Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso show. Join in another great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game-changers they are today. Now, here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome I'm your host, Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality and here’s the successful entrepreneur who provides insight and guidance you can use to move along your vision path. Listen to my shows on all the podcast platforms such as Spotify or iTunes, Apple podcasts. Just search for Tony D-U-R-S-O and please subscribe too. Okay, Success Squad, before we get going here’s a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from Future on having your own personal trainer available when you are ready to work out. Yeah. I said when you are ready to work out. It’s an amazing detail program. So perfect for you. Stay tuned for more. And coming up is a significant message from Zoho CRM who provides the CRM that caters to businesses of all sizes and has an AI-powered sales assistant who can help you stay on top of your leads and deals. And stay tuned for a message from LinkedIn on how the right hire can make a huge impact on your business. Hey, I said huge. Do listen for that. More info on them just ahead, so please stay tuned. Today’s show is about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. Let’s see what we can learn today. Here’s some info on Nicolas. He began his career selling newspapers in the streets of Paris in high school, studied Math at École Polytechnique, and then received his MBA from Stanford GSB. He started and sold three tech companies with up to 65 employees and $11 million in revenue, and he also ran sales for a $2 billion telecom firm negotiating billion-dollar deals with companies like Google. At the end of this interview I’m going to do a summary recap of what we went over, so stay tuned for that. Here we go. Welcome to the show Nicolas, so great to have you on board with us today.

Nicolas:

I’m delighted to be here.

Tony:

Nicolas, you’ve done so much in B2B sales. We have a large audience, entrepreneurs, small business owners. We definitely are all ears in wanting to know the secret to closing in B2B sales. But before you give us your secrets Nicolas, we’d love to know, how did it all start for you. What’s your backstory?

Nicolas:

I am a serial entrepreneur, I guess what you would call it. I’ve done several companies and several exits. I do have a passion for sales. I actually started selling newspapers in Paris when I was 17. I was still a student. And at the time I outperformed everybody else something like four to one in how many newspapers I sold. So early on I thought that there was something special about sales that I love, that I’m good at so. I actually went to study computer science at the École Polytechnique in Paris. I came to the U.S. to do my MBA at Stanford. And when I was at Stanford I was fortunate, it was in the mid-90s, to be introduced to Steve Jobs. So Steve came to talk to us. At the time he was running a company called NeXT, and people would say that it was going nowhere next to nowhere because he was struggling with it. And yet listening to him was so inspiring that at the end of the evening I figured out this was what I want to do with my life. I want to become a tech entrepreneur. I want to be like these guys, inventing solutions, building companies. And that’s what I’ve been doing pretty much ever since.

Tony:

That’s quite amazing. What an honor to have actually met with Steve Jobs and gotten some of his vision. And I’m certain, as you’ve just mentioned, that it’s rubbed off on you. So that is the genesis Nicolas of when you got the vision for your current success?

Nicolas:

No, that took many more years. Many more years. So when I finished there was something ironic in my fate, is that when I graduated from Stanford in 1995 I met John Sculley, the very person who had fired Steve Jobs, and I got into business with John Sculley. So it’s just chance that it happened. We started doing our first company. You could call it photoshop for dummies. It was the early days of digital imaging and we’d invented this super easy to use software where people could play with photos. A bit like Instagram, just 20 years earlier. So we built that business and we generated $6 million in revenue the first year, and I closed more than half of that myself that we were selling [Inaudible:00:05:09] software and printers with companies like Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. So that was my first company. It was in San Francisco in the late ‘90s. And then I did another company in e-commerce in 1998 to 2000. And so it’s a long path to what I’m doing today. But the current company Chili Piper is the first time that I’m able to combine my two passions. So this passion for sales that I got very early on in my career and this passion for entrepreneurship and building tech companies. So we started Chili Piper in early 2016 and we actually started the company earlier than that, I think we always joke about it in the same space. But it took me a long time to be able to get these two passions together.

Tony:

That’s quite something. What is the purpose? Because behind this there’s this drive. You’ve had multiple companies. You’ve done amazing with them. What’s the passion? What’s Nicolas all about?

Nicolas:

It is the sense of creating something from scratch and building a new solution, a new product, and impacting the life of others in very positive ways. That’s the thing that I find so fascinating about entrepreneurship in general and tech entrepreneurship in particular. I had jobs before, but I’ve never felt the same satisfaction as when I can just start something from scratch and build something and deliver products to the markets that make users happy. That’s what driving me. And the current solution is focused on salespeople and so we’re building tools that help them do their jobs. The idea is that, I was running a sales team for a friend of mine, I was helping a friend of mine in around 2012 and I looked at the tools that were available to us salespeople, mostly Salesforce and some other things, and I thought, this is going to be changing dramatically in the coming years. We use these things like the iPhone that makes everything so easy, and the life of the salespeople was just so full of administrative tasks and things that they shouldn’t have to do every day. I thought with the advance in computers this is going to change, and I want to be at the forefront of that change. So that’s when I decided to start a new company focusing on what’s called sales tech. Technology for salespeople.

Tony:

You know Nicolas I’ve done a lot of sales. I’ve written a couple books on sales and marketing. I have not been in the corporate world heavily for at least a good decade. And no offense to anything, just back then the various software that existed just didn’t do anything for me. And we’re going to go into what you do. I’ve tried Salesforce. I’ve tried Act! I’ve tried Goldmine. I’ve tried so many and none of them did what they needed to do for me as a salesperson. So what I did Nicolas was I just took a good old-fashioned spreadsheet and I put everything on it. Everything. People to call, prospects, everything. And you know it worked so well, I was so detailed, focused on it, that in a six-month period I was helping an insurance tech start-up and I raised $3.25 million from just using that spreadsheet because nothing else seemed to work. Now that was, you know, a decade or two ago. Now it’s a whole different story. Now we have Chili Piper.

Nicolas:

Exactly.

Tony:

But we really needed it. I just want to mention to the audience. You saw the need for something like this and you developed something amazing, which I’m looking at it now and I’m going, “Boy, could I have used this back then.”

Nicolas:

You’re exactly right. There’s a cartoon with a joke about this IT guy who said, “Hey, I’ve come to see how CRM is helping you,” and the other guy says, “Oh it’s great. Now I still have my spreadsheets, but now in addition I have to upload my spreadsheets into the CRM.” That is exactly how it feels. It feels like it’s a tool for management to know what’s happening, but it doesn’t help salespeople. I had somebody on my team who actually was even older fashioned and he had all his deals on a whiteboard and he would just update and erase and update the deals on a daily basis on his whiteboard with a good old-fashioned marker. And the thinking is, as I said, nowadays with all this new technology and the iPhone and the artificial intelligence, there’s got to be tools to help salespeople do their job, as opposed to a burden on them. That’s the very reason why I started this new company.

Tony:

Well you know Nicolas, if back then whiteboards were big enough, I would have put everything on there, because here’s what I liked about it Nicolas. I’m talking my old sales, so like I’m the dinosaur in the room. Okay, I get that. But you could see everything at a glance. There was nothing hiding. And the one thing that I did not like about any of the applications coming, besides the fact that they were cumbersome and you really had to study and take classes in how to use this and how to do that, and I’d forget it if something was updated because then all the buttons changed or where you were going. But the thing is you would have to still move it out of the way, minimize it, put it somewhere to do your work, and all that would disappear. So as you’ve heard, out of sight out of mind. You kind of forget where you’d go. So for me that spreadsheet was always on my screen. I knew who I had to call, when I had to call, what was going on, who to email, and it was always immediately there. So I really liked that system. You’re going to have to convince me. I’m just…

Nicolas:

I know. I know. The bar is high with the spreadsheets. Yes.

Tony:

So for any of us dinosaurs in the audience that love spreadsheets, you know, let’s go into this a little bit. This is The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe, and you can find him at chilipiper.com. I’m going to spell that chili. We know it, yes, that’s the red hot one. C-H-I-L-I. Piper is P-I-P-E-R.com. Chilipiper.com. You know what Nicolas, this may be out of sync or out of order, but how did Chili Piper, which I really love the name, how did you come up with that name? And why a chili?

Nicolas:

So we were looking for a name that tied back to pipeline. And I had seen this beautiful commercial for the champagne Piper-Heidsieck, and the tagline was, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” And I thought, “Wow, that’s a powerful statement for the piper.” And picking piper, that’s a good word too to pipeline. And then there was a play on words - chili pepper, chili piper, chili hot, hot pipeline. And I think, “Yes, this is it. We’re going to call it Chili Piper.” And people would wonder why and then would ask us the question, and we’d tell them, “With Chili Piper, your pipeline’s gonna get hot.”

Tony:

I love it. This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. (Advertisement: VoiceAmerica Influencers) (Advertisement: Future)

Tony:

We’re back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom of success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let’s see what we can learn today. Today’s show is about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe, and at the end of this interview I’ll give you a summary of what I got out of this and I’ll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Most recently in 2016 Nicolas co-founded his fourth start-up, and presently is the CEO of the SaaS firm Chili Piper, a pioneer in buyer enablement. The company is fully distributed, leveraging global talent with employees in 28 cities in 14 countries. All right. Now back to the chat with Nicolas. Nicolas let’s get into your vision path here. As mentioned earlier, you’ve had a couple of companies. And what is interesting, that doesn’t make sense at first look, one of your businesses has had to do a major rebrand and pivot because two competitors were bought by Salesforce. So can you explain what was that all about and explain the whole thing?

Nicolas:

Absolutely. So starting in 2013, I had this idea that I was going to build tools for salespeople and, just like you and I discussed, the first problem salespeople have is the CRM, right? It’s supposed to help them, and it’s actually a burden on them. And the reason why it’s a burden is because they have to update it every week to make their management happy. So I thought I’m first going to solve this problem. I’m going to do a smart intelligence service that goes into salespeople’s email, contacts, calendar, phone, but I’m going to define the information and put it in the CRM, so that the CRM is kept up to date and they don’t have to do anything. We started this project, I hired a team, and it turned out that as we were getting closer to launching the solution two other companies had the idea at the same time. One in Israel and the other one in San Francisco. I figured well, you know, good ideas happen often at the same time independently and we compete. But then some VP from Salesforce decided to buy one of the companies, the one based in Israel, for about $30 million. Then a few months later Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, decided to buy the other company in San Francisco for $390 million. The company was about three or four years old, they were a bit ahead of me, for $390 million. So I felt, well the good news is the idea was good and there was real value. The bad news was now my number one partner in CRM for business solutions has bought my two competitors and can offer a solution. So there was a bit of soul searching at that time. What do we do? I had some smart investors who told me you can’t build a business assuming that forces are going to screw up $400 million worth of acquisition. So that’s when we rebranded. So the Chili Piper name came at that time. We said okay let’s just go find another angle. There are so many things that can be done to help salespeople. Let’s find another thing. And then we came up this scheduling. So meetings are, you know, the lifeblood of sales, right? It’s all about getting the initial meeting, then getting the next meeting, and keep influencing the prospect through these discussions. So we figured that by helping salespeople get meetings more easily, we would solve an important pain point. And we found that there was a big problem that all these companies had and sometimes they were not aware of it. And that was around what’s called the inbound process. The inbound process is a fancy way to say people come to your website and they ask to talk to you. So currently, when your prospects come to your website for a meeting with the company, that prospect’s going to fill a form to submit and get a thank you page that says, “Thank you, somebody’s going to you call you.” And the prospect is left wondering, “Well, who is going to call me and when?” Right? And companies lose typically more than half of their prospects that way. The prospects ask to be contacted and yet they never end up being contacted because the process is broken. There is a delay in when the company calls them and by then they disappear. So then we built an intelligent solution to solve that problem. It’s a little piece of a code that is built into the webpage and when the form is submitted we automatically take the data to qualify the prospect, make sure it’s a prospect worthy of a meeting. Then we find the rep that should take that call. We dial the rep, we dial back the prospect, we put them in touch immediately. And if the rep is not available then we can retrieve the rep’s calendar and let the prospect book a time that’s convenient for that prospect. And when we did that we found that companies went from conversion rates around 40%, as I mentioned, which mean that they lose more than half their pipeline, to conversion rates of about 70% or 80%. So double. Basically most of these prospects who would ask for a meeting actually get the meeting, get the call, and engage with the company. That’s the solution we launched. It’s relatively easy to sell, because doubling the income pipelines goes directly to the top line and that increase revenues. So it’s not just one of these tools that say, “Oh yeah it makes me feel better,” or it helps with culture. It goes straight to the revenues. We’ve been very successful with that with double year over year, and now we’re expanding to an even more ambitious solution. We have launched, a couple weeks ago we launched what we call Collaborative Inbox. So it’s an email account just like Outlook or Gmail, except it’s designed for salespeople and it helps their life. The way it helps them is by letting them see what other people on their teams have discussed with their prospects. So often in sales more than one person is going to be involved. Right? With each and every one of the prospects works an accounts manager, an accounts executive to collaborate on closing a deal and that’s exactly what we enable with our Collaborative Inbox. It’s a very intuitive, very user-friendly solution that helps salespeople to do their job more easily.

Tony:

I want to talk a little bit more about that, but I also want to comment on what you were just saying Nicolas. Because if I go back in time, I’m just drooling at what you’ve said that you can do, and I hope that the entrepreneurs and the businessmen in the audience really, really check this out or play it back. It’s absolutely amazing. Back then, the time period I was talking about or just afterwards, I was selling a lot of leads and I was doing not quite a million a year in sales of leads. Just my own share, my own take. And you know, it’s good, but I had to search for everything. I had to get everything. I had to go out there. I had my spreadsheet, right? If I had your system that pulled that prospect and looked at my calendar and started setting up meetings for me, Nicolas I tell you I would be dangerous back then. That’s amazing stuff.

Nicolas:

It is amazing. The results that we’re getting are amazing. That’s definitely a powerful way to use modern technology to improve the experience for everybody so salespeople get more meetings. And the prospect has a better experience too, because he or she is no longer left wondering, “Who is going to call me?” They get instantly in contact with the right people.

Tony:

Well today especially when a prospect is hot and he’s searching on the internet for something. Take me. I’ll search for something. I’m looking for it and I get this, “Okay, you know we’ll get back with you,” which I think is a cute little app. And I think you mentioned this earlier, I’m just going to hazard a guess, maybe 50% of the time or so nobody gets back with me Nicolas. Nobody at all. And you know, I’ll be surfing and searching and looking for others. I’m still hot to buy something, whatever it is I’m buying, and I’ll keep going until I find someone that’s available and is ready. Because I’ve got this, you know, I want to get it done. Now if I had made a schedule or an appointment or calendared it, I would be satisfied with that and then I’d be free to go somewhere else. But it’s that missing link, let’s call it - that would also be another good name for your company or a sub-product - is that missing link that keeps that keeps that buyer’s level of interest because after a while it just fades because and as well it goes somewhere else.

Nicolas:

Absolutely right.

Tony:

Now let’s get into that Inbox. We talked a little bit about it. And so this software will read my inbox, will find out people that want to communicate with me, people that are ready. And is there an AI interface in this that responds and communicates with the prospect?

Nicolas:

No Tony. Nobody can respond in such a fashion as you can. So we don’t want to replace you with the response and the e-mails that you send. Tony we want to make sure that it’s authentic from Tony. It doesn’t come from a robot that pretends to be Tony.

Tony:

I like that already because when I get robots, like you know, other places, it’s like you can tell right away. It’s not syncing or engaging with what you want. That’s very good. All right. So you passed the first step with me.

Nicolas:

Now what it does it helps, as I mentioned, teams work together. So typically, nowadays sales has become more specialized and companies hire what they call sales development reps to draw the prospect, in. We found that more junior people would be on the phone and the emails, send a lot emails and try to engage with companies. And when that has happened then they move to more experienced people to do the job of closing. Right? Something we’re going to talk about. Those are called the closers. And then it is not finished because typically nowadays companies are subscription businesses and you have to renew the business. Right? So a new person has to get involved. Could you call that customer success, could you call account management, after a year to renew the business and continue the relationship. So you get these different people involved with an account and they all need to know what has been discussed, where things stand, and how things are happening. In addition, they often have questions. So in real terms a customer may ask or a prospect may ask, “Hey, do you integrate with Microsoft doc?” Right. So you need to have the answer quickly. So what we’ve built in is this inbox where you can see other people’s emails that have been sent to your accounts and other people can see the emails that have been sent to the same accounts. And then you can have an instant message to ask questions around it right to your inbox. That’s the ability to have full information about the accounts you’re working with, and to be able to chat with others around it and get the best response. Another aspect with it is for management. So sales management they can see what their reps are doing. They can see what they’ve said, correcting where they could do better, and they are able to coach them, because they direct access to all the account information and the exchange. Actually it’s a very simple idea to be able to have access to all this communication and to be able to chat around it. It was just an ambitious project because we had to rebuild an email client to do it and give the features that you get in Outlook or Gmail to really make it at the level where the users would actually enjoy and have all the stuff they need.

Tony:

That’s brilliant stuff Nicolas. This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. But first it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. (Advertisement: VoiceAmerica Influencers) (Advertisement: Zoho CRM)

Tony:

We’re back on the Tony DUrso Show where we can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let’s see what we can learn today. Today’s show is about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe, and at the end of this interview I’ll give you a summary of what I got out of this and I’ll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. All right. And now back to the chat with Nicolas. Let’s talk about the salesperson. You have so much experience with sales. So I’d love to get your point of view. What makes a great salesperson?

Nicolas:

That’s a very difficult question. There is also the importance of context. Right? So I do believe that the question has to be segmented in a way, asking all this … So a great salesperson in a great transactional sales may not be a great salesperson in enterprise sales. So we have to bear that in mind. There are different profiles. In transactional sales, I’ve got to say that energy and activity goes a very long way. So when I was selling newspapers in the streets of Paris, you know everybody says, “How did you sell so much more?” Well, I worked harder. I moved to places where there was a lot of traffic. I talked to everybody I saw. So just the fact that there was a very high activity to be around, which was selling a lot more. And then there was this enthusiasm that I conveyed when I was just talking to everybody about why they should buy this newspaper. That is a very different approach from the enterprise sales. So when I started my career, after college I actually went into management consulting and I worked for a spin-off of the Boston Consulting Group. And two years into it I jumped from analyst to associate and I got assigned to the second largest bank in the U.K. And I managed to convince the executive team to buy this assignment from us for $200,000 at the time and that sale was very different from my newspapers. So then you wonder well how did I manage to do that sale? It was very much a combination of the ability to identify what’s called the champion. So the person who is much much committed to things changing and was going to do the work internally to sell the project. And that ability to sense the champion and the motivation behind the champion is, in my opinion, the critical part of the enterprise sale. So it’s spotting who’s going to do it, what motivates them, and how to present your solution so that that person feels it exactly fills their need. So that’s the first part of the sales. The second part, the champion has to convince everybody internally that really they should go ahead with that solution. So that a bit of a cheerleading aspect to do. You have to mentor the champion to make sure that he or she is able to influence everybody else. Because that’s more akin to project management, so you’ve got to very disciplined in making sure there is always a next step, making sure that everybody has the information they need, making sure that whoever is to be involved in the process has been involved and has all the content they need. So as you can see, the answer to your question is nuanced. But if I go with this enterprise sales, the true skill, the most important skill is the ability to spot or to identify and to motivate the champion, and then execute in a very disciplined way the follow up to ensure that all the steps are achieved to the closing line. Toney: Nicolas, that’s very accurate and a very sophisticated definition. I’m going to give you my old school dinosaur definition here. He who talks the most gets the sale. Just kidding folks. But it has some truth to it, because sales is based upon communication, and Chili Piper really creates and allows that communication to happen. The little joking aside. Nicolas you ran your company, you started your company, and in nine months you were profitable. What’s your strategy for bootstrapping a company and getting it profitable right away?

Nicolas:

We, sometimes I say we cheated.

Tony:

You sure you want to tell people on radio?

Nicolas:

Well it’s a nice cheat. Often I’ve struggled with what’s called product market fit, which is you build a product and then you wonder if the market is going to want that product. We actually did it the other way. We asked a whole bunch of companies what problem they have, and we found a company that said they had this problem around scheduling in our process and I’ll pay you $20,000 if you can build a solution to solve that problem. So before we signed the contract and took the $20,000 up front, we went to other companies and said, “Hey, do you have the same problem?” And we found a dozen companies that did. So by the time we actually worked on coding the solution, (a) we already had this $20,000 prepayment, and (b) we already knew that a dozen companies had the same problem. So it took us 45 months to build the product. We cashed in the 20K, then we went to these other companies. It took us another three to four months to sell to them. And by nine months into it we were cash positive. We did that with a small team. We didn’t need a marketing budget or anything. We just identified the companies we were going after and sold to them directly. I actually sold the first million dollars in revenue myself in the company. Because we just went after these clearly identified companies we knew that had the problem and then we closed all these deals.

Tony:

Brilliant and amazing. Nicolas, is that part of your bullseye marketing strategy?

Nicolas:

That’s exactly right. So we did something additional to the strategy. We didn’t go out there after any company that had the problem. We identified the company that was the most influential in the industry. The bullseye strategy comes from the world of fashion. So in the early 2000s when the Louis Vuitton Luxury Company came to the U.S. they were doing about $100 million in revenues and they wanted to expand. Five years later they were running at $2 billion in revenues a year. And the way they did it is that they targeted the celebrities as the center of the bullseye and got them to carry Louis Vuitton bags and wear Louis Vuitton clothes. Once they had that, they organized parties in big cities with, they would call it, socialites. So people were photographed in the press, and also got them to wear Louis Vuitton clothes and bags. So by then everybody in the press could see that the people they looked up to were carrying Louis Vuitton bags and wearing Vuitton clothes, and from there they expanded like wildfire. So we wanted to do something similar in our tech space. We went after companies that were most influential, but these companies they were the hardest to get. So for example, one of our first customers was Square, the payment company. This is a very highly respected company that everybody looks up to when it comes to technology, and by having them as a customer it helped us build credibility and word of mouth around it. So we made a very concerted effort to go after these most influential companies, and from there things spread and the information spread in concentric circles around all these other companies about our solution.

Tony:

Those are still great strategies today and very good on how you guys took care of that. Excellent. Nicolas, your product is international. It goes everywhere in the world. And the world keeps changing, cultures are changing, thoughts are changing, prevailing interests are changing. Let’s go into and maybe comment upon the sales, and how sales and buyers, how that actually changes in how you can address the needs, especially when you span across different countries.

Nicolas:

Well it’s something quite fascinating happening in the world right now is that the differences among countries are getting smaller and smaller. I remember at the time of the dot.com boom, Europe was about six to nine months behind the U.S. So when the U.S. started building the Internet there was almost no Internet in Europe, and then it took about nine to twelve months maybe to catch up. And when there was this bomb in 2000 in the U.S. European investors continued investing as if they hadn’t seen the problem. Right? Again, it took nine to twelve months until they realized that there was a problem and the same thing happened. Nowadays things are completely different. Pretty much every country has access to the same information, players have access to the same tools, and so the world is much more similar from one place to the other. And so what we’re finding is that we have interest, for example our solution is used in Brazil, in Japan, in Italy, you know in all these places, because they have the same problem and they are now aware of the same solutions. So it’s a very different world. I actually love it. I think it’s a … I’m a big believer in the citizen of the world and actually achieved Chili Piper we made the decision when we started the company to be fully distributed. So right now we have 40 employees in 30 different cities and in 14 different countries. In the larger case we think they are smart people everywhere in the world. These people are talented and we want to have access to them. We don’t want to be restricted to hiring people just in the city where we are when there are so many other cities where smart people are. So we went ahead with this strategy, we build the tools internally to make sure that we are able to go to work remotely and collaborate without being in the same room, which we do very successfully. And we’ve been able to get people from Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria. All sorts of other countries that you wouldn’t think of like Slovakia, Cyprus. And yet they are super talented people working there.

Nicolas:

Brilliant, brilliant strategy and a great comment on the world and how it’s more or less unifying very rapidly into some things. Some things not, but some things yes. Very good.

Nicolas:

You’re referring to the food when you say some things less? Because if that’s the case the food seems quite different.

Tony:

Well you would think the food is still different. I mean, you know, in England the biggest food now is what? Chicken curry. It’s an Indian dish. So the food changes. I’m sure there’s places in Europe that make a great hot dog. In fact, pasta when I’m in Italy. The Italian food is different unless I’m in Sicily. But because in the United States and other parts of the world the food is better. So I think food has really changed radically. And I think part of that also depends on the chef and the caliber of the chef and it just depends where they are. But I’ve seen so many changes.

Nicolas:

That’s true. You know there are certain things with chefs. There are talented chefs everywhere. There used to be three star Michelin chefs were in France, and now you have talented people everywhere. So these chefs in Asia or in the U.S. have achieved an unbelievable level that you would have never thought 10 years ago.

Tony:

It’s true. And you know this was true a couple years’ back, I don’t know any more. But I mean of all the places I’ve been in the world, every single place in France, I don’t care where it is, I don’t care if it’s a truck stop, a hole in the wall, the food is absolutely amazing. Absolutely. And in Italy, everywhere you go, even the truck stops, the coffee, the espresso, is the best you’ve ever had.

Nicolas:

You’re right. That’s right. People all focus on what is important to them.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. But first, it’s time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment. (Advertisement: VoiceAmerica Influencers) (Advertisement: LinkedIn Jobs)

Tony:

All right. We’re back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let’s see what we can learn today. Today’s show is about The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. And at the end of this interview, I’ll give you a summary of what I got out of this and I’ll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. The Chili Piper scheduling platform is used by Intuit, Square, Twilio and more than 300 companies worldwide for multiple use cases. And now back to the chat with Nicolas. Well, let’s see now. Where are you looking to go in the next couple years? What’s the future hold for Chili Piper?

Nicolas:

We’re putting our energy into helping salespeople do their job. That Collaborative Inbox is just the beginning. We’re rebuilding the calendar. We’re rebuilding, as I mentioned, the scheduling. So there’s a company in our space called Hot Spots and they decided to reinvent marketing. And it took them a while but by now they are a publicly traded company, they have $100 million in revenues and $80 million in market cap. And that’s our mission. We want to do the same thing ourselves, sales tech and salespeople, and we see that the market is at least as big. We’ve got a lot of good ideas. So that’s the journey we’re on.

Tony:

We’re going to keep our eye on you, on Chili Piper and you, and see about that. All right. That sounds good. There needs to be a leader in this area and its open for you if you guys can step up to the challenge.

Nicolas:

That’s absolutely right.

Tony:

Nicolas, any personal habits that contribute to your vision, success, and help make you and Chili Piper what they are today?

Nicolas:

I think that would have to be the belief in helping people in identifying their talent, what they’re good at, and making sure I put them in the right position. So that is something that worked really well for me. We achieved our bootstrap, so we were able to grow our revenues without funding, and we did that by having every person in the right position in the company, doing their best and doing a very good job. It’s like a coach in a soccer team, right? You want to make sure that you have the right middle fielders, and the right people on the front and on the back. And that is a habit I have as soon as we start hiring people. And we need to look at exactly what talent does this person have and what is the best position for that person. And then making sure that they’re happy and help them grow. It goes a long way in the entrepreneurial world.

Tony:

Yes, it does. Very good. And lastly, are there any great resources that you’d like to share with our audience? You’ve mentioned a couple things. We have a mix from solopreneur, all the way, you know, small business, there are corporate executives. What are some great resources that you believe would really help everyone?

Nicolas:

There’s this book that I read recently called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It’s actually about negotiation, but almost every page is applicable to sales, and I highly recommend it. I think it is a very, very good way, the way he approaches it is a really deep understanding of human beings and how to influence that. I actually think that it is even applicable to family life for how you approach that relationship. So I highly recommend that book, Never Split the Difference. There are a few, but those are more in the tech field. There are a few blogs that are very useful. There is one from David Scott around building the sales machine. So since we’re talking about sales, I highly recommend it. It’s a very insightful set of posts to help companies build their sales and marketing machine. And of course I would have to recommend that they always listen to your podcasts, right Tony?

Tony:

That’s a given. But thank you. Thank you very much for that. And thank you for those resources. Once again, this is The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. And you can find him at chilipiper.com. Nicolas, thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing what Chili Piper’s going to do in the future.

Nicolas:

My pleasure. Thank you Tony.

Tony:

Hey Success Squad, thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took his vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned a lot and the insights are so valuable. How did you like it? The Secret to Closing in B2B Sales with Nicolas Vandenberghe. I thought that was really interesting how he met Steve Jobs way back then and that inspired him to get into technology and inventing solutions. And then ironically, he went into business with John Sculley, the person who fired Steve Jobs and ran Apple for about a decade. That’s a great purpose that I think many of us harmonize with. He loves to create something new from scratch and get very successful at it. Sounds like most of us I’m sure. Now that said, Nicolas has done this over and over and over again, building highly successful companies from scratch and selling them. Guys, learn everything you can from Nicolas. I can only point out a few things. Get his point of view into your head and listen to this again. I really find this highly invigorating. Ha! I laugh at my spreadsheet story. And its funny that Nicolas brings up how someone once used the whiteboard to a high degree of success. This shows clearly how we need something like Chili Piper to run our business. I know I could have gotten several times more sales using what they offer. I suggest you look into that for your company as well. And it’s happened to me many times. Does it happen to you? You’re searching for something and then you reach out to a company through their website and you get a message that someone will get back to you; and sometimes, literally, I never get contacted again. Getting scheduled for a call back is definitely a missing link in my personal experiences. I love Nicolas’ response to my asking him what makes for a great salesperson, and he brings up a great point and a very sophisticated definition in that it’s the ability to identify and motivate the champion and then execute in a very disciplined way to follow up to make sure the necessary steps are achieved to the closing line. Nine months running a company and he made it profitable. He’s brilliant. His bullseye marketing strategy is pure brilliance. Have a deep think on this and see if you can leverage what you do to earn income in a similar manner. Can you implement anything like the Louis Vuitton strategy? There’s so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? I’d love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Reach out to me and let me know. Now grab hold of your vision. Decide you’re either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You know that you have to decide first. It always starts with the decision. You can get my vision map to help you along with the process. The free e-book is at Tony D-U-R-S-O.com. I created my empire in just a few years. That’s all it took. I had the vision map as my guide. You can do it too. Once again check out my shows on Spotify or Apple podcasts. They’re all designed to help you get to the next level in your business or career. Lets help you move on your journey to success. And by the way, if you have iTunes or access to any Apple device, look up my name Tony D-U-R-S-O and subscribe to my show. And remember a kind review there will get you tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks guys, and remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds. Do good deeds. And join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show.

We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5:00 P.M. Eastern Time, 2:00 PM Pacific Time on the VoiceAmerica Influencers Channel.