Accelerate Spotlight: Nicolas Vandenberghe

Accelerate 2021 is a 2-day virtual summit that features 15 speakers including some of the most respected leaders from the sales tech industry and the most loved sales

coaches we have all admired and learned from.

This is a blog series where we interview speakers from Accelerate. Today’s featured speaker is  Nicolas Vandenberghe, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Chilli Piper.

Nicolas began his sales journey selling newspapers in Paris, starting and successfully selling 3 tech companies, founded KosmoTime - a calendar app and then moved to start Chili Piper - a software platform that’s truly carved its own space in the scheduling software category.

Here’s an interview with Nicolas to get some sales insights and what you can expect him to speak on during Accelerate.

Q. How do you think sales has changed over the past 5 years? What do you predict will happen in the next 5 years?

Nowadays, there are more and more solutions, so buyers are making a larger number of purchasing decisions than before. They no longer rely on vendors, rather, they rely on other people in their social networks, slack groups, or review sites. So sales reps have to be much more knowledgeable and be able to move much faster. This will only increase in the next 5 years.

Q. What is the one piece of advice you'd like to give to people who are just starting out in sales?

Something that would take you places would be deepening your tech and market knowledge at the earliest. This would help you build a strong base before you start selling.

Q. Can you tell us a bit about your greatest win in sales, something that still motivates you to date?

Actually, for me, I like to call every new cool logo of mine as one of my greatest wins. This is what motivates me so much!

Q. Okay, let’s pretend this is a cold call, what’s your go-to cold calling opener? :)

“I've researched your company and I think I have something that will be of great interest to you, it will only take 2 minutes, does that work?”

Q. When you started Chilli piper, what challenges did you face while trying to make a pitch and how did you overcome them?

When we first started Chili piper, prospects didn't believe that what we offer is possible for them. They were very skeptical and didn’t expect much. To overcome this issue, we used social proofing (case studies, reviews, endorsement, etc.) The question that ringed in all the prospect’s heads after this was - ‘If everyone else is trying, why can’t I?’

Q. What will you be talking about at Accelerate 2021?

At Accelerate, I’ll be talking about "It's time to redeploy your inbound SDRs."

Q. A book that you recently read and would recommend to others?

My personal favorite is - Never split the difference. As the book suggests, it’s all about learning how to negotiate as if your life depended on it.