Win-Win Selling

Doug C. Brown is the CEO of Business Success Factors. He started working for family businesses at the age of three and now has built over 35 companies himself. He’s got three degrees. He’s America’s number one expert in revenue expansion and sales optimization. When he was at college, he supported himself by selling music equipment to the colleges and some of the world’s biggest bands, such as Billy Joel and the Eagles. He also served twelve years in the US Army where he was awarded a Distinguished Soldier. He graduated second in his class, and then went on to enroll at the Massachusetts Military Academy.

After his service, he worked at and became a top-selling sales representative for a $2 billion company, which laid the groundwork for him to form his own consulting and auditing company. He’s traveled to 47 out of the 50 States. I’m curious to hear which three he hasn’t been to. He’s been an independent president of sales and training companies like Tony Robbins and many others. His efforts have generated over $500 million in sales.

Doug, I have not been to nearly as many States as you had. I highly recommend Alaska when the cruise industry comes back. It’s an incredible experience and New Mexico, Santa Fe is amazing and the hot air balloons in Albuquerque. You’ve got lots to look forward to. First of all, thank you for your incredible years of service. I think that’s worth acknowledging. I’ve had some other veterans who have taken their learnings and expertise from the military into the business world. The most intriguing thing for me and the readers from that wonderful introduction that you have is, can you tell us what it was like to go from selling equipment to colleges to getting to be hanging out with the Eagles and Billy Joel?

I was hanging out with Billy Joel’s people. The guitar players in there. It was awesome. I had Billy Joel’s band. I had Paul McCartney’s Wings. I had some of their peeps. I had Extreme Boston, Aerosmith, Joe Wall, the Eagles, and so on. There were others, too. What happened was I was selling music equipment, supporting myself through college, and then one thing led to another. Some of these guys were starting to come into the store and I got to know them. I started becoming their preferred provider. I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston so that’s opened up some other avenues for me. It was a lot of fun. It was one of those things that you were out all night, you get up and had to be back to work at around 10:00 to 10:30 in the morning. You do it all day long and then you go back out again at night. It was how I lived my life going through college.

What a great foundation between the military, the music, starting all these companies and getting to work with big ones. I’m fascinated by CBS television. What were you doing for them?

I was working with the president of CBS eventually. Initially, I started working with CBS as a division that’s like PBS, Public Broadcasting. Their concern and frustrations were they weren’t producing enough sales. I got the call to come into work with them. At that time, they had guys who have been there forever. I was surprised that the imprints of their bodies weren’t firmly affixed somewhere. They were trying to sell like the old Tin Men days, where you beat up on the client and move it forward. We had how to adjust that. Eventually, we ended up having conversations with the president at that time and I worked with them for a while. It was a good gig.

For those of you who may not know, networks have to convince advertisers to buy time to advertise on their show. They have something called an upfront, where they try and wow them with their pilots. It’s all typically ratings-based, but it’s gotten a lot more sophisticated now where there are some stories to tell, instead of pushing numbers, which is the old way, Tin Men. You referenced it. You’re talking about it there. Sophisticated selling requires storytelling and not more so than in any other industry, which is the entertainment industry. Having lived in LA and worked in that business, the good salespeople would say to an advertiser, “This particular show is going to attract families and your Olive Garden. You’re going to want to be in an environment that is family-friendly while also having some emotion.”

I remember talking to the CMO of Olive Garden about that very thing, “How do you decide which shows you advertise on?” They were going to go on The Good Doctor, which targeting families but also had some drama. It’s very difficult now for families to find a show that they all want to watch because everyone can watch something separately. That industry has changed. I’m sure they needed your help to figure out, “How do we make our show stand out to advertisers against all the other shows?”

You brought up the keyword, which is storytelling. We used to do something called the core story. It’s telling the picture and getting motivation, inspiration and a little bit of pain when needed throughout the story to get the clients to understand to move and you’re right. That industry has changed so much. Streaming services are everywhere and like any technology, it evolves. What was happening is they weren’t evolving their sales process around that. Now, with things going on, even more so. Storytelling is even more important now than it used to be in the past because you can’t get together now, have drinks, lunch and all that other stuff. People are so jaded from not being able to see one another that they love a good story. Isn’t that the way we learned as children? We were told stories.

When you talk about the process, you have worked with so many companies and you see consistent problems across industries. One of them, from what you have said, is that there aren’t systems in place. When that happens, let’s say, for whatever reason, you’ve got an onslaught of demand. Your leads are being lost. It’s taking forever to close a sale. You come in and help fix that. How do you do that? Do you have a story to share on how you’ve done that?

The short way of explaining it and then I’ll be happy to share stories. The first thing to understand is a lot of companies lack systematic processes that are measurable. Take something as simple as hiring. They all want to hire top-producing sales salespeople but the question is, “If you want to hire an A player, are you a company that can achieve holding onto an A player?” We start with what I call the truthful goal, not honest and subjective, but this is the concrete measurable goal. We get very clear about that then we assess the process of where they are right now. What do they have? What’s working great? What could be optimized? What’s not working well? What’s missing? What are the constraining factors in the process as well as all the assets they have?

We build a growth plan together based on what they want to achieve on that truthful goal. It’s a bit different for every company because every company is individual, although most companies have the same 10 to 12 issues going across the board. Smaller companies tend to lack systems. The larger companies because they’ve had to grow larger, it’s a need and a must. They got to have systems and processes in place. Even that gets out of skew because of the people. They’re not following the system and not being held accountable to the system. I had a company that was doing $50 million. They called me and said, “I’d like you to come here and talk with us.” I came in and I did my thing. The truthful goal is they wanted to double their business. On the assessment, I had to go back to the owner of the company and explain to him, “You’re about to lose 60% plus of your sales team.” They had things crazy, John. They had an 82% turnover of help annually.

Some of those reasons are unattainable quotas and bosses who micromanage them. You hit your quota and they double it for next year.

It was like, “You’re never good enough no matter what’s going on.” Even the top producers were producing top-wise weren’t rewarding them or showcasing their egos. Let’s face it, salespeople have egos. They wouldn’t be salespeople otherwise. We all have egos to a degree. Some good, some not. I went to him and he said, “No. I built a growth plan.” He was like, “I’ll take it from here.” Two months later, he called me. They have fallen from $50 million to $48 million. Sixty-two percent of his sales team quit in 60 days. He called me back and went, “Can you fix this?” I said, “Sure, I’ll give my best.” I got back in there. I started re-recruiting the people that had left. I got him to agree that this is how we should run the company going forward.

We got some of those back. We hired other new people. After I was doing this actively, I found out that almost 60% of his leads were never going from a lead stage to the first contact. I went back to him again and explained to him. He told me, “No, you’re crazy. This can’t be happening.” A lot of times companies manage numbers from top-line revenue or top-line numbers. They don’t look down below what’s going on and they go, “We’re making money. This is good.” Long story short, we fixed that one ratio. Within the first 30 days, it dropped by half. In the second 30 days, it dropped by another 25%. In the third month, it dropped by a little bit more. Installing that and a couple of other things because it’s usually only a few 3, 4, 5 things. They went from $48 million to $110 million over the next two years.

You get the right processes and systems in place, leads aren’t lost and you treat their people well. It’s not rocket science and yet companies are too inside their own bottle to read the outside of the label. That’s why they need people like you to come in. Almost like a child sometimes with a parent. The parent can say the same thing. Until a teacher says it, it doesn’t stick. Whether it’s a speaker like I am or an outside consultant like you are, sometimes having another perspective and voice helps people go, “That’s the sixth time I’ve heard that. I got to fix it. Let’s try it. What do we have to lose at this point,” especially when things are going down? Thank God he called you when they were only at $48 million and not $20 million and trying to turn that ship around as much harder.

In about six months, he would have been at $20 million.

What do you see the big problem is that salespeople have around rejection? Are they giving up after the first no? They take it personally. I have some ideas around that I’ve experienced being in sales myself for many decades. I’d love to know what you see that causes salespeople to not close sales and take rejection so personally that they are giving up quickly?

No person I’ve ever met loves rejection. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some big names and people. They don’t like rejection, behind every corporate objective is always personal or something. One of the reasons that people do not like rejection is because of how they grew up. All of this goes back to our roots. We grow up and we’re habituated to our behavior. We’re told what’s right and what’s not right by parents, preachers, teachers, classmates and all kinds of things.

What we don’t realize is we’re making agreements all the way through based on what we agree to, even if we don’t agree with it. That sneaks up on people as they become adults because adults are nothing more than grown children who have been taught how to navigate their way through society. However, if one grows up in an environment where it’s rude to interrupt the adults and they are admonished, punished and publicly humiliated going all the way through this, eventually, that starts to become a pattern that they go, “I cannot interrupt people because it’s rude. I won’t get mom and dad’s love.”

The core beliefs are founded right there.

They even value it because when they’re not doing that, they might get praise. “Look how well the children are behaving,” and all of that good stuff. That’s well-meant. Fast forward 30 years, they’re now 34 years old. They’re in a sales job. The goal is to make 100 cold calls a day, which is interrupting 100 people a day. What ends up happening is when they start getting rejected, it reminds them of the pain of their youth. There’s a set frame there that until they are aware of it, it’s on autopilot, too. That’s the whole thing. It’s the same thing with closing. It could be a myriad of different things that they learned growing up.

Let’s say that they were taught not to pressure people for whatever reason. No matter how their moral obligation says, “This person needs this. This person wants this.” They’re going to have that duality and that fight within them. I had one sales guy that I help with this. He grew up in an environment where everything was negotiated. “It doesn’t matter. You close the deal, negotiate. That was how we grew up.” I’m sitting there watching. He closed this deal and I was like, “That’s a good deal.” What did he do? He started negotiating right after the deal. Instead of pushing the paper forward and saying, “Can we have your endorsement on this?” He goes, “Well.” He started backing it up again and he undid the deal.

I’ve seen it happen so many times. I tell people, “When you get someone to say yes, stop talking. Don’t tell them ten more features.” It’s so bizarre to me that people feel the false belief that, “You got to get people to know, like, and trust you. I’ll push out a bunch of information. Do you know enough about me now or you still don’t? Even if you want to buy, I still need to give you more facts.” It’s fascinating to tie it all the way back to childhood beliefs that get formed of either the fear of rejection and/or pushy or “I need to negotiate in order to feel like I won.” You’re talking about getting people in the right roles. Some people love to nurture existing clients. Others only like to get the sale and then turn it over to somebody else. They hate the servicing of the clients. If you’ve got the people doing something they don’t like, that’s a big problem, too.

It’s a huge problem. I fully agree with you. Sometimes, that is the solution. I always talk to owners and a lot of times, they make this mistake. They take their top-producing salesperson and promote them to a manager. A top-producing salesperson loves to go out, be social, prospect and do all of those things. A manager loves to do spreadsheets and metrics. You try to take that and say to a top-producing salesperson, “I need you to create pivot tables and this and that.” Without question, it’s a problem. If you have people in the wrong role, they’re not happy and productive.

What I use is sales-specific assessments which will pinpoint, “Are they a farmer? Are they a hunter? Do they have the will to sell?” That’s another closing thing. Because if they don’t, then they’re not going to close well. Closing is not hard. In fact, closing could be a very simple question. “Would you like to move forward with this at this time?” Closing is so important. I’ve seen statistics out there that highly suggest all of them. About 92% of people won’t buy unless they’re asked to buy.

Let’s take a moment on that, 90% won’t buy unless asked. It’s like dating. You’re not going to get someone to knock on your door out of the blue unless you’ve asked them out. No one is sitting at home alone single going, “I don’t know why nobody’s asking me out, knocking on my door. I’m not putting myself out there, but yet I expect that I should not have to do that.” This premise of, “I’ve given you all the information. Please don’t make me ask the closing question because I hate it,” or whatever the belief is, yet I compare it to being a copilot with your buyer.

I tell the story when I give a talk. When I flew from LA to New York or wherever, the pilot comes on at the end and says, “We’re now landing in New York.” Nobody stands up and says, “What? We’re landing. I thought we’re going to fly around forever.” We see so many salespeople who are afraid to land the plane. The clients are like, “If you’re not going to ask, I’ll keep dragging this thing on forever. I’ll keep picking your brain or asking for more information. We’re doing this endless flight.” Someone is going to run a fuel one way or the other until you start from the get-go going, “This whole journey is expected to have a landing point at someplace. It’s not going to be a shock when I ask you. Does that sound like something you want to move forward with?” It’s like the plane ride. We have a destination in mind. Otherwise, we wouldn’t get on.

We all want that plane ride when it touches down to be smooth and effortless. For too many people in sales, because they’re afraid, they have a fear of rejection or they grew up in whatever environment, “You’re good, but never good enough,” they don’t ask the question or wait until they’re desperate to ask the question. It’s like the plane hitting the runway very hard. No one likes to be in a plane and feel kaboom when it hits the ground because you don’t know what’s going on. When they ask closing questions, a lot of objections will come up because they’ve asked the question in the wrong way. They haven’t made the flight, staying with the analogy, enjoyable all the way through, informative and value-based. Closing begins before you ever meet.

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