Ignite Sales Growth with Personalized Follow-Up: Insights from Doug C. Brown
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Here’s the transcript:
00:00:00
All right, here we go. So welcome to another episode of Straight Talk About Sales. I'm Dr. Nadia, and I'm super excited to be joined today by my guest, Doug Brown. No relation that we're aware of.
00:00:13
However, Doug is the CEO of CEO Sales Strategies, and I'm super excited to have him with us here today. Welcome, Doug. Thanks, Nadia. I really appreciate being here. And we'll have to get our DNA test done and see if we are related.
00:00:26
I know we gotta do deeper research on that one.
00:00:32
So, with that, with your background and all the things that you've done throughout your years, tell us a little bit more about your journey and what led you to now be the CEO of CEO Sales Strategies. Well, I started working at the age of 3, early. Yeah, I was itty bitty tiny. My Dad had an electric machinery commercial repair company where we repaired electric motors and commercial machinery and things like that. And I swept floors for twenty five cents a week.
00:01:07
I loved it. It was like one of my best jobs ever. Because back then you could get candy for a handful for a penny, right? Yes. You were rich.
00:01:19
I was.
00:01:23
But I kept working with my Dad and by about five and a half or six I don't know if this was by design or just happened, but we were kind of thrust out in front of clients and we started writing orders and doing all of that stuff. And what fascinated me back then was by that time I was making $0.50 an hour. It was like, woohoo. Right, back then.
00:01:49
But I was noticing I was selling parts and we were doubling our cost on the parts. So if we bought it for, I don't know, $5, we sold for ten. If we bought it for ten, we sold it for sometimes not quite double, but certainly 50, 60% markup. And so my brain went, I just made $5 selling this part, but I have to work 10 hours to actually get that. And so I was like, it's got to be a better way.
00:02:22
So that's how it kind of started. So I had side hustle businesses when I was growing up. I've been involved in over 35 businesses in my life at this point, so a lot of them were small, especially when I was younger. I mean, when I was 13, I guess I convinced my brother, who was 18 years old, to co-sign a bank loan for me. And we started a music business and that worked out pretty well.
00:02:55
I've had Christmas retailing businesses, all kinds of things. And then I think one of the things in childhood that really struck me was the blizzard of 78, because I'm that old. Your listeners, people were locked in. I mean, we had snow, I don't know how much snow, 4ft of snow, whatever it was, a lot of snow, whatever it was. And people could not, the plows couldn't plow out driveways.
00:03:21
It was that deep. But my Dad had this industrial snowblower that he had repaired and somebody never picked up. So we had it at the house, and my friend Steve and I were like, well, snowblowed out our driveways. Let's see if other people want it, right? And we made $450 snowblowing nice.
00:03:46
In about 6 hours. Because we would go to people and they'd be like, well, how much to clear my driveway? And we'd be $50. And they'd be like, what? What?
00:03:55
Are you kidding me? I mean, back then you could fill your gas tank up for $6. Right? Right. But I learned that if somebody has a need, problem or challenge, they're willing to pay for it.
00:04:11
And so at that point, you got kind of like leverage going on. So it's like if we go need an operation, a life saving operation, we don't ask the doctor a whole heck of a lot of questions except will this work or not? Right. Can we get it scheduled? Yeah.
00:04:30
I don't think anybody's probably asked a doctor their grade point average when they were in undergrad or this type of thing. So what I learned is people pay for value, and the value is what they deem it to be. And the bigger the problem or the greater the opportunity, the more value they see in that and they will pay more. So then I learned a form of leverage which was sell on value. So we started going through that process and then just one thing led after another.
00:04:59
I was in the military. I got out, went to college, like everybody tells you you're supposed to, got out I had three college degrees. I couldn't find a job. So I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm in debt, so what do I gotta do?
00:05:13
Well, I think I'll try this thing called Sales, and it just kind of spiraled from there that it was one thing to another. And then I ended up landing a couple of really good positions, and I did extremely well in the corporate world. And then from there, I was helping coaching people. And I ended up helping a guy called Jay Conrad Levinson who wrote a Guerrilla book series. And he introduced me to a man named Chet Holmes.
00:05:37
I saw. I helped Jay. I helped Chet. Then Tony Robbins came along, which a lot of people may know him. And I was instrumental working for Tony.
00:05:46
So I was Tony's President of Training and Sales independently for seven years in their business divisions. Nice. And just one thing kept leading to another. And that's how I kind of ended up as the CEO of CEO Sales Strategies because we teach people and train them on how to think and act like a 1% earner so that they can be a 1% earner and selling if they want to be. Yeah, so tell us about , because I know you have a resource you're going to share later.
00:06:14
So I won't jump the gun. But when it comes to being a 1% earner, because I'm sure in your years of experience you've seen some amazing sales team members and some not so amazing, what would you say is the difference between those that are part of the 1% and the other 99%? Well, if I had to sum it up, it would be how they think, act and what they do. Really. When it comes down to it, the crazy part about being a 1% earner versus a non 1% earner is it's not like these massive shifts, right?
00:06:57
It's not like we're trying to cross the Gobi Desert or the Grand Canyon or something, right, to get to one point to the other. So give you an example. If we think that we're worth a certain amount, we will then tend to sell as valuable right at that point. So it's not a lot harder to sell a $10 million deal than it is to sell a deal that is 10,000, right? It's just a little different.
00:07:48
But let's say we're on a static commission of, I don't know, 10%. Well, one you make a million dollars, one you make $1,000, right? So it's all about leverage in those three activities, about thought. So how we think, how we act, what leveraged activities can we create in the action component of it? So I teach people how to do massive prospecting and sometimes massively automated prospecting.
00:08:22
Right, nice.
00:08:25
And then what we do, we spend our time with leads, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads, sales ready leads or purchase order ready leads? And you will find that the 1% earners will spend the majority of their time into sales ready leads and purchase order ready leads. It doesn't mean they don't go through the same discovery processes and things that other people do. It's just they're leveraging all of that process and they're even leveraging the sale. So once they look at a sale as not one cell but multiple cells, and they will do things like follow up that people don't seem to do.
00:09:12
Which blows my mind when I look at some of these companies and some of the individuals within the companies and it's like they generated 200 contacts and they followed up with like six of them. I was going to say seven. So our numbers… could be family members. We're thinking on the same numbers, right? So it's all about creating leverage in the process.
00:09:42
And then really, when we look at businesses in general, the difference between a business that tends to grow and scale and one that doesn't is exactly in what they think, act and do. So a business that grows and scales, they have the understanding of a different model. They have processes and systems. But the businesses who tend not to scale, they usually have an insufficient model in their business and they all can be working this. We all work the same amount of hours.
00:10:13
Right. And I would argue that even 1% earners sometimes work less depending, because once they hit their target, they don't stop. It's really about their performance, too. Nadia so there's different characteristic traits, but these are all learned abilities. It's not something that somebody is, like, born a sales extravagant.
00:10:44
I'm sure there's a few just like I'm sure that when you look at any great musician or something like that, they have some natural talent, but they had to work at it, work at the craft. So it's no different than that. I've met people all over the world. Most of the people I meet are very similar in their, you know, wants, desires, needs, and who they are and what they want in life, no matter where they you know, you can be the greatest pilot in, I don't know, Portugal, that you can be in the United States or Canada or Dominican Republic. I don't even know if they fly planes in the Dominican Republic as an air force or something.
00:11:28
But you know what? It's it's shifts. And those shifts compound on one another, and that compounding is what creates the leverage, the systems and process in that process. And that is why people can get into the 1% earners group, and then when they get there, they can decide whether they want to try to get into the 1% or the 1% earners group. Right.
00:11:53
Now, that's a goal. So one thing you've talked a lot about I'm hearing you say you talked a lot about leverage yes. And processes. And so when it comes to follow up, I'm sure many of our listeners have heard that saying the fortune is in the follow up. Right.
00:12:10
We say it, we feel like we understand it, but we don't always do it or do it well. So I come across this a lot in my work. I'm like, okay, you did a lot of work to generate leads, to start having conversations. What happens? So what are some of the things or guidance you would have in really helping to capture and close those sales so that more people are following up?
00:12:36
Because we know it takes, oftentimes, more than one conversation, especially when you're talking about closing $10 million deals. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've followed up for two years and closed a deal in two years. Right. And people think that's weird.
00:12:51
But that relationship immediately led me to another relationship, which was a little company called NASCAR that became my client. Right.
00:13:05
See, the fortune is not in the follow up, okay? The fortune is in doing the follow up because there are lots of people, it's the application of the actual action of follow up that actually brings results. Yes, agreed.
00:13:28
Somebody can go out to the place and see the person of their dreams, and they can sit there and look across the room and go, my gosh, she's amazing, or he's amazing or whatever, right. But if they never get up and have that conversation initially and then don't continue to build that relationship through follow up and I'm illustrating it this way because people usually get it, right. Because it's like, okay, you have an initial conversation which is in any sale, you got a connection. In the beginning, you have to have a connection. So you have a connection.
00:14:01
And then that connection has got to lead to building rapport, trust, like respect, that type of thing. Yes. So it's no different than if a suitor was you know, a potential suitor was to see you in a coffee shop, Nadia, and they walk up to you and go, my God, I love your hair. You enchant me. Right.
00:14:21
In whatever way. They better have a good message. They better. Yes. Right.
00:14:26
Or your Uncle Doug will have to talk to them. So there's the messaging and then, okay, we found some commonality. We want to build a relationship. So what do we do from there? If you think about it, I'm going to take men, for example, because I don't want to sound like I know how women think because I'm not that smart most of the time.
00:14:55
My wife sometimes says to me, she goes, you think like a man. And I'm like, you're like is that a compliment? Exactly. Is that a compliment or is it downplay? What is it?
00:15:07
Right? So that's called qualification, what you do in objections. But when we establish a relationship, what do we do next? We set a date, a follow up, right?
00:15:24
We mend. We send flowers if we're smart or whatever she is looking for. Right. That's a follow up. It's a connection.
00:15:33
It's another continuous piece. My gosh, men write songs, women write songs. We do all of these things in the beginning of a relationship to build a relationship for something that is of mutual value, hopefully to both of us. Yes. But when it comes to business, we meet with the buyer and then half the people never follow up with the buyer again, ever.
00:16:01
Right. And half the people never even ask the buyer for the sale. So when we're doing that over and over again, we're prepping the buyer with information so that when the next person comes in i.e Or the competitors, we've queued up our competitors to take the sale because we're not following up.
00:16:22
Yes. Just as if we and I've done this research, Nadia. I've actually surveyed women. Like when I have done speaking or whatever, I would say to them, look, if you go out on an awesome date, how long does it take before you go, this guy is burnt toast. If he doesn't call you, how much time does he have to actually get a hold of you before he's the toast you throw in the trash?
00:16:58
Overwhelmingly, it's 24 hours or less. Wow. And then a smaller part of the audience, smaller percentage, it's 24 to 48, sometimes up to 72 hours. But if he doesn't follow up within. Three days, it's a wrap.
00:17:16
It's a wrap. I like that they have a whole book. He’s Just Not That Into You, Right? So why do people not do this? Because it's so logical, right?
00:17:30
And men don't think you're the only one that's trying to follow up with her if she's got a lot of good qualities, right. So in the business context, don't think you're the only one in there pitching what you're pitching, because you're not, right? Can I give an example of how insane this is? I just did this. This is a business to consumer sale, right?
00:17:55
At my home, our electric bill is going insane here. Cost is going up. And I'm like, what the heck? So I'm like, you know what? Let's look into solar, okay?
00:18:08
Because we want solar, right? Well, I just don't want to pay this $1,000 a month electric bill type thing. I don't blame you.
00:18:18
So I'm like, okay, so we look at solar now called a bunch of people, maybe six or seven, were called.
00:18:30
Two responded. Wow. Two responded, right. One of them was a previous client that I had taught some selling abilities to who makes about $450,000 a year selling solar now, okay?
00:18:54
No, not at all. I mean, he started at like, a couple of hundred and doubled up, right? So I call him and I say, hey, look, I'm thinking of doing this. I know you know how to do this, and just tell me what I'm supposed to do. I trust you.
00:19:15
Sends me a proposal. I look at the proposal. I go, okay, I think we'll do this. I don't hear anything back. Well, wait.
00:19:29
Yeah, exactly. This gets more bizarre than that.
00:19:34
In you. So a friend of mine who's a realtor, I asked her, do you know anybody who's doing solar? And she said, yes, this gentleman's name is Taylor. I'll introduce you. I introduced Taylor.
00:19:51
Calls me immediately, says, hey, can I stop by tomorrow? Do you have any time for us to stop by tomorrow? So I said, sure. Now, remember, I've already made a buying decision. I'm going with my past client because of the relationship.
00:20:05
Right? Right, exactly. Now, in the meantime, the other company had thrown a different company had thrown a proposal, and it was just way out of the things. But now I'm getting more educated as a buyer because now I know, okay, I want to put a new roof on this place and things like so Taylor shows up. I really like this guy.
00:20:29
Smart, sharp, straightforward, truthful guy, right? He's like, I wouldn't do this, but I would do this. And here's the reasons why. I'm like, hey, can you give me a proposal? He goes, sure, I'll have it to you this afternoon.
00:20:42
Proposal comes in that day. Wow. Right? He calls me. I'm liking this Taylor.
00:20:52
I did too. He calls me and I'm like, okay, brother, what are some of the things we could possibly do? Right? Because his quote is now much higher than the original quote, like $10,000 higher. So, anyways, long story short is, he said, Let me see what I can do.
00:21:11
I'll work some numbers, I'll get back to you. He gets back to me the same night, says, I'll have things to you in the morning, drops them to me in the morning. He said, this is what we can do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, I want you to know that the quote is $54,000. The other quote was $48,000.
00:21:35
I'm still stuck that your former student is not following what you taught.
00:21:42
Here's the bizarre part. I called my student back and said, look, this is what happened. He goes, So what do I do? I go back to Taylor and I say, Taylor, I got this other quote. It's a little more appealing than yours.
00:22:09
Do you think you can do anything with your people? He said, you know, I'll do my darndest. So he takes my quote, comes back, and he says, I'll be back to you within 24 hours. Back to me within 24 hours and closes the gap. He's still $4,000 more.
00:22:24
Wow. I call my previous client. Now, this has nothing to do with my coaching. I want everybody to understand it has nothing to do with my training. This has everything to do with thinking, acting, and being a 1% earner.
00:22:38
Yeah. This gentleman who's making $450,000 is not a 1% earner in his location. He has to almost double that for the state that he lives in.
00:22:52
He lives in the state of Massachusetts. So Taylor, on the other hand I asked him the same question he told me he made about the same amount of money. So I called my previous client back. I said, I'm making a decision. He said, OK, I'll follow up with you in a couple of days.
00:23:09
Nothing.
00:23:13
I'd buy from Taylor, of course, because. At this point, why not? I'd buy from.
00:23:21
And my previous client never followed up with me, ever.
00:23:29
Now, here's the difference. I want people to understand you can be trained and know exactly what to do, and you can know how to think and you can know how to act. But if you don't do it's like having five PhDs and still struggling financially, because you never went out to pursue those fields, right? Or you did and they said yes, and you never showed up for work, right? That's basically it.
00:23:59
Like you got the job and you just didn't show up for work. So when I sat and asked Taylor, I said, what do you want to make? He goes, I'd like to make about $2 million a year. Yes. Okay.
00:24:14
It's the thinking component of this thing, which caused the lack of follow up. When somebody's at $450,000, a lot of people would go, My gosh, that's amazing. That's where I want to be. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Right.
00:24:28
But we still have to think and act and do if we want to get to the 1%. So you can have all the knowledge in the world. I tell people all the time, look, there are better salespeople than me. And they go, well, that's not very good because you teach people how to be in the top 1%. I'm like, I'm in the top 1%, but there are better people than me.
00:24:49
Jeff Bezos is making more money than I am. I'm going to say he's probably better at that than I was. Right? Right. So everybody has a level of expertise, but we've got to keep creeping that level up if we want to continue.
00:25:03
Why? Technologies change, markets change. I mean, AI has come in and it's going to eliminate jobs right now, whether people like it or not. So when it comes to following up that fortune is in doing the follow up what we talked about before, which is what this other gentleman didn't do. Correct.
00:25:24
Now, the crazy part is I already have a couple of referrals for Taylor. Absolutely. Taylor's all over it. Right. So Taylor told me that about 60% of his business is referrals now because he doesn't have to prospect so heavily, but he wants to get to the million dollar level.
00:25:44
So we're having that conversation on how to prospect. Nice. Right. So the reason I highlighted somebody I actually had familiarity with, Nadia, is not because training is bad. That's not the issue.
00:25:58
Right. He doubled what he was from the origination that worked. But people will seek their own level. So the question is, do you want to be a 1% earner? Do you want to be a 3% earner or a 5% earner?
00:26:10
Whatever 10% earner. That is okay. Water seeks its own level. The question is, can you think, act and do like a 1% earner so that you can maintain that level of income and work half the hours? Nice.
00:26:25
Yes. That's the true freedom in being in a 1% thought act and doing. Absolutely. Especially when it comes to follow ups. But yeah, follow up people.
00:26:38
And by the way, follow ups are common courtesy.
00:26:44
How many of us listening to this go, my God, from the car dealer never followed up with me? Sometimes our biggest frustration when we're the buyer is the lack of follow up like you. Especially when you've made the decision, you're like, hey, I am ready to pay you. Let's go, let's do this. And crickets.
00:27:03
It's like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And in the cellular world, they tend to get anywhere between 4015 thousand per commission per deal. Sometimes the bigger ones, they get more. So I don't know what the commission was on that, but let's say it's whatever, pick a number.
00:27:22
It's a lot easier to do that and then get two other commissions that are going to close at an 80% plus rate. So let's say an average commission on that is $7,500. That's 7500 times three. If that can be accomplished in two weeks, it's an extra 20. What is that, $22,500 or something?
00:27:43
Yeah, right? So it sure beats being on a hot roof in the middle of July and scraping the shingles off the roof. Right. You live here in Phoenix, where I live. Oh, my gosh.
00:27:58
Yeah. It's super hot. Super hot, yeah. Is that answering your question on follow up? I mean, what people want to do in follow up is we want to have a very simple structure.
00:28:11
I'm actually probably going to get released in the last quarter of this year. I actually built an automated follow up and prospecting system as a SaaS application because this is crazy how much money is lost. When I was talking with Jay Levinson, he told me statistically that 82% of sales that would have happened that don't happen are direct cause of lack of follow up in most cases. Wow.
00:28:40
I believe it. I think, like you said, one is systems. So what type of systems can people put in place? Another, like you mentioned, is mindset. Like the mindset of getting over your call reluctance to pick up the phone or send an email or a text to follow up with folks.
00:28:57
But another thing, and one thing that interested me when we were even preparing for this is you mentioned meaningful and personalized. What are some ways or strategies that because we have to do it right? And I love how you reframed the fortune is in doing the follow up. I hope everyone wrote that down. But in doing so, how do we make it meaningful and personalized in such a way that feels good and is still effective?
00:29:25
And like you mentioned, sometimes it may take two years, but hey, it happens. Yeah, it was well worth my two years. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean?
00:29:38
Well, okay, so meaningful. When you hear the word meaningful, think relevant.
00:29:48
It has to be relevant. So let's say, I don't know, somebody falls overboard. We're on a boat and they fall overboard and they don't know how to swim, and they're just splashing around in the water, let's say, and a life insurance salesman comes up and says, hey, I think now is a good time for a policy.
00:30:16
Right.
00:30:20
Maybe a smaller bit of relevance there. Not probably so meaningful at the moment. Not in the moment, but let's say somebody comes to the side with a what do they call life boys or whatever? The flotation life preserver. Life preserver.
00:30:36
Thank you. And they go, hey, would you want to buy this?
00:30:42
That is going to be more meaningful and relevant at that moment, right? So when we think about following up, it has to be something that is relevant and meaningful to the other individual. I love that. I don't know how many emails you get that are like this, but it's like, Dear Dr. Nadia, your manufacturing company is probably needing an overhaul at this time due to post COVID gameplay, and you're like, sitting there going, I don't have a manufacturing company that is not meaningful and is not relative.
00:31:31
Correct. But if they're talking about something that you have interest in, that you have a challenge or an opportunity right now that you're looking to resolve or gain. Right. I mean, your hair is amazing, right? Thank you.
00:31:51
If I didn't know you and I struck up a conversation about how lovely your hair is and how you get it to do what you get it to do, I mean, obviously people who are seeing me are going to see that my hair is amazing, too, all three. But the point being is if somebody came up to me and they said, hey, I have this magic potion to grow hair back, they can assume that it might be relevant to me, but it may not be. Correct. True. Because my wife loves a shaved head.
00:32:22
I was going to say bald is in.
00:32:27
And she wins more than the sales guy will win or the sales gal will win.
00:32:35
We want to do our research on people. We want to find out things that matter to them. And you can do this online in five minutes sometimes, right? I mean, you can go to their LinkedIn profile and see, Jeez, they attended XYZ University or they were in the military or they have social media posts posted out there that have their children in it saying how I love the Baltimore team or Phoenix, the Arizona Coyotes, or whatever the professional hockey team is. If you were into the NHL sporting thing, you can connect and have relevancy on that, but it still has to be meaningful and relevant to what you're doing.
00:33:34
That's the other thing. Absolutely. If I come in, I go, hey, how's the Coyotes doing? You're going to go, oh, they're great. And then if I go, Well, Jeez, what about your business?
00:33:45
Coaching business? You know what I mean?
00:33:51
They're two separate things, right. But what we want to do is we want to have it as personalized as possible. A lot of times, people use templated, stuff that goes out. I love this one. They send me stuff and they go, Hi, Doug.
00:34:04
C. Because my middle initial C, right? And they load it into their autoresponder on their system as Doug Brown. Last name Brown. No one calls me Doug Brown.
00:34:21
I. Guess the one is just Doctor. There is no name. Oh, yeah, doctor. Hi, Doctor.
00:34:27
Right. So personalized, like, after this, right? I, Nadia, thanks for having me on. Your podcast, right. The street talk about sales podcast.
00:34:43
I really enjoyed the fact that we had good connection and we did a lot for the audience. I love the fact that our last name is Brown together and that we could possibly be related. I'm going to check. That DNA as we talked about. And hey, it's probably pretty hot now that it's in the summer now.
00:35:05
Triple digits every day. So that is personalized. Very. So versus, hi, my name is Doug, I'm great, my company's great, everything we do is great. We'll be great for you.
00:35:23
Right. That's typical follow up in the conversation or it's a mismatch completely.
00:35:32
And Doug Brown, like, seriously, no one talks like that. So it's got to be meaningful, it's got to be relevant. Meaning that it's got to mean something to the person. It's got to be in the ballpark that the person's interested in. And it's got to be something that they're interested in exchanging information or ideas on.
00:35:54
Trying to, I don't know, teach a fish to swim is not probably irrelevant, but trying to teach a fish to pilot a plane, probably not that relevant, right? Considering unless it's in a fish tank or something. But it's one of those things that people don't think about this and they just throw anything out. I will tell you, if you're going to throw anything out, just make it short. Yes, keep it short and sweet.
00:36:21
Right. Hi, Nadia, I was thinking about you. How's your day going? I was thinking about your business. Do you want to buck that's better than Dear doctor, whatever.
00:36:36
Right.
00:36:39
I always recommend, and this is what I do too, I take notes. So whether I can write them down or mentally, I try to remember the things about that individual. Like I was just in a conversation with a gentleman that I've known for a long time and I know he has a daughter and a son and his wife, and he mentioned his daughter's wife and son's name. Well, I didn't remember them. I probably have heard earlier, so I wrote them down.
00:37:08
So the next part that I send out, I'm going to go, how's your son Max doing? And all of a sudden this brings a different level of human connection. Yes, I love that. And you're so right. And it's so easy to do because like you said, just jot down a note, it's easy to incorporate it and yet we so often don't do it.
00:37:32
While I'm thinking of it, Nadia, if people would just once a day call three people, that's a good one. Do you know what I'm saying? If just once a day. If you did this seven days a week, that's 21 people a week. If you did it 50 weeks out of the year, you've contacted well over 1000 people.
00:37:58
That's a great goal. It doesn't have to be hard. You could send one personalized postcard a day and you'll have 300 plus postcards a year. These are touch points. That's what follow up is, if you want to keep the relationship alive.
00:38:15
And by the way, those of you who are in a significant relationship, married, whatever you want to call it or. Not, you want to stay married, you might want to take notes. You better think about following up and doing something special for the other individual. Yeah. The follow up doesn't end after the dating is over, right?
00:38:32
After you get married, you no longer have to follow up. Right. No. That's where the relationship declines. Right.
00:38:38
And when it comes to business relationships, especially if you're the selling party, do not expect the other person is going to follow up with you because it is our responsibility. Responsibility. I can't speak. It's incumbent upon us to actually take and do the follow up right. Because everybody gets busy in life and we all have days and weeks and months sometimes where it's like, oh, my gosh, I don't want to die, but I hope this ends, that type of thing.
00:39:15
But it doesn't take much if you just followed up just a little bit, especially with the key people you want to keep relationships with. And I will tell you, when you do this over a period of time and they start to trust you more than they actually trust their own decisions, they'll buy from you more often. Sales will be shortened. The closed cycle is highly shortened. And guess what?
00:39:40
They'll introduce you to their network. They will, happily, yes, because they trust you. They know, hey, if you took care of me, you're going to take care of somebody else for me. Right. So that is what it's all about.
00:39:54
I love it. This has been so good. So I hope everyone took notes. The fortune is in doing the follow up and let's set a goal to reach out to at least three people per day. Those are just some of Nadia's personal notes.
00:40:08
I suggest you go back and listen to this again and get some more. These are great gems. So before we wrap up, Doug, one thing is any final thoughts? And then what resource do you have to share with our listeners? I think you said the greatest final thought you could.
00:40:26
It's like, okay, if you found something valuable in this, which I hope you do, listen to it over and over and over again and then go to Nadia's Page and give it a five star review. Thank you. Right? Well, I mean, podcasting takes a lot of energy, effort, time, and if people want to show their gratitude, a way of following up, by the way, folks, is finding people's podcasts that you really want to meet listening. To that having a personalized, relevant, meaningful piece of information that goes out to them and show them that you put a five star review on their podcast.
00:41:11
Nice, right? I will tell you, that will get you in the door far more than other things. So I think that what you said was what I would say is like, there's one thing, see, there's learning from training, then there's application in the training which gains our skill sets and makes us better. Right. And then there's continuous improvement, which is what my previous client isn't doing.
00:41:42
Right. And you want to know what the number one complaint of that previous client is? What? I want to make more money.
00:41:53
It could be so simple.
00:41:57
I will speak with him again, and when I do, I'm going to show him the purchase and sales order that I signed for the other. And I'm going to say, this is why. Right. But again, Water seeks its own level. A lot of people say they want it, but they don't absolutely want it.
00:42:15
Yeah, it's just a great idea. Right. It's like, I want to learn how to play piano. Well, you can go buy an electronic piano for $300. What's stopping you?
00:42:26
Right? Oh, there's so much time that I have to do. No, time is a priority. Money is a priority.
00:42:38
If you needed the money bad enough, you'll find the way. Yes. You figure it out. Your children were deathly ill, and you had to get them to the hospital, and you had to go to the big meeting. I suspect your children, you'll find the time to get them to the hospital, right.
00:42:52
Immediately. I know I would.
00:42:58
And I think the resource I'd love to share is I wrote, just recently wrote this. It's called the Nonstop 1% Earner And it's an ebook. And you can download the ebook at www.ceosalessstrategies.com. The number one, so, one PE.
00:43:22
Paul Echo. It stands for 1% Earner. So ceosalestrategies.com. One PE. And the book actually goes into the thought process, the psychology philosophy of what a 1% earner is and how it's made up.
00:43:44
So I've been getting good feedback. So this is good on the book. And that's what I would say. Study, go back, learn, own it.
00:43:57
If not, if we gave somebody a script and we said, this script will make you an extra half million dollars in the next six to twelve months, it's the golden magic strip. Strip golden magic script. At least people know this is live. And we said, all you have to do is commit this script to memory. There will be people who do that.
00:44:25
Then there'll be a larger percentage of people who actually read the script and keep reading the script every time they have that conversation. And those are the ones that we got to shift their focus and their mind. And I will tell people most of the time why this is happening. Do I have one more minute? Yeah, go ahead.
00:44:46
Okay, so we grow up. Anybody who's ever had children knows one has a personality, the other one born has a different personality. Yes. And it's like, how did this happen? Two exact people made the same child.
00:45:00
Right. But they come out into this world with their own abilities and own desires. We all do. We're an open book of learning. Then we are conditioned by society and parental and people who are supposed to be taking care of us on how to act, how to think and how to be and what to do.
00:45:26
And therein lies the challenge, because a lot of times we are complying as young people to gain the love, honor, and respect of the people that we believe that we should be loving and honoring. So if they're telling you something like, and you're hearing this all the time, like money doesn't grow on trees, you know, yes, that expensive stuff. That's only for the super rich, that's not us. And you're hearing this over and over and over again, it seeps in. Yeah.
00:46:05
And so when it seeps in, then we start acting as if because we want the approval, you can't go out and buy a new luxury car. Because if you do and you bring it home, people are going to be like, oh, you're one of them. Right, right. So people comply. We're doing this often.
00:46:24
We form a habit. Then as we get to be adults out on our own, we still keep doing that habit because we still want that love and honor and respect that we had when we were younger. So if we act outside that, there's the mental game that gets involved. So if somebody grew up in an environment where good is never going to be good enough, they won't memorize the script. Yeah.
00:46:48
Because they go, well, if I get there and I make the extra half a million dollars, that's better than I'm supposed to be. Wow. That's the mental game. Fortunately, I can teach you how not to play that game because part of becoming a 1% earner is actually reshaping that part so that you can still have what you want and still have the connection if you want the connection as well. Still.
00:47:17
So that would be what I would leave people with. Oh, that's so good. And we will make sure that all of Doug's contact info, including the link to the ebook, is in the show notes, because I'm sure there are many listeners that would love your support, Doug, and making sure they make that shift, especially with the doing. A lot of us know what to do, but we don't always do it. If they do get the book, there'll be another page that will eventually be showing them we're rolling out a 1% academy.
00:47:53
That's what we call it. So if they want to be on the waiting list for that, they can go. And then we'll be communicating with them. We will be doing follow up.
00:48:08
If they have questions, just reach out. They can send an email to you matter. youmatter@ceosalestrategies.com and my team will pick it up. Either answer it or get it to me and then I'll answer it directly. Perfect.
00:48:26
Well, this has been awesome. Such a rich conversation. We could talk about sales stuff all day long. However, I'm sure both of us have work to do. So I just want to thank you so much, Doug, for being my guest.
00:48:36
Today on this episode of Straight Talk About Sales. Oh, thanks, Nadia. I had a lot of fun, and I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you. We'll see you all soon.