Ep. 57 The Stern Truth: Where is Your Hidden Revenue Opportunity? with Doug C. Brown

I sit down with Doug C. Brown of CEO Sales Strategies in this episode. He and I talk about how to increase your revenue and increase the growth trajectory of your business.

He first started his business journey when he was a kid working with his dad. That turned into working for a company owned by Tony Robbins. During his time there, Doug was able to do something amazing – look at the numbers, see where money was hiding, and free it up to make the company grow from $9 million-$27 million in just 18 months 

Doug breaks down the power of finding hidden revenue with his own example, simply changing the sales script, the company dropped their refund rate to less than 1% within 48 hours. That’s something that ads and marketing just can’t do.

We dive into one of Doug's many golden nuggets, speed to contact. He emphasizes that waiting even five minutes to respond to a lead versus one minute can drop your conversion rate significantly. Take the lead and show your prospect that you're a real person who cares. Start to build that trust from the first interaction.

Doug also tackles follow-up strategy, which is something so many small business owners struggle with. And the golden nugget on follow-up frequency: it's only creepy when it's not value-laden.

Doug shares something from a mentor that is a great golden nugget – “Whatever you try in life will take 2-3 times longer and cost two to three times more than you think.” But if you have someone helping you be more effective and efficient, it might only take 1-2 times what you thought. And it’s exactly why you need outside perspectives on your business, whether it's a coach, mentor, a group, or someone like Doug, who finds those hidden revenues.

Grab a pad of paper and a pen (I know I say that all the time) because the golden nuggets in here are so incredible. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I do.

Connect with Doug here:
www.ceosalesstrategies.com
doug@ceosalesstrategies.com
www.linkedin.com/in/dougbrown123  

The ONtrepreneur Inner Circle is launching soon. If you need mentorship, coaching, accountability, and encouragement to step up your game and achieve your goals, check out the program: https://marshallstern.net/landing/innercircle

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Marshall Stern: So here's the thing, I'm constantly in conversations with business owners and they're struggling to get more clients, as they say, find more clients, increase their revenue. What if the revenue opportunities are already there? But they're hidden. In today's episode, we sit down with Doug Brown of CEO Sales Strategies, and this, my friends, is a lesson in how to really increase your revenue, increase the growth trajectory of your business, grab a pad of paper.

[00:00:34] I know I say that all the time, but seriously, this time, do it. And a pen, because there are so many golden nuggets and takeaways that I took, and I know you will also join us in the ONtrepreneur Inner Circle. If you are feeling isolated and alone as the CEO, the leader, the business owner in your own business, and you just want to be around some other entrepreneurs and talk about challenges, opportunities, support each other, grow, increase our revenue, increase our profit.

[00:01:07] Information is down below in the show notes. Finally, if you like what you hear and see from this episode, which I know you will please give us a five star review. It'll help other business owners and entrepreneurs like yourself find our podcast. Now, without further ado, here's Doug C. Brown and my sit down with him.

[00:01:26] Enjoy.

[00:01:34] Hi, I'm Marshall Stern and I've spent over 35 years leading and growing multiple small businesses. I know firsthand the struggles of entrepreneurship, feeling isolated, lonely, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have to do it all by yourself. I've been through multiple recessions, and I have felt the highs and the lows.

[00:01:53] I've been there, and I get it. This podcast is here to change that. Every week I will bring you straight talking advice, real world strategies, and honest conversations about what it takes to succeed in business without the fluff, the gimmicks, or the sugar-coated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place.

[00:02:16] This is the Stern Truth. 

[00:02:21] All right everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Stern Truth Business Unfiltered. And today I want to introduce you to – I want you to first grab a pad of paper and a pen, and I want you to introduce you to the CEO and founder of CEO Sales Strategies, Doug Brown. Is that correct?

[00:02:41] Doug C. Brown: That is correct, sir. Thank you Marshall for having me on here. I'm very grateful. 

[00:02:45] Marshall Stern: Welcome. How are you today? 

[00:02:47] Doug C. Brown: I'm awesome. I, I've been traveling so it's, you know, it's been fun. 

[00:02:50] Marshall Stern: Nice. We were just talking before we got on and  you know, it's a new year and I wished you a happy New Year, but we're well into the new year now, so I don’t know if we can still do that, but I haven't spoken to you since last year.

[00:03:01] Doug C. Brown: That's right. 

[00:03:04] Marshall Stern: Normally, on the Stern Truth, we talk about, and we're going to talk about different stern truths here for sure. Your entrepreneurial journey, your ups and downs, and, and I'd love to hear some of that too. I want to know how you got into the business you're in now. That's question number one.

[00:03:20] We'll, we'll go there first. Okay. And then I want – And I know you're going to, and for our listeners, I'm telling you I've spoken to Doug before. We're going to put the link to his website in there. You are going to get some, so many golden nuggets from this. So make sure you listen or watch if you're on YouTube.

[00:03:36] Alright? You're on. 

[00:03:38] Doug C. Brown: So, so I got – thank you. And by the way, thank you for the, for the wonderful words,  of kindness and I – the way I got into the business I'm in now, quite frankly,  like many people, it was a journey from trying this, trying that and being in a certain place and then this kind of fell into place from all the other stuff I was doing.

[00:04:01] And you know, as I look back on life, you know, Steve Jobs had something called the, connecting the dots at a Stanford commencement speech. I look back on what I'm doing now, it was a connection of the dots that I didn't really realize would bring me to where I am.

[00:04:16] So this business here was founded on the premise of – I, I was always coaching people, but I was doing it for free and I was helping them grow their revenues, grow their margins, growing their profits. And it started back when I first worked with my dad back when I was a kid. But it really kicked in when I was, I was fortunate enough to get a kind of an entry level position into a company.

[00:04:44] It was called Chet Holmes International. At that point it became Business Breakthroughs International and Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins actually owned the company. And I was able to, because of my, all the stuff I did before, like looking at my dad's business and looking at lots of businesses over the years.

[00:05:02] I just was able to take what I normally was doing in those businesses and apply it to Chet Holmes and Tony Robbins business, and the company was  able to grow in a very short period of time from about 9 million to 27 million, and I calculated, I was $14 million of that growth over, say, an 18 month period, from doing all the things I was doing.

[00:05:28] So I was just in there like tweaking the numbers and looking at things that were hidden, things that were kind of glaring when nobody was paying attention to. And I was able to monetize the heck out of those things. Well, here's the thing. When you do this for Tony Robbins, people kind of take notice.

[00:05:44] So that's how this business started out. Because people started seeking me out going, oh my gosh, you know? You did this for one of Tony's businesses and Chet was very well known at that same time, training companies kept starting to find me. So like Deepak Chopra or Brian Tracy, you know, the E-Myth company.

[00:06:02] We worked with different companies like that back then. Then I helped a gentleman named Russ Whitney, who owned a couple of big brands. One was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but he also owned a construction company worth $700 million. And, you know, it just kept growing. I helped the ASK Method Company, so it was kind of training niche, but then what was happening is, business to business companies were actually finding me.

[00:06:25] I was getting asked to speak here and there, and it's sort of, just sort of mushroomed out of that whole thing, Marshall, until we said, you know, why don't we put a formalized,  you know, what I teach people to do, put a formalized prospecting and marketing process around this whole thing. And when I did that bang, it really started growing.

[00:06:42] And I've been doing that ever since. 

[00:06:45] Marshall Stern: So what – that, that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, obviously if you do, if you mention Tony Robbins, you know, being on the stage with Tony Robbins or working with Tony Robbins people, that's, yeah. That's credibility right there, right? 

[00:06:56] Doug C. Brown: Right. 

[00:06:57] Marshall Stern: For the most part, some people are not a big fan, but it's still, it's, like you, but you still.

[00:07:02] Doug C. Brown: Yeah, it's, it's like saying I was, you know, whether you're a big fan of the current administration or not, it still carries some weight, you know? 

[00:07:09] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:07:10] Doug C. Brown: And so in the previous administration and you know, through that aspect, I was able to take clients on like Intuit, Procter and Gamble, CBS Television, Nationwide, you know, big companies like that.

[00:07:22] And that added more to my credibility 'cause they had really great results. But then I, you know, I've worked with literally thousands of people in group environments on their, with their businesses, helping them, you know, find those hidden revenues and profits and improve their margins and valuations on their companies.

[00:07:41] And some have exited for some pretty good cash. I had one that started at three and a half million, go to six, then go to 10 over a three year period. And then they exited out, they were almost 11. And, rumour is, they exited out at five times revenue. So, you know, you started three and a half million and you sell your company, let's say for $55 million, not a bad three years, right?

[00:08:05] So, and I'm very grateful to be able to help, help those people be and all these people because it just, and it really translates into their lives, in a different way. You know, I was just talking to somebody yesterday actually, and, you know, he's, he's sold more in his business in the last three months than he had in the past two years.

[00:08:28] He's got that kind of trajectory of growth and I said, what does that mean? He goes, I can do a lot of fun things with my kids that I couldn't do before. You know, I mean, gosh, that's like, that's like gold to me, right? Because that's, we only have a certain amount of time on life as we know it. You know?

[00:08:46] Let's squeeze all the fun in that we can. 

[00:08:50] Marshall Stern: Yeah, no, I love that. You said something a few minutes ago, which caught my thinking, hidden revenues. So what do you mean by that? Because a lot of us as business owners, and a lot of the people who listen to and watch this podcast, they're – and a lot of people I coach are looking to grow their business and they're just pushing and pushing and pushing Facebook ads, all this kind of stuff, and they're just trying to increase revenue, or they think they're trying to increase revenue.

[00:09:18] What's hidden revenue? 

[00:09:20] Doug C. Brown: Well, so hidden revenue is the stuff that they've already paid for, but they never collected on. And I don't mean like, you know, we're over 180 days on collections. I mean, that can be some of that type of thing, but it's a lot of the, the missing components, like I'll explain to you like what I did in, in Tony and Chet’s business, right?

[00:09:44] So when I got there – I'm a metrics guy. I'm a math guy. This is how I help my dad's business and all the other businesses. When you measure metrics and you measure me and you look at the math, it starts telling you stories. So I first looked at their front end and I was like, because they were complaining that they were running 27% over on the front end that they wanted to run, but the back end was certainly profitable enough to, to make it worthwhile on the front end.

[00:10:10] So one of the metrics stuck out, glaring to me in the beginning, which was they had over a 15% refund rate on the front end of the machine. They would run radio ads, which were super expensive, into a sales queue. The queue would sell them into a $229 training, and then they would sell a $4,000 training to a $12,500 training on average.

[00:10:34] And I looked at this and I'm like, I listened to the training. I'm like, this is fantastic. This is like amazing training. These people are telling them that they're getting hundreds of thousands to literally sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in the two and a half hours they were spending on the call.

[00:10:50] Why would anybody refund out of that? That's crazy. And so what I realized was, you know, you're driving a thousand leads a week, you're losing 15% of your sales. That starts adding up even at $229 because what was happening at the $229 at that point, there was one in five going on to buy a $4,000 to $12,500 package.

[00:11:16] And then one in five going on to buy a $9,000 coaching package. Right? So, so what I figured is if we fix the refund rate, we push more people through the funnel, we've already paid for these people. That's just a huge upside, right? And so what I realized was they were inviting the refund during the training.

[00:11:40] So what they would do, Marshall, is they would say the training, they'd go around the room and they'd say, tell everybody what you, you know, got for numbers and people saying, I got 500,000, I got a hundred million dollars, I got 72 million, I got $65,000 a day coming in. You know, like the huge numbers like that were coming in and then they were saying these words.

[00:11:59] All right guys, if you don't think we earned our $229, I want you to jump off this call right now. Drop off this call right now and call - 800 get a refund and you know, that's what I want you to do. And they said it two or three times people would drop off 'cause they told them to. And I'm like, whoa, whoa.

[00:12:18] What the heck? And so long story short, all I did is they made a script change and we went around the room and collected all the numbers and then I told the presenters team, I said, guys, add up all the numbers and then report it back. And I took something from Tony Robbins. 

[00:12:33] So if you look at Tony Robbins on stage, he'll always do things like, everybody say aye, you know, that type of thing. Right? There was another one, like, you know, so I, I pulled something like that out there and I, we went around and we added it up. So the first time we did this, it was like $72 million was found on this call. It was like $72,346,017.

[00:12:54] So we added it up and I said, you know, told the guys like, say this and this is what we said. Okay, everybody. We got $72,000,364 - 364,19 $17 on this call, everybody say, woo-hoo, and it was open line, and you would hear these CEOs go, woo-hoo. I think we earned our $229 today. What do you think?

[00:13:14] Yes. You know? Yes. Yes. Okay, great. And they moved on. The refund rate within 48 hours fell from 15.6%, if I remember correctly, to less than 1%. Now think about a thousand leads a week coming through that funnel, right? Long story short, that was one of six things that I did in that business to start now.

[00:13:39] It was sitting there, money, we fixed the follow up. They weren't following up appropriately. We, we improved the close rates on both teams, the sales team and the, and the presenters team. We took one, one product was called the Sales Mastery System that was selling at $895. They were selling $86,000 a year of this.

[00:14:00] And when I looked at the metrics, I found 70% of the leads were not buying the $4,000 to to to $12,000 price point 'cause they were $300,000 a less in revenue. I called those people and said, why aren't you buying anything? And they said, well, I love the Sales Mastery System, but I want coaching with it.

[00:14:17] Okay. I added six weeks worth of group coaching. Raised the price to $1,450. In the first month, we went from selling eight of it to 110. By the fourth month, we were selling over 500 of these, and we went from $86,000 in sales to $8 million in sales in the first year. 

[00:14:36] Marshall Stern: Wow. 

[00:14:37] Doug C. Brown: This is just hidden revenue sitting there. Leads were already paid for. So imagine getting $14 million with almost zero cost to it on an annual basis. That's what happened in that business. This is what happens at everyone's business. They just, all these things, Marshall, they can't see them ‘cause they're so busy trying to, as you said, raise revenue and do all this stuff, right?

[00:15:00] Facebook ads, this, that, this. 

[00:15:02] Marshall Stern: So I want, I want to, okay, so a lot of our listeners are listening to this, they're going 14 million, 72 million. This is like, just, I can't even imagine that. I want to bring this back to - I, I'm going to put myself into this story here. So I had a sign company we talked about earlier, I sold a couple years ago.

[00:15:19] After 29 years of running it, I would get leads and a lot of our listeners, whether it's through Meta ads or Google Ads or whatever, that might be, some online they're doing some leads or lead generation. I would get leads to my website. I would send a – so, talking about hidden revenue, what, let's say my, my conversion rate or close rate was whatever, we'll, we'll call it 50%.

[00:15:45] Okay. What is something, a strategy, not just for me, like just for our listeners, what is something that they can do to, or to look at, to improve, to find that hidden revenue? Okay. Because you're talking about, like, big numbers. People are like, oh my gosh, that's, but break it down to these smaller numbers or smaller businesses.

[00:16:04] What is something that I could have done without knowing the whole story and the details and looking at the, all the metrics? Or listeners could do to, that do they, what do they need to look at? 

[00:16:16] Doug C. Brown: So we got a lead that we generated, then that lead eventually gets a proposal. Is that, that what I understand?

[00:16:22] Marshall Stern: Yes. 

[00:16:22] Doug C. Brown: Okay. So here's my first question on that whole thing. What's the connection rate on your leads? So in other words, if you're, if you get a lead in, what's your speed to speed to connection rate at that point? How long are you waiting to get back to that lead? Okay, so that's my first question. So let's do a mock scenario here.

[00:16:42] I don't know what your numbers are, but you can just gimme numbers and we can play off that if that's okay. So the lead comes in, it's 12:23 PM Eastern Time. How long before we get back to that lead? 

[00:16:56] Marshall Stern: Okay, so I love this question because for me, and I want everyone, like I always say, within 24 hours, but I always get back to them personally. And my team, what I would always want them to do is within two to three hours on a business day-

[00:17:12] Doug C. Brown: Right. 

[00:17:13] Marshall Stern: To get back to them. 

[00:17:14] Doug C. Brown: So if you look at lead conversion rates, and this is something, and again, this is not to say, Marshall, you're not doing it right or you are doing it right. 

[00:17:21] Marshall Stern: No. Yeah. I mean, I'm here to learn, my friend.

[00:17:23] Doug C. Brown: So here's what I want everybody to understand. They're not just reaching out to you, okay? So if somebody's on Facebook, they could be reaching out to 6, 12, 15 different people. Because here's the thing, let's, let's take a service based industry. I, I want to, I want HVAC services, right? I reach out to 15 people.

[00:17:44] I'm lucky if three people get back to me. Okay, so people know this now. So statistics clearly show from the time a lead comes in, if you get to that lead within 60 seconds of it hitting your queue, you have an immense chance of selling that lead. If you wait five minutes versus one minute, it drops over 50%.

[00:18:08] If you wait two hours, it drops even deeper. If you wait 24 hours, it's darn little closed, dead at that point. 

[00:18:18] Marshall Stern: Okay. So just for, so we're talking now, we're talking automation? 

[00:18:21] Doug C. Brown: Yes. Automation or human intervention, whatever it is. So well within, within 60 seconds.

[00:18:26] Marshall Stern: Yeah, continue. 

[00:18:29] Doug C. Brown: I just had this conversation with somebody who's actually in the training business, training service-based companies.

[00:18:38] And I asked him, I said, what's your speed to speed to connection? And his wasn't really that good. He's like, he's like, I knew you were going to ask me this question down the line, because I tell my clients the same thing. So I said to him, I said, look, why don't you do this? You're getting notifications from your CRM or something that something's coming in, right?

[00:18:55] And he goes, yeah. I said, the moment you see that, why don't you record a video on your phone or use Loom or something like that. Now if you're in a meeting or whatever, I get it. Send an automated one. But better to be personalized and, and, and meaningful. So it'd be like, hi Marshall, this is Doug. Hey, listen, I'm running into a meeting.

[00:19:14] I just got your message. You know that you're interested in our, you know, in our services or, or, or products or services. I'm going to call you within two hours of me getting out of this meeting. In the meantime, if you'd like to schedule an appointment so we could talk one-on-one, I've included a link to my schedule where you could just pick a time that's convenient for you, or if you don't agree with that and you have a link, send yours to me please.

[00:19:41] If you just do that and it comes back to beep. Now, Marshall knows that I'm a real person and I actually care enough running in between meetings that I'm actually getting back to you now if I can't get back to you for two hours. At least I got back to you within that minute. Right. So it increases our odds. 

[00:20:01] Marshall Stern: I love that. 

[00:20:04] Doug C. Brown: Now, now think about it, Marshall, if they reached out to 15 people and no one got back to them within that period of time, and I'm the only guy who got back to them within that period of time, who are they going to talk to? 

[00:20:17] Marshall Stern: Yeah, well it brings up – no, I love that. And so two quick stories. So number one, when I first started my sign business, I had someone reach out and I went and I did a site visit.

[00:20:28] And, I kid you not, it was a $95 job. This is back in 1994. Okay. So maybe it's worth $150 now. A $95 job. And the, and I quoted her on the spot, which I really never did after that. Okay. But right on the spot, I quoted her, she goes, oh, well, I got a quote from someone else for $85. Literally, Doug. It was $10 less.

[00:20:50] And I said, oh, okay. And this just came like, I, this wasn't planned. And I said, oh, okay. I said, well, you know, the difference between that quote. And I said, did you meet this, this person? I goes, no, no, it, it's just over the phone. I said, well, you know what? The difference between that quote and my quote is? She goes, yeah, $10.

[00:21:03] I said, no, I'm here. 

[00:21:05] Doug C. Brown: Perfect. 

[00:21:05] Marshall Stern: Okay. So. I learned that early on. Another story, the opposite was, I, speaking of HVAC, I was looking for air conditioning from my home. This is about three years ago. And you know, you go into, you, you do one search on Google for air conditioning or HVAC, all of a sudden you go into Facebook or Instagram.

[00:21:23] It's all, they're all there, all the ads are coming up. So I started clicking on them, entering my information. I would get some, couple automated, right? And then I did, actually did get some quotes from some people. One company, which is a very well known company in my city. I kid you not a year later, they followed up.

[00:21:40] Oh, we're just following up on your request for it. 

[00:21:43] Doug C. Brown: Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:43] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:21:44] Doug C. Brown: A year later. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to entrust you. 

[00:21:48] Marshall Stern: I, I’m, yeah, thank you. I'm sitting here in my nice air-conditioned house now. 

[00:21:51] Doug C. Brown: You want $40,000 to air condition in my home and you can't get back to me for a year. What happens when something doesn't work out?

[00:21:59] Right. So, you know, look, here's the thing. Speed to contact is, is a follow up strategy and follow up is a common courtesy for most people in life and follow up shows that we care. 

[00:22:13] Marshall Stern: Yeah. 

[00:22:13] Doug C. Brown: Follow up shows that we're trustworthy, follow up shows that we're on top of our own game and trust is one of the biggest factors why somebody will buy from us.

[00:22:23] So if we can't improve the, the trust – Steve Covey wrote a book, I think, called The Speed of Trust. So the, the more that they trust you, the faster they trust you, the easier the transaction goes. But you know, in the, in the case we're talking about, we're talking about one little thing, like speed to contact, right?

[00:22:40] So then the question is, when you contact them, are you getting positive responses or negative responses? Because if we're, if we're not measuring these responses, that's not – let, let's say that we are contacting people and bam, we're on it. Like in 20 seconds, everybody, boom, boom. You know, we're talking to people, but out of the 20 people we're talking, or let's just make numbers easy.

[00:23:02] 10 people we're talking to. Nine of them give us really negative feedback on our conversation just to go to the extreme ridiculousness, right? What does that tell you? What does that tell me? I, I'll tell you what it tells me. It tells me that A, either my marketing is targeting the wrong people, or B, my messaging is not value-laden enough that these people value it, and they're telling me, take a walk.

[00:23:30] Now, if we're spending $20 on this ad every single time somebody's coming through that and we have $10, that's $200. If we have nine bad responses, that's $180. We lost on that particular aspect of it. Now if I can get that, but, but, and on we got one sale, let's say on the 10th. It was positive, right? So, and let's say that sale is worth a thousand dollars.

[00:23:57] Well, we spent $180 to get a thousand dollars. It's 18%. Not that bad. Depending on what you do, but let's say I can now get that one sale to four sales. Let's say I look at what my message is. I'm, I'm targeting the right audience. I know I am, but I'm saying the wrong thing. It's like walking up to a lady in a, a restaurant or a bar and going, hey honey, I really like how you look man.

[00:24:22] You know, that, that type of message. And she's like, get lost loser. You know, that type of response.

[00:24:28] Marshall Stern: That doesn't work. 

[00:24:29] Doug C. Brown: Well, it used to work a long, long, yes. No, it doesn't work. It never has, for the most part. You might, you might get a one out of 10 response that they say, yeah, you know, buy, you know, sit down and let's talk.

[00:24:39] But if we can get that one sale now with better messaging to even say, two sales, now we're getting $2,000 for that same investment. If we can get it to four, now we've got four sales at that same investment. Now we're much more profitable. And we're only talking about two metrics. Like if we look at the positive response rates to the amount of appointments we're setting, that'll also give us another thing. 

[00:25:07] What we're saying is it is getting us to our, our next level, our next step. If it is, great. If it's not, can we improve upon it? Because if we can improve upon that, let's say we have a static close rate of one of four, and out of those 10, let's say nine, you know, rejected things.

[00:25:24] Now we got nine positive ones. So let's say we have 10 positive ones, just to make it easy. And out of that, we're driving only two appointments. Well, I'll tell you, to me, that's telling me either we don't have the right client again, or two, our messaging to get them to appointment needs improvement. So now if we can improve that from two to four, we've doubled our, we've doubled our appointment ratio, and if we know we have a static close rate of 25%, we have literally doubled our sales.

[00:25:52] Marshall Stern: Okay. I'm going to ask you something. 

[00:25:55] Doug C. Brown: Yes, sir. 

[00:25:56] Marshall Stern: That is all part of this. But it's a, it's a challenge that most, I – I was going to say small business owners. I think it's just everyone goes through. I want to get your feedback, your, your take on this follow ups. 

[00:26:09] Doug C. Brown: Yes. 

[00:26:10] Marshall Stern: So you have the Zoom meeting, Google meeting, meet in person, whatever. You send a proposal, let's say, how frequently should you follow up? 

[00:26:19] Doug C. Brown: So before we go there, I want to say something, we're going to send a proposal. Before we send the proposal, we want to get an upfront agreement. I'm going to send you this proposal and this is my understanding of what I'm sending. Do we agree on that?

[00:26:35] We are going to get back in touch with each other within this period of time? Let's set the upfront agreement so that we're just not sending proposals out and then we're chasing people around on an arbitrary timeframe. 

[00:26:49] Marshall Stern: Okay. Before we go on that, because that's, that's powerful. That is powerful because I know a lot of people who think proposal, proposal, proposal.

[00:26:57] Just get the proposal. That's success. Which obviously it, it's a step, but it's not. Right. So I want to know – okay, so you're saying get the agreement, get the prospect into agreement that you are going to send a proposal, and then a follow and a follow up that you're going to follow up. 

[00:27:13] Doug C. Brown: Then an action of some sorts going to happen within a period of time.

[00:27:17] Marshall Stern: Okay. 

[00:27:18] Doug C. Brown: So we're setting the frame for our communication loop. 

[00:27:22] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Okay. Perfect. 

[00:27:23] Doug C. Brown: Okay. And then you also want to ask them, look, I'm going to follow up with you. How do you prefer that we follow up? Email, text, phone call, carrier pigeon, you know, no, letter. You know, you can ask what, what's your preferred methodology of us communicating?

[00:27:40] And here's the magic question, if they go email, they say, okay, great. I got email. You know, I'm curious why email? Just ask why email? They'll tell you, you know, well, because I get, I never answer my phones. I don't respond to text till three days from now. Right. Whatever. Now you got to ask it in a way that's not, you know, well dude, why email?

[00:27:59] You know, you don't want to have that tone around it but, you know, figure it out. And then it's like, okay, so great. We're going to hear back within 48 hours. I'm going to follow up with you, right. You know, within, within a day or right after this, and within 48 hours, if I don't hear back from you, what would you ask me to do?

[00:28:20] Marshall Stern: I like that. Yes, you gain permission and you're actually the control in their minds. Like they're getting some, or the power, not control the power. Now it's with, it's still with you, but it's also with them. Like, they feel like, okay. And it's the permission, like, but they, they have some power in this as opposed to someone trying to sell them now, they have some control over the conversation.

[00:28:41] Doug C. Brown: Yeah. And if, and if you don't, if you don't have communication amongst human beings, you got to commoditize sale, right? You don't, you know, when you go to Amazon, let's say, and you're looking at, at four items that are, that are similar, what do you look for? Price. If nothing else, right? 

[00:29:01] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Reviews. If, if it's similar, the price is similar.

[00:29:03] Doug C. Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the price is similar, you might look at the reviews to see, well, what are other people saying about this? And you see one that's got 12 reviews and you know, they got four, you know, ones and twos out of the 12. You, you, you start going to the ones and twos, right, to find out what's going on.

[00:29:23] And you sort of start making all this decision yourself. Well, that's the, that's the problem for people who are selling. They're allowing the client to make the decision by themselves without engaging them as human beings. All of us listening to this at one, well, I, I shouldn't assume, I will assume the majority of us at one time in our lives.

[00:29:47] I know I've certainly done this, have spent more for service than I needed to. And in fact, I just did it, Marshall, I just did it yesterday. So I'm on my way to a doctor's appointment and I'm driving down the road and I hear, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And I'm like, oh my goodness. It sounds like I got a nail in my tire.

[00:30:07] Now I'm trying to get to a doctor's appointment. That took two weeks to actually get the, the appointment, tap, tap, tap. And I, and I pull over and I look down. I'm like, ah. There's a screw in the tire. You know, I got to drive 40 minutes to this appointment. I'm supposed to be there in an hour, but I don't want to drive down the highway with a screw in my tire because if I drive down the highway and this thing goes flat, I'm stuck on the side of the road.

[00:30:28] Right. So I'm, I'm, I asked my wife, I said, where's the tire shop around here? Because we're in an area where we don't understand and, 'cause we're literally traveling right now. And she said, oh, it's here. And so we go and we look and, and it's in a parking garage. There's a tire shop in a parking garage, and I'm like, something's wrong here with Google, they're not like, there's no tire shop.

[00:30:51] She's like, Doug, it's right down there. I see the sign that says, go, come down the garage. So I go down in the garage, sure as heck, it's right in the bottom of the parking garage and there's nobody right there. But then the guy comes out and you know, we're in a country that we don't speak the, the same, you know, English is my primary – we're in Spain.

[00:31:37] So it's like, I'm trying to, well, he speaks English. I'm like, oh my gosh. Great. And I, I show him what's going on in the tire and he goes, oh yeah, yeah. He pulls the tire off, he lifts the car up, pulls the tire off. Goes over and he puts the, the, the thing, he fixes the tire like all this is happening in like 10 minutes.

[00:31:28] And he puts the tire on. He asks me what the tire pressure was. I said, ah, I don't know. It's, you know, he is like, I'll figure it out. And he puts the air in the tires, it looks good, drops the car back down. It's not leaking. This all took about 10 or 12 minutes. And, and I'm like, I'm like, oh, thank you. He goes.

[00:31:43] How much, and I go, I, I – no,  I said, how much? And he goes, 10 euro. I'm like, fine. I said to my wife, I said, you got any euro on you, cash? She goes, I don't have a 10, I got a 20. So I pull, she pulls the 20 out. I grab it and I start to turn. She goes, oh, I got a 10. I turn back and I see a 10 and a five in her pocket.

[00:32:02] And I'm like, eh, I give the guy the 20. Why? If that guy told me 50 bucks, I would've given it to him and I would've given him a hug and a kiss at that moment just to get, you know, on the, on the, on the forehead. Because the value was so high, I didn't care about the money. 

[00:32:17] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Yeah. Well it goes back to a coach I once had.

[00:32:21] And he talked about having a bleeding neck problem. When you're messaging your clients, it's a bleeding neck problem. You had, I mean, it's, it's a kind of gross analogy, but you had a bleeding neck problem. Like you had to get this fixed, there's no option. You didn't have time to go onto Amazon or to go on to Google and search all the different places and then get quotes and then wait 24 hours.

[00:32:39] You needed something fixed right away. 

[00:32:41] Doug C. Brown: Yeah. And, and it's, you know, the analogy like if you're in the desert in this water, how much would you pay for it? Right. But there's also bleeding neck opportunities. And that's where people actually miss out a lot of times. They're always constantly trying to figure out what's the problem, what's the problem, what's the problem.

[00:32:56] You know, I was just talking to a CEO today and he's like, I just, we ran this new product out and it's taken off and we don't know quite what we're going to do with it. But he goes, I think this is like a hundred million dollar opportunity. Aha. We're not talking about problems right now. We're going to talk about as an opportunity.

[00:33:17] And then we'll figure out what problems are preventing him from getting that opportunity. 

[00:33:21] Marshall Stern: Right. 

[00:33:23] Doug C. Brown: So I, I, yeah, again, I think that's follow up is so important because it's human to human connection. 

[00:33:30] Marshall Stern: Okay. So I've got, before we go, I have two more questions. One question is, speaking of the follow up, how often is too often, when does it become creepy? Like stalk-ish?

[00:33:42] Doug C. Brown: When it's not value-laden. 

[00:33:43] Marshall Stern: Okay. 

[00:33:44] Doug C. Brown: Right. So that's, that's the look, follow up needs to be personalized, meaningful, relevant, and value laid. If, if I send you something, let's say that after this podcast, I stock you Marshall, as in follow-up, but every piece of follow up I'm sending you makes you $5,000.

[00:34:05] Okay. Okay. When do you want me to stop sending you that follow up? Right? That – so if, if, if I'm sending you 20 pieces a day and you're making a hundred thousand dollars a day off this information I'm sending you, will you call me up and say, Doug, will you please stop that? Now, maybe if, if you only wanted 50,000, then yeah, I'm, I'm overloading you.

[00:34:26] Right. So the problem with most-

[00:34:28] Marshall Stern: I'm writing this one. 

[00:34:29] Doug C. Brown: Right. Yeah. The problem with most people with follow up is, it's all about them, not about the value that they're trying to convey to the, to the thing. You know, hi, I'm great, my product's great. I'm, everything's great. Buy me now. You know, that type of thing.

[00:34:43] Marshall Stern: So I'm going to tell before my last question, well last, yeah. Before the last question. I'll tell you a quick story before we go. 

[00:34:48] Doug C. Brown: Yes sir. 

[00:34:49] Marshall Stern: Because you'll appreciate this being, you know, podcasts, all that kind of stuff. Okay. I started the podcast earlier this year, and it's on YouTube as well. Some of you're watching this on YouTube.

[00:35:00] Please comment below all the, all your insights and takeaways because there's a lot. And I remember, I think it was episode three or four, and all of a sudden I got my first YouTube comment, okay, on the, on the podcast, on the episode. Oh, it's exciting. Clicked on it to see who it was. I've talked about this on the podcast before.

[00:35:21] Doug. I kid you not within five minutes, this person. Okay. She was from overseas. She commented how awesome the podcast was, this episode was, and that my YouTube ranking was low and that she could help me increase my rankings on YouTube for the podcast, number one. Within five minutes, she went from YouTube to a LinkedIn connection request, Facebook connection friend request, an Instagram follow, following on Instagram.

[00:35:50] All within five minutes. Okay. An email all about her and how she could help me, blah, blah, blah. What made it even worse? I thought she was about to come to my front door. She even tried to call, she even tried to call me on WhatsApp all within five minutes. A little bit too much. That may be a little bit too, too much.

[00:36:08] Doug C. Brown: Yeah. It's a value. It's a lot, too much because there's zero value. And so firstly, she doesn't know whether or not you actually care about what she sent. Right. So if, if she had a, followed up with you on, let's say LinkedIn and said, Marshall, I commented on your, on your YouTube channel. I just wanted to see if this was relevant to you or not.

[00:36:32] Just something like that, right? You could have said, no, it's not. And then she could have said, that's awesome, Marshall. I appreciate you and you answering my, my response. Marshall, do you know anybody that's looking to up their YouTube rankings or whatever? You know, whatever she's pitching, right?

[00:36:47] She go for the referral, go to the extend through the relationship that we built. Right? Because she, you probably would've. She – you probably would've given her some of your trust at that point as a human being because she wasn't being the stalker pushy, you know? But like you said, it's like she's on you like trying to, I mean, you probably felt a hand trying to pull your wallet out of your pocket trying to get at the credit card.

[00:37:15] Right. It was that type of creepy feeling. 

[00:37:17] Marshall Stern: Yeah. Well, I really thought she was going to be banging on my front door like shortly after next. That was the sixth. 

[00:37:23] Doug C. Brown: That's, that's kind of terrifying when you, you know, if, if she was banging on you. Right. Because it's like they're so aggressive.

[00:37:30] That's like, you know, the, the guy in the dating world, like the guy who just walks up to the gal and won't leave her alone. Right. So that guy deserves a punch in the nose, you know, from somebody. Right. Back in my younger days, if I met him, I might've been the one to, to step inside and say, leave her alone.

[00:37:52] Right. But the – I might do it today. You never know. But the, the point being is that's too much, too quick. So we can diminish trust by, you know, that overcrowding, we still got to, you know, human beings are human beings and people forget, they're not selling to anything but a human being. 

[00:38:11] And a human being has wants, needs, feelings, desires, you know, all that stuff, also has fears and, you know, trepidation about being stalked and,  so yeah, that, that, that's a crazy, wonderful example, but it's somebody who is just being overly aggressive about the sales process. 

[00:38:29] Marshall Stern: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:38:30] Doug C. Brown: Just a bit. 

[00:38:31] Marshall Stern: Okay. Final question.

[00:38:33] You've already delivered so much, so, so much. I – my late father used to always talk about golden nuggets. If you could take one golden nugget from seeing a speaker, reading a book – there's no podcasts or anything back then because he passed in the eighties – just one golden nugget that’s been worth your time and I know there's been tons here.

[00:38:49] What would be one golden, one more golden nugget you would like to deliver to our audience on this whole world of sales revenue? 

[00:38:59] Doug C. Brown: Oh, on sales revenue for sure. Here. Here's the thing. When we're looking at sales revenue, we can, and this is going to sound self-serving, but this is the, the truth, the gold nugget is we can only see something through our own eyes that we can see, and someone else can see something different through their eyes.

[00:39:24] And so we should always have somebody taking a look at what we're doing for our revenue or, or in our process. Because we can't see, most of the time, we can't see the outside of the car while we're sitting in the inside of the car. But someone driving past us can see, oh, we got a flat tire happening on the back of the car.

[00:39:46] We can't see it, or we can't see it on the front of the car 'cause there's no mirror directly, you know, going down to the car tire. So I guess the golden nugget would be, have somebody like you, Marshall or somebody like me, take a look at these things, do a diagnostic assessment on where is the found stuff that's just sitting there.

[00:40:07] I can tell you from doing this, so, you know, I mean I've been doing this for three decades. It's, it's, it's always there. There's always something there. And, and I'll, I'll give you an example. I'll close with, close with this. I was just talking to a gentleman. He is doing about a million dollars a year in this business.

[00:40:27] He wants to hire a salesperson 'cause he thinks the salesperson's going to solve the need. He's got another $400,000, he thinks he can get out of this business in 2026, and he was talking to me, but he is like, I just really don't have the funds to get a salesperson in the door. It's a classic story that always happens in business.

[00:40:46] And so he said, I just, I'm just going to put this off for another quarter. I'm going to get some money in the door and then we'll put it off. And I said to him, I said, I thought you said you can get $400,000 coming through this year. You know that's going to happen if you put the salesperson in 'cause you've got the right processes as the leads are coming through.

[00:41:03] He goes, yeah. And I said, so you're going to wait and lose a hundred thousand dollars to save 50 grand. Like, help me out here, right? He goes, yeah, but I don't, I don't know how I'm going to be able to afford this. I said, wait a minute. You're a gym, right? He goes, yeah. I said, how much are you taking in credit cards?

[00:41:20] He goes, a million dollars. So I said, you're paying at least $30,000 in fees, plus you're paying access charges and taxes and all this other stuff, right? And he said, yeah. I said, well, normally in a credit card statement like that. You're probably overpaying by 20% plus. What if we got somebody to look at your credit cards and you're paying say, $40,000?

[00:41:43] Because he said it, no, it's more than 30. He already knows that. I said, you're paying $40,000 and now you are paying over 20% and they could recover, that's $8,000 right there. Correct? He said, yeah. I said, what about your telecom? What about your insurance? What about your office supplies? What about your electricity?

[00:42:01] What about your internet? What about your CRM? Right. Do you think we can come up with maybe 20 grand that you could come up with to get that person through the gate for four months, five months? And he goes, I never thought of that. And I said, of course you didn't, because you are sitting in the driver's seat.

[00:42:17] That's what I'm trying to tell everybody. I, I hope that analogy makes sense. 

[00:42:21] Marshall Stern: No, it does. I mean, you, we talked a lot today about hidden revenue, and that's a hidden opportunity because it, there is money sitting there, which would translate into revenue if you put the proper systems or, or people in place in this case.

[00:42:34] Okay, Doug, this is, we definitely went over 30 minutes. This has been absolutely tremendous. I've actually learned so much from this and what I want our listeners, so I want to thank you and I'm going to have to have you back one day too because there's so much you have. I want to include all your contact info in the show notes.

[00:42:51] Just maybe verbally what's the, how's the best way for someone to reach out to you or to check out your stuff? 

[00:42:58] Doug C. Brown: Yeah, they can go to CEOsalesstrategies.com.  They can check my podcast out. I got CEO Sales Strategies. Podcast. But the best way to get ahold of me is just reach out to me at Doug@CEOsalesstrategies.com. 

[00:43:15] Sales and strategies is plural. And that's my email address. Doug Brown123 is LinkedIn. If you want to call me. My cell phone number is eight three two, five four nine, four eight three six. Please no spam text. Please, please, please. But you know, that's, I have people who check my email and, and other things, but that, you know, I always know whether or not if I respond to you first or they respond to you first.

[00:43:42] And let me know what you're looking at and for, and we can, you know, converse, and find out if there's something I can do to help you. 

[00:43:51] Marshall Stern: That's awesome. That's awesome. So thank you very much. And everyone just come on. Like, I want to hear your feedback. I want to hear your biggest – there's going to be multiple takeaways here, but what have you really, there's so much value that Doug has given us.

[00:44:06] What's some of the value that you've taken from this, and what are you planning on doing with it? 

[00:44:10] Doug C. Brown: And, and Marshall, if I could say one last thing to your audience. Here's two things. Number one, if you really like this podcast, please go give it a five star review. Thank you because when you give Marshall a five star review, it actually starts pushing him up in the rankings on Apple and Spotify and things like that, and other people can find this podcast that they couldn't find before.

[00:44:34] So that's the first thing. The second thing is a wise piece of advice was given to me one time, a mentor of mine, he was actually worth $350 million at that time when, when I was talking with him, and he said this to me and he said, Doug, whatever you try in life, it's going to take you two to three times longer than you figure, and it's going to cost you two to three times more than you figure.

[00:44:55] But if you keep your nose pointed in the direction you want to go and you keep taking a step every single day, you will get there. And I said, well, that's really wise advice. I said, what if I was more effective and more efficient on that process? Then he said, well, it probably only going to take you one to two times, which you figured it was going to.

[00:45:12] So folks have somebody take a look to have Marshall take a look. Somebody like myself take a look. Because you can be much more effective and much more efficient in that process and it, you don't get back the time that you lose – you always make more money, but you can't make more time. So thank you for having me on Marshall. I appreciate it.

[00:45:30] Marshall Stern: That's a great way to close. I got nothing else to say except for thank you. You're welcome and thank you for all of our, all of our listeners. And as Doug said, if you like what you've heard here, absolutely give us a five star review. That would be very much appreciated. And until next week, we'll see you again on another episode of The Stern Truth Business Unfiltered.

[00:45:50] Thank you so much for tuning in to the Stern Truth. If you found today's episode helpful, we would love to hear from you. Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest in an upcoming episode or join us in one of our Moment Accountability Group sessions, simply email me to marshall@marshallstern.net.

[00:46:09] That's marshall@marshallstern.net. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep pushing forward and leading with confidence.