themselves printer because they’re nurse entrepreneurs in an enterprise. Yeah, they have an entrepreneurial approach. Not Not nothing against bookkeepers. I like them. Yeah, but they help us. But you see, a bookkeeper has another an entrepreneurial approach.

Alexander Ferguson 6:08
Yes, they’re trying to find ways to keep the business growing and moving and have to make new sales. So this this as it turned, this is several years into this journey. Once you found that this opportunity to switch the narrative, did that effect? How did that affect then? new clients and in sales and opportunities for the business?

Nikolaus Kimla 6:32
Oh, definitely. Absolutely. We created this platform sales pop dotnet. And this is right now are so far as we know, the biggest or a sales platform in our industry. On content, we have over 1000 contributors. And we have it now. It’s amazing what’s happening. And behind that are a lot of universities came and were just joining us because they felt this narrative, that change of the narrative to help sales people really do become who they are. And exactly the same valuable workforce as a firefighter. See, in our society in the US, the firefighters have a very good standing. A very good standing, everybody is looking up to them. Yeah, it’s like, wow, this is the cool guy. First of all, sometimes, most of them look really great. For it, yeah, you know, they have a very good reputation, if you will see, it did not and so the universities found out this is a good narrative, this and it’s a logical narrative and therefore, as the firefighters need a lot of training sales people need a lot of training today. Social Selling intelligent blah, blah, blah. And so that is what the narrative changed and right now it’s really it’s our whites driving around the world.

Alexander Ferguson 7:52
And so this this has grown now this this this movement, and obviously, sales will only increase because of technology will take care of a lot of other opportunities but sales is still between two people and so that’ll be always a personal jag

Nikolaus Kimla 8:04
I give you one example for especially the virus will be gone so we have to be faithful and we have to be smart and we have to fight against this enemy but when it’s over guess which is the most important job after the crisis.

Alexander Ferguson 8:19
How salespeople to get those sales everyone again,

Nikolaus Kimla 8:22
especially in industry where you have to convince let’s say you are right now a salesperson for cruise ships in a car job this will be hard so they need they need to be trained because if they not It’s not only marketing Yeah, well I believe sales and marketing work together that work together Absolutely. But what would marketing do without the salesperson convincing great now at the end the customer then you go on this cruise ship and we need this industry? We have this tremendous ships if they’re not filled in the future, we have a disaster we cannot use them all for hospitals.

Alexander Ferguson 8:58
So obviously you’re always looking for for new inspiration ideas and that’s how you probably were able to realize this narrative you were open to it to end to close us out here. What what books are you reading right now or podcasts that you’re listening to audiobooks that you’re

Nikolaus Kimla 9:15
late? I am reading tremendous a lot or I have a big library. I’m

Alexander Ferguson 9:20
reading what’s one what’s the latest thing that pops in your head?

Nikolaus Kimla 9:23
The latest that pops in my head was our Hold on. Give me a second are the latest or is from our good? I know him I wouldn’t call him a real friend but I call him I know him and I feel like a friend to him because he’s a nice guy, or is Chuck bland inked? Okay, it’s about negotiation how you can better negotiator for instance. But there is one book that I read every day and it’s endless. It’s 2000 years old and has a lot of wisdom. And I think if you go there you You will find a lot of good smart I go there to on a daily basis and read my proverbs.

Alexander Ferguson 10:05
Ah, there’s some wisdom in there. There is

Nikolaus Kimla 10:08
real wisdom. Yeah, old good testament wisdom, R and R you see there. But I’m reading constantly. And I love that.

Alexander Ferguson 10:20
Both both that one and the other. So I see one last question. What kind of tech nology innovation do you predict we will see in one year, five years and 10 years from now?

Nikolaus Kimla 10:35
Wow, that is our arm. I think in a year from now we we see more incrementally are more automation. Yep, that’s like we don’t talk that will really go to the next level. And are here the keen is not so much to technology as the transformation how to make it happen? Because people, so not only the use, but someone has to define that we have to find good ways to help people to create their workflows, because each business is different. Yeah. So you cannot make everything the same.

Alexander Ferguson 11:19
In automation in five years, what do you what do you predict

Nikolaus Kimla 11:23
in five years are, I basically believe that are the trend that we see right now. And definitely to the virus that we all experience, the home, our office trend, that people work wherever they want will be more that means we will see surrounding technology that helps us to be more efficient in that area. So it’s about more our communication, immediately, maybe having our text where we immediately see to each word that we talk or a sentence immediately contextualized content that is related. When I say chat blunt, they’re all the books immediately are there nd and you can click on that. And you can immediately do that. So I see more the area how this is all interconnected, because content leads to other content. Yeah. And what we need is pattern recognition. I’m coming deeply from that better recognition system. That means natural learning systems are coming in that area. Yeah. And what we definitely have in the next 10 years is a completely hopefully, completely different school system. Because our schools are out of date. It’s over. And today we see the closing is a great opportunity worldwide, worldwide to schools close what we do the kids, what should they learn? Yeah, not books. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 12:54
Wow. Well, I love your predictions. I’m excited for the future that you paint and also for this innovation and mindset that you have shared of switching a narrative on a whole whole industry. Thank you for your time, Nicholas, this was awesome. That concludes the audio version of this episode. To see the original and more visit our UpTech Report YouTube channel. If you know a tech company, we should interview you can nominate them at UpTech report.com. Or if you just prefer to listen, make sure you’re subscribed to this series on Apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.