Want More Sales? Try Saying ‘No’ More Often – Doug C. Brown on Smart Selling

00:00
Rob Murray
Welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. Today, we have a really special guest, Doug C. Brown, with a C. Doug C. Brown. Doug, thank you so much for doing this.

00:43
Doug C. Brown
Oh, Robert, thanks for having me here. I’m very grateful to be here today.

00:48
Rob Murray
Doug is the CEO of sales strategy. He’s been doing it for over a decade and really helps people understand essentially a mathematical approach to generating revenue through demand gen and sales. And I think it’s a really timely interview considering the market that we’re in currently and will be over the next, say, 12 or 24 months. You know, we all are aware that the COVID days are long gone, and the wind is now maybe not so much at our back, and we got to sharpen our swords and get this, get the most value out of every lead we can and you know, close these deals and you know, grow our company. So before we get into it, Doug, can you give us just a summary of Cole’s notes of where you’ve been and what you’re up to these days?

01:34
Doug C. Brown
Well, it’s really weird because I’m turning 63 next month, right? So I’ve been working for 60 years now, and it’s coming next month. Very strange when I think about it. I started working for my dad’s business when, at age 3, sweeping floors. He had an industrial machinery repair company, and I loved it. It was great. You know, I’m a little three-year-old, and they’re bringing me to the bars, you know, during lunch, and I’m getting me, you know, my Coca-Cola, and they’re having their beers or whatever. But it was a great time. By the time we were about five and a half, it was a family-run business with 14 employees, and I actually started selling. They brought us out to the front counter, started putting us in front of the people, taught us how to write orders, all of that stuff.

02:25
Doug C. Brown
By the time I was six, I remember the power of leverage hitting my brain because I sold a part for $20 that we paid 10, right? And I was like, man, I did this in about six minutes. And I was getting 25 cents an hour at the time. So I was like, I made $10 in six minutes, or I work 40 hours, and I make $10. I think this selling thing makes more sense. Right? So, so, you know, fast forward, you know, now I’ve been involved in 36 companies throughout my life. Not all have gone great; some have broken even, some have lost money, and some have done quite well. I also helped other companies. The largest one we’ve grown is sold off at 2 billion. So that was a nice day.

03:14
Rob Murray
Okay.

03:15
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. And, so I started the CEO sales strategies process because it was all the things that I was doing for companies as I was, you know, going along in my companies and other people’s companies. I also had the privilege of being the president of training and sales for a guy named Tony Robbins. Another guy, Chet Holmes, and might be familiar, some people know, you know, I don’t know how many of the younger generation know him as much, you know, as they, you know, but you know, he’s, he owns hundreds of companies. I mean, when I worked for him and worked with them, they owned about six billion dollars worth of companies at that time. And I actually was responsible for taking their sales teams and really bolstering them up.

04:03
Doug C. Brown
Their, their presenters team, for example, went from 17.8 to 43.2% on the close rate in four months.

04:10
Rob Murray
That’s a big deal.

04:11
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, we have one product, one product line that actually went 4152% growth if I remember correctly; it’s the first year. So when I did it for them, I caught the wind of a lot of other people in, you know, industries, and you know, I have been doing that ever since. So, the CEO says the strategy is a combination of all of this, an accumulation of all of this. We also built out a metrics-based, math-based revenue growth. You know, specifically, we focus a lot on independent businesses, consultants, independent business professionals, service-based businesses, and sales teams and companies. And we can really dial it in, you know, to make it predictable and measurable and reliable.

05:00
Rob Murray
Yeah, well, let’s walk through it. Before we do, let’s get to the main question of the podcast in terms of what do you see as the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back and in this case the green industry.

05:10
Doug C. Brown
But just from your experience, that’s a loaded question. So, you know, there are different ones. I will say the, the number one factor that I see mostly across the board is. They don’t know their ideal right. Fit buyer.

05:33
Rob Murray
Cool. Tell me more about that.

05:35
Doug C. Brown
Well, so if I ask questions like, you know, who’s your ideal, right? Fit buyer? People will say, well, it’s this, you know, within this industry or this growth process or this revenue of a company or, you know, like in the landscaping business because I know that you support that. And I had a landscaping company. Right. So, who’s the ideal buyer in that particular industry? Right. It’s. So, I quickly figured out, let’s go to million-dollar-plus homes because they pay more.

06:10
Rob Murray
Yeah.

06:12
Doug C. Brown
So, it’s not just million-dollar-plus homes. It’s like, who’s the apex decision maker within there? Is it the spouse? Is it the wife, the husband, the. The wife of the wife or the husband of the husband? Right. Like all of these parameters. What motivates them to buy? What do they want, what do they need, what do they feel, what do they desire? Who are the influences in the process? Right. All of these things are important in a sale. And the more complex, you know, if we’re getting into, you know, multi-person, you know, sales, corporation type sales or whatever, there could be literally seven decision-makers in the process.

06:48
Rob Murray
On a large Paris, especially these days, it seems to be more and more by committee.

06:53
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, yeah, exactly. In the committee, there’s always one apex decision-maker. So who is that? Who’s that person who can say yes no matter what and make sure the money goes out no matter what? That’s the person you’re supposed to be prospecting. And so what I find out most of the time are people they really don’t know. You know, they have an idea, but they’re not really clear. In fact, Harvard, Wharton School of Business, I believe, HubSpot, and Marketo, if I remember correctly, all did a study, and they found out that 97% of businesses or people selling don’t know in part or in full their ideal right. Fit buyer. So that’s what I see as kind of the first challenge. Because, Robert, if they don’t know that, then their messaging is off, their marketing is off.

07:45
Doug C. Brown
All of that kind of stems from that core of what they don’t have. And it’s kind of like, you know, if we got a weak core in our body, you know, we can have really strong biceps, but if we go to pick something heavy up and our core is weak, out goes our back or whatever. Right?

08:01
Rob Murray
Yeah, yeah.

08:02
Doug C. Brown
So the same thing, that’s the number one thing I see universally across the board.

08:06
Rob Murray
So then, let’s break it down a little bit. So, like, let’s. There are some people who maybe do have an ideal buyer figured out, but they’re still taking in a bunch of other stuff. So when an ideal buyer comes around, they’re like, well, sorry, we’re busy, and we can’t actually just speak how people like. So we talk about this a lot when we’re doing our talks about, you know, the riches are in the niches, and then you know, you can niche around a customer type, you know, a different type of job type or a property type. But what do you say to folks that are saying, okay, they’ve dialed in who they want to work with, but they’re still saying yes to everybody else?

08:44
Doug C. Brown
Well, so that comes back to, you know, we’d call that a character flaw in some regards. Right? I don’t mean to be that harsh, but once we know who our ideal right-fit buyer is, I want people to think of it this way. If you found your ideal right fit mate in life, you’re not going to go out and start saying yes to other people. If the ideal right fit mate is there, you would say no if you’re smart, right?

09:18
Rob Murray
Yeah, yeah. If you want to keep the right fit.

09:21
Doug C. Brown
So, no business, no. If you were dating, you could have lots of ideal right-fit dates, right? And so that would be it. But we’ve got to say no to the ones who aren’t because if we don’t, then it doesn’t turn out to be ideal in the execution of the date. Right. It’s the same concept. But let’s take it in a business context. If we are saying yes to everyone and we know what our ideal right fit buyer is, then I would say our marketing and our prospecting efforts are off because we’re not targeting and only prospecting into those areas.

09:55
Doug C. Brown
Now when we prospect into those areas, we should find far more like, again, criteria million dollars up and home, you know, home, you know, in the, let’s say whatever software business or this business or whatever business, once you understand what that is and you start to dial it in, you know, the wife is the decision maker, let’s say in that case, right, we’re now going to target the wives of a million dollar plus home, you know, in these certain sectors of the city or the community. So we shouldn’t be over on the other side of the city if those ideal right-fit buyers are there. But if we are, We’ve got to say no to those things. Now, in the beginning, it’s really hard because it’s like, oh, I got a sale, I got a sale. Right, right. But there’s that old Pareto principle.

10:43
Doug C. Brown
Let’s take 80% of the ideal right-fit buyers. Then, at the end of the year, what I want everybody to please take into consideration is that at the end of the year, let’s take that 20% and get rid of a percentage of those people. Let’s get rid of 25% of those, one-quarter of those, and replace it with ideal right-fit buyers again. And then, you know, so if they don’t want to go cold turkey on it, you could do it gradually over 2, 3, 4 years. And so now you’re focused only on that. The reason you want to focus on your ideal right-fit buyer is they know other ideal right-fit buyers. So when we’re looking at sales, expansion, getting new clients through referrals, and things like that, acquisition costs are very low.

11:30
Rob Murray
Yeah, the lowest.

11:31
Doug C. Brown
Right, yeah. In most cases. And you know, because especially like if you’re in a service-based business, because you know, how many of us been, you know, in that position where it’s like you find the real like cool person who can handle your home or your business from a service-based business perspective and you don’t want to let go of that person, but you’re, you’ll tell all your friends.

11:54
Rob Murray
Right.

11:55
Doug C. Brown
You know, and so that’s why we want to go to the ideal right fit buyer if we’re not there and we’re taking on all this other business. And that’s why I said character flaw, because it’s not, that’s what it’s called. I don’t like the word. But the reality is we’ve got to underkeep our boats or our automobiles in the right lane. Right, right. And we do this automatically on the highway. You know, how many of us don’t like that person on the freeway or the highway that goes from the far left lane to the far right lane and takes the exit within three seconds? Right, right. So analogous to what we’re talking about, stay in the lane that you’re supposed to be in, and you’ll get to your destination a lot faster, and you’ll enjoy the ride more.

12:38
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, I couldn’t. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir and the converted over here, so. But maybe if someone’s listening to this and they’ve been thinking about the idea of getting more focused on their business, they’re not there right now. Maybe they’ve got, let’s say, you know, 10 of their customers are ideal, but they want to get more, right? What do you do? How do you help people? What action steps can they take to acquire more customers like this?

12:59
Doug C. Brown
So the first thing to do is identify it, right? Because awareness. So if we got, let’s say, 10%, what is this? What’s the commonality amongst this whole 10%? And so then, once you figure out what that is, and if you don’t know what it is, you can run all these filters now through AI, which will make it a hell of a lot easier for you. So you can take all of the factors that you have, let this, the machine learning, break it down, and spit it back, and it’ll come up with you and get you into the ballpark. Now, then, go to the ideal right-fit buyers and interview them. What made you decide to do business with us? Go to the ones that were ideal, right-fit buyers and ask them why they didn’t do business with you. Right?

13:43
Doug C. Brown
Start getting the reasons and start to put together a profile sheet and a persona sheet for that ideal right-fit buyer. Now, here’s the thing: you don’t have to have it 100%. Once you get it in the ballpark, then you start saying, okay, where are these people hanging out? And so where they’re hanging out, let’s say they’re, for example, in million-dollar neighborhoods. That’s easy to target because they’re right there in the million-dollar neighborhood plus neighborhood, right? So wherever they’re hanging out, that’s where you’ve got to start looking.

14:15
Doug C. Brown
And it’s not anymore complex or complicated, I guess, than this process, but once you understand that, you don’t stop there as you continue to gain other ideal Persona fields in the process; you’re now going to keep looking at the data, and you’re going to say who’s going to be buying more out of this? You know, the Pareto principle, there’s 20% of the 80% who are now your 4%, if you will, right? So now you look at the 4%, you want to start targeting the 4%. And this is how you grow quickly and profitably because you can do it, you know, with low stress. If you do this right and I’ll give you, I’ll give people an example like this happens all the time in the consulting world.

15:07
Doug C. Brown
So I just was working with a consultant. He’s doing 700,000 a year as a consultant, which, you know, isn’t that bad. Yeah, it’s not a profitable business. And we helped him dial this in and say no to certain things. And within six weeks, he went from 700,000 to $945,000 in business because he cut out all of the things that he was the distractions. You’re talking about Robert, you know, saying that, saying yes to everybody. Right. And we focus the target right on that particular ideal right-fit buyer.

15:40
Rob Murray
So let’s say you find that you find this ideal right fit buyer and now you want to start reaching out to them. Like what do you guys do with your clients? Like how do you go about reaching out to these prospect?

15:49
Doug C. Brown
So it depends on the particular business. Right. So if, you know, we work a lot with business to business so you can find them, you know, certainly online. You know, LinkedIn is a really great aspect of B2B. Right. If you reach out. Yeah. So I’m a big old fan of cold-calling these people, and so am I.

16:09
Rob Murray
Know but like for people, cold calling is like a four letter word and, and people tell me it’s dead, it doesn’t work and no one picks up their phone anymore. I was just like, I don’t, I just don’t agree with that. So what can you say to folks like in terms of what does cold calling look like and how would they approach it?

16:25
Doug C. Brown
So the first thing is people give cold calling a bad rap because they don’t know how to do it.

16:30
Rob Murray
Yeah. Well, cold calling done poorly doesn’t work.

16:34
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. Nor does LinkedIn, nor does nothing marketing.

16:37
Rob Murray
Nor does anything. Walking doesn’t work if you are on all fours.

16:41
Doug C. Brown
If you’re walking sideways and you’re not looking at the traffic coming by, you’re going to be in trouble. So it’s, look, here’s the thing. So, who’s the ideal right-fit buyer? Where are they, and when are they there? And that’s when you target your cold call. For example, if you’re calling CEOs, a lot of CEOs are in the office at 6 am. Call them then because they’re not distracted by all of the things that are going on during the day. They’re also there on Friday nights, so Saturdays in the morning. So, if you know when, you know what days and times you can call, and how do you figure that out? Start Talking to the people you’ve already sold, or if you haven’t sold them, call the ones who are ideal, right, fit buyers and ask them this question. Hi. You don’t know me.

17:34
Doug C. Brown
I don’t know you. This is a cold call. Can I tell you in 30 seconds or less what I’m trying to do? And you can tell me whether I should hang up and bid you the greatest day you’ve ever had in your life. Or maybe we can set another appointment, something as simple as that.

17:50
Rob Murray
Easy. You know, it’s really interesting you say that, too. There was a story about this insurance company. It was out west. Anyway, they hired a consultant to come in to figure out what was going on because their growth stagnated. And so the guy comes in, doing three days of intensive research, interviewing all these people, and going through all their financials. He walks into the room on the fourth day and says the problem is actually quite simple. You’re not making enough calls. And the board was like, this is bullshit. We paid you $50,000 to come in here for a week. You come in, you just say, we haven’t done enough calls. He’s like, yep. They’re like, well, we want our money back. This is just a horrible report. He’s like, I’ll prove it to you.

18:29
Rob Murray
You give me 10 middle-of-the-pack people in your insurance business who are salespeople and put me into a cold territory where nobody knows your business. I’ll show you what you can do with making calls. And so they. They cold-called, door knocked, and they could do. It was about eight an hour. And they had 10 guys; they’re doing about 80 houses an hour. And all they would do when they knocked on the door was say, I don’t suppose you’re looking for life insurance, are you? And so they did. 80 houses an hour, and they were closing one deal an hour.

18:56
Doug C. Brown
Yep.

18:57
Rob Murray
In a brand new cold territory. 1 out of 80, close on the spot.

19:01
Doug C. Brown
Which, which knows, goes to the lesson, so start prospecting more.

19:08
Rob Murray
Yeah. And you miss, what, 100% of the shots you don’t take?

19:11
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, exactly.

19:12
Rob Murray
Look, that was Gretzky. For anybody listening, it’s a Canadian reference. Just for the. Anyway. Yeah, yeah.

19:17
Doug C. Brown
Oh, we’re going to get into hockey. Hockey thing going on.

19:20
Rob Murray
Yeah, yeah. It’s all good. Oh, yeah. Thursday, big night.

19:25
Doug C. Brown
So the. Here’s the thing. The master prospector will always outsell the master closer. Always.

19:33
Rob Murray
Tell us more about that. What do you mean by that? Because I mean, I. I think, I believe, and I Completely understand.

19:37
Doug C. Brown
But what the example you just said, were out there, we’re knocking on doors, 80 an hour, closing one deal. Right. So, the master closer will study sales and closing skills. They’ll study all of these things, and it’s not that not, it’s not important. However, the person who can target the buyers forgets the ideal. Right. Fit buyer, but you can just target buyers, and you’re prolific in targeting buyers. One will always outsell the master closer because the master closer doesn’t have the resources of those buyers at their fingertips. They’re really skilled at closing, and they.

20:13
Rob Murray
But they need the opportunity in front of them.

20:15
Doug C. Brown
Exactly. And so, an average closer will outsell the master closer every single day if they are a master prospect. Now, the master prospector, who’s also a master closer, will outsell the whole team.

20:26
Rob Murray
Right. So what now? You’re getting into unicorn territory? I’m, you know, there are a lot of those people, and most of them have started businesses. I’m thinking. But if you go back to this idea of the master prospector versus the master closer, you’re explicitly implying that there are two different roles here and usually two different people. If I’m sitting here listening to this as a landscape entrepreneur and considering whether or not I should hire salespeople,

20:50
Doug C. Brown
Yes.

20:52
Rob Murray
And I’m thinking I want someone to go open doors versus say closed deals. Like what should I be looking for in somebody who’s built that way?

21:00
Doug C. Brown
Well, it’s a very different profile so y,ou know that that person is going to open doors. So here’s the biggest mistake that people make when hiring a salesperson. Whether it’s going to be an appointment setter, an SDR sales development rep or a closer or you know, a sales manager. Right. There, there are four different distinct personality profiles. Sure.

21:25
Rob Murray
Yeah.

21:26
Doug C. Brown
Right. And so they don’t look at firstly what the true job description is. That’s the number one mistake. So before anybody wants to hire somebody to go knock on doors or open opportunities, write out a detailed, in-depth job description. Because then you’re going to create an ad to attract that ideal right. Fit person.

21:51
Rob Murray
Oh yeah. We’re now talking about the same principles. Recruiting and selling it’s like the same shit, right?

21:55
Doug C. Brown
Same stuff.

21:55
Rob Murray
You’re looking for a team instead of a customer.

21:58
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. And so now, if you think about it, a lot of people know this analogy: the best salesperson promotes the sales manager, and they ruin two jobs in most cases. Right. And here’s the reason why the salesperson who’s high performing loves to close deals, loves to be out amongst people, loves to the. The thrill of the competition, the thrill of the chase, the thrill of the hunt, the thrill of helping people. Right. And they hate detail.

22:31
Rob Murray
Right.

22:33
Doug C. Brown
So they then take that person and throw them into a management position where they now have a new fill-out spreadsheet and reports and this and that.

22:43
Rob Murray
All detail. Yeah.

22:44
Doug C. Brown
They no longer hunt on their own; now, they have to help the whole team hunt. Right. So now they got to become a coach, which they didn’t want to do in the first place. And so it doesn’t mean that it can’t work, but it works very rarely. So, for people who like going, really, does this matter? Let me give you an example. So I was just in a restaurant with a really good friend of mine down in Florida, and this amazing server came by the table. His name’s Ryan. Ryan is the quintessential. You want to give him a 40% tip.

23:20
Rob Murray
Yeah.

23:20
Doug C. Brown
Right. And so he, and he’s lovable, happy, and upbeat, and if your day is down, you will feel amazing. And to serve, you know, the food was there on time, and recommendations cross-sells and upsells. The guy had it down. And my, and my friend said to me, he said, you know what happened here? Because I said to him, I said, this guy’s amazing. He goes, yeah, you know what they did? They promoted to, promoted him to head of customer service. I’m like, are you kidding me? And he goes, no, no. And we both looked at each other and smiled because, I mean, this guy has built billions of dollars worth of companies because we knew what happened. Well, what happened was Ryan almost quit. Why?

24:03
Doug C. Brown
He went from this cheerful, amazing position where he was getting high-end commissions to now hearing everyone’s complaints about everything with no ability to make commissions and make people happy. In most cases, he just dealt with problem after problem in the restaurant. So he was going to quit. So when we’re looking at hiring an appointment setter, you better look at somebody who can handle rejection because they’re going to get rejected a lot.

24:36
Rob Murray
Well, 79 out of 80, right? 79 out of 80 said no one said yes. And they’re just like, they’re it. But yeah, that’s cool. So rejection’s a big one.

24:43
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. Such a description. Then, you write the ad for the particular style of person that you’re looking at. And if you’re looking for somebody who has high rejection rates, you had better write the ad. To reject them. Right, because.

24:57
Rob Murray
Tell us about that because I love that.

24:59
Doug C. Brown
So, match.com, you don’t take any of these services, right? What do they do? They match up people based on their desires, their wants, their needs, their fears, their concerns. Take all of that into consideration. Basically, put an ad together, put two people together who think alike, look out on outlook of life alike, et cetera. Yeah, you have to do the same thing. You cannot hire a salesperson, folks, the same way you hire an internal employee for an administrative position or, you know, an operations person or whatever, because they face different situations. You know, your internal operations person is not hearing no, no, all day long, you know, f you. Exactly. So whatever happens, right?

25:48
Rob Murray
Yeah, yeah.

25:49
Doug C. Brown
And so, you know, it’s. So you want to write the ad to capture the type of person that you want in the description, right? So when we used to write ads, you know, for our own companies, and we still do, shouldn’t say when we used to or when we write them for clients, we literally figure out what the description is. And so here was one of the ads that we used to do when I first worked with Chet Holmes. You know, sales superstar wanted. Don’t even apply to this if you’re not truly awesome. That was our first line out of the gate, right?

26:26
Rob Murray
Pretty sure he references this whole story in the book, right? The sales machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:30
Doug C. Brown
We used to do this all the time. And, you know, then we modify the ad for particular things. Now, what we were looking for was personality type. We needed people who had strong self-confidence. It’s called ego strength in his world. We wanted to hire people who would capture an income inbound call from somebody in their car driving down the highway. We wanted them to get them on a training two and a half hour training program where they paid $229 on the spot, pulling the credit card out of their pocket while they were driving down the highway.

27:07
Rob Murray
Right.

27:07
Doug C. Brown
You can imagine you’re going to hear every single objection possible. Now, I’m driving on the highway; I can’t look at my credit card. My God. You know what I mean? Like, call me back, whatever it is. Listen, I was expecting to get a recording, not a real live call. Right. So, how do you turn those types of people? Well, you can’t have somebody who has so high empathy in that position because they’re going to burn out. And so we needed somebody who had a lot more ego, strength, self-confidence, and somebody who also had high empathy and could deal with those things. So we would test for those things. Now, I love it.

27:48
Rob Murray
How do you test? What do you use? What do you use for testing?

27:51
Doug C. Brown
So we had our own internal testing process that we used to use back then. But there are sales specific assessments. Now. Here’s the thing. Don’t please use personality test as your benchmark for like a disc. Right. Don’t use disc. Is Briggs. All that stuff you heard of.

28:12
Rob Murray
Have you heard of OMG Objective Management Group?

28:14
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, that’s the one I would recommend.

28:15
Rob Murray
Yeah. There you go.

28:16
Doug C. Brown
Okay, so OMG is one of the most sales specific assessments out there. And it’s got predictive validation in it.

28:22
Rob Murray
Right.

28:23
Doug C. Brown
So that, you know, and those are the ones that we use.

28:27
Rob Murray
And for the record, we used it. We hired three people through it. One of them said they would work, and two of them said they wouldn’t. Yeah, the one that said worked. The two that said it wouldn’t didn’t.

28:38
Doug C. Brown
Right. It’s predictive.

28:40
Rob Murray
I know. We still ignored it. It’s like, what the.

28:45
Doug C. Brown
So it’s, it’s. It, it’s. If you do the whole predictive system like that, it’s. I believe it’s 92% predictive that they will be there a year from now.

28:57
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s huge.

28:59
Doug C. Brown
And so, you know, when you look at hiring, you know, I remember Charlie Munger, if folks don’t know who he is, Warren Buffett’s.

29:05
Rob Murray
Warren Buffett’s partner. Yeah. He’s awesome.

29:07
Doug C. Brown
He said, you know, if you hire and get 50. Right. You’re doing a damn good job. That’s what he said. So, you know, that’s the thing. Like you will. There’s a whole process to this. I mean, it would take literally hours to explain it all. But there’s a whole process, too. Or as you would say in Canada, the process to this whole, you know, we.

29:29
Rob Murray
Got some east coasters in Canada. They can say process. It’s all good.

29:34
Doug C. Brown
Well, I want to be respectful to the whole audience, you know.

29:37
Rob Murray
I appreciate that. Cool. All right. So you. It’s almost like a full circle, right? When you talk about the fact that people don’t necessarily have their ideal buyer, but then when you look at the team side on sales specifically, you don’t necessarily have the ideal seller in mind. And, you know, the idea of segmenting those roles from, you know, internal sales, hunting, closing, you know, door knocking and kicking open doors. I think it’s just a really good thing for people to take note of and really look at. From my perspective, and we see this all the time, there are so many entrepreneurs running sales. They just close the deal, so they keep doing it. They can’t find someone to come in and do it better, so they keep doing it.

30:19
Rob Murray
It’s a huge nut to crack for folks, I think. And you create a bit more simplicity around it.

30:24
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, well, the thing is, Robert, the reason that happens that way is because they’re trying to hire themselves.

30:31
Rob Murray
Right, the entrepreneur.

30:33
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, the entrepreneurs are trying to clone themselves, and they think that’s the way to go. And here’s the thing, entrepreneurs. Don’t scream at me later, please. There are a lot of people out there who are a hell of a lot better than you are at actually selling your products and services. You just don’t know how to find them.

30:49
Rob Murray
Right. And so then, so on that note, then what would you recommend for folks to do to find these people? Like, is it just really around the ad copy and placing the ads in the right spots?

30:58
Doug C. Brown
So firstly, again, the number one thing, sit down and get brutally truthful about the description of the position.

31:07
Rob Murray
Yeah, yeah, right.

31:09
Doug C. Brown
Then, not only what are they going to do within the company, but the actual cultural aspects of how they do it. You want them to be within the company. Right. What is the culture of your company? Then, once you get past that and you can write the ad to attract them, you’ve got to have a consistently scripted interviewing process, folks. If you’re asking different questions of different people in your interview, you’re going to have variability in your actual hire. In other words, what I mean by that is to ask all the same questions. And you want to lead, score just like you would score a lead.

31:45
Rob Murray
Yeah, I love it.

31:46
Doug C. Brown
So, use the right assessments. I mean, there’s a whole process to this, that. But you know, the bottom line is that it is match.com, and so they don’t have to be the entrepreneur. One other piece that’s so critically important is you’ve got to have standardized training in the process. Even if they’re top producers, they want training. Yeah, right.

32:10
Rob Murray
Well, if anything, they just want to get better faster. Right.

32:13
Doug C. Brown
Well, that’s what your top producers will do. That’s exactly what they’ll demand. Right. So you don’t have to have the perfect of all perfect training. And that’s what stops a lot of people, Robert, when they hear that, like, oh, I Gotta set all this stuff up front. No, no, no. A person who is a. Let me give you an example. I’m gonna brag a little about myself on this.

32:32
Rob Murray
Yeah, go for it, man. This is the space to do it. You’re good to go.

32:35
Doug C. Brown
So, a company called PayTech Communications hired me. I didn’t know anything about selling their products or services, but I knew enough to be able to sell myself into the position. I knew a little bit about telecommunications, but these people are selling digital circuits called T1s DS, you know, all these, like, technical whatever. Yeah, sales, engineering, blah, blah, blah. So here’s what a top producer will do. I overnighted myself three telecommunications engineering books and read them over the weekend. All I needed was enough to get in the door and be specific enough to be able to talk to the. The CEO will be able to interface a little bit with the technical people and then bring my sales engineering staff in for the complex ones. Okay, long story short, I became the number one rep in that company.

33:28
Doug C. Brown
Within six months, I was outselling my whole team of nine combined. And I was outselling the whole New England region of six combined teams of nine every single month almost consistently. So when you get the right person, that right person will light up the world for you, but you’ve got to have the right match. And. Yeah, you know, and fortunately, the guy who hired me understood that. Not only fortunately for myself, but fortunately for him as well, because, you know, he overrode everything that I did. So. And, you know, it was just. In that case, I would say it was a little bit of circumstance and luck that we found one another because their. Their hiring process wasn’t all that great in the beginning, but, you know, it worked when you hire the right people.

34:21
Doug C. Brown
So you want to look for the profile of people like myself, you know, because I’ve done this not only in that company but in numerous companies. I mean, I did in Tony Robbin’s company, Chad Holmes’s company, and Russ Whitney’s. Right. Billion-dollar players. So it’s one of those things that you. There. Those people are out there. You just really have to have the process around knowing how to go after them. And when you can go after them, it. They don’t have to be like you as the owner. As my company owner, I don’t hire people who are exactly like me. I have people that are better than me. That’s what I go for.

34:58
Rob Murray
And so then. So before we close up on this thing with building the sales teams, which is huge, what do you pay these people? You know, like, what are the pay scales and how do you go about finding, figuring out what a reasonable compensation strategy is?

35:13
Doug C. Brown
So people like me like to work on commission. We’re not really big base salary fans. Well, we want a base salary. For example, if it’s a long sales cycle, we want something to cover us. But what I’m looking at is, you know, what am I going to be doing in year two, in year three, Right? How do I get that hockey stick curve to work? I want to make as much money in year one as possible, but I’m really looking at year two or year three. All right, so how do I get to a million dollars in year two or year three? That’s where the brain goes, or 2 million, or 5 million, or whatever.

35:53
Doug C. Brown
Like, I’m negotiating something right now where, you know, we’re going to be building something, and I’m already looking at 24 million in our second year of revenue from a standstill. Right. So they’re going to think like this. And how do you know how they think like this? You can ask questions in your scripted process.

36:15
Rob Murray
Right.

36:16
Doug C. Brown
Reveals these things. Right. So what do you pay them? As much as you possibly can pay them. One of the challenges with people who provide commission sales programs is they try to cap these people.

36:31
Rob Murray
Why?

36:32
Doug C. Brown
Because they’re greedy. Oh.

36:37
Rob Murray
You’re making too much money. Well, it turns out everybody’s making too much money. So what?

36:41
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, that’s called the corporate breakaway. Really? That’s the term for it, Right? It’s a breakaway. So what they do is they take a program, and when they’re making enough money, they actually start pulling territory from them. Or they. I have a good friend who works for Stetson, and they just did this to them, and he’s leaving. Yeah, yeah, Right. So the guy was making $450,000 a year. They pulled territory from him. Now he’s down to 300. He’s like, I’m not doing this. Bye.

37:05
Rob Murray
Yeah. Yeah.

37:07
Doug C. Brown
So, what is he looking for?

37:08
Rob Murray
Is he looking? Is he looking for a gig? Is he looking for a gig?

37:11
Doug C. Brown
Do you want me to refer him to you? Is that what you’re?

37:13
Rob Murray
Yes, 110. I do.

37:16
Doug C. Brown
I can reach out to him.

37:17
Rob Murray
Okay.

37:19
Doug C. Brown
You know, and he, you know, and he’s like, that’s it. I’m done. Right. And so, why would you cap a guy like that in his territory? He’s lighting it up for that particular company. Why not let you know his goal is to get the $650,000 he’s aligned?

37:34
Rob Murray
With the company, he wants to grow.

37:36
Doug C. Brown
Exactly. And you don’t want to leave.

37:38
Rob Murray
No.

37:39
Doug C. Brown
So now, what does he do?

37:40
Rob Murray
Well, Stetson is pretty badass.

37:42
Doug C. Brown
Exactly. And he likes the company, but now he’s looking at competitors.

37:47
Rob Murray
Right, right.

37:48
Doug C. Brown
So what happens when you take a top person like that and then they move to a competitor? Well, they wait out the agreements, and then they pull your comp. Those people off you onto the competitor because they already have the relationship. So why would we cap somebody like that in the first place? It makes no sense if that person made a million. I’ll tell you why it happened: I had the conversation with him because he’s making more than his upper management was starting to make.

38:12
Rob Murray
Whatever. He’s closing deals.

38:15
Doug C. Brown
You and I look at that from a business perspective and go, that’s what’s supposed to happen.

38:20
Rob Murray
Yeah.

38:20
Doug C. Brown
A lot of people will look at that and say, no, no, no. I’ve had that happen to me in life. When I was in the music business selling music equipment, it was the greatest job I ever had, selling to the bands that we all listen to on the radio. You know, I was almost making double what the owner was making of the company. And the owner came to me one day, and he said, you know, you’re the highest-paid person in this company. I said, well, thank you. He goes, no, that’s a bad thing. You’re making almost twice what I’m making. I asked how that was a bad thing. Aren’t you making a percentage of everything and your company stronger? Like if I add, you know, $10 million to the bottom line and your profitability, let’s say, is 20%, you’re now $2 million.

39:06
Doug C. Brown
Let’s say whatever your EBITDA is, right? Your EBITDA is usually going to go off at 5x, right? So if I make you $2 million on the EBITDA every single year, you’re now going to sell that company for $10 million, and you’re begrudging me an extra $300,000 a year. Yeah, Right. It’s like, we can’t. These are how. These are how your elite performers think. They think like a business owner. And so we’ve got to treat them that way. And that’s part of the challenge. So. And we also want lanes, right? We want to know what we can cross and what we can’t cross.

39:44
Rob Murray
You know, it’s interesting you say that. Somebody told me a long time ago that if you give somebody a city and just say, hey, go sell. They’ll have a hard time, and they’ll be all over the place, and they won’t spend their time efficiently. But if you say, hey, go sell these three streets for the next 90 days, right? They’ll go. They’ll kill it.

39:57
Doug C. Brown
Right? The reason behind this is that elite producers are highly creative. And so if you let them be creative, they’re going to be like a free-form jazz player just going to be playing out any tune anywhere somebody can hear the music. So hopefully they, you know, they, you know, get some accolades out of it, right? So it’s one of those things that you want to put the lanes on them. Like, I was a major account executive in a company, and what did I do? I started selling into wholesale accounts. Well, I’m pissed off wholesale, right? Because now I’m going after international companies like CBR and Richard Ellis, right? A big real estate company. And they’re like, no, no, that’s his own. This is wholesale. I’m like, well, I just sold it. Do you not want to pay me for it?

40:46
Doug C. Brown
Well, yeah, you know what I mean? So they’re like, Doug, you’ve got to stay in your lane, all right? Right. And so then I’m like, I want a wider lane. So. So, by the way, these people will drive you crazy if you don’t provide what they need because I don’t wait. And I’m not just saying, again, I’m bragging a little about myself, right? But, I will not wait for you, as the owner, to tell me whether I can or can’t do this.

41:17
Rob Murray
Right? Yeah, I’m going, go do it.

41:19
Doug C. Brown
And I have done this in companies. I sold things that didn’t exist, and then the company had to actually go. I did this. I sold six major accounts, which are called tie lines. And we didn’t have them. Basically, you have a digital circuit that has 24 channels. And I figured out you could tie two or four or six of these channels together and get them to talk to one another, right? Well, in the old days, you had to go out and buy 24 channels and then 24 channels. And connect 24 to 24. And a lot of these companies didn’t need 1.5 megabytes of bandwidth. They needed 512, which would be channeled. So I just went out and I said, oh, okay. And all I did was rub it at that time. As I said, it’s $50 a channel.

42:05
Doug C. Brown
So for eight channels, it’s $400 a month extra. Well, that’s better than the $2,000 they were paying for their full thing from the other competitor. And so they went, fine. And. But I need a five year agreement to pull this off. Okay. They sign off. So I sold six major names. I won’t even name them because I don’t know if I can. But one of them was Enterprise Rental Car.

42:29
Rob Murray
So they’re doing okay.

42:31
Doug C. Brown
Six major corporations. And I went in, and I just submitted the orders, and then I heard from the top of somebody’s lungs in the sales engineering department, my name with a lot of expletives going off. And I heard footsteps coming down the hallway. And I knew exactly what was going to happen. And they were all like, we can’t. What are you doing? And I’m like, can we technically do this? And they said yes. I said, well, then I sold it, so make it happen, please.

42:56
Rob Murray
Yes.

42:57
Doug C. Brown
It went all the way up to the CEO. This was a 400 million dollar company. The CEO calls me, and he goes, what are you doing? Like I said, can’t we make money, right? And all he said to me is he said, good job, but please call me next time before you even try something like this. Because the next eight in the next 18 months. They added a million dollars a month in Thailand at the end of the 18 months.

43:25
Rob Murray
A month.

43:26
Doug C. Brown
A month.

43:26
Rob Murray
Yeah, A million a month.

43:28
Doug C. Brown
Right.

43:28
Rob Murray
So that’s a big deal. So don’t. You have to make sure you have people’s support, and they’re not going to wait for you when you get a rock star in. We got to wrap up. Just from a timing point of view, before we go, what’s one Mentor, author, or speaker that’s kind of, you know, giving you an aha moment once or twice that you’d recommend to the audience?

43:49
Doug C. Brown
Russ Whitney.

43:51
Rob Murray
What’s he about?

43:53
Doug C. Brown
I think this is the best business book ever written. Even though it’s not technically a business book, it’s called Inner Voice. I N N E R V O I C E. It will challenge the paradigm of your thought, like probably nothing you’ve ever read. And it’s written by a guy who had a billion-dollar company and lost 80% of his net worth overnight and then lost his family. And so he went on a quest to fig. He’s like, hey, I had all this. What’s the point of all this? And it gets people super clear on what their truthful goal is in life versus a lot of stuff they’re chasing where they don’t really want to get it anyway. It’s like chasing that gal back in, you know, school where you thought, man, if I could just go out with her.

44:39
Doug C. Brown
And then you go out with her, and you’re like, oh, this was all, this was like, you know, she’s not even a nice, you know, or, you know, it was the thing you wanted. So that’s. It’s one of the best books that I’ve ever read based on. Because here’s the thing. Our brain and our business, they’re not. They don’t coexist separately.

45:01
Rob Murray
Right. See, that’s interesting.

45:04
Doug C. Brown
And so if you’re going to be trying to grow your company, there could be childhood wounds that are holding on to you that you just don’t realize, and that will create certain behaviors of the ownership and create certain behaviors through the leadership of the company because it all pushes down.

45:23
Rob Murray
Well, it’s interesting you say that. And we. It’s full, that’s full circle to the beginning of the show around what’s the primary growth because and holding entrepreneurs back. And a lot of time, it’s between the ears. So. Russ Whitney, inner voice. We got to check it out.

45:35
Doug C. Brown
I’m.

45:35
Rob Murray
I’m gonna put that mic next on my list for sure. If someone wants to reach out to Doug C. Brown, how do they get a hold of you?

45:42
Doug C. Brown
Doug at what is your. No, that was another company own DougCEO sales strategies.com is my email address. Doug Brown 123 is my LinkedIn. And you know, heck, you could just call, you know, text me at 832-549-4836. I do have people who check my email and my text and all that stuff. But, you know, I, I’m a pretty. I like to talk to people, as you already know, Robert, so that’s.

46:12
Rob Murray
Yeah, for sure. Well, I appreciate you doing this and talking to everybody in the audience. So, thanks for doing the show, man.

46:16
Doug C. Brown
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me on. I’m very grateful.