Keeping on your toes is important in business, since the first person to respond to a customer’s need often has the advantage. MiNeeds.com, a company that matches local professionals with local customers, aims to give professionals a heads up right when new leads come in.
The company is set to release a new voice update system, Bridget on Feb. 14 that converts new leads into audio message. This will let professionals get updates over the phone wherever they are, anytime.
The service “Brings immediacy to the sales process,” said MiNeeds.com CEO and co-founder Raed Malhas said Bridget, via email.
MiNeeds.com has more than 50,000 registered professionals around the United States, and has matched more than 280,000 customers with these professionals over the last 90 days.
Bridget is meant, in part, to take some weight off of salespeople—they don’t need to keep clicking for updates to watch for new clients. The instant alert system lets the salesperson be “untethered from the desktop” and “do other things and still get to those in-bound leads,” said Malhas.
Responding to calls leads works through a simple system. A salesperson can leave a voice response over the phone, which they can edit if they don’t like, and then write a follow-up proposal when they have time.
After proposals are in, it’s in the hands of the person looking for a service. “Once Bridget calls the customer and reads them the professional’s proposal, the customer has the option to have Bridget call the professional back on the spot, and a bridge call is set up. Bridget then drops from the call, and normal phone operations resume,” said Malhas.
The intended effect, according to Malhas, is that “all opportunities become convenient.”
“More competition means better pricing for the customer,” he said. “Vendors know they are bidding against other matched vendors and thus are more apt to quickly submit a highly competitive proposal which works out very well for the consumer.”
