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 metricsMetrics Metrics  are quantities that are measured and used to: have to be “both efficient and effective,” it’s obvious that the speaker considers the two terms to 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.”

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 accountAccount Account refers to a record of primary and background information about an individual or corporate customer, including contact data, preferred services, and transactions with your company. 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.

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 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.

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.