A Conversation with Doug C. Brown of Business Success Factors
Sales, selling and people expert Doug C. Brown has helped literally thousands of companies improve sales results, through his company Business Success Factors. He put that sales-expert lens on email in this relaxed, insightful conversation. You may end up thinking about sales, marketing, leads, prospects in communication in completely different ways. Topics: people, sales, email, company, doug, person, salesperson, matthew, business, objections, real-time email, life, selling, type, question, conversation, leads, happening, build, clients
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Dunn
Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. And my guest today is Doug C. Brown, CEO of business success factors. And it's Doug not Douglas, right?
Doug C. Brown
Well, if you're my mother, you'll call me Douglas. But for most people,
Matthew Dunn
my mom calls me Matt and I make everyone else call me Matthew Matthew. So yeah. Well welcome Doug's in snowy New Hampshire, and I'm in I'm in sunny Washington. So How weird is this? dug on orient people a bit about I mean, I read your background, which is really something in will ask a bunch of questions about that, orient them a bit about what your what you focus on. Now.
Doug C. Brown
I focus on sales, revenue growth for companies. Okay. So it's, you know, sometimes that encompasses certain parts of sales, like, as far as even training, right? So I do do those type of things. But what I really do is I look at a company, I assess what's going on, I look at the whole customer journey, I figure out, where do they have places that they can monetize that they're not monetizing today?
Matthew Dunn
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Doug C. Brown
And so because most companies, most people in life, we all have blind spots, and I've never, ever, in the 20 years, I've been doing this never have seen a company that doesn't have a blind spot, right. And so most of them, you know, have several of them. And so what we do is we assess everything that we figure out, are they able to grow, and if they are, then we help them put a plan together to grow. And many times they'll want us to implement the plan. And that's usually what I do with larger companies, smaller companies, I run a university on sales, revenue growth, and conversational sales mastery. So I combine that together, because, you know, the companies like Intuit and Procter and Gamble, they have deeper pockets than, say, a company doing, you know, $300,000 a year who still the same information applies. It just, you know, how do we deliver in a cost effective manner for both of us at that point?
Matthew Dunn
Right. Right. What are their are their blind spots that you've come to expect?
Doug C. Brown
Yes. Yeah. So over time, right. I mean, you know, I remember Tony Robbins saying, when I was listening to Tony, one time, he's like, you know, I've worked with over whatever it was 70 million people or whatever. So, you know, these common themes come out on a consistent basis. And it's the same thing with companies. I mean, I've worked with 10s of 1000s of businesses. So I start to see the overlap. You know, I see the overlap of what's not really working, what is working, where are the most common mistakes. So, you know, I'll give you an example, companies are dropping the ball a lot on something as simple as referrals. They don't have an active referral program into their company, it's very passive. Okay. You know, follow up, is almost non existent in many companies, right. reengagement of old clients, or dormant clients, you know, you know, through the use of follow up through the use of contact, but so there's, there's these blunt those type of blind spots that are, you know, everybody goes, Well, that makes sense. Then there's the huge like, Okay, we got a people issue, blind spot, right, where I remember I went into a company one time, and they had somebody that was their top salesperson, they didn't want to get rid of this person at all, which is fine. But this person was the biggest disruption to the rest of the sales team. And they couldn't figure out why the rest of the sales team wasn't performing because they seem like skilled people. And so I told the owner look, you need to move this gentleman down the trough a little bit or into a different division, let's just move them off like you don't have to fire him. Just keep them and as soon as we you know that that was a fight for by three or four weeks. And then after that, they move this gentleman I just said, you know, trust me just try it right. Yeah. So they move this and all of a sudden productivity and sales started picking up in month one in their sales division. So what was happening was the sales reps were coming back and they're talking about but this guy was so mean so nasty to the rest of the team, right? That the team was just kind of checking out and they didn't they didn't push forward.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. Okay. Last last last emotive and dominant personalities hard to get away from kind of thing.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, exactly. And then you know, I mean, there, there's every salesperson is different type of personality, you know, sometimes, you know, if you ask somebody, what's a salesperson, they go, well, it's slimy used car, you know, pedaler. Right? Right. A lot of people will think of a salesperson like that. But in reality, they're, they're different types of personality in different ways of selling. One of the great books I've ever read in my lifetime, was by Blair singer, it's called sales dogs, actually. And he compares each individual salesperson to a breed of dog. And so,
Matthew Dunn
sales dogs,
Doug C. Brown
sales dogs, yeah, it was a great read. And, you know, some people have pit bulls, some people have Golden Retrievers, some people have poodles, some people, you know, so like, the pit ball just gets in there and just, you know, grabs a hold of it, and just start shaking it. And you know, it's more disruptive. You know, the poodle is the, you know, I'm putting on the air I have to drive in, in the most fancy car, the best suits, right? You know, the golden retriever, or the Labrador or whatever. It's just like, you know, Pat, me love me. I'm your best friend, you know, so every everybody has their own personality. And we tend to use that personality when we're selling. So sometimes it just doesn't line up in a team atmosphere.
Matthew Dunn
Well, it sounds like you had a sense that you had an alpha or identified an Alpha Dog problem. One company, right. Interesting on what it is, I wanted to ask you, because I knew you had this deep background in in sales and helping companies be effective at sales on and we could put this in the context of last year and pandemic shift or or maybe a few more years, you may know more and more mediated and digital communication less and less face to face. But how is it how's it affecting the the cycle and the process of sales? Where where we're all quite inundated with messages or requests for our attention?
Doug C. Brown
Sure. I mean, again, you know, the purpose of a message is to get, you know, attention, right. So we got it, we got to we first make connection, and we've got to get some type of attention. Yeah. The problem is, is it a positive response from the receiver as the attention or a negative response? Hmm,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah.
Doug C. Brown
So what a lot of people don't think about is they? I just got two or three emails like this. You know, Matthew, is it's kind of weird. You know, Hi, I'm, you know, Joe, from ABC company. We do this for our clients. were great, because our clients say, we're great. Here's what the great things that our clients say, I know, if you do business with us, you'll, you'll be one of our great clients. You know, it's just the kind of a theme it's like, all about them.
Matthew Dunn
them. Yes,
Doug C. Brown
yes. Right. And so those those emails immediately, most people, including myself, just go by. And so they never get the chance. Because today more than ever, it used to be important. But today more than ever, building a relationship and building rapport is far more important than it ever was. And part of the reason behind that is exactly what you said, the shift the internet. Because people years ago, the seller actually had the information. And they could withhold that from the buyer. Yeah, yeah. Right. And use it strategically to their advantage if you think I just bought a new automobile. And, you know, I went there, and I was talking with the sales rep. But if you think about it now, as a buyer, myself, I go up on the internet, I search out everything I go, what's the safety ratings? What's this? What's that? You know, what features do they have? Yeah, yeah. And, and so when I walked into the dealership, you know, I was asking the salesperson questions like, Okay, so in this model, the heated seats, so they also cooled. Yeah, yeah. Right. Because I want my I want my wife to be comfortable in the wintertime. I want my wife to be comfortable in the summertime. Yeah, yes. So but he's saying things to me. Like, I didn't know we had those, you know, cooling seats, right.
Matthew Dunn
Because you probably also went in informed about sorry to cut you off. But you probably also went in informed about sales incentives and interest rate percentages, etc. your wares as informed about the sales process. And that asymmetry of knowledge has flipped over.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. And so in any situation now that we're selling most situations, we have to play, win win. And we have to be there and say, Okay, what are the problems, fears, frustrations, wants, desires, needs, must haves that my potential buyer wants, and so if we don't identify those things, then what people tend to do is they start pitching into their product or pitching into their service. Yeah, and they're missing the real agenda. Because behind every buying decision is a personal mission of some sort personal agenda of some sort. You know, so somebody who might be buying something, I don't know, high end for a manufacturing company, for example, you know, they are they're going to spend millions or 10s of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, right? They know that they might have to buy that, but their personal agenda might be to keep their job. Right,
Matthew Dunn
right.
Doug C. Brown
And so if their personal agendas to keep their job, I want to know why. Right, because, you know, the more I can understand what the person is feeling, the more I can help that person to lower that fear and increase the buying confidence in that buying scenario.
Matthew Dunn
Chase that thread, for a moment, if you don't mind. And intersect back with the with the cold email that you mentioned that you get that I get that everybody Yeah, gets, how does that? How does that sender who's who's trying some degree of mass outreach, you know, poke, poke, poke, poke, and I get a response? Even if they were very diligent about identifying likely fits? How do they open the conversation and start the relationship? So that some sense of what do you need? What's your mission? And this starts to play a role in in a longer conversation?
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, it's, firstly, we have to send something to them that makes them go, Wow, I want to know more about this. Okay. Right. Because if they go, so what, then it gets deleted, or whatever it might be. So with with a cold email? Firstly, we want to figure out what are the most common pain points that are happening with the industry. So if I was to send a cold email, which I haven't done in a while, but if I was to start that process again, then I would send out and say, you know, Matthew, you and I don't know one another. This is a cold email. You know, if you'd read the next two lines, it'll tell you exactly what I'm looking for. If you'd like to have a conversation on and around this, I'd be open to setting one up. Thanks for your consideration, right? That would be something and in that two or three lines, it'd be like, well, Matthew, are, you know, our, if you're looking for, you know, your sales to grow in this capacity? You know, Are you frustrated with the current revenue growth of your company? Are you frustrated with the current sales team that you have? Do you know, you can be doing better, but you're either not sure why it's not better? Or you do understand, and you're not sure how to implement it? Right? If any of these three apply to you, then I think I can help you. Yeah, right. And, and, you know, if you're interested, that would be my type of outreach, because I want to build a relationship with this person. I just did this recently. So the second thing that I would do, is, I didn't reach out cold with this person, but it was people who referred me to these people. So I reached out to him, which was sort of cold, but it wasn't cold. And I had that type of email that went out similar. You know, and I referenced the person, obviously, to get some familiarity, but this the second so that the second one I sent out was something to help them. Right. Right. I actually came across a resource that had a book that I could get the book for, pretty much free. And I sat down, I said, Listen, you know, in the industry, this is seems to be what is happening. And I found this book specifically on it. I just like to, you know, if you want, you can just click on the link, download it off the site, and it won't cost you anything, but I think it'll answer his questions for you if you ever have these nice, right. So it's about building the relationship. And I have a company right now that they're, they're bigger. Not huge, but bigger companies doing, you know, 500 million a year. And, you know, I was able to help the CEO actually get published in something. Okay. Right. And so depending on what level you're playing, will depend on what you're willing to spend to acquire that client. So if you know, on a $500 million company, that's probably worth somewhere between 200,000 and a half million dollars or so tonight, my company Right, right. Right. Yeah. Um, to help them and if that's the case, then I'm more than happy to spend $5,000 to acquire that client. Sure. Yeah. Right. So it's, it's one of those things that we have to look at what are our return on our investment will be and then determine on what we're going to do you know, I'm more than happy if it if it gets a CEO on a call with me that I have to spend $500,000 to get them published in Forbes. Yeah, yeah, right. Right. That's a good bonding point. And so now the conversation shifts from Okay, who are you kid? To? You know, okay. I like you, kid, you know, you still have improved to me everything but I'm now they're up. I'm up on the hierarchy a little more in their likability scale. And so from there then I can continue to keep doing it. But I do this consistently sometimes I will just send an email out. And this works great. Let's say you don't have anybody that you haven't talked to them in a while we all have these, you know, people in our life, right? Yeah, I just send out a simple one liner. Hey, I was thinking of you. I was wondering how you and your life are doing.
Matthew Dunn
Right? Yeah.
Doug C. Brown
And it's amazing, you know, 95% of the time, or whatever it is. It's Hi. I got a response. Wow. Hey, you know, Doug, I was thinking about you last year. Yeah. Right. Blah, blah, blah, How's this? Or How's that? Or, you know, what are you up to these days? Right. Love that question. Right? Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Right.
Doug C. Brown
So, it's about personalization. And it's about building a relationship more than ever, because with their, with the, the pandemic shift, it was coming anyways, with the internet. But with the pandemic, companies have now figured out wow, you know, what, we don't have to pay all this high square footage or high square per meter, right, you know, cost. We're going to sell our building, we're going to sell this building for, you know, $30 million, we're going to take that money will let people work remotely, because we get the same level of productivity Or even better, or in some cases, yeah. So that's what a lot of companies doing. So it's going to continue to be more remote. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, we we definitely accelerated the shift to, as you said, you know, more remote more, you know, more more through communication channels, less face to face, you know, live conferences are off the table for a while. Right, while a while to come on. And those are all big changes. I think of them as even bigger changes for people who do do or did a lot of face to face sales, then then for come other jobs, other functions?
Doug C. Brown
Well, exactly. I agree with you. And building rapport is different. Virtually, yeah, then it is face to face, you can't hug somebody you can't shake their hand. You know, you can't, can't
Matthew Dunn
hear and chit chat.
Doug C. Brown
Exactly right. I can't. So when you're doing one's doing it virtually, we have to, I would say communicate better. We always wanted to communicate, but it's really about what I would call active or proactive. positive communication, right? So we're giving feedback to the person on a much deeper level than we were would so like, if somebody said something like, you know, hey, hey, Doug, thanks. You know, you just got promoted, right? An active constructive feedback on something like that would be like, you know, you coming up to me and saying, hey, Doug, you know what I heard about your promotion? Listen, dude, you really deserve that you come in here early, you leave late. You're the first guy and you're always a team player, you absolutely deserve the promotion, that would be an active constructive, okay. You know, a, an active destructive would be something like, you know, hey, Doug, congratulations on the promotion. I bet the I bet I bet we needed some people at the top without hair. Or something like that. Right. Right. So, you know, I lost mine at 28. So it's kind of done my dad. So
Matthew Dunn
you know, perfect heads don't need here.
Doug C. Brown
No, that's Thank you. Thank you. And so you know, but there's, there's also like, passive constructive feedback, which would be something like, you know, Hey, Dad, good for you. I'm really happy for you. Right, that would be kind of passive. And then we have the passive destructive feedback, which is, oh, well, you know, they had too many women on staff. I'm sure that that's the reason right? It's like, it's so we, we in the digital world, and a lot of people, I don't believe have figured this out yet. I do. But in the digital world, the more we can stay in the active, constructive, productive side of the fence, the more people will be drawn to us.
Matthew Dunn
Which which implies if I'm if I'm, if I'm, you know, listening to learning here, well, it it's, it puts a burden on you to actually have have some knowledge of MSA essence of relationship right knowledge of the other person knowledge of the situation. Cuz a, an obviously made up or you know, be active constructive is probably going to misfire.
Doug C. Brown
Oh, yeah. I mean, if it's if it's pandering or if it's a Yeah, right, the people are gonna sniff it out has to be sincere. So it's relevant, sincere, honest communication, you know, when it comes down to it, and most people really appreciate that because most people have an agenda to hide something. I teach all my clients when we're selling, we're going to be the first to disengage if this isn't the right thing. Nice. Yeah. Right. Why would we do that? Because if you don't do that, you're going to call that person that you sold? Because you are skilled enough to sell them, you're going to call them a bad client. Yeah. And the reality is, there are no bad clients, there are bad decisions on the actual acquisition of a client, which leads to a problematic issue later on. Right. But I've never I've never met anybody who's a bad client. I just, you know, bad decisions on the front end, we took this on, we were reaching, we know we shouldn't have. Now look, we're doing 10 times more of the work. And they're always complaining about No kidding, because it wasn't well qualified, or disqualified.
Matthew Dunn
I had a young, young developer on our team here, who and I had him sit in on a call with early early discussion with a company that was a potential client, and they asked for something can't remember what it was. But I said no. And later on, he's like, what you said no, to that request, and I said, Well, you know, a, the correct answer was no. B, if I said, Yes, we're dead, right, like we're just dead. So we might as well be pretty clear that there are some boundaries up front, we're not going to do everything in the world to win their business, if it's gonna ruin us. So, you know, fair's fair. And we got to be in the we got to be the mindset of like, if this is a great business relationship, it's mutually beneficial. If it's not, let's not do it. Be willing to say no?
Doug C. Brown
Well, a lot of people, I mean, that's the best way. Right? I mean, to me, it's the best way it's, it's, you know, there's something called quality of life. And, you know, because we have here, you know, 20 extra clients that are driving us insane and ruining our quality of life or even to write I mean, it's, it's just not worth it. And in the in, the reality I find is, most people who are in that mentality that they take things that they don't, they don't, or shouldn't take, don't want to, but do anyways, most of the time, they just don't have enough lead flow. They just, they're, they're not prospecting enough, they're not driving an overabundance of leads, so that they can be the person who screens through them first to get to the right ones. Right. Right. That's usually what I find the challenge to be,
Matthew Dunn
is, is enough challenge to be enough lead flow to actually make that sort of better scale decision for both of you.
Doug C. Brown
Right? I mean, think of it is, let's say there's 50, perfect leads, but there's 500. Almost perfect leads, right? And you have only those 50 that you can work. So you know, now we're gonna like, man, I gotta hit quota, I got to do this, I gotta do that. We're going to try and twist him in in any way we can. Yeah. Not me, but a lot of people. Yeah. And, you know, but if I had 500, and they were all talking to me, I'm going to be a heck of a lot more relaxed and a lot more clear about what I want what I don't want at that point, because I know my odds are better. And, you know, if you can, if you can get the leads going to a place and then get more quality leads in the in the front end, then what ends up happening is you have more quality conversations, as we have more quality conversations, those lead to either presentations. Or if you do it right, you don't even have to have a presentation, it leads to sales. And, but it's all it all starts on the front end. But salespeople in general, people selling, they don't think about the whole customer journey. And that includes how they're bringing them in. So you know, they may get a lead handed off from marketing, for example, but they have no idea what the marketing was actually doing. They've never read it. They don't know what, what's in it. They just know they got a lead. And that's where part of the challenge is, you know, comes in because marketing and sales really shouldn't be separate. They should be one unit to
Matthew Dunn
totally agreed. Yeah, totally agreed. Totally agreed. I'm curious to take this down. This may be a rabbit hole with no rabbit at the other end. But you're the you're certainly the right guy with the expertise to to ask about this on. We've got the tools of automation to try to fake it to try to fake those active constructs. have conversations to try to fake the the personal and personalized, not my favorite word thing to get the door open and I'll throw out an example just so we got something to kick around. Partially deliberately, I put the the doctor in front of my first name inside LinkedIn in my profile. And it it's a dead giveaway when I'm getting some pain in the ass Robo invite. Right? Like they clearly didn't read it. Hey, Dr. Matthew, a nice guy. Wrong. Right? You guys great that you're putting the form you send it to me. Delete. And somebody does take the time to do that says you know, always name's Matthew Got it? Great. Okay, that's better. But how do we how do we? How do we navigate those, those tricky thresholds of sniffing out the genuine the personal the this could go somewhere from both of us from the absolute bombardment of faked?
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, and I think it comes back to a few different things. Number one, we we consistently we proceed how we begin. So if we are doing Dr. Matthew, you know, type things, then we have now invoked a response from you, which is negative. So now we are going to proceed, even with other communication as this is more challenging for you to get your attention. So the first thing is, is that if you got an email that said, you know, Dr. Matthew, I've been researching the Washington area, and I found you there. And, you know, I also noticed that you went to ABC college, which is where my uncle went, right there would change the whole thing, right? Yeah. Because now it's not the spam email that you will know what it's going to be. And, you know, so so we we continue. So the big part is, when people are doing mass emails like that, and I don't recommend that people do that, especially if they're a sales person, it's like, Look, if you want to send automated messages is fine. But send a few of them at a time. And, and and take a little bit of time and research the person. Yeah, yeah. Right. So, you know, I cannot tell you how many times people call upon me never looked at my anything, LinkedIn, anything. I've had people call me up, go, you know, hey, what what part of the country you and I'm like, dude, you called me?
Matthew Dunn
You could find this out. Yes,
Doug C. Brown
exactly. Right. And you know, and I have a Texas phone number, because I used to live in Texas at one time. And you know, I live in New Hampshire, which is where I grew up in this area. But I never got rid of my Texas number. So I know that when somebody calls me up, and they go, Hey, Doug, you know, listen, I, I see you're in Texas, right? I know, they at least looked at that. And so I give them a little more of a chance. Yeah. And with email, the same thing, the more relevancy that, you know, in it, by the way, it's not hard to find, right? I mean, you know, I'm a veteran of the United States Army, it's not hard to find it's all my profiles.
Matthew Dunn
12 years.
Doug C. Brown
12 years. Thank you. Yeah. So it, it's not hard to find that information. But if somebody sent to me and said, Hey, Doug, I see you are in the military. You know, the United States Army. You know, first thanks for your service, or whatever they want to say, right? Or, you know, I find this really great. I appreciate you, for whatever, anything like this anything. And you know, I also see that, you know, by your LinkedIn profile you live in New Hampshire, I like to tell you what I do in a couple of lines. And then if you want to read more, please do. And if you'd like to schedule appointment, here's a link that we could talk, you know, to make it convenient upon you or send me your secretary or your link or whatever, I'll be happy to something like that just as different than what everybody else is sending out there. You don't have to talk about your products and service, you just have to talk about what are the problems they're having? make it relevant, make it consistent, right. And the other thing is, once you start the relationship, make them laugh a little bit. Yeah. Because people love humor. Yeah, we love humor. So you know, I found a crazy picture of something. And I was like, Man, this just made me laugh, right? I mean, nobody's getting hurt. It's not political. It's not religious, right? It's not spouse bashing, which is the three you want to definitely stay away from. It was just something that was good, clean, fun humor. And so I sent it to a couple friends. I said, What do you think of this? They said, This is hilarious. So now I use it in my correspondence. I'll send it out. You know, if you You know, hey, Matthew, I just sending this to you. Because, you know, sometimes we get so mired down in business and in life, you know, it's sometimes we have a few stressors. Hopefully this will make you laugh a little and lighten your day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's all I said.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. You know, and visual one liner.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. And you know what I mean, but if people did that type of thing. I have a while they were client, and I've trained their people, and I'm in good contact with some of them now. And they still use humor today. And they're getting into fortune 50 companies, you know, using humor. Oh, nice. Right, because it gets them laughing. Yeah, you know, like one of the guys, he'll send something out and you go, geez, you know, Matthew, I've been I've been trying to get ahold of you. I mean, it's been 1213 attempts, I've been trying to get ahold of you, you know, you're yours. You're harder to get ahold of then my my wife's you know, whatever lover or whatever. He says, you know, and then he says, you know, Mister George Clooney. Right? That type of thing. Yeah. And you know, my wife, my wife's boyfriend. That's what he says, My wife's boyfriend, Mister, mister George Clooney. Right? And people laugh. And then they, they respond to him. And they they'll send it back. And they go, Oh, that was really funny. I appreciate that. Right, that's what we're looking for is to start to build a because remember, behind every corporate buying decision is a personal agenda. So we must address both of those and what, what doesn't hit in the emails that you're talking about with you and I that that we receive and everybody else does, is they're talking about a potential corporate agenda without addressing the human nature to which it's attached to,
Matthew Dunn
you know, the the person with the personal agenda. There was a there's a message I got, like the third or fourth in a sequence the other day, and just wanted to smack this grade. You know, gee, I'm sorry, if I seem persistent for emailing you again, but you didn't respond and thinking. That's right. I didn't respond in response. That was the signal you it's not my it's not my monkey done subscribe. Especially since I never never, you know, said you have permission to somebody. Yeah, in the first place. And watching that watching the the the fads and fashions of cold email, the fake re in the subject line, the fake forward in the subject line that worked. And then that got old and tired. This is this is a, it's exhausting. And at the same time, there's some degree of that's the sea you're swimming in. Even if you sit down and spend half an hour learning about someone's company and try and do a genuine, sincere look, I think there's a huge opportunity for both of us. Can we talk? Right? Yeah.
Doug C. Brown
Right? Because, you know, look, people are, are, like all of us. They don't want to get emails like that are being sent out, you know, but those people are running the odds, right? They they're probably putting those emails out from somewhere, even not even the United States, it might be coming from a different server, where, you know, they're paying $1,000 a month, and they'll continuously send out emails to people. And so they're running the numbers, you know, if there's 100,000 emails that go out, and we get a 2% response, you know, we got 2000. And then that's what they're doing. So I you know, if you're selling anything of substance or tangibility that has value to it, I wouldn't send that type of email ever. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, there was a, I can't remember what the magazine was. I'm thinking it was fortune. But back in the late 90s, mid to late 90s, when people were first starting to get email addresses and SMTP internet email, had won won the day. Some article put Bill Gates Microsoft address Bill g@microsoft.com, like in this article about email, of course, he just got boom, flooded. Right. And, you know, those of us had work in that, you know, in the digital sphere, or particularly with email for a long time. We're like, why did it take a magazine article to make this, you know, obvious, but it did. And that prompted the prompted gates to talk about the, at the beginning of the problem of spam at the time. Right? He said, You know, they're a pity with with email is that there's no cost to send, right? If we put a cost of a penny ascend on every email server out there, we'd have a lot less spurious behavior. Oh, yeah, that offshore, I'm gonna send 1000s of them. You know, 2% 2% success is 98%. You You're a pain and everybody else is behind their inbox, but it's okay. So what's acceptable?
Doug C. Brown
Well, it's, you know, in certain places like Europe, it's become less acceptable. Yes. Right. So they've been putting in all kinds of laws to you know, in In my humble opinion, a little bit beyond reasonable some of the stuff that they're asking for. But I understand why they're doing it. Right. They're there because of that reason. Yeah. But I, you know, I love the idea of, hey, if you send an email, it cost you a penny, because they're not going to send in a million emails anymore. Right? Right, they'll have to it, the game will have to get real. And I bet somebody like Bill Gates, or Google or MailChimp, or whoever, you know, would be, would be more than happy to charge a penny and email, you know, and collect the revenue coming in. So I think it's a good idea. And, you know, for those of us who do have the freedom to send, you know, again, if you send a personalized email, that's not going to be construed as spam, even by the law in Europe, right, right, for the most part, right? I mean, yeah, you didn't, you know, they were on a list. You didn't know it, but it wasn't that spam email. So when the government official looks at it in higher probability, it's going to be like, Well, look, you know, this guy's trying to build a relationship with you. He's not, or she's not, or they're not doing whatever, right. So it just, it's just much more favorable. And the reality is, if people like you said, they took time to research, and sent a thoughtful, connecting type email to somebody, instead of sending 500 of these things, you could send 20 of them and get better response.
Matthew Dunn
Right. Think think of it think of the relationship and invest in that. Don't get hit, don't just hit the mail merge.
Doug C. Brown
But I mean, mail merge, as its as its, you know, if you have a list, and people are subscribing, it has its purpose, right. Yeah. But for cold outreach, I it has its purpose to I just, you know, here's the other thing that people don't think about, what if you send 500 emails and 500 people respond to you?
Yeah, whoops.
Doug C. Brown
And they all want personalized one on one meetings. And they all need it in the next 30 days? How are you going to do that? What
Matthew Dunn
do you write? What are you going to do? I've watched the I've watched the evolution of of text and mobile messaging with a good deal of curiosity over the last, you know, last couple of decades on and there was a, there was a moment where it looked like that might become a common forum for everybody. I don't think that's going to happen now for a variety of both technical and privacy reasons. But I still get the occasional unsolicited inbound text. And somehow that's much more bothersome.
Doug C. Brown
Oh, yeah. Because it's, it's, firstly, it pops up on your phone a lot of times or makes a noise, right. So it's interrupting. And then you're like, wow, oh, just this might be important. So you check it? Yep. Yep. And then it's like, you know, I had like three or four of them on my phone in the last two weeks. And it was kind of, you check the message, and it's like, Hey, you know, make $1,000 a day, you know, blah, blah, blah, go to this, you know, bitly link, you know, blah, blah. Yeah, it's like, a block block, right? Because there's no, you know, you might be expecting a text message from somebody that you care about, or important or whatever, right. And, you know, like, if you sent me a message, or I sent you a message, you know, you'd probably be like, Oh, hey, Doug, how you doing? Right. But that type of spammy? Yeah, type of thing. You know, there is a market for that. And it works. But it's not something that I would employ or recommend anybody neither. It's It's It's such a high,
Matthew Dunn
such a high psychological cost, interrupt, that you're really going to backfire if I didn't want it. Or if it you know, I don't even know who you're not like remember phone numbers. So the unknown phone numbers sort of automatically. Oh, yeah. Are you are you you're like you are people on your team, getting the volume of of spurious robo calls as well. They're making me nuts.
Doug C. Brown
It used to be really bad. Yeah, for some reason, it's backed off. You know, they have they have robocall blockers,
Matthew Dunn
you know, that you can pay and stuff like that.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. And, but it used to be but, but what I love are the ones that actually are using computers that are sound human. They mean they sound nice, yes. And so I can always tell when they're computer beat, by the way, they asked the question, so I know there's a person pushing buttons on the other side. Yeah. So being a sales professional, I play with them. I'm like, you know they'll go Yeah, you know it you know, you know the Oh How you doing today line comes up most of the time with these things and you know, it's like, I will play with my kid my my daughter's like that. I can't believe you say these type of things, but You know, the reality is they'll call in, they'll say, Hey, this is john calling from ABC painting company. You know, how you doing today? Right now go? Well, quite frankly, I found out I have venereal disease. My doctor says I might have less than a week to live. You know that it added on I'm going on in my, you know, my wife's rolling her eyes. Right? And, and then they come back on. And they don't know what to do. They don't know what button to push. Or they'll come back and say, Oh, I'm sorry. I said, Well, why are you sorry? You You the one who passed along the venereal disease? Right. I will say stuff like this. And then eventually, you'll just here to go click Yeah, yeah. Because I do this, because I like to have fun with people. Number one, but the the, I want to see what their responses are. Right? Because that type of technology is not a bad technology. If they used it appropriately. It's like every tool. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. I've been getting a ton of, and I don't know why a ton of calls where there's silence on the other side, and I assume the agenda is voice sampling. So increasingly, if I don't recognize the number, I'll answer and not say a word, because a person would go, you know, hi, Is anybody there that could hear the pickup? Exactly. And, you know, the the fake call is going to not know what to do with that thinking. Wow. So it's cost effective to call millions of people at random and sound sample the silence? Okay,
Doug C. Brown
well, because they're using voice technology or some type of internet technology. Right. So there's no termination charges at the telecommunications and I mean, if we, you know, when we were charged for long distance, we, you know, go from the local company, to the regional company to long distance company back to the local company. That's how we made a call. Everyone wanted to get paid.
Matthew Dunn
You just dated. You just dated both of us because I'm chuckling in appreciation. And remember, it's tough. We used to talk to the grandparents on Christmas Eve, because it was so expensive on Chris.
Doug C. Brown
Oh, absolutely. You know, at&t made a lot of money, making people feel guilty, because they're not calling their mother on Mother's Day, you know, right. But the reason they did that is I mean, long distance could be you know, 50 cents a minute. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Long Distance bills with, you know, college girlfriends or whatever that Oh, definitely created some problems. Hey, I've got a completely off topic question for if you're okay with it. Do you still find time to sing?
Doug C. Brown
Actually, I'm finding more time now than I ever have before. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm at a place in life now where it's like, I want to make a good quality living. But I don't have to prove to the world anymore. how smart I am. Right? That type of thing. Yeah. Because, you know, we all grow up in certain I grew up in an environment where good was never going to be good enough. Okay. And so to prove I'm good, or good enough, I always have to be number one, I always had to be there, you know, and, and, and I always tried to do it respectfully. And most times I was, but I'm at a place now where I step back. And I just just did this a couple weeks ago. And I said, You know what? One of the mistakes that business owners make is they don't build out a life's plan first. Hmm. They start a business. And then they adapt their life to the business. Hmm. And, and I've certainly been more than guilty from doing that, you know, getting up early in the morning and get up at five o'clock work until midnight, go to bed at one o'clock get back up, you know, that type of thing. But what I realized that this place in my life now is music is really more important to me, than it even was when I was in my rock and roll days, you know, with the with the you know, with the bands. Yeah. So, I now, but it's a different appreciation now. Yeah, no, yeah. And so yeah, so I am definitely I am making time to do it. Yeah. And that's part of my life's thing. Because I sat down and said, Okay, what do I really want my life to be? How much money do I actually want to make? Right? You know, and I know some people think here in this if they're entrepreneurial, I go, Well, that's crazy. Not really, really good. It's not because we all think we have tomorrow or even this afternoon, and we don't Yeah, right. One day that'll end. So I look at this and I say, okay, what's the quality of life I want? Now, I'm going to build my business, like, you know, my business is being built around all of that I want, you know, not only the traveling, I want the ability to, you know, have time during the day to have quality conversations with people I care about. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
yeah. Yeah. I, I had looked at for if you're listening on the podcast, I had read through Doug's LinkedIn bio and noted that he was at Berklee College of Music that's in his vocal major, I think, and that's how I knew about seeing what kind of stuff do you like to do now? You
Doug C. Brown
Music wise, or just wise? I still love rock. Yeah. And you know, I'm, I'm 59 years old, and obviously my children think I'm too old to be a rock star now, but the I disagree with that. Yes. Um, but, you know, I thought of starting a band and calling it 50, you know, 55 Plus or something
Matthew Dunn
like that. I like that.
Doug C. Brown
So, you know, because I was involved, as you know, in some of the biggest musicians in the world at the time, you know, back when I was was doing this, and, you know, for your listeners, you know, I mean, I worked with Boston, I worked with Aerosmith, I work with Billy Joel's band, I work you know, those type of people. Yeah. And I had a great time. It was a wonderful time in my life. And I just decided, I don't want to be on a tour bus 300 days a year for five years straight. Right. That's, that's kind of one
Matthew Dunn
life either.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, and you know, and that's okay. For people like the Grateful Dead. They did it their whole life, and then they liked it. Right. So yeah, um, but I just, you know, I was gonna have a family, I wanted some different things. I just wanted to, but really, now more than ever, a few. I'm going back toward things like the theater. And, you know, Nichols. Yeah. Because it gets me a chance to, to sing, but it gives me a chance to also perform act in a live setting, you know, when these things come back more? Yeah. And I'm doing a lot more songwriting than I haven't in the past is excellent.
Matthew Dunn
Wow. That's it. I didn't know you had a theater, theater bug as well, that was actually my first career. So I totally get,
Doug C. Brown
well, there is a high correlation between sales, music and theater, like, Hi, you know, because in sales, you know, you can be the constructive person that that provides logical information. But we also have to be kind of that entertainer, right? So it's, you know, we got to provide information in entertainment. And it's got to be kind of balanced.
Matthew Dunn
And you also have to be, actually, I think, the next person, the next guest on the podcast I'm talking with next week is my friend skip Fedora. And he had mentioned that his daughter had the theater bug. And I, I, we were emailing back and forth. And I, unfortunately, I sent him this page long rant about why that was great. You're like, if she's gonna go, you know, go off in college and study theater. Trust me. She's learning stuff that'll pay off her entire life for all the reasons you just mentioned.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. I mean, one of the things I do when I do live sales trainings, is I'll take and I'll do an improper improvisation session, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of people I, I don't, I'm not a big fan of scripts. I don't mind scripts. I don't mind templated stuff for people to look at and follow. But I wanted to sound natural. And so when we take these things, and we put them into the improv side, they've got to spontaneously react to it in order to keep the improv going. And what's nice about that is it trains the human brain on how to do that in in sales as well. You know, it's okay to have formulas, like I have formulas when I take people through discovery calls or whatever. But I'm not, I'm not going step one, step two, step three, step four, because they might go from step one to step five. And the problem with using a script is the person that we're speaking with, they don't know you have a script, and they don't know what their part is, the script does.
Matthew Dunn
That's precisely why that's precisely why you threw the vd monkey wrench in the phone call. Right is, is to see if they were actually listening, not just following the road steps.
Doug C. Brown
Exactly. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
having a little fun with their with their structure. Yeah, the other the other thing about musicians and music and theater background, I think is, you really have to listen. If you're, you know, if you're part of an ensemble, you have to listen to what the other guys are doing.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, without question because sometimes your bandmates will not do what you're doing. Right, right. Oh,
Matthew Dunn
yeah, you're like the drummer, the drummer is lagging, so you better adapted or the whole thing.
Doug C. Brown
Exactly. And, and, and music as you know, there's all of these dynamic things going on. And you still have the audience, you know, the reactions of that the sound light people everything's going on. So it's not just, you know, people think that Yeah, I don't know, Paul McCartney gets some, you know, probably today he does. gets up on stage and you know, and everything just goes perfect, right? Because I was just, I don't know if you know, Matthew, but I used to be a professional DJ as well. Right. So that was Yeah, so I did lots of high end corporate events. Cinema weddings, high end stuff like really? Okay, no $200 plus a plate type stuff. Okay. And I was one of the top guys in the Boston area doing it at that time. And, you know, for reviews and in getting paid quite a bit. I mean, we used to get paid two to $3,000 Wow job as a DJ. Wow, nice, right? Um, but the, the reality is that I was just saying this today so somebody asked me this question actually was my wife she asked me this quote, what was the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you out in the DJ world? Right? So I'm telling her stories. She's like, Are you kidding me? You know, we used to do this. I remember this one time we used to do this choreographed thing with with in a wedding. When New York New York was a big song to do at a wedding. Okay, but what we used to do is we get the whole bridal party, the whole audience out on the dance floor around the bride and groom. And I would say things like, you know, hey, Joey and Melissa are, you know, so grateful they love each and every one of you that thank you for being here. Really appreciate you. And then the crowd would go Yeah, that's great. You know, whatever, right? And then I'd say, you know, in fact, they appreciate you so much, that they told me that they're going to take you on a trip with them. And, and and now Joey, Melissa are looking at me, like, what are you doing? Right? And, and, and, and I'm like, in fact, they also told me that all expenses are going to be paid out of pocket 100% from them for you. And now the crowds like, whoa, I'm like, folks, lock your arms together. Let's get around these two lovebirds a little more than we bring them in. I'm going to move in a little bit more. In fact, right now, Joey and Melissa are going to take you all the way to New York City. And that was the cue from New York, New York to kick in. Yeah. Right. And as soon as it did people, you know, I would get them starting to sing and they're dancing. And you know, the videographer loved me. She was like, Oh, my gosh, they all these pictures, right? Um, but one time, I said, all the way to New York City, and what I heard was funky town. So it's like, I'm like, ah, like you the wrong music, right?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah. But you learn in those situations in music, or in theater or production, how to recover very quickly. Yeah, and that is a must. And human human communication and sales.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and not and not take to not crash to a halt. And, and apologize. Why? Cuz, you know, it happens, you get used to the fact that it's gonna happen. It's like, Oh, you dropped a line. Yeah, someone's dropped the line know,
Doug C. Brown
exactly what I said in that case was I said, but before we go to New York, we're going to funkytown right. So yeah. Perfect.
Matthew Dunn
Cuz you stay in the moment.
Doug C. Brown
Absolutely. And quite frankly, most of the people didn't even know there was anything different. And then then the the person caught my vocal, and, you know, all over the loudspeakers and they went, oops, got the wrong thing. So they put in they, they started bringing in faded back into the right song. Yeah. And so, you know, it was a blip for 20 seconds. And, and people loved it. It's a good story,
Matthew Dunn
though. It's good story. So you are finding time to sing rock and roll?
Doug C. Brown
I am I am. To the I'm not sure to the pleasure or disagreement of my of my, my daughters, but
Matthew Dunn
daughters are how old
Doug C. Brown
2022 Oh, nice night. Yeah. And they both have been in either theater while Ballroom in a theater ballet and or, okay. You know, music and they, I don't know, I used to say Thank God, you got the voice of your mother, but I mean, their, their vocal quality and, you know, compared to mine is just amazingly better. And yeah, so they're in they're really smart. And they, they're good kids. And you know, I love them, obviously. So you know, I'm a proud dad in that regard as well. So, but you know, I'm finding them very, like, using music as a leverage point, like my oldest daughter, Rebecca, or even Jacqueline, my youngest daughter, Rebecca, one time I went and she, she was doing a speech. And it was kind of like she was graduating from something. So they asked her to come up and do a speech. And when she got up there, she knew how to work the audience. Like I'm, like crazy. I was like, yeah, I'm like, okay, that's me. Right. I know. That's, yeah. Because, you know, she was able to tell, you know, clean, nice jokes and, and pull the audience in and she just knew how to do it naturally. So I'm like, Okay, well, hanging out with me. And probably Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes and all these other people actually paid off right in ways that I never thought, but they're both very You know, capable sales people thought so from a father's perspective, I don't even worry about them financially because they're just, they're going to be fine no matter what.
Matthew Dunn
Nice. Nice. And and and they're going to use those skills. whatever they're doing doesn't have to have a sales label. Oh, no,
Doug C. Brown
no, no, no, my my oldest daughter is into hair, cosmetology that type of thing, right? She, she loves that. But you know, in her brain, it's like, Okay, how do I sell lots of product, because that's where the profit is in, in the in that business, right? And then in the cosmetic world, and all of the other things that whatever they do there, and you know, in her mind, she's, she's talking to me about that, I'd like to maybe open up 12 locations over my lifetime and not, and I'm like, oh, gosh, alright, let's have a conversation. Right. But I mean, you know, she just turned to me, she's turning 22. Soon. And, you know, I think that's a good good sign for a person that age to really be kind of hyper focused on what do they want to do? And what kind of lifestyle that they want?
Matthew Dunn
It does seem like my I have two sons in their similar age a little just slightly older, on, it does seem like their generation is a little more likely to be thinking about doing their own thing running their own business, then then, you know, then our, than our 22 year olds were,
Doug C. Brown
oh, yeah, for several reasons. Number one, they watched our generation, you know, go, go to school, get a good a degree, you know, go work for a company, and you'll be happy kid, right? And then they've watched their parents grow up, and all of a sudden, you know, 234, layoffs, or whatever is happening to them. And the parents are all stressed out, and they're like, ah, not gonna be for me. Yeah, right. You know, I'm not even gonna, you know, I'm not even going to go work for under $60,000 a year, I'm not even going to it's not even going to be my entertainment of my mind. A lot of the, you know,
Matthew Dunn
one entrepreneur wasn't a word. Oh, no, no,
Doug C. Brown
no, but I mean, it was from me, because my dad was, you know, I started working with him at the age of three in his business. So cool. You know, it was for me, because I grew up that way. But I, you know, I would go to school from eight o'clock in the morning to 11 o'clock, and I was out of school by 1045 11 o'clock, and I went right to work for his company. Okay, well, so I, you know, for me, it was just kind of normal, like, this is what you do? Yeah. And, you know, and I'm sure he hired me for less, you know, labor costs than that he would have had to hire, you know, person, three times my age, but the, you know, but I also think he taught me a lot of lessons that I still carry with me today, through doing what he did. And so, you know, I did the same thing with my, my daughters. I mean, I had them they were in their first tax seminar when they were five years old. You know, and people thought they were adorable. Yeah. Right. And they're very well mannered. And they were sitting there, and they're trying to, you know, because I know, absorption, utilize Moses of information will get good get, you know, brought in, in some capacity. And that's what I was hoping for them. And I can see them now at their, their young age, especially, you know, when we're talking about email, or we're talking about whatever, they are far less tolerant of that, then I am certainly interested, right? Because there there's a, there's a certain standard that they feel that everybody you know, in social media or in email or in, you know, and so I asked him, I said, Is this just YouTube? And they're like, No, no, no, that it's like everybody we hang out with, you know, this is, you know, you have to have a certain way about you in social media, right. And you're highly judged in social media based on how you do this. And so they're teaching me all this stuff that you know, it's coming up from their generation. Yeah. And, you know, where I'm like, Well, okay, if there's a typo here and there, who cares if I helped you make $2 million, you're not gonna care if I have two typos in my whatever, right. But there's, they're telling me and their generation and I found in Europe, especially like over in Eastern Europe even more, they judge you immediately off off the off those type of things,
Matthew Dunn
where there's a I'm working on a side project with a friend of mine, and we were both in long term relationships. So he's like, we're gonna sign up and we're gonna sign up and look on his phone at Tinder. He said, I got to tell the guys I got to tell her I'm doing this because of this business project. But he was swiping through and he said it's literally first impression just swipe this way or swipe that way. Like that's that's what you've got. Right? He's that photo impression, right lead to anything else and and your daughter's Did you know your daughter's generation, like their, their acuity and speed at processing, all of those little cues. It's quite astonishing,
Doug C. Brown
really well, they're a lot faster than I am. I can tell you that. But you know, I mean, I know, I know, you know, they learn from, you know, it's the old thing you'll, you know, my mother used to say this to me when I was growing up, and I never understood it when I was growing up, and nor did I agree with it when I was growing up, you know, when I was younger, she said, Doug, it's, it's really sad that, you know, wisdom is wasted on the old energy is wasted on the youth. And I'd be like, Mom, that's ridiculous. You know, I'm, what am I know, I'm 1314 years old. She's saying these things to me, right. But now as I become 59, I realize exactly what she's saying. Because, you know, I deal with hundreds, if not 1000s of people sometimes a month and have conversations. Yeah, whether it's in a group environment or one on one. And, you know, a lot of these people have the wisdom of sort of given up, right, they get to that place, but I'm seeing a resurgence of the over 60 crowd now the over 50 crowd, right, where they're, they're like, there's a resurgence going on. And I think in part, it's because of the internet because of social media, because now they're realizing, you know what, I don't have to in my Twilight, or late years, I don't have to retire, I can go build a tiny $100,000 a year business help a bunch of people because I am wise, you know, because there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom to me, knowledges, you get the information. Wisdom is you made so many you've learned from the mistakes, right? So we can teach them the mistakes. And I find a lot of people now in that generation are coming toward the online side. And they're they're starting smaller education type businesses, which is really cool.
Matthew Dunn
That is cool. That is cool. It's a maybe we have a way of passing on some of those lessons. That's better than just saying goodbye and watching him sail off in an RV.
Doug C. Brown
Yeah, and the the challenge for you know, for people, if we don't embrace those people, these people have experience. I mean, they have life's experience. And, you know, he can't buy that unless you can buy it in the form of, you know, talking to somebody like that. Yeah. But you know, and I see the younger folks coming up, you know, not my daughters, but a lot of the younger folks come on, they don't have a concept on how to do basic business skills, or how to conversationally sell, they don't. So I got a call the other day, I was on a call. And the gentleman asked me said, Hey, would you be interested, I won't name the university. Because of the everybody would know it. But you know, they have an entrepreneurial program here. And in you know, I have six universities that my stuff is in, and I would like them to talk to you. Because the number one challenge that all these these entrepreneurs in these entrepreneurial programs are having is they don't know how to sell. Hmm, yep. Right. So they come up with these great ideas. The kids are really, you know, I mean, they're sass companies, they're, you know, I mean, they walk technical circles around me, even though I have a technical background. But what they don't understand is exactly what we've been talking about through this whole thing. How do you have a communication loop? That is proactive in building relationship? That leads to conversations that leads to sales?
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah. And it leads to leads to relationships. That may not be sales now. But that in itself is a much more important outcome. Right?
Doug C. Brown
And without question, because if we can enhance somebody's life or better somebody's life, like even what we're doing here on this podcast, if this, if one ideas spark somebody goes, wow, okay. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. Right. But now I get it. I see it that way. And I think I'll embrace that. And they try it and it goes in. It's successful. Yeah. It's worth it. It's worth doing it. Right. Because we just keep planting seeds everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Before, you know, you walk back to that location, you go, wow, there's a there's a tree there. You know, and I've had that happen, where I've helped people 678 years prior. And, you know, they just asked me some advice. I told them the advice of what I would do, based on my life's experience, and they went implement it, and I hadn't seen it for seven years, they come back and they go, Yeah, I got a $33 million company, something like that, you know, I mean, so it's kind of like, well, what happened, you know, well, over the last seven years, I've been building this thing up and you know, that that conversation we had in the, you know, the hotel lobby, you know, whatever it was, really kind of orientating myself to think, okay, I probably should do this instead of that. And so I did that and it worked out and I got funding or whatever it might be right. So, yeah, I really think it's important for us, because me really Matthew can't take all this with you. Right. So you might as well enjoy it while we're here.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, exactly. They don't. They don't they don't go through spreadsheets at your funeral.
Doug C. Brown
That's Do I have permission to use that? Oh, absolutely,
Matthew Dunn
absolutely. Absolutely. It's like, yeah, it's the it's the digital, you can't take it with you. Right? Right. That line you use that's in, that's in. That's in wonderful life. The guy in the T shirts like, ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people. That's kind of what your mother was saying.
Doug C. Brown
Oh, interesting. We I wonder if that's where my mom got her from when she was born in 1934. So
Matthew Dunn
that movie did not get popular until the rights slipped over to the public domain. And Turner started broadcasting it over and over on the hollow Okay, actually forgotten for like 30 years. And then it because of the timing of the changes of copyright law, it and someone I believe someone boggled the copyright renewal. That movie went into the public domain, Turner could broadcast it without paying a cent. Oh, cool for a span of time there. And now it's you know, it's immortal class, one of my favorite movies, but for good reason. But it was under, you know, discovered for a while. Well, here we go. I managed to chew up well over an hour of your time, but what a heck of a conversation.
Doug C. Brown
Thank you. Yeah, I've had a good time here. It's been fun.
Matthew Dunn
Oh, yeah. Likewise, last question. before we let you go, any book recommendations aside for sales dogs?
Doug C. Brown
Aside from my book, Oh, that's
Matthew Dunn
right. I saw author but I saw author by your name, but I didn't reverse down what's title of your book?
Doug C. Brown
So I wrote a book called Win Win selling, unlocking the power of profitability by resolving objections,
Matthew Dunn
okay.
Doug C. Brown
And it's really about communication. The reason I put it into objections is because you know, the hardest thing for salespeople or people selling companies, people, whoever owners, is, you know, getting enough leads, which I'm writing a book on now. And the second thing is, how do I handle objections? Because people don't understand. And so I go deep into the psychology and the philosophy about how objections actually manifest in a conversation. And, believe it or not, they all start from our youth. And so the things we were taught in our youth, we carry forward and habits, right, and a lot of ways. And so I talked about frames, and I talked about, you know, how to change frames, and, and why frames come about, and you know, how things actually evolved it all, because we learn things from our grandparents. So we learn things from our parents, or we learn things from any of our caretakers, and then we start habituating the behavior. So I'll give you an example. It's not an objection. But my dad, when I worked for him all those years, he built the business on his back. He was he was a really smart guy. But he didn't build a business of leverage. He had employees, but everything came back to him. Okay, so for the first, you know, from my time, I was, like, 20, to the time I was about 35, guess what I did? Right? monkey see, monkey do, so to speak, right? In the old statement, but the and so we do that with communication, as well. So if you grew up if someone grew up in an environment, and I've seen this happen so many times in sales, you no one grew up in an environment that everything has to be negotiated. Everything. I've seen people in sales, literally where the buyer goes, Yeah, okay, I'll take it. And they go. Yeah, but let's talk about this, right, if let's renegotiate this. Right, right. And I'm like, kicking them under the table, like just push the paper forward? They said yes. Right. And, and I've literally seen people on do sales. I mean, there was a real estate agent one time, this couple had this house, and it was a couple million dollar house and you know, 6% Commission on $2 million, right? 120 grand. And the real estate agents showing it and the wife is like, I really want this house and the husband's going well, hon, I don't know it's kind of at a higher end at that. And, and so their husband and wife's going back and forth, back and forth, and listen to this. And I'm in this in the in the room, going back and forth, back and forth. And she goes, Yeah, I really want he goes, Well, I guess we could do that. I guess we could do that. She goes, honey will make me really happy. And he goes well, I guess that that that makes sense. Yeah, we could we could stretch it a little bit. And the real estate agent literally said this. You know, guys, this is a really important decision for you. You know where you live? And what you do is extremely important. So what I'm going to ask you guys to do is why don't you take the night and Think it over? I'm like you have to be kidding me.
Right? Right.
Doug C. Brown
Now the crazy part of this story is they didn't buy from this person. And they went and bought a house that was $400,000 more than they were asking for the house there. So it wasn't a situation that they couldn't do it. It was a situation that the real estate agent, in her own way heard this as an objection. Yeah, going back and forth between the husband and wife, and her empathy kicked in, versus serving them with, like a moral obligation that they want this house, they'll be happy. Yeah, she let that scripting kick in. And she threw the objection out, which stopped the whole sale.
Matthew Dunn
Fascinating. And you say a lot of that'll be pattered in youth?
Doug C. Brown
Oh, it totally. I mean, if you think about it, you know, in the book I go through in more detail, but, you know, the language patterns that that somebody uses, gets passed on. And once it's absorbed in, you know, like, you know, they the old, you know, hey, Grandpa, you you know, you want to take me out to, you know, play ball. Well, I can't do that right now. Well, why not? Well, you know, why grandpa right? Well, I'm really busy. You know, maybe maybe later, right? In the cradle, right? Yeah, maybe later, right? The cat's in the cradle. Right. So maybe later, well, Grandpa, What? Why? What? Because I said so, you know, it's that type of conversation, which people think, you know, hey, what's wrong with that conversation? But then, you know, he, he or she, they learn how to be put off by grandpa. Right? So now, fast forward years, they're selling, they're talking with an older dominant male. And the dominant male is going now. I can't see you right now. You know, what? Call me and call me in three months. And they go, okay. Right, where that older person who's a driving personality, is testing the salesperson to see Do they have the metal to actually stand up to them? In order to gain mutual respect, because that's the type of sales professional they want. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I go into the book on different scenarios like this, because people when they read it, they go, Wow, geez, I never even thought of things like this, you know, and the reason I wrote the book, because I couldn't find anything on it anyway, you know, people saying, Well, if they say this, you say that that's, that doesn't work most of the time.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, we can't keep up in your head.
Doug C. Brown
No, no. And plus, you know, you might say they say this, and then they say that back and all of a sudden, it's like, that drives more fear into the buyer, because there was no thought of what what is the human connection that's going on? Right,
Matthew Dunn
right, right. Oh, I'm looking forward to reading it. I'm gonna get my hands on it. Thank you. Well, cool. I'm going to wrap us up. Thank you, Doug. This has been a wonderful conversation. My guest has been Doug C. Brown. You can find his business at business success. factors.com. And, Doug, thanks so much for the time,
Doug C. Brown
Matthew. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.