The Next Wave: Customer-Facing Solutions   With the new year, we are all looking towards the next wave in customer-facing solutions available for us. This is important as it helps improve our business and sales strategies.  Nicolas Venderberghe is a CEO and entrepreneur. Nicolas is originally from France but has now lived in the U.S. for a good part of his career. He’s been working for tech companies, working at Chilli Piper since 2016. The company’s biggest vision is to improve sales and completely transform the industry by using digital tools.  Big companies like SalesForce specialize in back end algorithms and can miss the opportunities on the front end.  This is where Nicolas’ company helps its clients thrive. Salespeople used to be technophobes and hated the idea of using technology in their sales process. As new technologies have become available, salespeople now adapt to a variety of tools and have become savvier.  Next wave in customer-facing solutions The sales industry tends to move in waves. First, it was about automating internal processes, and that’s why we have CRM. It ensures that everything is recorded so, in any situation, much of the sales cycle happens in the backend.  The next generation helps with the interaction and is referred to as customer-facing tools. This is the next wave in customer-facing solutions.  An opportunity that Nicolas’ team addresses is in the booking, or scheduling a meeting. In sales, even before the first meeting, an opportunity has to be created to book a time and engage with a prospect. The easiest example would include inbound products, called the concierge.  In earlier days, the concierge occurred when prospects visited your site, and let you know they were interested in learning more by filling out a form that provided contact information for the follow-up. Upon clicking the submit button, they’d be brought to a thank you page and told that someone would be in touch.  The prospect was left wondering who would get in touch and when. In some cases, there would be no follow up so retention was lost. Many companies are losing more than half their pipeline due to a broken process. Businesses can lose up to 80% of their leads because they don’t act fast enough.  Qualifying the prospects Nicolas and his team built an intelligence solution to address this problem. In their version, once the prospect fills out the form for submission, Nicolas’ company uses the information from the form to qualify the prospect right away. They look at the prospect’s company size and the criteria set by their client to qualify. They’re able to do this, and reach out to a salesperson, in real-time. They call the prospect’s number and when they pick up, the prospect is connected immediately to a salesperson. If the sales rep isn’t available, a calendar is made available so the prospect can book a time that works for them, all with one click.  Streamlining the front of the sales cycle allows for more direct revenues. Companies that work with Nicolas’ team have seen an increase in revenue and conversation rates between 50-100%. They’ve even seen many companies double their conversion rates.  Some companies have even started to work with them with as little as 30-40% conversion, losing 60-70% of their leads.  Business to small businesses When a prospect wants to purchase a product or service, the quickest company to reply is typically the one that will get the account. This concept is called business to small businesses, where a bigger company is sending to small businesses. They don’t have an army of people to go through a procurement process.  Instead, they’re going to look for a variety of vendors. These are the types of prospects that bigger companies are losing. It’s because they fail to act quickly and respond to their prospects’ needs.  For a larger enterprise, the buyer has more time but they’re also going to look at how they are going to be served. The solution to this is called the red carpet. This mea